It is evident that as an historian has very wittily been called an inverted prophet, the professor of law is an inverted moralist, and therefore law itself, in its proper sense, _i.e._, the doctrine of the _right_, which we ought to maintain, is inverted ethics in that chapter of it in which the rights are laid down which we ought not to violate. The concept of wrong and its negation, that of right, which is originally _ethical_, becomes _juridical_ by the transference of the starting-point from the active to the passive side, and thus by inversion. This, as well as Kant’s theory of law, which very falsely deduces the institution of the state as a moral duty from his categorical imperative, has, even in the most recent times, repeatedly occasioned the very extraordinary error that the state is an institution for furthering morality; that it arises from the endeavour after this, and is, consequently, directed against egoism. As if the inward disposition, to which alone morality or immorality belongs, the externally free will, would allow itself to be modified from without and changed by influences exerted upon it! Still more perverse is the theory that the state is the condition of freedom in the moral sense, and in this way the condition of morality; for freedom lies beyond the phenomenon, and indeed beyond human arrangements. The state is, as we have said, so little directed against egoism in general and as such, that, on the contrary, it has sprung from egoism and exists only in its service—an egoism that well understands itself, proceeds methodically and forsakes the one-sided for the universal point of view, and so by addition is the common egoism of all. The state is thus instituted under the correct presupposition that pure morality, _i.e._, right action from moral grounds, is not to be expected; if this were not the case, it would itself be superfluous. Thus the state, which aims at well-being, is by no means directed against egoism, but only against the disadvantageous consequences which arise from the multiplicity of egoistic individuals, and reciprocally affect them all and disturb their well-being. Therefore it was already said by Aristotle (De. Rep. iii.): Τελος μεν ουν πολεως το ευ ζην; τουτο δε εστιν το ζῃν ευδαιμονως και καλως (_Finis civitatis est bene vivere, hoc autem est beate et pulchre vivere_). Hobbes also has accurately and excellently expounded this origin and end of the state; and that old first principle of all state policy, _salus publica prima lex esto_, indicates the same thing. If the state completely attains its end, it will produce the same outward result as if perfect justice of disposition prevailed everywhere. But the inner nature and origin of both phenomena will be the converse. Thus in the second case it would be that no one wished to _do_ wrong, and in the first that no one wished to _suffer_ wrong, and the means appropriate to this end had been fully employed.