The _bourgeoisie_ is the _aristocracy of_ DESERT; its motto, "Let desert wear its crowns." It fought against the "lazy" aristocracy, for according to it (the industrious aristocracy acquired by industry and desert) it is not the "born" who is free, nor yet I who am free either, but the "deserving" man, the honest _servant_ (of his king; of the State; of the people in constitutional States). Through _service_ one acquires freedom, _i. e._ acquires "deserts," even if one served--mammon. One must deserve well of the State, _i. e._ of the principle of the State, of its moral spirit. He who _serves_ this spirit of the State is a good citizen, let him live to whatever honest branch of industry he will. In its eyes innovators practise a "breadless art." Only the "shopkeeper" is "practical," and the spirit that chases after public offices is as much the shopkeeping spirit as is that which tries in trade to feather its nest or otherwise to become useful to itself and anybody else. But, if the deserving count as the free (for what does the comfortable commoner, the faithful office-holder, lack of that freedom that his heart desires?), then the "servants" are the--free. The obedient servant is the free man! What glaring nonsense! Yet this is the sense of the _bourgeoisie_, and its poet, Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world, etc. He who only serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to it," has the true freedom. And among thinkers the cause was--_reason_, that which, like State and Church, gives--general laws, and puts the individual man in irons by the _thought of humanity_. It determines what is "true," according to which one must then act. No more "rational" people than the honest servants, who primarily are called good citizens as servants of the State. Be rich as Croesus or poor as Job--the State of the commonalty leaves that to your option; but only have a "good disposition." This it demands of you, and counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all. Therefore it will keep you from "evil promptings," holding the "ill-disposed" in check and silencing their inflammatory discourses under censors' cancelling-marks or press-penalties and behind dungeon walls, and will, on the other hand, appoint people of "good disposition" as censors, and in every way have a _moral influence_ exerted on you by "well-disposed and well-meaning" people. If it has made you deaf to evil promptings, then it opens your ears again all the more diligently to good _promptings_.