What is left of theory and of “universal, natural law” in view of the force of “necessity?” Apparently very little. The state “must always let its actions be determined by necessity.” This principle was not conceived in terms of historical determinism; rather, necessity was defined in terms of the “unique individuality” of men.24 Necessity, the respect for the uniqueness of the individual, determines the theoretical demand for the limited state. The recognition of the uniqueness and diversity of men forbids the state to undertake “positive” action to achieve “useful” ends, since what is useful to an individual is always subject to speculation and can not be determined from the outside. Necessity is thus in harmony with freedom. No “other principle [could] be reconcile [d] with respect for the individuality of independent beings and the concern for freedom which derive [d] from this respect.”25 Then what remains of theory, of “eternally immutable reason,” of the “natural, universal laws of nature” is merely the recognition of the total diversity of men. The theory of the state, confronted by the necessities of the real situation, hangs in mid-air as an abstraction, incapable of realization.
Humboldt is quite aware of all this. In describing the “theoretical principles” of political power, he proceeds from the “nature of man,” viewing man “in the form most characteristic of him,” not yet determined by any concrete relationships. “But man nowhere exists like that,”26 he adds. The implementations of the theory require a degree of maturity for freedom. “Albeit, this maturity is nowhere perfect and in my opinion will remain foreign to the sensual, extroverted individual.”27 Thus, Humboldt asks his readers to refrain from all comparisons with reality, “despite all the general observations of these pages.”28 As he wrote to Schiller: “This treatise has no relation to present-day circumstances.”29 This may explain in part why this classic of German liberalism was never published in its entirety during Humboldt’s lifetime, but appeared only in 1851, long after his death.30
2.
Humboldt’s defense of the liberal state in The Limits of the State, however, includes two basic assumptions which in their modified form are still reminiscent of classic liberal theory. Humboldt maintains that there is a “pure theory” of the state, one based upon the principle of “eternal reason” and thus opposed to the existing “positive” state. This holds true even if for him, in contrast to classic liberal thought, the chasm between the ideal and the existing state are unbridgeable. Moreover, he finds a human dignity common to all men. In his other writings, Humboldt carefully attempts to free himself from all abstract or universal principles and more closely approaches an organicist concept of society and history.
This had been already true of his critique of the new French Constitution which he had written in August 1791, a year before the Limits of the State?31 It had been a great error of the Constituent Assembly, he holds, to attempt to base a constitution upon “pure reason.” Only that could develop harmoniously in men or in the state as “a sum of active and passive human energies” which has its origin within and is not imposed from without. Constitutions can not be drafted on men as sprigs on trees. “Where time and nature have not done the spade work, one might as well bind blossoms with threads. The first noonday sun will wilt them.”32 He does not urge the wise legislator to work out the “pure theory” of the intended reform in detail, as he does in the Limits of the State, but asks him to free himself from abstract considerations, to determine the actual direction of change, and then modify this direction by degrees. While reforms are possible within narrow limits, human institutions are only to a very small extent the result of deliberate human action. Indeed, as he comments, “when we offer philosophic or political reason for political institutions, we will, in actuality, always find historical explanations.”33
In the fragment “On the law of the Development of Human Energies (1791),” Humboldt sets the limits of reason and abstract law even more narrowly. Even if we possess the key to the universe, “a rational truth that pointed to the necessity of a uniform law,” this knowledge gives us no real insight into the nature of things. For living Nature, in contrast to “lifeless,” physical nature, can be grasped only through an act of understanding, of intuitively experiencing its innermost character. Indeed “understanding” of the lifeless, physical world is not really possible. We can establish uniformities in its behavior, but these relate only to its external appearance, not to its inner essence, which we can grasp in others who are analogous to us in being alive. We can know living things only through the energies they express which reflect their particular individualities. The more we succeed in reducing phenomena to abstract concepts, the further we move away from the understanding of real living forces and of individual essences.35
In other essays of the 1790’s, Humboldt develops further his concept of individuality and its implications for ethics and education.36 In “On the Spirit of Mankind,”37 written in 1797, he stresses that every man must have a goal, a “first and an absolute yardstick,”38 but this ultimate value must be related to his inner nature. The final goal common to all men is the “dignity of men,” but there is no set pattern by which this can be attained. However, this “absolute yardstick,” which man finds only in himself, does not relate to “momentary pleasure or for that matter to his happiness.” It is a “notable characteristic of man’s nature to be able to scorn pleasure and to do without happiness.” This yardstick is to be found in a man’s “inner value, in his higher, more perfect self.”39 Humboldt, in distinguishing between the essential and incidental elements of individual character, already approaches his later view that each individual represents an idea. Still noticeably missing is the view that collective groups, other than mankind as a whole, possess individual character or represent ideas. This concept was to become important to Humboldt’s later political writings.
3.
Until 1809, Humboldt’s relation to politics had been that of an outsider. Even as Prussian envoy and minister plenepotentiary in Rome, between 1802 and 1809, Humboldt had primarily devoted himself to aesthetic and scholarly tasks. Since 1792, he had written no essay on political questions, and even in the Limits of the State he had approached politics as a theoretical problem without direct relation to reality. As one of his political biographers observes, his primary concern in the Limits of the State is not with the question of the needs and functions of the state, but an aesthetic interest in the development of the individual personality.40
This relationship changed abruptly, when Humboldt was called to Berlin in 1809 upon Baron von Stein’s recommendation that he reorganize the Prussian system of education. From 1809, until the reaction which set in with the Carlsbad Decrees in 1819, Humboldt served the Prussian state in active, policy-making roles; for example, as envoy to Austria from 1810 until the end of the Congress of Vienna; as minister charged with the task of preparing a draft for the Prussian constitution in 1819; as one of the statesmen who, under the leadership of Stein and Hardenberg, attempted to reform the Prussian state along liberal lines after the humiliating defeat at Napoleon’s hands in 1806. He succeeded in reshaping the Prussian schools in accord with his Humanitätsideal. In the primary schools, he modified the then existing pedagogy, which he considered mechanical and rationalistic, and substituted Pestalozzian methods that took into account the inner needs and interests of the individual child. In the Gymnasien, he replaced preoccupation with Latin philology with emphasis upon the study of the Greeks. Influenced by Winckelmann’s perhaps one-sided interpretation of Greek art, Humboldt believed with Goethe that the Greeks had succeeded in approximating the ideal of the harmoniously proportioned and totally developed individuality. He was instrumental in founding the University of Berlin in 1810, with its principles of freedom of research and teaching which were to set a pattern for all German universities.41 He unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the function of the centralized state in matters of education by urging the transfer of state school funds to the local communities. Humboldt’s very assumption of the responsibilities of minister of education, of course, constituted a recognition of functions of the state which he had previously denied.
While it may be going too far to see in Humboldt’s turn to the state, as one historian has done, the decisive