Philosophy of Right
First Section
158The family is the direct substantive reality of spirit. The unity of the family is one of feeling, the feeling of love. The true disposition here is that which esteems the unity as absolutely essential, and within it places the consciousness of oneself as an individuality. Hence, in the family we are not independent persons but members.
Addition.—Love is in general the consciousness of the unity of myself with another. I am not separate and isolated, but win my self-consciousness only by renouncing my independent existence, and by knowing myself as unity of myself with another and of another with me. But love is feeling, that is to say, the ethical in the form of the natural. It has no longer a place in the state, where one knows the unity as law, where, too, the content must be rational, and I must know it. The first element in love is that I will to be no longer an independent self-sufficing person, and that, if I were such a person, I should feel myself lacking and incomplete. The second element is that I gain myself in another person, in whom I am recognized, as he again is in me. Hence love is the most tremendous contradiction, incapable of being solved by the understanding. Nothing is more obstinate than this scrupulosity of self-consciousness, which, though negated, I yet insist upon as something positive. Love is both the source and solution of this contradiction. As a solution it is an ethical union.
159A right, which comes to the individual by reason of the family and constitutes his life in it, does not appear in the form of a right, that is, the abstract element of a definite individuality, until the family is dissolved. Then those, who should be members, become in feeling and reality self-dependent persons. What was theirs by right of their position in the family, they now receive in separation in an external way, in the form of money, maintenance, or education.
Addition.—The family has this special right, that its substantive nature should have a sphere in actuality. This right is a right against external influences and against abandonment of the unity. But, on the other hand, love is subjective feeling, which, if it oppose the unity of the family, destroys it. If in such a case a unity is insisted on, it can comprehend only things that are external and independent of feeling.
160The family when completed has the three following phases:
(a) The form of its direct conception, marriage.
(b) External reality, the family property and goods and the care of them, (c) Education of children and dissolution of the family.
A. Marriage.
161Marriage, as the elementary social relation, contains firstly the factor of natural life. As marriage is also a substantive fact, natural life must be viewed in its totality as the realization of the species, and the process which the realization involves. But, secondly, the merely inner, potential and, when actualized, external unity of the sexes is transformed in self-consciousness into the spiritual unity of self-conscious love.
Addition.—Marriage is essentially an ethical relation. Formerly, in the majority of what are called rights of nature, marriage was interpreted on its physical or natural side. It has thus been looked upon simply as a sexual relation, and as excluding all the other features of marriage. But such a view is no more crude than to conceive of marriage merely as civil contract, a view found in Kant. In accordance with this view, individuals form a compact through mere caprice, and marriage is degraded to a bargain for mutual use. A third doctrine, equally reprehensible, bases marriage on love only. Love, which is feeling, admits the accidental on every side, as the ethical cannot do. Hence, marriage is to be defined more exactly as legal ethical love. Out of marriage has disappeared the love, which is merely subjective.
162As a subjective starting-point for marriage either the special inclination of two persons for each other may be the more observable, or else the provision and general arrangements of the parents. The objective point of departure, however, is the free consent of the two to become one person. They give up their natural and private personality to enter a unity, which may be regarded as a limitation, but, since in it they attain to a substantive self-consciousness, is really their liberation.
Note.—That an individual may be, objective, and so fulfil his ethical duty, he should marry. The circumstances attending the external starting-point are naturally a matter of chance, depending largely upon the state of reflective culture. In this there may be either of two extremes. Either well-meaning parents arrange beforehand for the marriage of two persons, who, when they have made each other’s acquaintance as prospective husband and wife, are then expected to love each other. Or, on the other hand, inclination is supposed first to appear in the two persons, left absolutely to their private selves. The extreme, in which marriage is resolved on prior to inclination, and both resolution and inclination are then present in the actual marriage, is the more ethical. In the other extreme, it is the individual’s private and unformed nature, which makes good its pretensions. This extreme is in close alliance with the subjective principle of the modern world (§ 124, note).
Modern dramas and other works of art produce an atmosphere of the chilliest indifference, by the way in which they represent the motive of sexual love. This feeling of indifference is due to the association in the drama of ardent passion with the most utter contingency, the whole interest being made to depend simply upon merely private persons. The event is, doubtless, of the very last importance to these persons, but not in itself.
Addition.—Amongst nations where women are held in slight esteem, parents arrange the marriage of their children, without ever consulting them. The children submit, because the particularity of feeling as yet makes no claim at all. The maiden is simply to have a husband, the man a wife. In other circumstances regard may be had to means, connections, political hopes. To make marriage the means for other ends may cause great hardship. But in modern times the subjective point of departure, i.e., being in love, is thought to be the only thing of consequence. In this it is taken for granted that each one must wait till his hour has struck, and that he can bestow his love upon one and only one individual.
163The ethical side of marriage consists in the consciousness that the union is a substantive end. Marriage thus rests upon love, confidence, and the socializing of the whole individual existence. In this social disposition and reality natural impulse is reduced to the mode of a merely natural element, which is extinguished in the moment of its satisfaction. On the other hand, the spiritual bond of union, when its right as a substantive fact is recognized, is raised above the chances of passion and of temporary particular inclination, and is of itself indissoluble.
Note.—It has already been remarked that there is no contract in connection with the essential character of marriage (§ 75). Marriage leaves behind and transcends the standpoint of contract, occupied by the person who is sufficient for himself. Substance is such as to be in essential relation to its accidents. The union of personalities, whereby the family becomes one person, and its members its accidents, is the ethical spirit. The ethical spirit, stripped of the many external phases which it has in particular individuals and transitory interests, has been by picture-thought given independent form, and reverenced as the Penates, etc. In this attitude of mind is found that religious side of marriage and the family, which is called piety. It is a further abstraction, when the divine and substantive reality is separated from its physical embodiment. The result of this procedure is that feeling and the consciousness of spiritual unity become what is falsely called Platonic love. This separation is in keeping with the monastic doctrine, in which natural vitality is regarded
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simply as negative, and is given by this very separation an infinite importance.
Addition.—Marriage is distinguished from concubinage, since in concubinage the chief factor is the satisfaction of natural impulse, while in marriage this satisfaction is subordinate. Hence, in marriage one speaks without blushing of occurrences, which apart from the marriage relation cause a sense of shame. Therefore, also, is marriage to be esteemed as in itself indissoluble. The end of marriage is ethical, and therefore occupies so high a place that everything opposing it seems secondary and powerless. Marriage shall not be liable to dissolution through passion, since passion is subject to it. But, after all, it is only in itself indissoluble, for, as Christ says, divorce is permitted, but only because of hardness of heart. Marriage, since it contains feeling, is not absolute, but open to fluctuations, and has in it the possibility of dissolution. Yet the laws must make the possibility as difficult as can be, and must retain intact the right of the ethical against inclination.
164Just as in the case of contract it is the explicit stipulation, which constitutes the true transference of property (§ 79), so in the case of the ethical bond of marriage the public celebration of consent, and the corresponding recognition and acceptance of it by the family and the community, constitute its consummation and reality. The function of the church is a separate feature, which is not to be considered here. Thus the union is established and completed ethically, only when preceded by social ceremony, the symbol of language being the most spiritual embodiment of the spiritual (§ 78). The sensual element pertaining to the natural life has place in the ethical relation only as an after result and accident belonging to the external reality of the ethical union. The union can be expressed fully only in mutual love and assistance.
Note.—When the question as to the chief end of marriage is asked with a view to enact or recast laws, it means:
Which particular side of the reality of marriage must be accepted as the most essential? But no one separate phase of marriage comprises the whole range of its absolute ethical content; and one or other phase of its existence may be wanting without injury to its essence.—In the celebration of marriage the essence of the union is clearly understood to be an ethical principle, freed from the accidents of feeling and private inclination. If the solemnization be taken for an external formality, or a so-called mere civil requisition, the act loses all purpose except that of edification, or of an attestation to the civic regulation. Indeed, there may perhaps remain only the positive arbitrariness of a civil or ecclesiastical command. Now, not only is a command of this kind indifferent to the nature of marriage, but in so far as the two persons have because of it ascribed value to the formality, and counted it as a condition precedent to complete abandonment to each other, it is an alien thing, bringing discord into the disposition of love, and thwarting the inner nature of the union. The opinion that the marriage ceremony is a mere civic mandate professes to contain the loftiest conception of the freedom, intensity, and completeness of love; but in point of fact it denies the ethical side of it, which implies a limitation and repression of the mere natural tendency. Reserve is already found naturally in a sense of shame, and is by the more articulate spiritual consciousness raised to the higher form of modesty and chastity. In a word, the view of marriage just criticised rejects the ethical side, by virtue of which consciousness gathers itself out of its native and subjective condition, and attains to the thought of the substantive. Instead of always holding before itself the accidental character of sensual inclination, it casts off the fetters of this state and engages itself to what is substantive and binding, namely, the Penates. The sensual element is reduced and conditioned by the recognition of marriage as an ethical bond. Insolent is the view of the mere understanding, which is unable to apprehend marriage in its speculative nature. This substantive relation, however, is in harmony with the unsophisticated ethical sense, and with the laws of Christian nations.
Addition.—It is laid down by Friedrich v. Schlegel, in “Luciade,” and by a follower of his in the “Letters of an Unknown” (Lubeck and Leipzig, 1800), that the marriageceremony is a superfluous formality. They argue that by the form of marriage love, which is the substantive factor, loses its value; they represent that the abandonment to the sensual is necessary as proof of the freedom and inner reality of love. This style of argument is usual with seducers. Besides, as regards the relation of man to woman, it is woman who, in yielding to sense, gives up her dignity, whereas man has another field than the family for his ethical activity. The sphere of woman is essentially marriage. Her rightful claim is that love should assume the form of marriage, and that the different elements existing in love should be brought into a truly rational connection.
165The natural office of the sexes receives, when rationalized, intellectual and social significance. This significance is determined by the distinction which the ethical substance, as conception, introduces by its own motion into itself, in order to win out of the distinction its own life or concrete unity.
166In one sex the spiritual divides itself into two phases, independent, personal self-sufficiency, and knowing and willing of free universality. These two together are the self-consciousness of the conceiving thought, and the willing of the objective final cause. In the other sex the spiritual maintains itself in unity and concord. This sex knows and wills the substantive in the form of concrete individuality and feeling. In relation to what is without one sex exhibits power and mastery, while the other is subjective and passive. Hence the husband has his real essential life in the state, the sciences, and the like, in battle and in struggle with the outer world and with himself. Only by effort does he, out of this disruption of himself, reach self-sufficing concord. A peaceful sense of this concord, and an ethical existence, which is intuitive and subjective, he finds in the family. In the family the wife has her full substantive place, and in the feeling of family piety realizes her ethical disposition.
Note.—Hence piety is in the “Antigone” of Sophocles most superbly presented as the law of the woman, the law of the nature, which realizes itself subjectively and intuitively, the law of an inner life, which has not yet attained complete realization, the law of the ancient gods, and of the under-world, the eternal law, of whose origin no one knows, in opposition to the public law of the state. This opposition is in the highest sense ethical, and hence also tragic; it is individualized in the opposing natures of man and woman.
Addition.—Women can, of course, be educated, but their minds are not adapted to the higher sciences, philosophy, or certain of the arts. These demand a universal faculty. Women may have happy inspirations, taste, elegance, but they have not the ideal. The difference between man and woman is the same as that between animal and plant. The animal corresponds more closely to the character of the man, the plant to that of the woman. In woman there is a more peaceful unfolding of nature, a process, whose principle is the less clearly determined unity of feeling. If women were to control the government, the state would be in danger, for they do not act according to the dictates of universality, but are influenced by accidental inclinations and opinions. The education of woman goes on one hardly knows how, in the atmosphere of picture-thinking, as it were, more through life than through the acquisition of knowledge. Man attains his position only through stress of thought and much specialized effort.
167Marriage in its essence is monogamy, because in this relation it is the personality, the directly exclusive individuality which subsides and resigns itself. The true inner side of marriage, the subjective form of the real substantive institution, issues only out of such a mutual renunciation of personality as is shared in by no one else. Personality acquires the right of being conscious of itself in another, only in so far as the other appears in this identity as a person or atomic individuality.
Note.—Marriage, or monogamy, rather, is one of the principles on which the ethical life of a community depends most absolutely. Hence the institution of marriage is represented as one of the features of the divine or heroic founding of the state.
168Since marriage proceeds out of the free resignation by both sexes of that personality which is infinitely peculiar to themselves, it must not occur within the bounds of natural identity, which involves great intimacy and unlimited familiarity. Within such a circle individuals have no exclusive personality. Marriage must rather take place in families that are unconnected, and between persons who are distinct in their origin. Between persons related by blood, therefore, marriage is contrary to the conception of it. It is an ethical act done in freedom, and not controlled by direct natural conditions and their impulses. Marriage within these limits is likewise contrary to true natural feeling.
Note.—To regard marriage as grounded not on a right of nature but on natural sexual impulse, to view it as a capricious contract, to give such an external reason for monogamy as the number of men in relation to the number of women, and to give only vague feelings as cause sufficient to prohibit marriage between blood connections, all such theories are due to the current idea of a state of nature, and to the opinion that such a state possesses rights. They are, however, devoid of the conception of rationality and freedom.
Addition.—Consauguineous marriages find opposition, in the first instance, in the sense of shame. This feeling of hesitation is justified by the conception. What is already united cannot be first of all united by marriage. As to the relation of mere nature, it is known that amongst animals copulation within one stock produces weaker offspring. “What is to be joined ought to be at first distinct and separate. The power of production, both of spirit and body, is greater, the deeper are the oppositions out of which it restores itself. Familiarity, intimacy, habituation due to the same course of action, ought not to occur previous to marriage, but should be found for the first time in the married state. Their appearance after marriage has richer results and a higher value, the more numerous have been the points of difference.
169The family, as person, has its external reality in property. If it is to furnish a basis for the substantive personality of the family, it must take the form of means.
B. The Family Means.
170It is not enough that the family has property, but, as a universal and lasting person, it needs a permanent and sure possession, or means. When property is treated abstractly, there occur at random the particular needs of the mere individual, and also, the self-seeking of the appetites. These now take on an ethical aspect, and are changed into provision for a common interest.
Note.—In the wise sayings concerning the founding of states, the institution of a sure property makes its appearance in connection with the institution of marriage, or at least with the introduction of an orderly social life.—When we come to the civic community, we shall see in what family competence consists, and how it is to be
171The husband is the head of the family, and when it, as a legal person, collides with other families, he is its representative. It is expected of him, further, to go out and earn its living, care for its needs, and administer the family means. This means is a common possession, to which each member has a common but not a special right. This general right and the husband’s right to dispose of the property may conflict, because the ethical sentiment (§ 158), which in the family is still in its simplest form, is subject to chance and violence.
172Marriage establishes a new family, which has its own independent footing as against the stems or houses from which it has proceeded. The connection of the new family with these stems is consanguinity, but the principle of the new family is ethical love. Thus, the individual’s property is essentially allied to his marriage, and less intimately to his original stock or house.
Note.—A marriage-settlement, which imposes a limit to the common possession of goods by the wedded couple, or any other arrangement by which the right of the wife is retained, is intended to be security against the dissolution of the marriage-tie by death or divorce. In such an event the different members of the family are by this arrangement apportioned their shares of the common possession.
Addition.—In many law codes the more extended range of the family circle is retained. It is looked upon as the real bond of union, while the tie of the single family is regarded as comparatively unimportant. Thus in the older Roman law the wife of the lax marriage is more closely allied to her relatives than to her husband and children. In feudal times, also, the necessity of preserving the splendor familiae led to reckoning under the family only its male members. Thus the whole family connection was the chief object of concern, and the newly-formed family was placed in the background. Notwithstanding this, every new family is more essential than the wider circle bounded by the tie of consanguinity. A married couple with their children form a nucleus of their own in opposition to the more extended household. Hence the financial status of individuals must be more vitally connected with marriage than with the wider family union.
C. Education of the Children and Dissolution of the Family.
173. The unity of marriage which, as substantive, exists only as an inner harmony and sentiment, but, so far as it exists actually, is separated in the two married persons, becomes in the children a unity, which has actual independent existence, and is an independent object. This new object the parents love as an embodiment of their love.—The presupposition of the direct presence of the two people as parents becomes, when taken on its merely natural side, a result. This process expands into an infinite series of generations, which beget and are presupposed. At this finite and natural standpoint the existence of the simple spirit of the Penates is represented as species or kind.
Addition.—Between husband and wife the relation of love is not yet objective. Though feeling is a substantive unity, it has as yet no footing in reality. This foothold parents attain only in their children, in whom the totality of their alliance is visibly embodied. In the child the mother loves her husband, and the father his wife. In the child both parents have their love before their eyes. Whereas in means the marriage tie exists only in an external object, in children it is present in a spiritual being, in whom the parents are loved, and whom they love.
174Children have the right to be supported, and educated out of the common family means. The right of parents to the service of their children, as service, is limited to and based upon family cares. The right of parents over the free choice of their children is just as clearly limited to correction and education. The purpose of chastisement is not mere justice; it has a subjective moral side, its object being to restrain a freedom, which is still bound to nature, and to instil the universal into the child’s consciousness and will.
