Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ Each person who hears another one cry for help is lawfully bound by the state-compact to hasten to his assistance. For all individuals have promised to all individuals to protect them; and the cry for help is the announcement that a danger exists, which the representative of the protecting power, the government, can not immediately remove. Hence, the cry for help confers upon each individual again not only the right but also the obligation to render immediate protection. If it can be proved that a citizen heard the cry for help and did not hurry to assistance, he is liable to punishment; ”

“ It is impossible to contrive a punishment as a counterpoise against the will, to arise in immediate hostility to the law and its power. The utmost that can be done and must be done, is that the law be made to maintain its authority; and hence the law can not, as an equal punishment for the attempt to overthrow it, provide double severity for all its subjects. This would be to punish all citizens for the crime of one individual. The punishment of an equal loss is, therefore, not allowable here; and there is no manner of expiating the original punishment for all crimes—to outlaw the criminal. ”

“ I call this agreement regarding the validity of wills arbitrary, therefore, merely because it is not necessary for the realization of the conception of rights.
The conviction that wills will be considered valid after death can be realized only by establishing a law that all wills, without exception, shall be thus considered. Each one, then, guarantees for his own sake to all others the validity of their will, and in doing so guarantees his own will. ”

“ Whence does any other mortal derive the right to personify this moral rule of the world, and to punish the criminal according to his deserts? A system which asserts the supreme ruler of a state to have this right is undoubtedly compelled to say that the title to it is beyond demonstration, and hence to call it a right given by God. Such a system is, therefore, bound to consider the monarch as the visible representative of God in this world, and to consider all government as a theocracy. ”

“ We thus obtain a more special determination of the exclusive sphere of freedom, guaranteed to each in the property-compact. To be able to live is the absolute, inalienable property of all men. A certain sphere of objects is guaranteed to a person exclusively for a certain use; but the ultimate end of that use is, that he shall be able to live. The spirit of the property-compact is the guarantee of this end, or of life. It is the fundamental principle of every rational form of government, that each person shall be able to live from the results of his labor. ”

“ It is, therefore, to some extent true, that punishment serves as an example, namely, to convince all of the infallible execution of the law. But the original intention of punishment was solely to deter the criminal from the crime. Now, since this end could not be attained, he having committed a crime, his punishment has another aim in view, namely, to deter other citizens from committing the same offense. The execution of the penal law is, therefore, a public act. Each citizen who has heard of an offense, must also learn that it has been punished. ”

“ Not to exercise the power of government is often as injurious to public security as to abuse it; and hence should be equally punished. It is all the same to the citizens whether government officials abuse their power for positive aggressions of their own, or whether, by neglecting to exercise it, they permit the aggressions of others. In either case, the citizens are oppressed. After an individual has signified his willingness to accept an office, the nation properly calculates that the duties of that office will be executed, and hence takes no other precautions to have them executed. ”

“ The only object of civil punishment, and the only measure of its degree is the possibility of public security. Violations of the law, prompted by malicious intentions, are to be punished more severely than violations inspired by selfish motives; not because they are more immoral [3] —morality, indeed, has no degrees; and there is only one morality—but because the fear of a milder punishment, a punishment simply of equal loss, would not afford adequate security. ”

“ Hence, there exists no positive right to sacrifice another individual to the preservation of my existence; but neither is it against the conception of rights, that is, it is not in conflict with any positive right of the other to sacrifice his life to the preservation of my own. ”

“ The law has no hold upon a man who has not this self-love. There are two ways of escaping from it. Firstly, by pure morality, when each one forgets his empirical self in the ultimate end of all reason; in which case the Penal Law does not determine his acts, since duty itself causes him to obey the laws; and, secondly, by barbarism, when a man does not care for his own welfare; in which case he becomes unfit to live with other free beings, since the Penal Law can not apply to him. Political reform is a return to a care for one's own security and welfare. ”

“ The sarcasm which the common people love to levy against our laws and government—namely, that they do not punish men for having committed crimes, but for having been foolish enough to allow themselves to be detected—is just and appropriate. It is an indispensable requirement addressed to the police, as the servant of the government, that each guilty person, without exception, should be brought to trial. ”

“ Whatsoever remains to the citizens after they have paid their taxes, is their property; but since the state has the power to compel the exchange of such articles for others, each citizen receives money for that remainder. This money is absolutely pure property, over which the state has no longer any control.
Each piece of money which I possess is, at the same time, a sign that I have fulfilled all my civil obligations. The state has no supervision over it. Taxation on money is absurd. ”

“ The plea of anger or of drunkenness—as having placed the criminal for the moment beyond the control of his reason—relieves him from the charge of premeditated and malicious intent; but a rational legislation will rather provide more severe than milder punishment for such cases, particularly if such a state of mind is habitual with the accused; for a single unlawful act may well constitute an exception from an otherwise blameless life. But a person who pleads, "I habitually get so angry or so drunk as not to be any longer master of my senses!" ”

