“As far as I know, the idea of the whole of the State has so far only been established through the ideal combination of individuals, and thereby the true insight into the nature of this relation has been cut off.” [2] [1] Fichte (_Werke_, iii. 203 ff.) says, “Indeterminate”; viz. I undertake to aid in protecting whoever is injured. Now, I can never know (he argues) who in particular is to be benefited by this undertaking; many are invisibly benefited by it through the suppression of the injurious will before it comes to be manifest. Therefore the relation is really organic; every part strives to conserve every part, because injury to any part may concern any part. It is the general as indeterminate, really less of a unity than Rousseau’s “moi commun”. [2] Werke, iii. 207. The “ideal combination” = the imaginary contract. You must, he urges, not merely have an idea of combination; you must show a bond of union beyond the idea, or making the idea necessary. “In our account this has been achieved. In the notion of that which is to be protected, in accordance with the necessary uncertainty _which_ individual will need the visible protection, and still further, _which_ it will have advantaged invisibly in the case of a wrongful will suppressed by the law before its outbreak, all individuals are forced into unity. {246} “The most fitting simile to elucidate this notion is that of an organised natural product, which has often been employed in modern times to describe the different branches of the public power as a unity, but not, so far as I know, to throw light on the whole civic relation. Just as, in the natural product, every part can be what it is only in _this_ combination, and out of this combination simply would not be this (indeed outside all organic combination there would simply be nothing ...): just so it is only in the combination of the State that man attains a definite position in the series of things, a point of rest in nature; and each attains _this determinate_ position towards others, and towards Nature, only through the fact that he is in _this determinate_ combination. ... In the organic body every part continually maintains the whole, and while it maintains it, is itself maintained thereby; just such is the citizen’s relation to the State.”