Addition.—Man does not possess by instinct what he is to be, but must first of all acquire it. Upon this is based the child’s right to be educated. As it is with children, so is it with nations under paternal government; the people are supplied with food out of storehouses, and are not looked upon as self-dependent or of age. The services required of children must bear upon their education and promote their good. To ignore this good would destroy the ethical element of the relation, and make the child a slave. A prominent feature in the education of children is correction, intended to break their self-will, and eradicate what is merely sensual and natural. One must not expect to succeed here simply with goodness, because the direct volition of children is moved by immediate suggestions and likings, not by reasons and ideas. If we give children reasons, we leave it open to them whether to act upon them or not. In this way everything depends upon their pleasure. In the fact that parents constitute the universal and essential is included the necessity of obedience on the part of children. When no care is taken to cherish in children the feeling of subordination, a feeling begotten in them by the longing to be big, they become forward and impertinent.
175Children are potentially free, and life is the direct embodiment of this potential freedom. Hence they are not things, and cannot be said to belong to any one, their parents or others. But their freedom is as yet only potential. The education of children has with regard to family life a two-fold object. Its positive aim is to exalt the ethical nature of the child into a direct perception free from all opposition, and thus secure that state of mind, which forms the basis of ethical life. The child thus passes his earlier years in love, trust, and obedience. Its negative aim is to lift the child out of the natural simplicity, in which it at first is, into self-dependence and free personality, and thus make it able to leave the natural unity of the family.
Note.—That the children of Roman parents were slaves is one of the facts which most tarnishes the Roman law. This wounding of the ethical life in its most intimate quarter is an important element in forming an estimate of the world-historical character of the Romans, as well as of their tendency towards formal right.
The necessity for the education of children is found in their inherent dissatisfaction with what they are, in their impulse to belong to the world of adults, whom they reverence as higher beings, and in the wish to become big. The sportive method of teaching gives to children what is childish under the idea that it is in itself valuable. It makes not only itself ridiculous, but also all that is serious. It is scorned by children themselves. Since it strives to represent children as complete in their very incompleteness, of which they themselves are already sensible. Hoping to make them satisfied with their imperfect condition, it disturbs and taints their own truer and higher aspiration. The result is indifference to and want of interest in the substantive relations of the spiritual world, contempt of men, since they have posed before children in a childish and contemptible way, and vain conceit devoted to the contemplation of its own excellence.
Addition.—Man, as child, must have been included with his parents in the circle of love and mutual confidence, and the rational must appear in him as his own most private subjectivity. At the outset the education given by the mother is of greater importance, since social character must be planted in the child as feeling. It is noticeable that children as a rule love their parents less than the parents do their children. Children are on the way to meet independence and wax in strength; besides they have their parents in a sense behind them: but parents possess in their children the objective embodiment of their union.
176Marriage is only the direct form of the ethical idea, and has its objective reality in the inwardness of subjective sentiment and feeling. In this is found its first exposure to accident. Just as no one may be forced to marry, so there must be no positive legal bond to hold together persons, between whom have arisen hostile thoughts and acts. A third authority must, however, intervene to hold intact the right of marriage and the right of the ethical fabric against the inroads of mere opinion, and the accidents of fleeting resolves. It must also distinguish between the effervescence of feeling and total alienation, and have proof of alienation before permitting divorce.
Addition.—As marriage rests only upon a subjective sentiment which is liable to change, it may be dissolved. The state, on the contrary, is not subject to division, since it rests upon the law. Marriage should be indissoluble, but this desirable state of things remains a mere moral command. Yet, since marriage is ethical, it cannot be dissolved at random, but only by a constituted ethical authority, be it the church or the law. If total alienation has taken place on account of adultery, for example, then the religious authority also must sanction divorce.
177The ethical or social dismemberment of the family occurs when the children have grown to be free personalities. They are recognized as legal persons, when they have attained their majority. They are then capable both of possessing free property of their own and of founding their own families, sons as heads of the family, and daughters as wives. In the new family the founders have now their substantive office, in contrast with which the first family must occupy a subordinate place as mere basis and point of departure. The family stock is an abstraction which has no rights.
178The natural disruption of the family by the death of the parents, especially of the husband, necessitates inheritance of the family means. Inheritance is the entering into peculiar possession of the store that is in itself common. The terms of inheritance depend on degree of relation and on the extent of the dispersion throughout the community of the individuals and families, who have broken away from the original family and become independent. Hence inheritance is indefinite in proportion to the loss of the sense of unity, since every marriage is the renunciation of former connections, and the founding of a new independent family.
Note.—It has been supposed that on the occasion of a death a fortune loses its owner, and falls to him who first gets possession of it. Actual possession, however, so the supposition runs, is generally made by relatives, since they are usually in the immediate neighbourhood of the deceased. Hence what customarily happens, is, for the sake of order, raised by positive law into a rule. This theory is little more than a whim, and altogether overlooks the nature of the family relation.
179Through the dismemberment of the family by death there is afforded free scope for the capricious fancy of the testator, who may bestow his means in accordance with his personal likings, opinions, and ends. He may leave his possessions to friends and acquaintances instead of to the family, adopting the legal mode of bequest by embodying his declaration in a will.
Note.—Into the formation of a circle of friends by a bequest, which is authorized by ethical observance, there enters, especially in the case of wills, so much of arbitrariness, wilfulness, and selfishness, that the ethical element becomes extremely shadowy. Indeed the legal permission to be arbitrary in drawing up a will is rather the cause of injury to ethical institutions and, also, of underhand exertions and servility. It occasions and justifies the absurd and even malign desire to link to so-called benefactions and bequests of property, which in any case ceases at death to be mine, conditions that are vain and vexatious.
180The principle that the members of a family become independent legal persons (§ 177) allows something of capricious discrimination with regard to the natural heirs to enter inside even the family circle. But this discrimination is greatly limited in order not to injure the fundamental relation of the family.
Note.—The simple direct freedom of choice of the deceased cannot be construed as the principle at the basis of the right to make a will. More particularly is this the case, if this wilfulness is opposed to the substantive right of the family, whose love and esteem for the deceased would be the chief reason for carrying out after his death his wayward behest. Such a will contains nothing so worthy of respect as the family right. Formerly the validity of a last will and testament lay only in its arbitrary recognition of others. This validity can be conceded to a testamentary disposition only when the family relation, in which it would otherwise be absorbed, is weak and ineffective. But to ignore the province of the family relation, when it is real and present, is unethical; and it would also weaken its inherent ethical value to extend the boundaries of a testator’s caprice.
The harsh and unethical Roman law makes unlimited caprice inside the family the chief principle of succession. In accordance with this law the son could be sold by the father, and would, if freed, again come under his father’s power. Only after being freed from slavery the third time, was he really free. According to these laws the son did not de jure come of age, and was not a legal person. Only what he took in war, peculium castrense, was he entitled to possess.”When he, on being three times sold and freed, passed out of his father’s power, he did not inherit along with those, who had remained in family servitude, except by the insertion of a special clause in the will. Similarly, the wife, in so far as she had entered marriage not as a slave, in manum conveniret, in mancipio esset, but as a matron, did not so much belong to the family, which had by her marriage been established, and was actually hers, as to the family of her birth. Hence she was excluded from inheriting wealth, which belonged to what was really her own family. Though wife and mother she was disinherited.
It has already been observed (§ 3, note) that, as the feeling of rationality developed, efforts were made to escape from the unethical elements of these and other laws. The expression honorum possessio, which, as every learned jurist knows, is to be distinguished from possessio honorum, was drawn into service by the judges instead of hereditas, through the employment of a legal fiction, by means of which a filia was changed by a second baptism into a filius. It thus sometimes became the sad necessity of the judges slyly to smuggle in the reasonable as an offset to bad laws. Hence, the most important institutions became pitifully unstable, and evils arose, which necessitated in turn a tumultuous mass of counter legislation.
The unethical results, flowing from the right of free choice allowed by Roman law to testators, are well known from history and from the descriptions of Lucian and others. As to marriage it is a direct and simple ethical relation, and implies a mingling of what is substantive with natural contingency and inner caprice. By making children slaves, and by kindred regulations, conspicuously by ready and easy divorce, preference is openly conceded to wilfulness over the right of the substantive ethical fact. Thus Cicero himself, who, in his “Officiis” and other works has written many a fine thing about the Honestum and Decorum, devised the scheme of sending away his wife in order that he might with a second wife get a sufficient dowry to pay his debts. When such things occur, a way is paved by the law for the ruin of morals; or rather the laws are the necessary product of this ruin and decay.
The institution of heirs-at-law is introduced in order to preserve the glory of the family stock. It makes use of substitutions and family trusts by excluding from the inheritance the daughters in favour of the sons, or the rest of the family in favour of the eldest son, or by sanctioning some other inequality. By it injustice is done to the principle of freedom of property (§ 62). Besides, it rests upon an arbitrary will, which has absolutely no right to be recognized, since it aims to preserve a particular stock or house rather than a particular family. But the family, and not the stock or house is the idea, which has the right to be preserved. Moreover, the ethical fabric is as likely to be maintained by the free disposal of property and equality of succession, as family trees are to be preserved by an opposite course.
In institutions like the Roman the right of marriage (§ 172) is everywhere misinterpreted. Marriage is the complete founding of a new and actual family, in contrast with which the family, as the stirps or gens is called, is an abstraction, becoming, as the generations pass by, ever more shadowy and unreal (§ 177). Love, the ethical element in marriage, is a feeling for real present individuals, and not for an abstraction. It is shown further on (§ 356) that the world-historical principle of the Roman empire is an abstraction of the understanding. It is also shown further on (§ 306) that the higher political sphere introduces a right of primogeniture and an inalienable family fortune, based, however, not on an arbitrary act of will, but on the necessary idea of the state.
Addition.—Amongst the Romans in earlier times a father could disinherit his children, and even put them to death. Afterwards neither of these acts was allowed. Efforts were made to bring both the unethical and also the illogical attempt to make it ethical into one system, the retention of which constitutes the difficulty and weakness of our law of inheritance. Wills may certainly be permitted, but in them should prevail the idea that the right of arbitrary decision grows only with the dispersion and separation of the members of the family. The so-called family of friendship, which bequest brings into existence, should appear only when there are no children or near relatives. Something offensive and disagreeable is associated with testamentary dispositions generally. In them I reveal those to whom I have inclination. But inclination is arbitrary, can be obtained surreptitiously, and is allied to whim and fancy. It may even be required in a will that an heir shall subject himself to the greatest indignities. In England, where they are given to riding all sorts of hobbies, an infinite number of absurdities are attached to wills.
Transition of the Family into the Civic Community.
181In a natural way and essentially through the principle of personality, the family separates into a number of families, which then exist as independent concrete persons, and are therefore related externally to one another. The elements bound up in the unity of the family, which is the social idea still in the form of the conception, must now be released from the conception and given independent reality. This is the stage of difference. Here, at the outset, to use abstract expressions, we have the determination of particularity, which is nevertheless in relation to universality. The universal is, in fact, the basis, which is, however, as yet only internal, and therefore exists in the particular only formally, and in it is manifested externally. Hence in this relation occasioned by reflection the ethical is, as it were, lost; or rather since it, as essence, of necessity appears or is manifested, it occurs in its phenomenal form. This is the civic community.
Note.—The extension of the family or the transition of it into another principle has in the actual world two phases. It is on one side the peaceful expansion of the family into a people or nation, whose component parts have a common natural origin. On the other side it is the collection of scattered groups of families by superior force, or it is their voluntary association, in order to satisfy by co-operation their common wants.
Addition.—Universality has here a point of outlet in the independence of particularity. At this point the ethical appears to be lost. Consciousness finds in the identity of the family what is properly its first divine and obligatory principle. But now there appears a relation, in which the particular is to be the prime factor in determining my conduct. Thus the ethical seems to be discarded and superseded. But in this view I am really in error, for, while I believe myself to be retaining the particular, the universal and also the necessity of social unity still remain for me fundamental and essential. Besides, I am at the stage of appearance, and although my particular nature remains for me the determining factor and end, I serve in this way the universal, which does not relax its own special hold of me.
The Civic Community.
182. The concrete person, who as particular is an end to himself, is a totality of wants and a mixture of necessity and caprice. As such he is one of the principles of the civic community. But the particular person is essentially connected with others. Hence each establishes and satisfies himself by means of others, and so must call in the assistance of the form of universality. This universality is the other principle of the civic community.
Addition.—The civic community is the realm of difference, intermediate between the family and the state, although its construction followed in point of time the construction of the state. It, as the difference, must presuppose the state. On the self-dependent state it must rely for its subsistence. Further, the creation of the civic community belongs to the modern world which alone has permitted every element of the idea to receive its due. When the state is represented as a union of different persons, that is, a unity which is merely a community, it is only the civic community which is meant. Many modern teachers of political science have not been able to develop any other view of the state. In this society every one is an end to himself; all others are for him nothing. And yet without coming into relation with others he cannot realize his ends. Hence to each particular person others are a means to the attainment of his end. But the particular purpose gives itself through reference to others the form of universality, and in satisfying itself accomplishes at the same time the well-being of others. Since particularity is bound up with the conditioning universal, the joint whole is the ground of adjustment or mediation, upon which all individualities, all talents, all accidents of birth or fortune disport themselves. Here the fountains of all the passions are let loose, being merely governed by the sun of reason. Particularity limited by universality is the only standard to which the particular person conforms in promoting his well-being.
183The self-seeking end is conditioned in its realization by the universal. Hence is formed a system of mutual dependence, a system which interweaves the subsistence, happiness, and rights of the individual with the subsistence, happiness, and right of all. The general right and wellbeing form the basis of the individual’s right and wellbeing, which only by this connection receives actuality and security. This system we may in the first instance call the external state, the state which satisfies one’s needs, and meets the requirements of the understanding.
184When the idea is thus at variance with itself, it imparts to the phases of the peculiarly individual life, i.e., to particularity, the right to develop and publish themselves on all sides, and to universality it concedes the right to evince itself as the foundation and necessary form, overruling power and final end of the particular. In this system the ethical order is lost in its own extremes. It is a system characterized by external appearance and constituted by the abstract side of the reality of the idea. In it the idea is found only as relative totality, and inner necessity.
Addition.—The direct unity of the family is here broken up into a multiplicity, and the ethical is lost in its extremes. Reality is at this stage externality, involving the dissolution of the conception, the liberation and independence of its realized elements. Although in the civic community particular and universal fall apart, they are none the less mutually connected and conditioned. While the one seems to be just the opposite of the other, and is supposed to be able to exist only by keeping the other at arm’s length, each nevertheless has the other as a condition. Thus most people, for example, regard the payment of taxes as injuring their particularity, and as opposing and crippling their plans. True as this may seem to be, the particular purpose cannot be carried out apart from the universal. A land, in which no taxes were paid, would not be allowed to distinguish itself for the strength of its individuals. In the same way it might appear as if it would be better for the universal to draw to itself the resources of the individual, and become a society such as was delineated by Plato in his “Republic.” But this, too, is only a mere appearance, since both elements exist only through and for each other, and are wrapped up in each other. When I promote my end, I promote the universal, and the universal in turn promotes my end.
185When independent particularity gives free rein to the satisfaction of want, caprice, and subjective liking, it destroys in its extravagance both itself and its substantive conception. On the other hand the satisfaction whether of necessary or of contingent want is contingent, since it contains no inherent limit, and is wholly dependent on external chance, caprice, and the power of the universal. In these conflicts and complexities the civic community affords a spectacle of excess, misery, and physical and social corruption.
Note.—The independent development of particularity (compare § 124, note), is the element which was revealed in the ancient states as an inflow of immorality causing ultimately their decay. These states, founded as they were partly upon a patriarchal and religious principle, partly upon a spiritual though simple ethical life, and originating in general in native intuitions, could not withstand the disunion and infinite reflection involved in selfconsciousness. Hence, so soon as reflection arose, the state succumbed, first in sentiment and then in fact. Its as yet simple principle lacked the truly infinite power implied in a unity, which permits the opposition to reason to explode with all its force. In this way it would rise superior to the opposition, preserve itself in it, and take it into itself.
Plato in his “Republic” represents the substantive ethical life in its ideal beauty and truth. But with the principle of independent particularity, which broke in upon Greek ethical life at his time, he could do nothing except to oppose to it his “Republic,” which is simply substantive. Hence he excluded even the earliest form of subjectivity, as it exists in private property (§ 46, note) and the family, and also in its more expanded form as private liberty and choice of profession. It is this defect, which prevents the large and substantive truth of the “Republic” from being understood, and gives rise to the generally accepted view that it is a mere dream of abstract thought, or what we are used to calling an ideal. In the merely substantive form of the actual spirit, as it appears in Plato, the principle of self-dependent and in itself infinite personality of the individual, the principle of subjective freedom does not receive its due. This principle on its inner side issues in the Christian religion, and on its outer side in the Roman world, where it was combined with abstract universality. It is historically later than the Greek world. So, too, the philosophic reflection, which fathoms the depth of this principle, is later than the substantive idea found in Greek thought.
Addition.—Particularity, taken abstractly, is measureless in its excess, and the forms of excess are likewise measureless. A man’s appetites, which are not a closed circle like the instinct of the animal, are widened by picture-thought and reflection. He may carry appetite even to the spurious infinite. But on the other side privation and want are also measureless. The confusion, due to the collision of appetite and privation, can only be set to rights by the state. If the Platonic state excludes particularity, no hope can be held out to it, as it contradicts the infinite right of the idea to allow to particularity its freedom. In the Christian religion, the right of subjects and also the existence, which is self -referring and self-dependent, have received a marked expansion. And at the same time the whole is sufficiently strong to establish harmony between particularity and the ethical unity.
