Not isolation or being alone, but society, is man's original state. Our existence begins with the most intimate conjunction, as we are already living with our mother before we breathe; when we see the light of the world, we at once lie on a human being's breast again, her love cradles us in the lap, leads us in the go-cart, and chains us to her person with a thousand ties. Society is our _state of nature_. And this is why, the more we learn to feel ourselves, the connection that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser and the dissolution of the original society more unmistakable. To have once again for herself the child that once lay under her heart, the mother must fetch it from the street and from the midst of its playmates. The child prefers the _intercourse_ that it enters into with _its fellows_ to the _society_ that it has not entered into, but only been born in. But the dissolution of _society_ is _intercourse_ or _union_. A society does assuredly arise by union too, but only as a fixed idea arises by a thought,--to wit, by the vanishing of the energy of the thought (the thinking itself, this restless taking back all thoughts that make themselves fast) from the thought. If a union[203] has crystallized into a society, it has ceased to be a coalition;[204] for coalition is an incessant self-uniting; it has become a unitedness, come to a standstill, degenerated into a fixity; it is--_dead_ as a union, it is the corpse of the union or the coalition, _i. e._ it is--society, community. A striking example of this kind is furnished by the _party_. That a society (_e. g._ the society of the State) diminishes my _liberty_ offends me little. Why, I have to let my liberty be limited by all sorts of powers and by every one who is stronger; nay, by every fellow-man; and, were I the autocrat of all the R......, I yet should not enjoy absolute liberty. But _ownness_ I will not have taken from me. And ownness is precisely what every society has designs on, precisely what is to succumb to its power.