States last only so long as there is a _ruling will_ and this ruling will is looked upon as tantamount to the own will. The lord's will is--law. What do your laws amount to if no one obeys them? what your orders, if nobody lets himself be ordered? The State cannot forbear the claim to determine the individual's will, to speculate and count on this. For the State it is indispensable that nobody have an _own will_; if one had, the State would have to exclude (lock up, banish, etc.) this one; if all had, they would do away with the State. The State is not thinkable without lordship and servitude (subjection); for the State must will to be the lord of all that it embraces, and this will is called the "will of the State." He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be all over with lordship. The _own will_ of Me is the State's destroyer; it is therefore branded by the State as "self-will." Own will and the State are powers in deadly hostility, between which no "eternal peace" is possible. As long as the State asserts itself, it represents own will, its ever-hostile opponent, as unreasonable, evil, etc.; and the latter lets itself be talked into believing this,--nay, it really is such, for no more reason than this, that it still lets itself be talked into such belief: it has not yet come to itself and to the consciousness of its dignity; hence it is still incomplete, still amenable to fine words, etc. Every State is a _despotism_, be the despot one or many, or (as one is likely to imagine about a republic) if all be lords, _i. e._ despotize one over another. For this is the case when the law given at any time, the expressed volition of (it may be) a popular assembly, is thenceforth to be _law_ for the individual, to which _obedience is due_ from him, or toward which he has the _duty_ of obedience. If one were even to conceive the case that every individual in the people had expressed the same will, and hereby a complete "collective will" had come into being, the matter would still remain the same. Would I not be bound to-day and henceforth to my will of yesterday? My will would in this case be _frozen_. Wretched _stability_! My creature--to wit, a particular expression of will--would have become my commander. But I in my will, I the creator, should be hindered in my flow and my dissolution. Because I was a fool yesterday I must remain such my life long. So in the State-life I am at best--I might just as well say, at worst--a bondman of myself. Because I was a willer yesterday, I am to-day without will: yesterday voluntary, to-day involuntary. How change it? Only by recognizing no _duty_, _i. e._ not _binding_ myself nor letting myself be bound. If I have no duty, then I know no law either. "But they will bind me!" My will nobody can bind, and my disinclination remains free.