186But the principle of particularity develops of its own accord into a totality, and thus goes over into universality. In this universality it has its truth and its right to positive realization. Since at the standpoint of dualism, which we now occupy (§ 184), the principles of particularity and universality are independent, their unity is not an ethical identity. It does not exist as freedom, but as a necessity. That is to say the particular has to raise itself to the form of universality, and in it it has to seek and find its subsistence.
187Individuals in the civic community are private persons, who pursue their own interests. As these interests are occasioned by the universal, which appears as a means, they can be obtained only in so far as individuals in their desire, will, and conduct, conform to the universal, and become a link in the chain of the whole. The interest of the idea as such does not, it is true, lie in the consciousness of the citizens; yet it is not wholly wanting. It is found in the process, by means of which the individual, through necessity of nature and the caprice of his wants, seeks to raise his individual natural existence into formal freedom and the formal universality of knowing and willing. Thus, without departing from its particular nature, the individual’s character is enlarged.
Note.—The view that civilization is an external and degenerate form of life is allied to the idea that the natural condition of uncivilized peoples is one of unsophisticated innocence. So also the view that civilization is a mere means for the satisfaction of one’s needs, and for the enjoyment and comfort of one’s particular life, takes for granted that these selfish ends are absolute. Both theories manifest ignorance of the nature of spirit and the end of reason. Spirit is real only when by its own motion it divides itself, gives itself limit and finitude in the natural needs and the region of external necessity, and then, by moulding and shaping itself in them, overcomes them, and secures for itself an objective embodiment. The rational end, therefore, is neither the simplicity of nature nor the enjoyments resulting from civilization through the development of particularity. It rather works away from the condition of simple nature, in which there is either no self or a crude state of consciousness and will, and transcends the naive individuality, in which spirit is submerged. Its externality thus in the first instance receives the rationality, of which it is capable, namely, the form of universality characteristic of the understanding. Only in this way is spirit at home and with itself in this externality as such. Hence in it the freedom of spirit is realized. Spirit, becoming actualized in an element, which of itself was foreign to its free character, has to do only with what is produced by itself and bears its own impress.—In this way the form of universality comes into independent existence in thought, a form which is the only worthy element for the existence of the idea.
Culture or education is, as we may thus conclude, in its ultimate sense a liberation, and that of a high kind. Its task is to make possible the infinitely subjective substantiality of the ethical life. In the process we pass upwards from the direct and natural existence to what is spiritual and has the form of the universal.—In the individual agent this liberation involves a struggle against mere subjectivity, immediate desire, subjective vanity, and capricious liking. The hardness of the task is in part the cause of the disfavour under which it falls. None the less is it through the labour of education that the subjective will itself wins possession of the objectivity, in which alone it is able and worthy to be the embodiment of the idea.—At the same time the form of universality, into which particularity has moulded itself and worked itself up, gives rise to that general principle of the understanding, in accordance with which the particular passes upward into the true, independent existence of the individual. And since the particular gives to the universal its adequate content and unconditioned self-direction, it even in the ethical sphere is infinitely independent and free subjectivity. Education is thus proved to be an inherent element of the absolute, and is shown to have infinite value.
Addition.—We call those men educated or cultured, who can perform all that others do without exhibiting any oddities of behaviour. Uneducated men thrust their eccentricities upon your notice, and do not act according to the universal qualities of the object. It easily happens that the uneducated man wounds the feelings of others, since he lets himself go, and does not trouble himself about their sensibilities. Not that he desires to injure them at all, but his conduct is not in unison with his will. Education refines particularity, and enables it to conduct itself in harmony with the nature of the object. True originality, which creates its object, desires true culture, while untrue originality adopts insipidities, which are characteristic of a lack of culture.
188The civic community contains three elements:
A. The recasting of want, and the satisfaction of the individual through his work, through the work of all others, and through the satisfaction of their wants. This is a system of wants.
B. Actualization of the general freedom required for this, i.e., the protection of property by the administration of justice.
C. Provision against possible mischances, and care for the particular interest as a common interest, by means of the corporation.
189. The particularity, which is in the first instance opposed to the universal will (§ 60), is subjective want. It gets objectivity, i.e., is satisfied (a), through external objects, which are at this stage the property of others, and the product of their needs and wills, and (β) through active labour, as connecting link between subjective and objective. Labour has as its aim to satisfy subjective particularity. Yet by the introduction of the needs and free choice of others universality is realized. Hence rationality comes as an appearance into the sphere of the finite. This partial presence of rationality is the understanding, to which is assigned the function of reconciling the opposing elements of the finite sphere.
Note.—It is the task of political science, which originates at this point, to detect the laws governing the movement of the masses in the intricacy of their qualitative and quantitative relations. This science has sprung from the soil of modern times. Its development reveals the interesting process by which thought (see Smith, Say, Ricardo) examines the infinite multitude of particulars lying before it, and exposes their simple, active, regulating principles. These principles belong to the understanding. As on the one side the principle of reconciliation involves a recognition of the external presence or appearance in the sphere of want of the reason which is active in the object; so, on the exact contrary, is this also the sphere in which the understanding with its subjective aims and moral opinions lets loose its discontent and moral vexation.
Addition.—It depends altogether on accident how such universal wants, as those of food, drink, and clothing, are to be satisfied. The soil is more fertile in one place than another; years differ in their yield; one man is diligent, while another is lazy. But this swarm of arbitrary things begets universal features, and what appears to be pure abstraction and absence of thought becomes bound by a necessity, which enters of itself. To discover the element of necessity is the object of political science, a science which does honour to thought, because it finds laws in a mass of accidents. Interesting is it to witness the action and reaction of the different relations, how the special circles group themselves, influence others, and in turn receive from them help or hindrance. So remarkable is this interpretation of facts in a sphere, where everything seems to be postponed to the free will of the individual, that it almost passes belief. It resembles the planets, which though to the eye always complex and irregular in their movements, are yet governed by ascertained laws.
(a) Want and its Satisfaction.
190The animal has a limited range of ways and means for satisfying his limited wants. Man in his dependence proves his universality and his ability to become independent, firstly, by multiplying his wants and means, and, secondly, by dissecting the concrete want into parts. The parts then become other wants, and through being specialized are more abstract than the first.
Note.—The object is in right a person, in morals a subject, in the family a member, in the city generally a burgher (bourgeois); and here, at the standpoint of want (§ 123, note), he is the concrete product of picture-thought which we call man. Here, and properly only here, is it that we first speak of man in this sense.
Addition.—The animal is particular in its being, having instinct, and a strictly limited means of satisfaction. Some insects are confined to a certain kind of plant; other animals have a wider circle and can inhabit different climates, but still their range is limited in contrast with that of man. Man’s need of shelter and clothing, his having to destroy the natural form of food, and adapt it by cooking to his changed taste, give him less aplomb than the animal. Indeed, as spirit, he ought to have less. The understanding, with its grasp of differences, brings multiplicity into wants: and, when taste and utility become criteria of judgment, they change even the wants themselves. It is in the end not the appetite, but the opinion which has to be satisfied. It is the province of education or culture to dissect the concrete need into its elements. When wants are multiplied, the mere appetites are restricted; for, when man uses many things, the propulsion to any one of them is not so strong, a sign that the force of physical need in general is diminished.
191The means for satisfying the specialized wants are similarly divided and increased. These means become in their turn relative ends and abstract wants. Hence the multiplication expands into an infinite series of distinctions with regard to these phases, and of judgments concerning the suitability of the means to their ends. This is refinement.
Addition.—What the English call “comfortable” is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.
192The satisfaction of want and the attainment of means thereto become a realized possibility for others, through whose wants and labour satisfaction is in turn conditioned. The abstraction, which becomes a quality of wants and means (§ 191), helps to determine the mutual relation of individuals. This general recognition of others is the element which makes the isolated abstract wants and means concrete and social.
Addition.—Through the compulsion I am under to fashion myself according to others arises the form of universality. I acquire from others the means of satisfaction, and must accordingly fall in with their opinions. At the same time I am compelled to produce the means for the satisfaction of the wants of others. One plays into the other; and the two are interdependent. Everything particular becomes in this way social. In the matter of dress, time of eating, etc., we follow convention, because it is not worth while exercising our insight and judgment. He is the most prudent who does as others do.
193The social element is a special instrument both of the simple acquisition of the means, and also of the reduplication of the ways by which want is satisfied. Further, it contains directly the claim of equality with others. Both the desire for equality, including the imitation of others, and also the desire of each person to be unique, become real sources of the multiplication and extension of wants.
194Social want joins the direct or natural want with the spiritual want due to picture-thinking; but the spiritual or universal factor outweighs the other. The social element brings a liberation, by which the stringent necessity of nature is turned aside, and man is determined by his own universal opinion. He makes his own necessity. He has arbitrary choice, being in contact with a contingency which is not external but internal.
Note.—It has been held that man as to want is free in a so-called state of nature, in which he has only the so-called simple wants of nature, requiring for their satisfaction merely the means furnished directly and at random by nature. In this view no account is taken of the freedom which lies in work, of which more hereafter. Such a view is not true, because in natural want and its direct satisfaction the spiritual is submerged by mere nature. Hence, a state of nature is a state of savagery and slavery. Freedom is nowhere to be found except in the return of spirit and thought to itself, a process by which it distinguishes itself from the natural and turns back upon it.
195This liberation is formal, since the particular side of the end remains the fundamental content. The tendency of the social condition indefinitely to increase and specialize wants, means, and enjoyments, and to distinguish natural from unrefined wants, has no limits. Hence arises luxury, in which the augmentation of dependence and distress is in its nature infinite. It operates upon an infinitely unyielding material, namely, an external means, which has the special quality of being the possession of the free will. Hence it meets with the most obdurate resistance.
Addition.—Diogenes in his completely cynical character is properly only a product of Athenian social life. That which gave birth to him was the public opinion, against which his behaviour was directed. His way of life was therefore not independent, but occasioned by his social surroundings. It was itself an ungainly product of luxury. Wherever luxury is extreme, there also prevail distress and depravity, and cynicism is produced in opposition to over-refinement.
(b) Labour.
196The instrument for preparing and acquiring specialized means adequate to specialized wants is labour. By labour the material, directly handed over by nature for these numerous ends, is specialized in a variety of ways. This fashioning of the material gives to the means value and purpose, so that in consumption it is chiefly human products and human effort that are used up.
Addition.—The direct material, which requires no working up, is small. Even air must be acquired, since it has to be made warm. Perhaps water is the only thing which man can use, simply as it is. Human sweat and toil win for men the means for satisfying their wants.
197Training on its theoretical side is developed by the great variety of objects and interests, and consists not only in numberless picture-thoughts and items of knowledge, but also in mobility and quickness of imagination, a mental alertness in passing from one image, or idea, to another, and in the apprehension of intricate general relations. This is the training of the understanding, with which goes the development of language. Practical training, or training by labour, consists in habituation to an employment, which satisfies a self-caused want. Its action is limited partly by the nature of the material, but chiefly by the caprice of others. It involves an habitual use of skill acquired by practice and implying objective conditions.
Addition.—The barbarian is lazy, and is distinguished from the civilized man by his brooding stupidity. Practical training consists in habitual employment and the need of it. The unskilled workman always makes something different from what he intended, because he is not master of his own hands. A workman is skilled, who produces what he intended, whose subjective action readily accords with his purpose.
198The universal and objective in work is to be found in the abstraction which, giving rise to the specialization of means and wants, causes the specialization also of production. This is the division of labour. By it the labour of the individual becomes more simple, his skill in his abstract work greater, and the amount he produces larger. The result of the abstraction of skill and means is that men’s interdependence and mutual relation is completed. It becomes a thorough necessity. Moreover, the abstraction of production causes work to be continually more mechanical, until it is at last possible for man to step out and let the machine take his place.
(c) Wealth.
199Through the dependence and co-operation involved in labour, subjective self-seeking is converted into a contribution towards the satisfaction of the wants of all others. The universal so penetrates the particular by its dialectic movement, that the individual, while acquiring, producing, and enjoying for himself, at the same time produces and acquires for the enjoyment of others. This is a necessity, and in this necessity arising out of mutual dependence is contained the fact of a general and permanent wealth (§ 170). In it each person may share by means of his education and skill. Each, too, is by it assured of subsistence, while the results of his labour preserve and increase the general wealth.
200But particular wealth, or the possibility of sharing in the general wealth, is based partly on skill, partly on something which is directly the individual’s own, namely, capital. Skill in its turn depends on capital, and on many accidental circumstances. These also in their manifold variety make more pronounced the differences in the development of natural endowments, physical and mental, which were unequal to begin with. These differences are conspicuous everywhere in the sphere of particularity. They, along with other elements of chance and accident, necessarily produce inequalities of wealth and skill.
Note.—Nature is the element of inequality. Yet the objective right of particularity of spirit, contained in the idea itself, does not in the civic community supersede the inequality set up by nature. On the contrary, it produces inequality out of spirit and exalts it to an inequality of talents, wealth, and intellectual and moral education. To oppose to the objective right a demand for equality is a move of the empty understanding, which takes its own abstraction and mandate to be real and reasonable. In the sphere of particularity the universal images itself, forming with the particular merely a relative identity. The particular thus retains both the natural and the capricious particularity, and also a remnant of the state of nature. It is the reason immanent in the system of human wants and their activities, which fashions this system into an organic whole, of which the differences are members. (See next §.)
201The infinitely varied means and their infinitely interlacing play of mutual production and exchange are gathered together by virtue of the universality inherent in their content, and become divided into general masses. The whole is thus formed into particular systems of wants, means, and labour, ways and methods of satisfaction, and theoretical and practical training. Amongst these systems the individuals are apportioned, and compose a cluster of
Addition.—The manner of sharing in the general wealth is left to each particular individual, but the general differences, found in the division of the civic community, are essential. The family is the first basis of the state, and classes or estates are the second. This second is of consequence because private persons, through self-seeking, are compelled to turn themselves out towards others. This is the link by which self-seeking is joined to the universal or the state, whose care it must be to keep the connection strong and steadfast.
202Classes are, in terms of the conception, (a) the substantial or direct, (b) the reflecting or formal, and (c) the universal.
203. (a) The wealth of the substantial class is contained in natural products obtained by cultivation. The soil is capable of being an exclusive, private possession, and demands not merely the taking from it what it bears naturally, but an objective working up. Since the returns of labour depend on the seasons, and harvests are influenced by variable weather and other natural conditions, provision for wants must take account of the future. However, owing to the natural conditions, this way of life involves but little reflection, and is but slightly modified by subjective volition. It therefore embodies in substantive feeling an ethical life resting directly upon trust and the family relation.
Note.—States are rightly said to come into existence with the introduction of agriculture along with the introduction of marriage. The principle of agriculture involves the cultivation of the soil, and therefore, also, private ownership of property (compare § 170, note). It takes the life of nomadic tribes back to the repose of private right and to the secure satisfaction of wants. Joined also to the agricultural life are the limitation of sexual love to marriage, the extension of this bond to an enduring universal relation, the extension of want to family maintenance and of possession to family wealth. Safety, protection by fortification, and uninterrupted satisfaction of wants are all commendable prima facie characteristics of these two fundamental ethical institutions. They are forms of universality, or ways by which reason or the absolute end seeks to realize itself. In this connection nothing can be more interesting than the ingenious and learned explanations which my much honoured friend, Mr. Creuzer, has given in the fourth volume of his” Mythologie und Symbolik “with regard to the agrarian festivals, images, and sanctuaries of the ancients. In these customs and rites the introduction of agriculture and kindred institutions was known and revered as a divine act.
From the side of private-right, especially the administration of justice, and from the side of instruction, culture, and also of religion, the substantive character of this class undergoes modifications. These modifications, however, are due to the development of reflection, and affect not the substantive content but the form.—They occur also in the other classes.
Addition.—In our time agriculture, losing some of its naturalness, is managed in a reflective way like a factory, and acquires the character of the second class. Yet it will always retain much of the substantive feeling, which pervades the patriarchal life. In it man accepts what is given with a simple mind, thanks God for it, and lives in the assurance that the goodness of God will continue. What he gets suffices him, and he uses it because it comes again. This is the simple disposition unaffected by the desire for wealth. It may be described as the type of the old nobility, who consumed simply what was there. In this class nature does the chief share of the work, and man’s diligence is in comparison secondary. In the second class the understanding is the essential factor, and the natural products are regarded simply as furnishing material.
204. (b) The business of the industrial class is to alter the form of the products of nature. This class is indebted for its subsistence to its labour, to reflection, and also to the interposition of the wants and labours of others. For that which it produces and enjoys it has to thank mainly its own activity.—Its field of action is again divided into three parts:—(i.) Labour for individual wants of the more concrete kind, and at the request of particular persons. This is manual labour, or the work of single artisans, (ii.) The more abstract collective mass of labour, which is also for particular needs but due to a general demand. This is manufacture, (iii.) Business of exchange, by which one special means of subsistence is given for others, chiefly through money, the general medium of exchange, in which is realized the abstract value of all merchandise. This is commerce.
Addition.—The individual in the industrial class is referred to himself, and this self-reference is intimately connected with the demand for a legal status. Consequently the sense for freedom and order has mainly arisen in cities. The first class needs to think little about itself. What it acquires is the gift of a stranger, nature. With it the feeling of dependence is primary. With this feeling is easily associated a willingness to submit to whatever occurs. The first class is therefore more inclined to subjection, the second to freedom.
