If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince; for the people, if it is to be a subject[165] and make history, must, like everything that acts, have a _head_, its "supreme head." Weitling sets this forth in the "Trio," and Proudhon declares, "_une société, pour ainsi dire acéphale, ne peut vivre_."[166]
The _vox populi_ is now always held up to us, and "public opinion" is to rule our princes. Certainly the _vox populi_ is at the same time _vox dei_; but is either of any use, and is not the _vox principis_ also _vox dei_?
At this point the "Nationals" may be brought to mind. To demand of the thirty-eight States of Germany that they shall act as _one nation_ can only be put alongside the senseless desire that thirty-eight swarms of bees, led by thirty-eight queen-bees, shall unite themselves into one swarm. _Bees_ they all remain; but it is not the bees as bees that belong together and can join themselves together, it is only that the _subject_ bees are connected with the _ruling_ queens. Bees and peoples are destitute of will, and the _instinct_ of their queens leads them.
If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean, to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself into different peoples and tribes, _i. e._ beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the "peoples" are regarded as the ones that have come together, are _destitute of will_. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change to unification.
Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes, that they want to set up something _general_, abstract, an empty, lifeless _concept_, in distinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively _particular_ from the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite a _people_, a _nation_, forth from the earth; the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials the two efforts that are just now the order of the day--to wit, the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions (Franks, Bavarians, etc., Lusatia, etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality--coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, _i. e._ unite _themselves_, only when they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in other words, when they are more than--Germans: only then can they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn in _to himself_. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German"! With that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," _i. e._ as long as they have a "_family disposition_." From the superstition of "piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness" or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run,--from the _family spirit_,--the Nationals, who want to have a great _family of Germans_, cannot liberate themselves.