But, having become the people's property, it is still far from being mine; rather, it retains for me the subordinate significance of a _permission_. The people plays judge over my thoughts; it has the right of calling me to account for them, or, I am responsible to it for them. Jurors, when their fixed ideas are attacked, have just as hard heads and hearts as the stiffest despots and their servile officials. In the "_Liberale Bestrebungen_"[196] E. Bauer asserts that liberty of the press is impossible in the absolutist and the constitutional State, whereas in the "free State" it finds its place. "Here," the statement is, "it is recognized that the individual, because he is no longer an individual but a member of a true and rational generality, has the right to utter his mind." So not the individual, but the "member," has liberty of the press. But, if for the purpose of liberty of the press the individual must first give proof of himself regarding his belief in the generality, the people; if he does not have this liberty _through might of his own_,--then it is a _people's liberty_, a liberty that he is invested with for the sake of his faith, his "membership." The reverse is the case: it is precisely as an individual that every one has open to him the liberty to utter his mind. But he has not the "right": that liberty is assuredly not his "sacred right." He has only the _might_; but the might alone makes him owner. I need no concession for the liberty of the press, do not need the people's consent to it, do not need the "right" to it, nor any "justification." The liberty of the press too, like every liberty, I must "take"; the people, "as being the sole judge," cannot _give_ it to me. It can put up with the liberty that I take, or defend itself against it; give, bestow, grant it it cannot. I exercise it _despite_ the people, purely as an individual; _i. e._ I get it by fighting the people, my--enemy, and obtain it only when I really get it by such fighting, _i. e. take_ it. But I take it because it is my property. Sander, against whom E. Bauer writes, lays claim (page 99) to the liberty of the press "as the right and the liberty of the _citizen in the State_." What else does E. Bauer do? To him also it is only a right of the free _citizen_.