205. (c) The business of the universal class is with the universal interests of society. Hence it must be relieved of the direct task of providing for itself. It must possess private means, or receive an allowance from the state, which claims his activity. His private interest may thus find satisfaction in his labour for the universal.
206A class is a particularity which has become objective, and the foregoing are the general divisions in accordance with the conception. Yet capacity, birth, and other circumstances have their influence in determining to what class an individual shall belong. But the final and essential factor in the case is subjective opinion and private freedom of choice. In this sphere free choice has its right, honour, and dignity. If a thing happens in this sphere according to internal necessity, it is ipso facto occasioned by free arbitrary choice, and for the subjective consciousness bears the stamp of its will.
Note.—In reference to the principle of particularity or subjective caprice may be clearly discerned the difference between the political life of the East and that of the West, between the ancient and the modern world. In the ancient world the division of the whole into classes was produced objectively of itself, because it is implicitly rational. But the principle of subjectivity does not receive its due, since the separation of individuals into classes is either a function of the rulers, as in Plato’s” Republic “(Rep. iii. 120), or else it rests upon mere birth, as in the caste system of India. Now subjective particularity is an essential element of communal life, and, when it is not taken up into the organization of the whole and reconciled in the whole, it must prove a hostile force and pave the way for the ruin of the social order (see § 185, note). It either overturns society, as was the case in the Greek states and the Roman republic, or, when the existing order is able to preserve itself by force or by religious authority, it then manifests itself as internal corruption and complete degradation. This happened in a measure amongst the Lacedemonians, and now is completely the case with the inhabitants of India.
But when subjective particularity is welcomed by objective order, and given its rights and place, it becomes the animating principle of the civic community, stimulates thought and promotes merit and honour. The recognition of the claim that whatever in the civic community and the state is rationally necessary should occur through subjective free choice is a fuller definition of the popular idea of freedom (§ 121).
207The particularity of the individual becomes definitely and actually realized, only by his limiting himself exclusively to one of the particular spheres of want. In this system the ethical sense is that of rectitude or classhonour. It involves the decision of the individual by means of his own native activity, diligence, and skill to make himself a member of one of these classes, preserve himself in it, and provide for himself only through the instrumentality of the universal. He should acknowledge this position, and also claim to have it recognized by others.—Morality has its peculiar place in this sphere, where the ruling factor is reflection upon one’s action, or consideration of the end involved in particular wants and in well-being. Here also the element of chance in satisfying these ends makes random and individual assistance a duty.
Note.—Youth is specially apt to struggle against the proposal that it should decide upon a particular vocation, on the ground that any decision is a limitation of its universal scope and a mere external necessity. This aloofness is a product of the abstract thinking, which clings to the universal and unreal. It fails to recognize that the conception must experience a division into conception and its reality, if it is to have a definite and particular realization (§ 7), and to win for itself reality and ethical objectivity.
Addition.—By the sentence that a man must be something we understand that he must belong to a definite class; for this something signifies a substantive reality. A human being without a vocation is a mere private person, who has no place in any real universal. Still, the individual in his exclusiveness may regard himself as the universal, and may fancy that when he takes a trade or profession, he is sinking to a lower plane. That is the false notion that a thing, when it attains the realization which properly belongs to it, limits itself and gives up its independence.
208The principle of the system of wants, namely the particularity of knowing and willing, contains absolute universality, or the universality of freedom, only in the abstract form of right of property. But here right is no longer merely implicit, but is found in valid reality as protection of property through the administration of justice.
209The relative principle of the mutual exchange of wants and labour for their satisfaction has in the first instance its return into itself in the infinite personality generally, i.e., in abstract right. Yet it is the very sphere of the relative which in the form of education gives embodiment to right, by fixing it as something universally acknowledged, known, and willed. The relative also, through the interposition of knowledge and will, supplies right with validity and objective actuality.
Note.—It is the essence of education and of thought, which is the consciousness of the individual in universal form, that the I should be apprehended as a universal person, in whom all are identical. Man must be accounted a universal being, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, or Italian, but because he is a man. This thinking or reflective consciousness, is of infinite importance. It is defective only when” it plumes itself upon being cosmopolitan, in opposition to the concrete life of the citizen.
Addition.—From one point of view it is by means of the system of particularity that right becomes externally necessary as protection of individuals. Although right proceeds out of the conception, it enters into being only because it is serviceable for wants. To have the thought of right, one must be educated to the stage of thinking, and not linger in the region of the merely sensible. We must adapt the form of universality to the objects, and direct the will according to a universal principle. Only after man has found out for himself many wants, the acquisition of which is an inseparable element of his satisfaction, is he able to frame laws.
210The objective actuality of right consists partly in existing for consciousness, or more generally in its being known, and partly in having, and being generally recognized as having, the validity and force of a reality.
(a) Right as Law.
211What is in essence right becomes in its objective concrete existence constituted, that is, made definite for consciousness through thought. It, having right and validity, is so recognized, and becomes law. Right in this characterization of it is positive right in general.
Note.—To constitute something as universal, i.e., to bring it as universal to consciousness, is to think (§ 13, note, and § 21, note). The content in thus being brought back to its simplest form is given its final mould. Only when what is right becomes law does it receive not merely the form of universality, but its own truest character. It is to select only one phase of law, if we consider it merely as a valid rule of conduct imposed upon all. Preceding this feature is the internal and essential element of law, namely, the recognition of the content in its definite universality. Even the rights of custom exist as thought and are known. Animals have law in the form of instinct; man alone has law in the form of custom. The difference between custom and law consists merely in this, that customs are known in a subjective and accidental way, and hence are in their actual form more indefinite than laws. In custom, the universality of thought is more obscured, and the knowledge of right is a partial and accidental possession of a few. The idea that customs rather than laws should pass over into life is a deception, because the valid laws of a nation, when written and collected, do not cease to be customs. People speak nowadays, indeed, most of all of life and of things passing over into life, when they are
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conversant with nothing but the deadest material and the deadest thoughts. When customs come to be collected and grouped, as takes place with every people which reaches a certain grade of civilization, there is formed a statutebook. It is somewhat different from a statute-book properly so-called. A collection is formless, indefinite, and fragmentary, whereas a real statute-book apprehends and expresses in terms of thought the principles of law in their universality. England’s land-law or common law is, as is well known, made up both of statutes, having the forms of laws, and of so-called unwritten laws. However, this unwritten law is written with a vengeance, and a knowledge of it is possible only by reading the many quartos which it fills. The monstrous confusion which prevails in that country, both in the administration of justice and in the subject-matter of the law, is graphically portrayed by those who are acquainted with the facts. They specially notice that, since the unwritten law is contained in the decisions of law-courts and judges, the judges are continually the lawgivers. Further, the judges are both directed and not directed to the authority of their predecessors. They are so directed, because their predecessors are said to have done nothing but interpret the unwritten law. They are not so directed, because they are supposed to have in themselves the unwritten law, and hence have a right to determine whether previous decisions are in keeping with it or not.
To avoid a similar confusion, which would have arisen in the administration of justice at Rome, when in later times the views of all the celebrated lawyers were made authoritative, one of the emperors hit upon an ingenious expedient. He passed a law, by which was founded a kind of college consisting of the jurisconsults who were longest deceased. This body had a president, and came to decisions through a majority of votes (Mr. Hugo’s “History of Roman Law,” § 354).—It is the task of a nation, or at least of its jurisconsults, not indeed to make a system of laws entirely new in content, but to recognize the existing content of laws in its definite universality. They should apprehend it in thought, while also making additions with regard to its application to special cases. To refuse to a people or its lawyers this right would be a flagrant insult.
Addition.—The sun and the planets have laws, but they do not know them. Barbarians are ruled by impulses, customs, feelings, but have no consciousness of them. When right is established as law and known, all random intuitions and opinions, revenge, compassion, and self-interest, fall away. Only then does right attain its true character and receive its due honour. In being apprehended right is purified from all mixture of chance elements, and thus becomes for the first time capable of universal application. Of course, in the administration of the laws collisions will necessarily occur, which must be settled by the understanding of the judge; otherwise, the execution of the law would be merely mechanical. But to do away with collisions by giving full scope to the judge’s well-meant opinions would be the poorest solution of the difficulty. Collisions, in fact, belong to the nature of thought, the thinking consciousness and its dialectic, while the mere decision of a judge is arbitrary.
In favour of rights of custom it is usually adduced that they are living; but life, consisting in simple identity with the subject, does not constitute the essence of the matter. Right must be known in thought. It must be a system in itself, and only as a system can it be valid for civilized peoples. Very recently the vocation of making laws has been abolished. This is not only an affront, but also implies the absurdity that to no individual has been given the capacity to systematize the infinite multitude of existing laws, and expose the universal contained in them, when this task is precisely the most pressing need of the day.
Similarly, it has been held that a digest of decisions, such as the Corpus juris, is preferable to a statute-book giving a detailed exhibition of the universal. A certain particularity and reminiscence of the historical is supposed to be contained in the decisions, and in a statute-book it is thought that these advantages would be wanting. But the mischievous nature of a mere collection is clearly manifest in the practice of the English law.
212Through this identity of the abstract or implicit with what is actually constituted, only that right is binding which has become law. But since to constitute a thing is to give it outer reality, there may creep into the process a contingency due to self-will and other elements of particularity. Hence, the actual law may be different from what is in itself right.
Note.—Hence, in positive right that which is lawfully established is the source of the knowledge of what is right, or, more accurately, is the final resort in litigation. Positive jurisprudence is to that extent an historical science based on authority. Additions are a matter of the understanding, and concern outward arrangements, combinations, results, further applications, and the like. But when the understanding meddles with the essential substance of the matter, it may serve up singular theories, of which those regarding criminal law are an illustration.—It is not only the right but the necessary duty of positive science, it is true, to deduce out of its positive data the historic progress and also applications and ramifications. Yet it cannot be wondered at if it be regarded as a fair cross-question whether a specific finding is after all wholly in accordance with reason (compare on this point § 3 note).
213Right is realized in the first instance in the form of constituted law. But it must in its content have further realization. It must apply to the matter of the relations
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bearing on property and contract, complicated and ramified as these relations in the civic community become. It must apply also to the ethical relations of feeling, love, and confidence, but only in so far as they contain the phase of abstract right (§ 159). The moral commands, touching the will in its most private subjectivity and particularity, cannot be the object of positive legislation. But additional material for legislation is furnished by the rights and duties which flow from the administration of justice itself and from the state.
Addition.—Of the higher relations of marriage, love, religion, and the state, only those aspects can be objects of legislation, which are by their nature capable of having an external embodiment. Here the laws of different nations are very different. Amongst the Chinese, for example, it is a law of the state that the husband shall love his first wife more than any of the others. If he is convicted of the contrary, he is flogged. So, too, in the older laws may be found many prescripts concerning integrity and honour, things that are wholly internal and do not fall within the province of legislation. But as to the oath, where the matter is laid upon the conscience, integrity and honour must be viewed as in it outwardly substantive.
214Besides applying to the particular as a whole, the constituted law applies to the special case. Here it enters the quantitative region left unoccupied by the conception. This is, of course, the abstract quantitative, which is found in exchange as value. The conception furnishes in this region only a general limit, inside of which there is room for considerable uncertainty. But fluctuations of opinion must be cut short, and a conclusion reached. Hence, inside of this limit a decision has the character of accident and caprice.
Note.—To whittle the universal down not only to the particular but to the individual case is the chief function of the purely positive in law. It cannot, for example, be determined by reason, or decided by any phase of the conception itself, whether forty lashes or thirty-nine, a fine of four dollars or three dollars and ninety-nine cents, imprisonment for a year or three hundred and sixty-four or three hundred and sixty-six days, be the just punishment for a crime. And yet a lash, a cent, or a day too much or too little is an injustice.
Reason itself recognizes that contingency, contradiction, and appearance have their sphere or right, limited though it is, and is not at pains to rectify these contradictions. Here the purpose is solely to reach actuality, that is, somehow or other within the given limit to get the matter settled. This settlement is the office of formal self-certitude or abstract subjectivity, which, observing the prescribed limit, may bring the matter to issue simply for settlement’s sake. Or its reasons for its decision are, if it has any, of this kind, that it should use round numbers, or that the number should be forty less one.
It is of no real significance that the law does not make the final decision demanded by reality, but hands it over to the judge, limiting him merely by a maximum and minimum. The maximum and minimum are themselves round numbers, and do not do away with the requirement that the judge shall pronounce a finite purely positive sentence. On the contrary, this action devolves upon him necessarily.
Addition.—Undoubtedly the laws and the administration of justice contain in one of their aspects something contingent, since the law, though of a universal character, must nevertheless be applied to special cases. If we were to declare against this element of contingency, we would pronounce in favour of an abstraction. The exact quantity of punishment cannot be found in any factor of the conception; and whatever judgment may be made, it is to some extent arbitrary. But this contingency is itself necessary. If one were to argue from the presence of contingency that a code of laws was imperfect, he would overlook the fact that perfection of such a kind is not to be attained. Law must, hence, be taken as it stands.
(b) Law as Incorporated.
215Since the binding force of law rests upon the right of self-consciousness (§ 132 and note), the laws ought to be universally made known.
Note.—To hang up the laws, as did Dionysius the Tyrant, so high that no citizen could read them, is a wrong. To bury them in a cumbrous apparatus of learned books, collections of decisions and opinions of judges, who have deviated from the rule, and, to make matters worse, to write them in a foreign tongue, so that no one can attain a knowledge of them, unless he has made them a special subject of study, is the same wrong in another form.—The rulers, who have given their people a definite and systematized book of common law, or even an unshapely collection such as that of Justinian, should be thanked and lauded as public benefactors. Moreover, they have done a decisive act
Addition.—Jurists, who have a detailed knowledge of the law, often look on it as their monopoly. He who is not of their profession, they say, shall not be heard. The physicists treated Goethe’s theory of colours harshly, because he was not of their vocation, and was a poet besides. But we do not need the services of a shoemaker to find out if the shoe fits, nor do we need to belong to a particular trade in order to have a knowledge of the objects which are of universal interest in it. Right concerns freedom, the worthiest and holiest thing in man, the thing which he must know in so far as he is answerable to it.
216We are in the presence of an antinomy. Simple universal characteristics are needed in a public statute-book and yet the finite material by its nature gives rise to endless definition; the context of any law should be a roundedoff and complete whole, and yet there must continually be new legal findings. But the right to a completed statutebook remains unimpaired, since this antinomy does not occur in the case of fixed general principles, but only with their specialization. General principles can be apprehended and presented apart from special cases.
Note.—One chief source of complexity in legislation occurs in the case of any historic institution, which in its origin contains an injustice. In the course of time it is sought to infuse into this institution reason and absolute right. An illustration of this procedure was cited above from Roman law (§ 180, note). It occurs also in the old feudal law and elsewhere. But it is essential to understand that, owing to the nature of finite material, any application to it of principles, absolutely reasonable and in themselves universal, must be an infinite process. To require of a statute-book that it should be absolutely finished, and incapable of any modification—a malady which is mainly German—and to base this demand upon the reason that, if the book cannot be completed, it cannot come up to the so-called imperfect and therefore falls short of reality, rest upon a twofold misunderstanding. This view implies a misconception of the nature of such finite objects as private right, whose so-called perfection consists simply in a perennial approximation. It implies, too, a misconception of the difference between the universal of the understanding and that of reason, and also of their application to the finite and particular material, which goes on to infinity. Le plus grand ennemi du Bien c’est le Meilleur is the expression of the truly sound human understanding in contrast with empty reasonings and reflections.
Addition.—If completeness means the complete collection of every individual thing or instance which belongs to a given sphere, no science can be complete. If we say that philosophy or any other science is incomplete, it seems like saying that we must wait till it is perfected, as the best thing may yet be lacking. In this way there is no getting on at all, neither in the seemingly completed science of geometry, in which, nevertheless, new elements are being introduced, nor in philosophy, which, though dealing with the universal idea, may be continually more and more specialized. The universal law cannot be forever merely the ten commandments. Yet it would be absurd to refuse to set up the law “Thou shalt not kill” on the ground that a statute-book cannot be made complete. Every statute-book can, of course, be better. It is patent to the most idle reflection that the most excellent, noble, and beautiful can be conceived of as still more excellent, noble, and beautiful. A large old tree branches more and more without becoming a new tree in the process; it would be folly, however, not to plant a new tree for the reason that it was destined in time to have new branches.
217In the civic society what is intrinsically right becomes law. What was formerly the simple and abstract realization of my private will becomes, when recognized, a tangible factor of the existing general will and consciousness. Acquisition of property and other such transactions must therefore be settled in accordance with the form assigned to this realized right. Hence, property now depends upon contract, and, in general, upon those formalities, which furnish legal proof of possession.
Note.—The original or direct titles to property and methods of acquisition (§ 54 and fol.) disappear in the civic community, or occur in it only as separate accidents and limited elements.—Forms are rejected by feeling, which holds to the subjective, and by reflection, which clings to the abstract side of the necessary formality. On the other hand the dead understanding clings to formalities in opposition to the thing itself, and infinitely increases their number.—For the rest it is involved in the whole process of education to win oneself free by hard and long endeavour from the sensuous and direct form, and attain to the form of thought with its appropriate simple expression. It is only in the earliest stages of legal science that ceremony and formalities are significant. They are then esteemed as the thing itself rather than its outer symbol. In Roman law is found a host of details and expressions, which formerly belonged to religious ceremonies, and should in law have given place to phases of thought and their appropriate expression.