“ The same holds good in regard to those who have attacked the body or property of other citizens. They are wild and untamed natures, and in the latter case, moreover, lusting after another's possessions. Let them first learn to live and take care of their own. It is only the reckless squanderer of money who is a thief or robber. Rebels may often be good-natured, but erring visionaries. Let them have their conceptions corrected, and learn to esteem the benefits of a civil government, particularly of that in their own state, and they may grow to be excellent citizens. ”

“ Now, apart from the laughing in his face, this is so very true that a murderer could not say he were suffering too much or unjustly, even though he should have been sentenced to the gallows by a government which was entirely ignorant of his crime of murder, and which was hanging him altogether unjustly. There is nothing more true than that we are forced to confess: In a moral world, governed by an all-knowing judge, and according to moral laws, no one who is treated according to the same law which he himself established suffers unjustly ”

“ What is the Police? This we can best answer by a deduction of the conception of the police power of the state. The state, as such, has entered into a common compact with its citizens by which each party assumes certain duties and receives certain rights. We have shown the means of connection between the state and the citizens in all cases in which the citizen can and undoubtedly will prefer complaint. ”

“ Secrecy is always petty, low, and immoral. Each one should have the face to do before the whole world whatever he dares to do at all. Moreover, to whom could the state intrust such a dishonorable occupation? Shall the state itself encourage infamy and immorality? If the state authorizes secrecy in the conduct of some men, who will guarantee that these men may not make use of that secrecy for their own purposes and for the commission of crimes by themselves?
Again: Why should a government secretly place a watch over its citizens? In order that they may not believe themselves watched. ”

“ Punishment is merely a means for the end of the state "to maintain public security;" and the only intention in providing punishment is to prevent by threats transgressions of the law. The end of all penal laws is, that they may not be applied. The threatened punishment is intended to suppress all evil purposes and to promote a good disposition, so that the punishment may never be applied. Hence, in order to attain this end, each citizen must know that the threat of the law will invariably become reality if he should commit any offense. ”

“ But why should they not believe themselves watched? That they may discover their thoughts respecting the government and its plans, and may thus become their own betrayers; or may betray whatever they know of other secret and illegal acts. The former is necessary only where government and citizens live in perpetual war with each other; where the citizens are unjustly oppressed, and seek to regain their freedom again by employing all the means and tricks of war: the latter is necessary only where the police are not watchful enough. ”

“ In that case government and law are equally impossible among men; all so-called states are nothing else and never will be any thing else but the oppression of the weak by the powerful under the pretense of law; and the science of law is nothing but the science of how the stronger may be unjust without injury to themselves, as Montesquieu ironically describes it. ”

“ Supposing some citizens should thus treat the outlaw, what would follow? No proceeding against them on the part of the state, for the outlaw has no rights; but certainly the contempt of all men, or infamy. He who tortures an animal for mere pleasure, without having any positive advantage in view, is justly held in abhorrence as an inhuman barbarian; how much more he who would torture or kill, for mere pleasure, a being which at the worst has, at least, a human countenance! It will not be done, therefore ”

“ The exclusive condition of the efficiency of legislation, and hence of the whole state organization, is this, that each citizen shall know beforehand that, if he commits a crime, he will be surely discovered and punished in the manner prescribed by law. For, if the criminal can entertain hopes of escaping detection, what is to deter him from committing a crime? In such a case, we merely continue to live, no matter how wise the laws we have, in our previous condition of nature, wherein each depends upon the good intention of the other ”

“ All the production of their labor, after deduction of their board, must remain their own. In the same manner, their property in the state must be kept for them under the supervision of the government. The object of their confinement is, to awaken in them love of order, of labor, and of property. But how could this love arise, if order and labor were to them of no advantage, and if they could not acquire property? They must be under the supervision of the state, and yet they must also be free; in other words, so long as they act properly they must seem to be perfectly free ”

“ The punishment which is established by such an agreement is an expiation of utter exclusion from the state; hence, it is a benefit extended by the law to the criminals. Each person has the privilege to reject his rights, and hence the criminal may reject this benefit granted him by the law; but by rejecting it he clearly proves himself an incorrigible scoundrel, and must be expelled without further delay. Let no one imagine, that by giving a criminal this privilege of accepting or rejecting the punishment of expulsion, the criminal obtains a means to escape punishment altogether. ”

“ The person, in acting, always presupposes his own future existence; the object of his present acting always lies in the future; and he is a cause in the sensuous world only in so far as he proceeds from the present to the future moment. Freedom and continued existence are essentially united, and he who guarantees the one necessarily guarantees the other. Present activity includes the future.
Nature has destined man, who alone concerns us here, for freedom, that is, activity. Nature attains all her ends, and hence must also have made arrangements to attain this one. ”

“ There is, however, this difference between property in land and property in animals, that the land can always be designated by the place in space which it occupies, whereas the animal has free motion and can not be so specified. How then is it to be made known what particular animal belongs to a certain person and to no one else? ”

“ The counterpoise becomes impossible of application from the peculiar position of the subject for whom the punishment is intended, when that subject has nothing to lose but his body. Let no one complain of injustice in this respect, because the wealthier man, who has no need to rob, and in robbing only risks his property, is allowed to expiate his offense; whereas, the poor man, who needed what he took for his absolute requirements, can not expiate it, and hence must be completely outlawed, simply because he has nothing. ”