At the same time the State depraves those who govern. "It is characteristic of privilege, and of every privileged position, that they poison the minds and hearts of men. He who is politically or economically privileged has his mind and heart depraved. This is a law of social life, which admits of no exceptions and is applicable to entire nations as well as to classes, corporations, and individuals. It is the law of equality, the foremost of the conditions of liberty and humanity."[362] "Powerful States can maintain themselves only by crime, little States are virtuous only from weakness."[363] "We abhor monarchy with all our hearts; but at the same time we are convinced that a great republic too, with army, bureaucracy, and political centralization, will make a business of conquest without and oppression within, and will be incapable of guaranteeing happiness and liberty to its subjects even if it calls them citizens."[364] "Even in the purest democracies, such as the United States and Switzerland, a privileged minority faces the vast enslaved majority."[365] 3. But the stage of mankind's evolution to which the State belongs will soon be left behind. "From the beginning of historic society to this day, there has always been oppression of the nations by the State. Is it to be inferred that this oppression is inseparably connected with the existence of human society?"[366] Certainly not! "The great, true goal of history, the only one for which there is justification, is our humanization and deliverance, the genuine liberty and prosperity of all socially-living men."[367] "In the triumph of humanity is at the same time the goal and the essential meaning of history, and this triumph can be brought about only by liberty."[368] "As in the past the State was historically necessary evil, it must just as necessarily, sooner or later, disappear altogether."[369] Everybody feels already that this moment is approaching,[370] the transformation is at hand,[371] it is to be expected within the nineteenth century.[372] II. _In the next stage of evolution, which mankind must speedily reach, the place of the State will be taken by a social human life on the basis of the legal norm that contracts must be lived up to._