Addition.—In law what is in itself right is constituted. In property I possess something which was without an owner; this must now be recognized and constituted as mine. Hence, with regard to property arise in a community legal forms. We place boundary stones as a sign for others to take notice of; we have registers of mortgages and lists of properties. In the civic community property is generally obtained by contract, a legal process which is fixed and definite. Against forms the objection may be urged that they exist merely to bring money to the authorities. Or they may be held to be objectionable as indicating a lack of confidence. It may be said that the maxim “A man is his word” has lost its force. But the essential thing about the form is that what is really right should be constituted as right. My will is rational; it has validity; and this validity is to be recognized by others. Here my subjectivity and that of others must fall away, and the will must attain a certainty, assurance, and objectivity, which can be realized only through the form.
218In the civic community property and personality have a legal recognition and validity. Hence, crime is injury done not merely to an infinite subject, but to a universal fact, which has firm and sure reality. Here occurs, therefore, the view that crime is a menace to society. On the one hand the magnitude of the crime is increased, but on the other hand the security, felt by society, lessens the external importance of the injury. As a result, crime is now often punished more lightly.
Note.—The fact that, when one member of a community suffers, all others suffer with him, alters the nature of crime, not indeed in its conception, but in its external existence. The injury now concerns the general thought and consciousness of the civic community, and not merely the existence of the person directly injured. In the heroic ages, portrayed in the tragedies of the ancients, the citizens did not regard themselves as injured by the crimes which the members of the royal houses committed against one another.—Crime, which in its inner nature is an infinite injury, must as a realized fact submit to a qualitative and quantitative measure (§ 96). This outward fact is conditioned by the general idea and consciousness of the validity of the laws. Hence, the danger to the civic community is one way of measuring the magnitude of a crime, or one of its attributes.—The quality or magnitude varies with the condition of a community. In the circumstances lies the justification of inflicting upon a theft of a few cents or a turnip the penalty of death, while it imposes a mild punishment upon a theft of a hundred or several hundred times the amount. Although the idea of danger to the civic community seems to aggravate the crime, it has really ameliorated the penalty. A penal code belongs to its time and to the condition in which the civic community at that time is.
Addition.—An offence seems to be aggravated, if it is perpetrated in a community, and yet in such a case it is treated with more leniency. This appears to be self-contradictory. But although a crime could not be allowed by the community to go unpunished, since it would then be constituted as right, yet, because a community is sure of itself, a crime is always merely a single, isolated act of hostility without any foothold. By means of the very steadfastness of the community crime becomes a mere subjective act, which appears to spring not so much out of deliberate will as out of natural impulse. Hence, a more lenient view is taken of crime, and punishment also is ameliorated. If the community is still unsettled, an example must be made by means of punishment, for jjunishment is itself an example against the example of crime. But in the sure and firm community the position of crime is so unstable, that a lesser measure of punishment is sufficient to supersede it. Severe punishments are not absolutely unjust, but are due to the condition of the time. A criminal code cannot apply to all times, and crimes are mere seeming existences, which draw after them a greater or less rejection of themselves.
(c) The Court of Justice.
219Right, having entered reality in the form of law, and having become an actual fact, stands in independent opposition to the particular will and opinion of right, and has to vindicate itself as a universal. The recognition and realization of right in each special case without the subjective instigation of private interests, is the office of a public power, the court of justice.
Note.—The office of judge and the court of justice may have originated historically in the patriarchal relation, in force, or in voluntary choice. This is for the conception of the object a matter of indifference. To regard the administration of justice by princes and rulers merely as a courtesy and favour, as does Herr von Haller in his “Restoration of Political Science,” is to have no inkling of the fact that, when we speak of law and the state, we mean that its institutions are reasonable and absolutely necessary; and that, when we consider the reasonable basis of the laws, we have nothing to do with the form of their origin. The extreme opposite to this view is the crude idea that the administration of justice is club-law or despotism, which suppressed liberty by violence. But the administration of the law is to be looked upon as the duty quite as much as the right of the public authority.
Whether to delegate the discharge of this office to some power or not is not at the option of any individual.
220Revenge, or the right against crime (§ 102), is right only in itself. It is not right in the form of law, i.e., it is not in its actual existence just. The place of the injured person is now taken by the injured universal, which is actualized in a special way in the court of justice. To pursue and punish crime is its function, which therefore ceases to be a mere subjective retaliation or revenge, and is in punishment transformed into a true reconciliation of right with itself. In the act of punishment, viewed objectively, right is reconciled to itself, and restores itself by superseding the crime and realizing its own inherent validity. In punishment, viewed subjectively, or from the standpoint of the criminal, the law, known by him and available for his protection, is atoned for. The execution of the law upon him, or the satisfaction of justice, he finds to be simply the completed act of his own law.
221A member of the civic community has the right to bring a cause before the court of justice, and is also in duty bound to appear in the court, and accept from it the decision of the point in dispute.
Addition.—Every individual has the right to bring his case before the court. But he must know the laws, otherwise, the privilege would be of no service to him. But it is also a duty for him to appear before the court. Under the feudal system the prince or noble defied the court, and refused to appear, regarding it as a wrong if the court summoned him before it. This condition of things is contradictory of the real function of the court. In more recent times the prince has in private affairs recognized the courts as superior to him, and in free states his cases are usually lost.
222By the court it is required that a right be proved. The legal process gives the contending parties an opportunity to substantiate their claim by evidence, and put the judge in possession of a knowledge of the case. The necessary steps are themselves rights; their course must be legally fixed; and they form an essential part of theoretical jurisprudence.
Addition.—It may stir men to revolt if they have a right, which is refused to them on the score that it cannot be proved. But the right, which I have, must be at the same time constituted. I must be able to present and prove it, and only when that, which it really is, is constituted as law, is it of any avail to me in a community.
223The stages of the legal process may be more and more minutely subdivided, and each stage has its right. As this subdivision has no inherent limit, the legal process, which is already of itself a means, may be opposed to the end, and become something external. Though this extensive formality is meant for the two contending parties and belongs to them as their right, it may become an evil and an instrument of wrong. Therefore, in order that the two parties, and right itself as the substantive basis, may be protected against the legal process and its misuse, it is by way of law made a duty for them to submit themselves to a simple court, the civil court of arbitration, for a preliminary trial, before going to the higher court.
Note.—Equity includes a departure from formal right through moral and other regards, and refers directly to the content of the suit. A court of equity decides upon the particular case, without adhering to the formalities of the legal process. It is not confined to the objective evidence, as is formal law. It decides upon the interest peculiar to each particular suit. Its judgment is not meant to be applied generally.
224As the public promulgation of the laws is one of the rights of the subjective consciousness (§ 215), so also is the possibility of knowing how in any special case the law is carried out. The course of the external proceedings should be public, and also the legal principles involved.
The order of procedure is of itself a thing of general value. Though the special content of the case is of interest only to the contending parties, the universal content, involving right and a legal decision, is of interest to all. Hence is demanded the publicity of the administration of the law.
Note.—Deliberations by the members of a court amongst themselves over the judgment to be given, are only private opinions and views, and are not of public import.
Addition.—Honest common sense holds that the publicity of legal proceedings is right and just. A strong reason to the contrary was always the rank of the judiciary. They were not to be seen by everybody, and regarded themselves as the warders of a law, into which laymen ought not to intrude. But law should possess the confidence of the citizens, and this fact calls for the publicity of the sentence. Publicity is a right, because the aim of the court is justice, which as a universality belongs to all. Moreover, the citizens should be convinced that the right sentence has actually been pronounced.
225In the application of the law by the judicial authorities to special cases are to be distinguished two separate aspects. There must be firstly an acquaintance with the direct facts of the case, whether a contract has taken place, an injurious act done, and who the doer is. In criminal law the act must be known also in its intention, which contains its substantive criminal quality (§ 119, note). In the second place the act must be brought under the law of the restoration of right. This in criminal law includes the punishment. Decisions in connection with these two aspects are two different functions.
Note.—In the constitution of the Roman law-courts these two functions occurred in this way. The Prætor gave his decision on the condition that the case was of such and such a kind, and then he commanded a certain Judex to make inquiries into its exact nature. The fixing of the exact criminal quality of an act, whether, for example, it be murder or manslaughter, is in English judicial procedure left to the insight or caprice of the accuser, and the court is restricted to his view, even if it is seen to be
226To conduct the whole inquiry, to arrange the procedure of the parties, which is itself a right (§ 222), and to pass sentence, are the special functions of the judge (§ 225). For him, as the organ of the law, the case must be prepared and brought under some law. It must be raised out of its empirical nature, and made a recognized fact with general attributes.
227That aspect of the case, which consists in knowing and estimating the direct facts, contains no distinctively judicial elements. The knowledge is possible to any intelligent man. When, in order that an estimate of the act may be made, the subjective factor of the insight or intention of the agent is essential (see Second Part), when the evidence concerns no abstract object of reason or the understanding, but mere particulars, circumstances, and objects of sensible perception and subjective certitude, when the case contains no absolutely objective element, and the duty of deciding must fall to subjective conviction and conscience (animi sententia), and when the evidence rests on depositions and statements, the oath, though a subjective confirmation, is ultimate.
Note.—In this question it is a cardinal point to keep before our eyes the nature of the available evidence, and to distinguish it from knowledge and evidence of other kinds. To prove a phase of reason, such as is the conception of right itself, that is, to recognize its necessity, requires another method than the proof of a geometrical theorem. Moreover, in a theorem the figure is determined by the understanding, and is already abstractly made according to a law. But in the case of an empirical content, such as a fact, the material for knowledge is composed of sense-perceptions, and attestations based on the subjective certitude of sense. These depositions, testimonies, and circumstances must be put together, and from them a conclusion must be drawn. With such material and such a means of making it independent and objective there are attained only partial proofs. In obedience to a true logic, which nevertheless is formally illogical, the punishments are consequently exceptional. This objective truth is quite different from the truth of a rational principle or of a proposition, whose matter has already been abstractly fixed by the understanding. In so far as an empirical truth can be recognized in the specific judicial finding of a court, and so far as in the finding can be shown to lie an unique quality, that is, an exclusive implicit right and necessity, the formal judicial court is entitled to pass judgment upon the fact as well as upon the point of law.
Addition.—There is no reason for supposing that the judge is the only one to decide upon matters of fact. For this not the legal mind alone but any man of ordinary intelligence is competent. Judgment as to matter of fact depends upon empirical circumstances, witnesses of the act, and similar data of perception. There may also be other facts, by means of which one can infer the nature and probability of the act in dispute. Here at most we reach an assurance, but not a truth in the sense of something eternal. Assurance is subjective conviction or conscience, and the question to decide is what form to give this certitude at a law court. The demand, usually made in German law, for a confession on the part of the criminal has this right, that by it satisfaction is given to the right of the subjective consciousness. The judge’s decision must agree with the criminal’s consciousness; and, not until the culprit has confessed, is the sentence free from an element which is foreign to him. But the criminal may deny the act, and thus imperil the course of justice. Yet it is a harsh measure to treat him according to the subjective conviction of the judge, since then he is no longer regarded as free. Hence, it is still required that the decree of guilt or innocence should come from the soul of the criminal, and this requisite is secured through trial by jury.
228. When the facts of the case have been decided on, and the judge in his sentence brings the case, so qualified, under a certain law, the accused’s right of self-consciousness is not violated. In the first place, the law is known, and is itself the law of the accused. In the second place the proceedings, by which the case is brought under a certain law, are public. But when a decision is not yet reached upon the particular subjective and external content of the matter, a knowledge of which comes under the first of the two aspects given in § 226, the accused’s right of self-consciousness is preserved by intrusting the case to the subjectivity of jurors. This procedure is based on the equality of the jurors with the accused, both as regards class and in general.
Note.—The right of self-consciousness, or the element of subjective freedom, can be regarded as the substantive point of view in the question of the necessity of a public trial, or trial by a jury. To this point of view all that is essential and needful in these institutions may be reduced. From any other standpoint disputes may arise as to whether this or that feature is an advantage or disadvantage, but such reasonings either are of secondary consequence and decide nothing, or they are taken from other and perhaps higher spheres. It is possible that the law might be as well administered by courts of judges, or even better by them than by other institutions. But grant the possibility, or let the possibility become a probability or even a certainty, there remains always on the other hand the right of self-consciousness, which maintains its claims and must be satisfied. Because of the general nature of the law, it can happen that the knowledge of right, the course of legal proceedings, and the possibility of prosecuting the law, may become the exclusive property of a class. This class may use a language which is to those in whose interest it was made a foreign tongue. The members of a civic community, who have to rely for their subsistence upon their own activity, knowledge, and will, then become strangers not only to what is most private and personal in the law, but also to its substantive and rational essence. Hence, they fall under a kind of bodily vassalage to the legal class. They may have the right to present themselves in person before the court (in judicio stare), but of what use is that, if they are not present as intelligent spirits? The justice, which they receive, remains for them an external fate.
229In the civic community the idea is lost in particularity, and dispersed by the separation of inner and outer. But in the administration of justice the community is brought back to the conception, that is, to the unity of the intrinsic universal with subjective particularity. But as subjective particularity is present only as one single case, and the universal only as abstract right, the unification is in the first instance relative. The realization of this relative unity over the whole range of particularity is the function of the police, and within a limited but concrete totality constitutes the corporation.
Addition.—In the civic community universality is only necessity. In the relation of wants, right as such is the only steadfast principle. But the sphere of this right is limited, and refers merely to the protection of what I have. To right as such, happiness is something external. Yet in the system of wants well-being is an essential element. The universal, which is at first only right, has to spread itself over the whole field of particularity. Justice, it is true, is a large factor in the civic community. The state will flourish, if it has good laws, of which free property is the fundamental condition. But since I am wholly environed by my particularity, I have a right to demand that in connecting myself with others I shall further my special happiness. Regard to my particular well-being is taken by the police and the corporation.
C. Police and Corporation.
230In the system of wants the subsistence and happiness of every individual is a possibility, whose realization is conditioned by the objective system of wants. By the administration of justice compensation is rendered for injury done to property or person. But the right, which is actualized in the particular individual, contains the two following factors. It asks firstly that person and property should be secured by the removal of all fortuitous hindrances, and secondly that the security of the individual’s subsistence and happiness, his particular well-being should be regarded and actualized as a right.
(a) Police.
231So far as the particular will is the principle of a purpose, the force, by which the universal guarantees security, is limited to the realm of mere accident, and is an external arrangement.
232Crimes are in their nature contingent or casual, taking the form of capricious choice of evil, and must be prevented or brought to justice by the general force. Apart from them, however, arbitrary choice must be allowed a place in connection with acts in themselves lawful, such as the private use of property. Here it comes into external relation with other individuals, and also with public institutions for realizing a common end. In this way a private act is exposed to a haphazard play of circumstances, which take it beyond my control. It thus may or actually does effect an injury or wrong to others.
233. This is, indeed, only a possibility of harm. But that no actual injury is done is now no longer a matter of accident, since the aspect of wrong in private acts is the ultimate ground for the right of police control.
234The relations of external reality occur within the realm of the infinity created by the understanding, and have accordingly no inherent limit. Hence, as to what is dangerous and what not, what suspicious and what free from suspicion, what is to be forbidden, or kept under inspection, or pardoned with a reprimand, what is to be retained after pardon under police supervision, and what is to be dismissed on suspended sentence, no boundary can be laid down. Custom, the spirit of the constitution as a whole, the condition of the time, the danger of the moment, etc., furnish means for a decision.
Addition.—No fixed definition can here be given, or absolute boundary drawn. Here everything is personal and influenced by subjective opinion. To the spirit of the constitution or the danger of the times are due any more decisive characteristics. In time of war, e.g., many things morally harmless are looked on as harmful. Because of the presence of this aspect of contingency and arbitrary personality the police are viewed with odium. They can by far-fetched conclusions draw every kind of thing within their sphere; for in anything may be found a possibility of harm. Hence, the police may go to work in a pedantic spirit, and disturb the moral life of individuals. But great as the nuisance may be, an objective limit to their action cannot be drawn.
235Although every one relies on the untrammelled possibility of satisfying his daily wants, yet, when in the indefinite multiplication and limitation of them it is sought to procure or exchange the means and it is desired to expedite the transaction, there comes into sight a common interest, which makes the business of one subserve the interest of all. There appear, likewise, ways and means, which may be of public utility. To oversee and foster the ways and means calculated to promote the public welfare is the function of a public power.
236The different interests of producers and consumers may come into conflict, and, although the right relation between the two may on the whole arise of its own accord, yet the adjustment of the two calls for a regulation standing above both sides and put into operation consciously. The right to make such a regulation in any particular case {e.g., taxation of the articles most necessary to sustain life), consists in this, that the public offer of goods, in wide and daily use, is not to the individual, as such, but to him as a universal, i.e., to the public. The people’s right to honest dealing and inspection of goods to prevent fraud may be enforced by a public functionary. But more especially does the dependence of great branches of industry upon foreign conditions and distant combinations, which the individuals engaged in these industries cannot themselves oversee, make necessary a general supervision and control.
