According to this representation, all and each of the people give up
their external freedom in order to receive it immediately again as
members of a commonwealth. The commonwealth is the people viewed as
united altogether into a state. And thus it is not to be said that the
individual in the state has sacrificed a part of his inborn external
freedom for a particular purpose; but he has abandoned his wild
lawless freedom wholly, in order to find all his proper freedom
again entire and undiminished, but in the form of a regulated order of
dependence, that is, in a civil state regulated by laws of right. This
relation of dependence thus arises out of his own regulative law
giving will.
48. Mutual Relations and Characteristics of the
Three Powers.
The three powers in the state, as regards their relations to each
other, are, therefore: (1) coordinate with one another as so many
moral persons, and the one is thus the complement of the other in
the way of completing the constitution of the state; (2) they are
likewise subordinate to one another, so that the one cannot at the
same time usurp the function of the other by whose side it moves, each
having its own principle and maintaining its authority in a particular
person, but under the condition of the will of a superior; and
further, (3) by the union of both these relations, they assign
distributively to every subject in the state his own rights.
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