216 pmLOsoPHICAL VIEWS AND POLITICAL THEORYment - Speransky does not always clearly distinguish between them,
which may be significant in itself - are the expression of this general
moral will of the members of society. The support of this general will
gives the government its material and moral strength to restrain the
manifestations of unbounded egoism. 1 There is nothing truly original
or profoundly liberal in this conception, in spite of the fact that Jean-
Jacques Rousseau shared it also. If Speransky perhaps found in Rous-
seau the idea of general will (not popular sovereignty, though>, he
derived the moral and theological features from an ecclesiastic, religious
conception of government, and from romantic political philosophers
like Fichte.
More important than the formal similarity to 18th century concepts
is the fact that the ideas of Speransky imply that government has a
moral purpose. Every government must have an aim, a positive goal
- usually moral and theological - which guides its actions and helps
determine the proper system of administration. Speransky enters
directly into the stream of romantic German thought when he says that
this spiritual goal, which the government must help bring about, is an
expression of the ethical aspirations and moral strength of the people. 2
A similar role, as we have seen, he has reserved to the state in the
economic realm, in his Financial Plan of 1810. The energies of the
state should be directed to protecting and promoting the spiritual
aspirations of the nation, and not to securing the happiness of
individuals or the satisfaction of private interests. In rejecting the
concept that the government should concern itself with the interests of
individual citizens, and in having the state abandon its purely passive
and negative function in society ("night watchman") in order to
exercise a positive role of moral leadership, Speransky dispenses with
the atomistic individualism and utilitarianism of the 18th century. The
notion of a natural interplay of individual interests, which eventually
leads to satisfactory compromise and balance between the various in-
terests - with the government as friendly umpire - is quite alien to
Speransky. As a matter of fact, the interest of individuals as such, is
of little concern to him. He is only interested in a legal safeguard of
their ethical and moral independence and freedom. The integrity of
the moral individual must be secured, though this may take place
even under conditions of serfdom. Once the integrity of the individual
is secured, the single member of the social group does not interest
Speransky anymore.
1 "Pervyi politicheskii traktat," p. 67 and Plan 1809, pp. 4, 5.
2 "Pervyi politicheskii traktat," pp. 53-54; Zapiska 1803, p. 185.