Note.—In contrast with freedom of business and trade in the civic community stands the other extreme of the establishment and direction of the work of all by means of official regulation. Under this head comes perhaps the construction of the pyramids and other monstrous Egyptian and Asiatic works. They were built for public ends without the intervention of any work done by the individual to further his own private interests. Private interest summons the principle of freedom against interference from above, but the more blindly it is sunk in self-seeking ends, the more it stands in need of regulation, in order that it may be led back to the universal. Thus what might be a dangerous upheaval becomes largely harmless, and shorter time is left for conflicts to adjust themselves merely by unconscious necessity.
Addition.—Police control and provision are intended to intervene between the individual and the universal possibility of obtaining his wants. It takes charge of lighting the streets, building bridges, taxation of daily wants, even of health. Two main views stand out at this point. One view is that it falls to the police to look after everything, the other that the police should not interfere at all, since every one will be guided by the need of others. The individual, it is true, must have the right to earn his bread in this or the other way, but on the other hand the public has a right to ask that what is necessary shall be done. Both claims should be met, and the freedom of trade ought not to be of such a kind as to endanger the general weal.
237The possibility of sharing in the general wealth is open to the individual and secured to him by public regulations. This security, however, cannot be complete, and in any case the possibility of sharing in the general wealth is from the subjective side open to casualties, just in proportion as it presupposes conditions of skill, health, and capital.
238In the first instance the family is the substantive whole. To it falls the duty of providing for the particular side of the individual’s life, both in regard of the means and talents requisite for winning his maintenance out of the common stock, and in regard of subsistence and provision in case of disability. But the civic community tears the individual out of the family bonds, makes its members strangers to one another, and recognizes them as independent persons. Instead of external inorganic nature and the paternal soil, from which the individual drew subsistence, the community substitutes its own ground, and subjects the whole family to fortuitous dependence upon itself. Thus the individual has become the son of the civic community, which makes claims upon him, at the same time as he has rights to it.
Addition.—The family has, of course, to provide bread for individuals; but in the civic community the family is subordinate and merely forms a basis. After that it is no longer of such extensive efficacy. Rather is the civic community the monster, which snatches man to itself, claims from him that he should toil for it and that he should exist through it and act by means of it. If man is a member of such a community, he has just such rights in it or claims upon it as he had in and upon the family. The civic community must protect its members, and defend their rights, as they in turn are engaged to obey its mandates.
239The civic community, in its character as universal family, has the right and duty to supersede, if necessary, the will of the parents, and superintend the education of the young, at least in so far as their education bears upon their becoming members of the community. Especially is this the case if the education is to be completed not by the parents but by others. Further, the community must undertake general arrangements for education, in so far as they can be made.
Addition.—The boundary line between the rights of parents and those of the civic community is hard to define. The parents generally suppose themselves to possess complete liberty with regard to education, and to be able to do whatever they wish. Whenever instruction is made public, the chief opposition usually comes from the parents, who cry out and make acclaim about teachers and schools merely because they are displeased with them. In spite of this, the community has the right to proceed according to tried methods, and to compel parents to send their children to school, to have them vaccinated, etc. Contests occur in France between the demands of free instruction, i.e., of the pleasure of parents, on the one side, and the oversight of the state on the other.
240Similarly, the community has the duty and right to take under its guardianship those who wantonly squander their subsistence and that of their family. In the place of this extravagance it substitutes their real end, which it seeks to promote along with the purpose of the community.
Addition.—It was a law in Athens that every citizen should give an account of his way of life. Our view is that this is no one’s business. Of course every individual is in one way independent, but he is also a member of the system of the civic community. In so far as every man has the right to ask maintenance from it, it must also protect him against himself. It is not simply that starvation must be guarded against. The wider view is that there never shall arise a rabble, or mass. Since the civic community is obliged to support individuals, it has also the right to insist that individuals should care for its
241Not the arbitrary will only, but accidental circumstances, which may be physical or external (§ 200), may bring the individual to poverty. This condition exposes him to the wants of the civic community, which has already deprived him of the natural methods of acquisition (§ 217), and superseded the bond of the family stock (§ 181). Besides, poverty causes men to lose more or less the advantage of society, the opportunity to acquire skill or education, the benefit of the administration of justice, the care for health, even the consolation of religion. Amongst the poor the public power takes the place of the family in regard to their immediate need, dislike of work, bad disposition, and other vices, which spring out of poverty and the sense of wrong.
242The subjective element of poverty, or generally the distress, to which the individual is by nature exposed, requires subjective assistance, both in view of the special circumstances, and out of sympathy and love. Here, amidst all general arrangements, morality finds ample room to work. But since the assistance is in its own nature and in its effects casual, the effort of society shall be to discover a general remedy for penury and to do without random help.
Note.—Haphazard almsgiving and such foundations as the burning of lamps beside holy images, etc., are replaced by public poor-houses, hospitals, street lighting, etc. To charity enough still remains. It is a false view for charity to restrict its help to private methods and casual sentiment and knowledge, and to feel itself injured and weakened by regulations binding upon the whole community. On the contrary, the public system is to be regarded as all the more complete, the less remains to be done by special effort.
243When the civic community is untrammelled in its activity, it increases within itself in industry and population. By generalizing the relations of men by the way of their wants, and by generalizing the manner in which the means of meeting these wants are prepared and procured, large fortunes are amassed. On the other side, there occur repartition and limitation of the work of the individual labourer and, consequently, dependence and distress in the artisan class. With these drawbacks are associated callousness of feeling and inability to enjoy the larger possibilities of freedom, especially the mental advantages of the civic community.
244When a large number of people sink below the standard of living regarded as essential for the members of society, and lose that sense of right, rectitude, and honour which is derived from self-support, a pauper class arises, and wealth accumulates disproportionately in the hands of a few.
Addition.—The way of living of the pauper class is the lowest of all, and is adopted by themselves. But with different peoples the minimum is very different. In England even the poorest man believes that he has his right, and with him this standard is different from that which satisfies the poor in other lands. Poverty does not of itself make a pauper. The pauper state implies a frame of mind, associated often with poverty, consisting in inner rebellion against the wealthy, against society, and against constituted authority. Moreover, in order to descend to the class, which is at the mercy of the changes and chances of life, men must be heedless and indifferent to work, as are the Lazzaroni in Naples. Hence, in this section of the community arises the evil thing that a man has not self-respect enough to earn his own living by his work, and still he claims support as a right. No man can maintain a right against nature. Yet, in social conditions want assumes the form of a wrong done to one or other class. The important question, how poverty is to be done away with, is one which has disturbed and agitated society, especially in modern times.
245If upon the more wealthy classes the burden were directly laid of maintaining the poor at the level of their ordinary way of life, or if in public institutions, such as rich hospitals, foundations, or cloisters, the poor could receive direct support, they would be assured of subsistence without requiring to do any work. This would be contrary both to the principle of the civic community and to the feeling its members have of independence and honour.
Again, if subsistence were provided not directly but through work, or opportunity to work, the quantity of produce would be increased, and the consumers, becoming themselves producers, would be proportionately too few. Whether in the case of over-production, then, or in the case of direct help, the evil sought to be removed would remain, and, indeed, would by either method be enhanced. There arises the seeming paradox that the civic community when excessively wealthy is not rich enough. It has not sufficient hold of its own wealth to stem excess of poverty and the creation of paupers.
Note.—These phenomena may be studied in England, where they occur on an extensive scale. In that country may also be observed the consequences of poor rates, of vast foundations, of unlimited private benevolence, and, above all, of the discontinuance of the corporation. In England, and especially in Scotland, the most direct remedy against poverty and against laziness and extravagance, which are the cause of poverty, has been proved by practical experience to be to leave the poor to their fate, and direct them to public begging. This, too, has been found to be the best means for preserving that sense of shame and honour, which is the subjective basis of society.
246By means of its own dialectic the civic community is driven beyond its own limits as a definite and self-complete society. It must find consumers and the necessary means of life amongst other peoples, who either lack the means, of which it has a superfluity, or have less developed industries.
247As the firm-set earth, or the soil, is the basis of family life, so the basis of industry is the sea, the natural element which stimulates intercourse with foreign lands. By the substitution for the tenacious grasp of the soil, and for the limited round of appetites and enjoyments embraced within the civic life, of the fluid element of danger and destruction, the passion for gain is transformed. By means of the sea, the greatest medium of communication, the desire for wealth brings distant lands into an intercourse, which leads to commercial exchange. In this intercourse is found one of the chief means of culture, and in it, too, trade receives world-historical significance.
Note.—Rivers are not natural boundaries, though people have in modern times tried to make them so. Rather do they, and more especially the sea, bind men together.
That Horace (Carm. I. 8) is wrong when he says:
“... deus abscidit Prudens Oceano dissociabili Terras, ...”
is shown by the general fact that basins of rivers are inhabited by one nation or race. This is proved even more conspicuously by the relations of ancient Greece with Ionia and Magna Graecia, of Brittany with Britain, of Denmark with Norway, of Sweden with Finland and Lapland, in contrast with the slight intercourse obtaining between the inhabitants of the coast and those of the interior. We have only to compare the position of the nations, who have frequented the sea, with that of the nations who have avoided it, in order to discover what a means of culture and commerce it really is. Observe how the Egyptians and Hindoos have become dull and insensible, and are sunk in the grossest and most shameful superstitions, while all the great aspiring nations press to the sea.
248The wider connection due to the sea becomes a means for colonization, to which, be it sporadic or systematic, the full-grown civic community finds itself impelled. Thus for a part of its population it provides on a new soil a return to the family principle, and also procures for itself at the same time a new incentive and field for work.
Addition.—The civic society is forced to found colonies, owing to the increase of population, but more especially because production oversteps the needs of consumption, and the growing numbers cannot satisfy their needs by their work. Sporadic colonization occurs mainly in Germany, the colonists, finding a home in America or Russia, being without any connection with and of no benefit to their native land. A different kind of colonization is the systematic, which is conducted by the state consciously and with suitable appliances. Of this kind of colonization many forms occurred amongst the ancients, especially the Greeks. In Greece the citizens did not engage in severe toil, but directed their energies to public affairs. When the population grew to such an extent that it was difficult to provide for them, the youth were sent into a new neighbourhood, which was sometimes chosen for them, sometimes left to the accident of discovery. In modern times colonists have not been granted the rights possessed by the inhabitants of the parent country. The result has been war and ultimate independence, as may be read in the history of the English and Spanish colonies. The independence of the colonies has turned out to be of the greatest advantage to the mother land, just as the liberation of the slaves was of the greatest advantage to the masters.
249The universal, which is contained in the particularity of the civic community, is realized and preserved by the external system of police supervision, whose purpose is simply to protect and secure the multitude of private ends and interests subsisting within it. It has also the higher function of caring for the interests which lead out beyond the civic community (§ 246). In accordance with the idea particularity itself makes the universal, which exists in its special interests, the end and object of its will and endeavour. The ethical principle thus comes back as a constituent element of the civic community. This is the corporation.
(b) The Corporation.
250. In its substantive family life and life of nature the agricultural class contains directly the concrete universal in which it lives. The universal class, again, has this universal as an independent end of its activity, and as its ground and basis. The middle or commercial class is essentially engaged with the particular, and hence its peculiar province is the corporation.
251The work of the civic community spreads in different directions in obedience to the nature of its particularity. Since the implicit equality, contained in particularity, is here realized as the common purpose of an association, the particular and self-seeking end becomes something actively universal. Each member of the civic community is with his special talent a member of the corporation. The universal aim of the corporation is accordingly quite concrete, and has no wider application than what lies in trade and its distinctive interests.
252In keeping with this view, the corporation, under the oversight of the public authority, has the right to look after its own clearly-defined interests, according to the objective qualifications of skill and rectitude to adopt members, whose number is determined by the general system, to make provision for its adherents against fortuitous occurrences, and to foster the capacity necessary in any one desiring to become a member. In general it must stand to its members as a second family, a position which remains more indefinite than the family relation, because the general civic community is at a farther remove from individuals and their special needs.
Note.—The tradesman is different from the day-labourer, as well as from him who is ready for any casual employment. The trader, be he employer or employee, is a member of an association, not for mere accidental gain but for the whole circuit of gain, or the universal involved in his particular maintenance. The privileges, which are rights of a corporate branch of the civic community, are not the same as special privileges in the etymological sense of the term. Special privileges are haphazard exceptions to a general law, but the other privileges are legal phases of the particularity of an essential branch of the community.
253. The corporation provides for the family a basis and steady means (§ 170), by securing for it a subsistence varying according to capacity. Moreover, both security and capacity are in the corporation publicly recognized. Hence, the member of a corporation does not need to certify his capacity or the reality of his regular income to any larger outside organization. It is also recognized that he belongs to and has active interest in a whole, whose aim is to promote the welfare of society in general. Thus, in his class he has honour.
Note.—The corporation, in making secure the means of the family, corresponds to agriculture and private property in another sphere (§ 203, note).—When it is complained that the luxury and extravagance of the commercial class give rise to paupers (§ 244), it must not be overlooked that these conditions have an ethical or social basis in such causes as the increasingly mechanical nature of work. If the individual is not a member of an authorized corporation, and no combination can be a corporation unless it is authorized, he has no class-honour. By limiting himself to the self-seeking side of trade and his own subsistence and enjoyments, he loses standing. He perhaps seeks, in that case, to obtain recognition by displaying his success in his trade; but his display has no limit, because he has no desire to live in a way becoming his class. Indeed, he has no class at all, since only what is of general purport really exists in a civic community, and can be established and recognized. As he has no class, he has not the more universal life characteristic of the class.—In the corporation the assistance received by poverty loses its lawless character, and the humiliation wrongly associated with it. The opulent, by performing their duty to their associates, lose their pride, and cease to stir up envy in others. Integrity receives its due honour and recognition.
254The corporation sets a limit to the so-called natural right to make acquisitions by the exercise of any skill, only so far as the limit is a rational one. This right is thus freed from mere opinion and random influences, and from danger to itself and others. In this way it wins recognition and an assured place, and is exalted to the level of a conscious effort to attain a common purpose.
255. As the family was the first, so the corporation, grounded upon the civic community, constitutes the second ethical root or basis of the state. The family contains the elements of subjective particularity and objective universality in substantive unity. Then, in the civic community, these elements are in the first instance dissociated and become on the one side a particularity of want and satisfaction, which is turned back into itself, and on the other side abstract legal universality. The corporation joins these two in an internal way, so that particular well-being exists and is realized as a right.
Note.—Sanctity in the marriage tie and honour in the corporation are the points which the disorganizing forces of the civic community assail.
Addition.—In modern times the corporation has been superseded, with the intention that the individual should care for himself. Grant that the intention is wise, yet the obligation of the individual to procure his own livelihood is not by the corporation altered. In our modern states the citizens participate only slightly in the general business. It is, however, needful to provide the ethical man with a universal activity, one above his private ends. This universal, with which the modern state does not always supply him, is given by the corporation. We have already seen that the individual, while maintaining himself in the civic community, acts also for others. But this unconscious necessity is not enough. It is in the corporation that a conscious and reflective ethical reality is first reached. The superintendence of the state is higher, it is true, and must be given an upper place; otherwise the corporation would become fossilized; it would waste itself upon itself, and be reduced to the level of a wretched club. But the corporation is not in its absolute nature a secret society, but rather this socializing of a trade, which without it would stand in isolation. It takes the trade up into a circle, in which it secures strength and honour.
256The limited and finite end of the corporation has its truth in the absolutely universal end and the absolute actuality of this end. This actualized end is also the truth of the division involved in the external system of police, which is merely a relative identity of the divided elements.
Thus, the sphere of the civic community passes into the state.
Note.—City and country are the two as yet ideal constituents, out of which the state proceeds. The city is the seat of the civic society, and of the reflection which goes into itself and causes separation. The country is the seat of the ethical, which rests upon nature. The one comprises the individuals, who gain their livelihood by virtue of their relation to other persons possessed of rights. The other comprises the family. The state is the true meaning and ground of both.
The development of simple ethical observance into the dismemberment marking the civic community, and then forward into the state, which is shown to be the true foundation of these more abstract phases, is the only scientific proof of the conception of the state.—Although in the course of the scientific exposition the state has the appearance of a result, it is in reality the true foundation and cause. This appearance and its process are provisional, and must now be replaced by the state in its direct existence. In actual fact the state is in general primary. Within it the family grows into the civic community, the idea of the state being that which sunders itself into these two elements. In the development of the civic community the ethical substance reaches its infinite form, which contains the following elements:—(1) infinite differentiation even to the point at which consciousness as it is in itself exists for itself, and (2) the form of universality, which in civilization is the form of thought, that form by which spirit is itseK in its laws and institutions. They are its thought will, and it and they together become objective and real in an organic whole.
The State.
257. The state is the realized ethical idea or ethical spirit. It is the will which manifests itself, makes itself clear and visible, substantiates itself. It is the will which thinks and knows itself, and carries out what it knows, and in so far as it knows. The state finds in ethical custom its direct and unreflected existence, and its indirect and reflected existence in the self-consciousness of the individual and in his knowledge and activity. Self-consciousness in the form of social disposition has its substantive freedom in the state, as the essence, purpose, and product of its
Note.—The Penates are the inner and lower order of gods; the spirit of a nation, Athene, is the divinity which knows and wills itself. Piety is feeling, or ethical behaviour in the form of feeling; political virtue is the willing of the thought-out end, which exists absolutely.
258. The state, which is the realized substantive will, having its reality in the particular self -consciousness raised to the plane of the universal, is absolutely rational. This substantive unity is its own motive and absolute end. In this end freedom attains its highest right. This end has the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member of the state.
