But if the state oppresses the individual with burdens and duties which he feels no inner necessity to fulfil, if it confiscates him, body and soul, instead of respecting his freedom and his right to self-determination, then the assumption falls to the ground; the state is no longer an institution which benefits the individual; it is inimical to the individual, hinders him in his struggle for existence, destroys his happiness; and he obeys his primitive instinct for self-preservation if he turns against it, masters it as he would a monster, draws its teeth and claws, and forces it back to the place it was meant to occupy, that of a docile and industrious servant of the individual, not of one individual who aspires to rule the others, but of all individuals who are of the people that make up the state.
I consider it unnecessary and a little ridiculous to quote authorities in support of the statement that twice two are four; what is reasonable and clear is convincing without further recommendation; nevertheless, it is a fact that may be worthy of mention that some of the best intellects of all nations have sided with the individual against the state. On the one side we have Plato, whose ideal is Sparta and who would like to see the despotism of this model state and its communal meals completed by the addition of community of property, of wives, and of children; we have Hegel, who has gone farther than any one in his idolatry of the state; we have Auguste Comte, who, in his zeal for his newly founded science of Sociology, conceives society as an organism biologically superior to the individual, and thereby has become the father of the Organicists. But against these we can put the Englishman, Jeremy Bentham, the embodiment of sound common sense, whom the muddle-headed fools that pose as deep thinkers have good reason to hate and fear, and whom they try to depreciate as vulgar and shallow; further, his compatriot, Herbert Spencer, who is his kindred spirit; the Frenchman, Frédéric Bastiat, whose writings sparkle with flashes of wit; the German, Wilhelm Humboldt, who bravely and successfully combated the state tyranny defended by Fichte. All these are convinced individualists who adduce irrefutable reasons for their views. We may also include Kant among them, as he gave utterance to this decisive sentence: "Man is his own aim and end, and must never be a mere means"; consequently it is never permissible to sacrifice the sovereignty of one's own person to that of the state, or make use of it for the realization of political aims by disregarding, and doing violence to, one's right of self-determination. Harald Höfding contends that progress should be measured by the extent to which, in Kant's sense of the words, man is recognized to be his own aim and end; but that is not only a measure of progress, it is the measure of all civilization.