But only a ruler who is himself enlightened and has no dread of shadows, yet who likewise has a well-disciplined, numerous army to guarantee public peace, can say what no republic may dare, namely: "Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!" Here as elsewhere, when things are considered in broad perspective, a strange, unexpected pattern in human affairs reveals itself, one in which almost everything is paradoxical. A greater degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to a people's spiritual freedom; yet the former established impassable boundaries for the latter; conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom provides enough room for all fully to expand their abilities. Thus, once nature has removed the hard shell from this kernel for which she has most fondly cared, namely, the inclination to and vocation for free thinking, the kernel gradually reacts on a people's mentality (whereby they become increasingly able to act freely), and it finally even influences the principles of government, which finds that it can profit by treating men, who are now more than machines, in accord with their dignity.
So, in other words, you increase people's freedom to reason by reducing their range of action. Argue as you please -- as long as you obey. You can disagree as much as you please, but you will be put in your place if you disrupt the peace. And slowly, over time, everyone will reason in public autonomously rather than merely following the public reasoning of others.
Of course, as is often the case with Kant it's difficult to say how much of this is intended to be serious and how much is merely Prussian flattery. But the view that Enlightenment is consistent with despotism was very widespread in the actual time period to which we usually attribute the Enlightenment. In the age of Frederick and Catherine and Joseph it was hardly possible to think of them as opposed. People like Diderot might insist that despotism was always wrong, but even Diderot took it for granted that Enlightenment was consistent with despotism -- he just thought that even benevolent and enlightened despotism led in the long run to a debased populace. As he put it in a memorandum to Catherine, three successive sovereigns like Elizabeth would have made slaves of the English.
We have a tendency to look at Enlightenment movements through the blurring lens of time; but continental theorists of the Enlightenment living in the period itself did not generally think of the Enlightenment as anything more than a transitional state; they did not regard it as holding the full answer to moral and social progress; they saw quite well that major elements of what they saw as the Enlightenment were occurring only under the patronage of authoritarian monarchs who did as they saw fit; and they formed no general consensus about how far this alliance was a good thing, although they all recognized the dangers of an unenlightened despot. And it could hardly have been possible otherwise in Europe at the time; it was the despots who made Enlightenment reforms possible, and it was the general mass of men who resisted. Some kinds of things considered to be progress had to be imposed from above by someone who merely had to say: "Obey!" And, of course, such a position naturally induces counterpositions, which arose soon enough.