Note.—Were the state to be considered as exchangeable with the civic society, and were its decisive features to be regarded as the security and protection of property and personal freedom, the interest of the individual as such would be the ultimate purpose of the social union. It would then be at one’s option to be a member of the state.—But the state has a totally different relation to the individual. It is the objective spirit, and he has his truth, real existence, and ethical status only in being a member of it. Union, as such, is itself the true content and end, since the individual is intended to pass a universal life. His particular satisfactions, activities, and way of life have in this authenticated substantive principle their origin and result.
Rationality, viewed abstractly, consists in the thorough unity of universality and individuality. Taken concretely, and from the standpoint of the content, it is the unity of objective freedom with subjective freedom, of the general substantive will with the individual consciousness and the individual will seeking particular ends. From the standpoint of the form it consists in action determined by thought-out or universal laws and principles.—This idea is the absolutely eternal and necessary being of spirit.—The idea of the state is not concerned with the historical origin of either the state in general or of any particular state with its special rights and characters. Hence, it is indifferent whether the state arose out of the patriarchal condition, out of fear or confidence, or out of the corporation. It does not care whether the basis of state rights is declared to be in the divine, or in positive right, or contract, or custom. When we are dealing simply with the science of the state, these things are mere appearances, and belong to history. The causes or grounds of the authority of an actual state, in so far as they are required at all, must be derived from the forms of right, which have validity in the state.
Philosophic investigation deals with only the inner side of all this, the thought conception. To Rousseau is to be ascribed the merit of discovering and presenting a principle, which comes up to the standard of the thought, and is indeed thinking itself, not only in its form, such as would be a social impulse or divine authority, but in its very essence. This principle of Rousseau is will. But he conceives of the will only in the limited form of the individual will, as did also Fichte afterwards, and regards the universal will not as the absolutely reasonable will, but only as the common will, proceeding out of the individual will as conscious. Thus the union of individuals in a state becomes a contract, which is based upon caprice, opinion, and optional, explicit consent. Out of this view the understanding deduces consequences, which destroy the absolutely divine, and its absolute authority and majesty. Hence, when these abstractions attained to power, there was enacted the most tremendous spectacle which the human race has ever witnessed. All the usages and institutions of a great state were swept away. It was then proposed to begin over again, starting from the thought, and as the basis of the state to will only what was judged to be rational. But as the undertaking was begun with abstractions void of all ideas, it ended in scenes of tragic cruelty and horror.
As against the principle of the individual will we must bear in mind the fundamental conception that the objective will is in itself rational in its very conception, whether or not it be known by the individual or willed as an object of his good pleasure.”We must also keep in mind that the opposite principle, the subjectivity of freedom, i.e., such knowing and willing as are retained in that principle, contains only one, and that a one-sided factor of the idea of the reasonable will. The will is reasonable only if it is so both in itself and when it is actualized.
The other contrary of the thought, which apprehends the state as an embodiment of reason, is the theory which takes such external appearances as the accidents of distress, need, protection, strength, and wealth, for the substance of the state, when they are mere elements of its historical ' development. Moreover, it is in unique and isolated individuals that the principle of knowledge is here said to be found, not however in their thought, but in the attributes of their merely empirical personalities, such as strength or weakness, wealth or poverty. The freak of disregarding what is absolutely infinite and reasonable in the state and of banishing thought from the constitution of the state’s inner nature has never appeared so undisguisedly as in Mr. V. Haller’s “Restauration der Staatswissenschaft.” In all genuine attempts to reach the real nature of the state, though the principles adduced be ever so one-sided and superficial, there is yet implied that rightly to conceive of the state is to attain to thoughts and universal characters. But in the book alluded to, the author not only consciously renounces both the rational content which is the state, and the form of thought, but passionately inveighs against them. One of what he himself calls the far-reaching effects of his work is due to the circumstance that in his inquiry he knew how to fasten the whole into one piece without the help of thought. Hence, he says, are absent the confusion and disturbance, which arise when into a discussion of the contingent is foisted a suggestion about the substantive, and into a discussion of the empirical and external is injected a reminder of the universal and rational. Hence, when engaged with the inadequate and imperfect he is not continually reminding his readers of what is higher and infinite.—Yet even this method of inquiry has consequences. Since the fortuitous is taken as the essence of the state, and not the substantive, there results from the absence of thought an incoherence, which jogs on without looking back, and finds itself quite at home in the very opposite of what it had commended a moment before.’
1 This book is of an original kind. The ill-humour of the author might in itself be not ignoble, since he was stirred to indignation by the false theories, to which is attached especially the name of Rousseau, and by the attempt to put them in operation. But Mr. V. Haller, in order to save himself, has thrown himself into a counter-position, which is wholly void of thought, and cannot, therefore, be said to have any standing-ground. He expresses the bitterest hatred of all law, legislation, and all formally and legally constituted right. Hatred of the law, and of legally constituted right is the shibboleth, by means of which are revealed and may Addition.—The state as a completed reality is the ethical whole and the actualization of freedom. It is the absolute purpose of reason that freedom should be actualized. The state is the spirit, which abides in the be infallibly recognized fanaticism, mental imbecility, and the hypocrisy of good intentions, let them disguise themselves as they will.
Such an originality as that of Mr. v. Haller’s is always a noteworthy phenomenon, and for those of my readers who do not yet know the work, I shall quote a few passages in proof of my contention. Mr. V. H. (p. 342 ff., vol. i.) thus exhibits his fundamental proposition: “In the inorganic realm the greater oppresses the smaller, and the mighty the feeble; so is it also with animals, and the same law in more honourable forms, and often indeed in dishonourable forms, appears again in man.” “It is the eternal, unchangeable decree of God that the more powerful rules, must rule, and will ever rule.” From these sentences, and from those given further on, it may be seen in what sense the word” power”is here used. It is not the power of right and the ethical, but the contingent force of nature. This he proceeds to make good upon this amongst other grounds (p. 365 and fol.), that by an admirable and wise provision of nature the feeling of one’s own superiority irresistibly enriches the character, and favours the development of the very virtues which are most necessary in dealing with subordinates. He asks, with much rhetoric,”whether in the kingdom of science it is the strong or the weak, who are the more inclined to use authority and trust, in order to aid their low selfish purposes, and for the ruin of confiding men, whether the majority of the lawyers are not pettifoggers and pedants, who betray the hopes of confiding clients, make white black and black white, use the law as a vehicle of wrong, bring those who seek their protection to beggary, and, like the hungry vulture, tear in pieces the innocent lamb, etc.”Mr. v. H. has here forgotten that he is employing this rhetoric in support of his sentence that the rule of the stronger is the eternal ordinance of God, the very same ordinance by virtue of which the vulture tears to pieces the innocent lamb. He seems to say that the stronger are quite right in using their knowledge of the law to plunder the feeble trusting clients. But it would be asking too much of him to bring two thoughts into relation when he has not one.
It is self-evident that Mr. v. H. is an enemy of statute-books. Civil laws in general are in his view” unnecessary, since they issue world and there realizes itself consciously; while in nature it is realized only as the other of itself or the sleeping spirit. Only when it is present in consciousness, knowing itself as an as self-evident from natural law.” States, since states there are, would be saved the trouble devoted to laws, law-books, and the study of legal right, if they would simply repose on the principle that everything is self-evident. “But on the other side the laws are not properly speaking given to private persons. They are instructions for the judges, who are by them made acquainted with the will of the rulers. The administration of the law (vol. i. p. 297; pt. i. p. 254, and elsewhere) is not a duty of the state, but a donation or assistance by the strong, and is merely supplementary. Of the means for the protection of rights the employment of law is not the most complete, but is rather uncertain and insecure. It leaves us with only our modern law-scholars, and robs us of the three other means, which lead most quickly and certainly to the end, the means which friendly nature has given man for the security of his rightful freedom.” These three are (what do you think?) “(1) Private obedience and enforcement of the natural law, (2) Resistance to wrong, and (3) Flight, when there is no other remedy.” How unfriendly are the jurists in comparison with friendly nature! “But the natural divine law (vol. i. p. 292), which all-bountiful nature has given to every one, is: Honour every one as thy equal.” (According to the author’s principle this should read: Honour him who is not thy equal, but the stronger.) “Wrong no man who does not wrong thee. Demand nothing but what he owes thee.” (But what does he owe?) “Yes, and more, love thy neighbour and use him when thou canst.” It is to be the planting of this law which is to make legislation and constitutions useless. It would be worth seeing how Mr. v. H. makes it intelligible that, irrespective of this planting, legislation and constitutions have come into the world.
In vol. iii. p. 362 f ol. , the author reaches the “so-called national liberties,”that is, the laws and constitutions of nations. Every legally constituted right is in this larger use of the word a liberty. Of these laws he says this, amongst other things,” that their content is usually very insignificant, although in books great stress is laid upon these documentary liberties.”When we realize that the author means the national liberties of the German Empire and of the English nation (the Charta Magna,”which, however, is little read, and, because of its antiquated expressions, less understood,”and the Bill of Rights), and the national liberties of the existing object, is it the state. In thinking of freedom we must not take our departure from individuality or the individual’s self-consciousness, but from the essence of people of Hungary and other lands, we are surprised to learn that he regards these so highly-valued possessions as insignificant. As great a surprise is it to hear that the laws, which are of daily and hourly concern, dealing with every piece of cloth that is worn and every piece of bread that is eaten, should have a value merely in books.
As for the general statute-book of Prussia, to quote only one thing more, Mr. v. H. has not one good word to say for it (vol. i. p. 185 fol.), because upon it the unphilosophical errors (not as yet the Kantian philosophy, at any rate, I must add, against which Mr. V. H. inveighs most bitterly of all) have had a bad effect, especially in the matters of the state, national wealth, the end of the state, the head of the state, his duties, the servants of the state, and such things. What most annoys Mr. v. H. is” the right to levy contributions upon private possessions, occupations, productions, and consumptions, in order to defray the expenses of the state. As state-wealth is not the private possession of the prince, but is qualified as the wealth of the state, neither the king himself nor any Prussian citizen has anything his own, neither body nor goods, and all the subjects become legal bondmen. They dare not withdraw themselves from the service of the state.”
In all this incredible crudity there is a touch of the ludicrous in the unspeakable pleasure which Mr. v. H. feels in his own revelations (vol. i., preface). It was”a joy, such as only a friend of truth can feel, when he after an honest investigation is assured that he has hit upon as it were “(yes, indeed, as it were!)” the voice of nature or the word of God.”(The word of God is in its revelation quite distinct from the voice of nature and of the natural man.)” And when he might have sunk down in sheer amazement, a stream of joyous tears sprang from his eyes, and from that moment living religiosity arose within him.”Mr. v. H. ought rather, in his religiosity, to have wept over his fate as the hardest chastisement of God. It is the most severe punishment which can be experienced to wander so far from thought and reason, from reverence for the law and from the knowledge of how infinitely important and divine it is that the duties of the state and the rights of the citizens, as also the rights of the state and the duties of the citizens, should be legally determined, to wander so far from this as to substitute an absurdity for the word of God.
self-consciousness. Let man be aware of it or not, this essence realizes itself as an independent power, in which particular persons are only phases. The state is the march of God in the world; its ground or cause is the power of reason realizing itself as will. When thinking of the idea of the state, we must not have in our mind any particular state, or particular institution, but must rather contemplate the idea, this actual God, by itself. Although a state may be declared to violate right principles and to be defective in various ways, it always contains the essential moments of its existence, if, that is to say, it belongs to the full formed states of our own time. But as it is more easy to detect short-comings than to grasp the positive meaning, one easily falls into the mistake of dwelling so much upon special aspects of the state as to overlook its inner organic being. The state is not a work of art. It is in the world, in the sphere of caprice, accident, and error. Evil behaviour can doubtless disfigure it in many ways, but the ugliest man, the criminal, the invalid, the cripple, are living men. The positive thing, the life, is present in spite of defects, and it is with this affirmative that we have here to deal.
259(a) The idea of the state has direct actuality in the individual state. It, as a self-referring organism, is the constitution or internal state-organization or polity.
(b) It passes over into a relation of the individual state to other states. This is its external organization or polity.
(c) As universal idea, or kind, or species, it has absolute authority over individual states. This is the spirit which gives itself reality in the process of world-history.
Addition.—The state as an actual thing is pre-eminently individual, and, what is more, particular. Individuality as distinguished from particularity is an element of the idea of the state itself, while particularity belongs to history. Any two states, as such, are independent of each other. Any relation between the two must be external. A third must therefore stand above and unite them. Now this third is the spirit, which gives itself reality in world-history, and constitutes itself absolute judge over states. Several states indeed might form an alliance and pass judgment upon others, or interstate relations may arise of the nature of the Holy Alliance. But these things are always relative and limited, as was the everlasting peace, the sole, absolute judge, which always avails against the particular, is the self-caused self-existing spirit, which presents itself as the universal and efficient leaven of world-history.
A. Internal Polity.
260The state is the embodiment of concrete freedom. In this concrete freedom, personal individuality and its particular interests, as found in the family and civic community, have their complete development. In this concrete freedom, too, the rights of personal individuality receive adequate recognition. These interests and rights pass partly of their own accord into the interest of the universal. Partly, also, do the individuals recognize by their own knowledge and will the universal as their own substantive spirit, and work for it as their own end. Hence, neither is the universal completed without the assistance of the particular interest, knowledge, and will, nor, on the other hand, do individuals, as private persons, live merely for their own special concern. They regard the general end, and are in all their activities conscious of this end. The modern state has enormous strength and depth, in that it allows the principle of subjectivity to complete itself to an independent extreme of personal particularity, and yet at the same time brings it back into the substantive unity, and thus preserves particularity in the principle of the state.
Addition.—The peculiarity of the idea of the modern state is that it is the embodiment of freedom, not according to subjective liking, but to the conception of the will, the will, that is, in its universal and divine character. Incomplete states are they, in which this idea is still only a germ, whose particular phases are not permitted to mature into self-dependence. In the republics of classical antiquity universality, it is true, is to be found. But in those ages particularity had not as yet been released from its fetters, and led back to universality or the universal purpose of the whole. The essence of the modern state binds together the universal and the full freedom of particularity, including the welfare of individuals. It insists that the interests of the family and civic community shall link themselves to the state, and yet is aware that the universal purpose can make no advance without the private knowledge and will of a particularity, which must adhere to its right. The universal must be actively furthered, but, on the other side, subjectivity must be wholly and vitally developed. Only when both elements are present in force is the state to be regarded as articulate and truly organized.
261In contrast with the spheres of private right and private good, of the family and of the civic community, the state is on one of its sides an external necessity. It is thus a higher authority, in regard to which the laws and interests of the family and community are subject and dependent. On the other side, however, the state is the indwelling end of these things, and is strong in its union of the universal end with the particular interests of individuals. Thus, just so far as people have duties to fulfil towards it, they have also rights (§ 155).
Note.—We have already noticed (§ 3, note) that Montesquieu in his famous work,” The Spirit of the Laws,”has kept before his mind, and sought to prove in detail, the thought that the laws, especially those of private right, are dependent upon the character of the state. He has maintained the philosophic view that the part is to be regarded only in relation to the whole.
Duty is, in the first instance, a ‘relation to something, which is for me a substantial and self-subsisting universal. Right, on the other hand, is in general some embodiment of this substantive reality, and hence brings to the front its particular side and my particular freedom. These two things, treated formally, appear as deputed to different phases or persons. But the state as ethical, implying thorough interpenetration of the substantive and the particular, brings into light the fact that my obligation to the substantive reality is at the same time the realization of my particular freedom. In the state, duty and right are bound together in one and the same reference. But because in the state the elements of right and duty attain their peculiar shape and reality, the difference between them once more becomes manifest. While they are identical in themselves or formally, they differ in content. In private right and morals the necessity inherent in the relation fails to be realized. The abstract equality of content is alone brought forward. In this abstract region what is right for one is right for another, and what is one man’s duty is also another man’s duty. This absolute identity of right and duty occurs, when transferred to the content, simply as equality. This content, which is now to rank as the complete universal and sole principle of duty and right, is the personal freedom of men. Hence, slaves have no duties, because they have no rights, and vice versa, religious duties, of course, falling outside of this discussion.
But when we turn from abstract identity to the concrete idea, the idea which develops itself within itself, right and duty are distinguished, and at once become different in content. In the family, for example, the rights of the son are not the same in content as his duties towards his father, nor are the rights of the citizen the same in content as his duties to his prince or government.—The conception of the union of duty and right is one of the most important features of states, and to it is due their internal strength.—The abstract treatment of duty insists upon casting aside and banishing the particular interest as something unessential and even unworthy. But the concrete method, or the idea, exhibits particularity as essential, and the satisfaction of the particular as a sheer necessity. In carrying out his duty the individual must in some way or other discover his own interest, his own satisfaction and recompense. A right must accrue to him out of his relation to the state, and by this right the universal concern becomes his own private concern. The particular interest shall in truth be neither set aside nor suppressed, but be placed in open concord with the universal. In this concord both particular and universal are inclosed. The individual, who from the point of view of his duties is a subject, finds, in fulfilling his civic duties, protection of person and property, satisfaction of his real self, and the consciousness and self-respect implied in his being a member of this whole. Since the citizen discharges his duty as a performance and business for the state, the state is permanently preserved. Viewed from the plane of abstraction, on the other hand, the interest of the universal would be satisfied, if the contracts and business, which it demands of him, are by him fulfilled simply as duties.
Addition.—Everything depends on the union of universality and particularity in the state. In the ancient states the subjective end was out-and-out one with the volition of the state. In modern times, on the contrary, we demand an individual view, and individual will and conscience. Of these things the ancients had none in the same sense. For them the final thing was the will of the state. While in Asiatic despotisms the individual had no inner nature, and no self-justification, in the modern world man’s inner self is honoured. The conjunction of duty and right has the twofold aspect that what the state demands as duty should forthwith be the right of individuality, since the state’s demand is nothing other than the organization of the conception of freedom. The prevailing characters of the individual will are by the state brought into objective reality, and in this way first attain to their truth and realization. The state is the sole and essential condition of the attainment of the particular end and good.
262The actual idea, the spirit, divides itself, as we have said, into the two ideal spheres of its conception, the family and the civic community. It descends into its two ideal and finite spheres, that it may out of them become actually infinite and real. Hence, spirit distributes to individuals as a mass the material of its finite realization in these spheres, in such a way that the portion of the individual has the appearance of being occasioned by his circumstances, caprice, and private choice (§ 185, and note).
Addition.—In the Platonic state subjective freedom has not as yet any place, since in it the rulers assigned to individuals their occupations. In many oriental states occupation depends upon birth. But subjective freedom, which must be respected, demands free choice for individuals.
263In these two spheres, in which the elements of spirit, individuality, and particularity, have in one their direct and in the other their reflected reality, spirit is their objective universality in the form of appearance. It is the power of the rational in the region of necessity (§ 184), and becomes the institutions, which have already been passed in review.
Addition.—The state, as spirit, divides itself according to the particular determining attributes of its conception, in order to exist in its own way. We may adduce an illustration out of the region of nature. The nerve-system is especially the sensitive system; it is the abstract element which aims, so to speak, to exist by itself, and in this existence to have its own identity. Now feeling, when analyzed, furnishes two separate sides, dividing itself so that the differences appear as complete systems. On one side is the abstract sense of feeling, which withdraws by itself; it is the smothered movement going on internally in reproduction, internal self-nourishment, assimilation, and digestion. On the other hand this withdrawal into oneself has over against itself the element of difference, or the movement outwards; and this outward movement of feeling is irritability. These two form a system of their own, and there are lower orders of animals, in which this system alone is developed, being without that unity of feeling which marks the complete soul. If we compare these facts of nature with the facts of spirit, we may place together family and sensibility on the one side, civic community and irritability on the other. The third is the state, corresponding to the actual nervous system as an internally organized whole. But it is a living unity only in so far as both elements, the family and the civic community, are developed within it. The laws which govern these two are the institutions of the rational; it makes its appearance in them. The foundation and final truth of these institutions is the spirit, which is their universal purpose and conscious object. The family is, indeed, also ethical, but its purpose is not a conscious one. In the civic community, on the other hand, separation is the definitive feature.
264. The individuals of a multitude are spiritual beings, and have a twofold character. In them is the extreme of the independently conscious and willing individuality, and also the extreme of the universality, which knows and wills what is substantive. They obtain the rights of both these aspects, only in so far as they themselves are actual, both as private persons and as persons substantive. One right they have directly in the family, the other in the civic community. In these two institutions, which implicitly universalize all particular interests, individuals have their real self-conscious existence. And in the corporation they provide for these particular interests a wider scope, and an activity directed to a universal end.
265These institutions comprise in detail the constitution, that is, the developed and actualized rationality. They are the steadfast basis of the state, determining the temper of individuals towards the state, and their confidence in it. They are, moreover, the foundation-stones of public freedom, because in them particular freedom becomes realized in a rational form. They thus involve an intrinsic union of freedom and necessity.
Addition.—It has been already remarked that both the sanctity of marriage, and also the institutions, in which the ethical character of the civic community makes its appearance, constitute the stability of the whole. The universal is the concern of every particular person. Everything depends on the law of reason being thoroughly incorporated with the law of particular freedom. My particular end thus becomes identical with the universal. In any other case the state is a mere castle in the air. In the general self-consciousness of individuals the state is actual, and in the identity of particularity and universality it has its stability. It has often been said that the end of the state is the happiness of the citizens. That is indeed true. If it is not well with them, if their subjective aim is not satisfied, if they find that the state as such is not the medium through which comes their satisfaction, the state stands upon an insecure footing.
266But spirit is realized and becomes its own object, not only as this necessity and as a kingdom of appearances, but as their ideality or inner being. Substantive universality is thus an object and end for itself, and necessity assumes the form of freedom.
267By the necessity, which lies within this ideality, is meant the development of the idea within itself. As subjective substantiality the idea is a political temper of mind, and in distinction from this it, as objective, is the organism of the state, i.e., the strictly political state, and its constitution.
Addition.—The unity of the freedom, which knows and wills itself, exists in the first instance as necessity. Here the substantive is found as the subjective existence of individuals. But there is a second necessity, and that is the organism. In this case spirit is a process within itself, makes within itself distinctions, divides itself into organic members, through which it passes in living circulation.
268Political disposition, or, in general terms, patriotism, may be defined as the assurance which stands on truth, and the will which has become a custom. Mere subjective assurance does not proceed out of truth, and is only opinion. Genuine patriotism is simply a result of the institutions which subsist in the state as in the actuality of reason. Hence, patriotic feeling is operative in the act, which is in accord with these institutions. Political sentiment is, in general, a confidence, which may pass over into a more or less intelligent insight; it is a consciousness that my substantive and particular interest is contained and preserved in the interest and end of another, here the state, in its relation to me, the individual. Wherefore the state is for me forthwith not another, and I in this consciousness am free.
Note.—By patriotic feeling is frequently understood merely a readiness to submit to exceptional sacrifices or do exceptional acts. But in reality it is the sentiment which arises in ordinary circumstances and ways of life, and is wont to regard the commonweal as its substantive basis and end. This consciousness is kept intact in the routine of life, and upon it the readiness to submit to exceptional effort is based. But as men would rather be magnanimous than merely right, they easily persuade themselves that they possess this extraordinary patriotism, in order to spare themselves the burden of the true sentiment, and to excuse the lack of it. If this feeling be regarded as something, which provides its own beginning, and can proceed out of subjective imaginations and thoughts, it is confounded with mere opinion, and in that case is devoid of its true basis in objective reality.
Addition.—Uneducated men delight in surface-reasonings and fault-findings. Fault-finding is an easy matter, but hard is it to know the good and its inner necessity. Education always begins with fault-finding, but when full and complete sees in everything the positive. In the case of religion one may say off-hand that this or that is superstition, but it is infinitely harder to conceive of the truth involved in it. Political sentiment, as a mere appearance, is also to be distinguished from what men truly will. They will in fact the real matter, but they hold fast to bits, and delight in the vanity of making improvements. Men trust in the stability of the state, and suppose that in it only the particular interest can come into being. But custom makes invisible that upon which our whole existence turns. If any one goes safe through the streets at night, it does not occur to him that it could be otherwise. The habit of feeling secure has become a second nature, and we do not reflect that it is first brought about by the agency of special institutions. Often it is imagined that force holds the state together, but the binding cord is nothing else than the deep-seated feeling of order, which is possessed by all.
269Political disposition is given definite content by the different phases of the organism of the state. This organism is the development of the idea into its differences, which are objectively actualized. These differences are the different functions, affairs, and activities of state. By means of them the universal uninterruptedly produces itself, by a process which is a necessary one, since these various offices proceed from the nature of the conception. The universal is, however, none the less self-contained, since it is already presupposed in its own productive process. This organism is the political constitution.
Addition.—The state is an organism or the development of the idea into its differences. These different sides are the different functions, affairs and activities of state by means of which the universal unceasingly produces itself by a necessary process. At the same time it is self-contained, since it is presupposed in its own productive activity. This organism is the political constitution. It proceeds eternally out of the state, just as the state in turn is self-contained by means of the constitution. If these two things fall apart, and make the different aspects independent, the unity produced by the constitution is no longer established. The true relation is illustrated by the fable of the belly and the limbs. Although the parts of an organism do not constitute an identity, yet it is of such a nature that, if one of its parts makes itself independent, all must be harmed. We cannot by means of predicates, propositions, etc., reach any right estimate of the state, which should be apprehended as an organism. It is much the same with the state as with the nature of God, who cannot be through predicates conceived, whose life rather is within itself and must be perceived.
270(1) The abstract actuality or substantiality of the state consists in this, that the end pursued by the state is the general interest, which, being the substance of all particular interests, includes the preservation of them also. (2) But the actuality of the state is also the necessity of the state, since it breaks up into the various distinctions of state-activity, which are implied in the conception. By means of the state’s substantiality these distinctions become real and tangible as the different public offices. (3) This substantiality, when thoroughly permeated by education, is the spirit which knows and wills itself. Hence, what the state wills it knows, and knows it in its universality as that which is thought out. The state works and acts in obedience to conscious ends, known principles and laws, which are not merely implied, but expressly before its consciousness. So, too, it works with a definite knowledge of all the actual circumstances and relations, to which the acts refer.
Note.—We must here touch upon the relation of the state to religion. In modern times it is often repeated that religion is the foundation of the state, and accompanying this assertion is the dogmatic claim that outside of religion nothing remains to political science. Now, no assertion can be more confusing. Indeed, it exalts confusion to the place of an essential element in the constitution of the state, and of a necessary form of knowledge:—In the first place it may seem suspicious that religion is principally commended and resorted to in times of public distress, disturbance, and oppression; it is thought to furnish consolation against wrong, and the hope of compensation in the case of loss. A proof of religious feeling is considered to be indifference to worldly affairs and to the course and tenor of actual life. But the state is the spirit, as it abides in the world. To refer people to religion is far from calculated to exalt the interest and business of the state into a really earnest purpose. On the contrary, state concerns are held to be a matter of pure caprice, and are therefore rejected. The ground for this step is that in the state only the purposes of passion and unlawful power prevail, or that religion, when taken by itself, is sufficient to control and decide what is right. It would surely be regarded as a bitter jest if those who were oppressed by any despotism were referred to the consolations of religion; nor is it to be forgotten that religion may assume the form of a galling superstition, involving the most abject servitude, and the degradation of man below the level of the brute. Amongst the Egyptians and Hindoos animals are revered as higher creatures than man. Such a fact leads us to observe that we cannot speak of religion in general, and that when it assumes certain forms security must be found against it in some power which will guarantee the rights of reason and self-consciousness.
But the ultimate judgment upon the connection of religion with the state is obtained only when we go back to their conception. Religion has as its content absolute truth, and, therefore, also the highest kind of feeling. Religion, as intuition, feeling, or imaginative thought, the object of whose activity is God, the unlimited basis and cause of all things, advances the claim that everything should be apprehended in reference to it, and in it should receive its confirmation, justification, and certitude. By this relation state and laws, as well as duties, attain for consciousness to their highest verification and most binding power, since they, as a determinate reality, pass up into and rest upon a higher sphere. (See” Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.”) For this reason in all the changes and chances of life religion preserves the consciousness of the unchanging and of the highest freedom and contentment.’
Religion, so interpreted, is the foundation of the ethical system, and contains the nature of the state as the divine
' Religion, knowledge, and science have as principles forms peculiar to themselves and different from that of the state. Hence, they enter the state partly as aids to education and sentiment, partly as ends for themselves, having an external reality. In both cases the principles of the state are merely applied to these spheres. In a fully concrete treatise on the state these spheres, as well as art and the mere natural relations, would have to be considered, and given their proper place. But in this treatise, where the principle of the state is traversed in its own peculiar sphere in accordance with its idea, these other principles, and the application to them of the right of the state, can receive only a passing notice.
will; yet it is only the foundation. This is the point at which state and religion separate. The state is the divine will as a present spirit, which unfolds itself in the actual shape of an organized world.
They who adhere to the form of religion, as opposed to the state, conduct themselves like persons who in knowledge think that they are right when they cling to a mere abstract essence and never proceed to reality, or like those who will only the abstract good, and arbitrarily postpone deciding what in fact is good (§ 140, note). Religion is the relation to the absolute in the form of feeling, imagination, faith; and within its all-embracing circumference everything is merely accidental and transient. If this form is obstinately maintained to be the only real and valid determination for the state, the state, as an organization developed into stable differences, laws, and regulations, is handed over as booty to feebleness, uncertainty, and disorder. By enveloping everything definite this vague form becomes a subjective principle. In contrast with it, the laws, instead of having validity and self-subsistence as the objective and universal, are counted as something merely negative. There result the following practical maxims:” The righteous man is not subject to law; only be pious and you may do what you please; you may yield to your own arbitrary will and passion, and direct those, who suffer harm by your acts, to the comfort and hope of religion, or you may brand them as irreligious.”But this negative relation sometimes refuses to remain merely an inner sentiment, and makes itself felt in external reality. There then arises the form of religious fanaticism, which, like political fanaticism, regards all state-management and lawful order as restrictive barriers, and discards them as unsuited to the inner life and infinitude of feeling. It banishes private property, marriage, and the relations and tasks of the civic community, as unworthy of love and of the freedom of feeling. But since in daily walk and action some decision must be made, then here, as is always the case with the subjective will, whose subjectivity is aware of itself as absolute (§ 140), the decision proceeds from subjective picture-thinking, that is, from opinion and arbitrary inclination.
In opposition to that kind of truth which wraps itself up in the subjectivity of feeling and imagination, the real truth consists in the tremendous transition of the inner into the outer, of the visions of reason into reality. By this process the whole of world-history has been wrought out, and civilized man has at length won the actuality and the consciousness of a reasonable political life. There are those who, as they say, seek the Lord, and in their untutored opinion assure themselves of possessing all things directly. They make no effort to raise their subjective experience into a knowledge of the truth and a consciousness of objective right and duty. From such persons can proceed nothing except abomination and folly, and the demolition of all ethical relations. These consequences are inevitable, if religious sentiment holds exclusively to its form, and turns against reality and the truth, which is present in the form of the universal, that is, of the laws.
Still, this sentiment may not invade reality. On the contrary, it may retain its merely negative character, thus remaining something internal, suiting itself to the laws and affairs of state, and acquiescing either with sighs or with scorn and wishing. It is not strength, but weakness, which has in our times made religiosity a polemic kind of piety, be it conjoined with a true need, or with nothing but discontented vanity. Instead of moulding one’s opinion through study, and subjecting one’s will to discipline, and thus exalting it to free obedience, it is much the cheaper plan to take a less arduous course. We renounce all knowledge of objective truth, treasure up a feeling of oppression and pride, and claim to possess beforehand all the holiness requisite for discerning the laws and institutions of state, for prejudging them, and specifying what their nature ought to be. The ground for this behaviour is that everything issues from the pious heart unquestionably and infallibly. Thus, as intentions and assertions go to religion for their support, neither by exposing their shallowness nor their erroneousness is it possible to prevail against them.
In so far as religion is of a true sort, not displaying a negative and hostile spirit towards the state, but rather recognizing and supporting it, it has its own special place and station. Public worship consists in acts and doctrine; it needs possessions and property, and likewise individuals devoted to the service of the congregation. Out of this arises between church and state a relation, which it is not difficult to define. It is in the nature of the case that the state fulfils a duty by giving assistance and protection to the religious ends of a congregation. More than that, since to the deepest religious feeling there is present the state as a whole, it may fairly be demanded by the state that every individual should connect himself with some congregation. Of course, with its special character, depending on inner imaginative thinking, the state cannot interfere. When well organized and strong, the state can afford to be liberal in this matter, and may overlook small details affecting itself. It may even give room within itself to congregations, whose creed prevents them from recognizing any direct duties to it. But this concession must depend upon the numerical strength of the sects in question. The members of these religious bodies the state is content to leave to the laws of the civic community, and to accept a passive fulfilment of their direct duties to it by means of substitutes.
' Of Quakers, Anabaptists, etc., it may be said that they are merely active members of the civic community, having as private persons only private relations with others. Even here, however, they have been permitted to forego the use of the oath. Direct So far as the ecclesiastical body owns property, performs overt acts of worship, and maintains individuals for this service, it leaves the inner realm and enters that of the world. Hence it places itself directly under the jurisdiction of the state. The oath, ethical observances generally, as well as marriage, all carry with them the inner reconstruction and elevation of that disposition of mind which finds in religion its deepest confirmation. Since ethical state duties they fulfil passively. To one of the most important of these, that of defence against an enemy, they openly refuse to submit, and are granted release from it on condition of their substituting some other service. Towards these sects the state is expected to exercise toleration. Since they do not recognize their duties to it, they cannot claim the right to be members of it. Once in a North American Congress, when the abolition of the slavery of the negroes was being strongly advocated, a deputy from the Southern States made the apposite remark,” Let us have negroes; we let you have Quakers.”—Only because the state is otherwise strong can it overlook and tolerate these anomalies. It relies upon the strength of its moral observances, and upon the inner reason of its institutions to diminish and overcome divisions, which it would nevertheless be within its strict right to abolish. So, too, states have had a formal right against the Jews in regard to the concession to them of even civil rights, because they are not merely a religious body, but claim to look upon themselves as a foreign nation. But the outcry raised against them on this and other grounds has overlooked the fact that they are first of all men, and that to be a man is more than a superficial abstract qualification (§ 209, note). The civil rights implied in it give rise to a feeling of self-respect, the sense of counting as a lawful person in the civic community. This feeling of being infinite and free from all others is the root out of which springs the needed balance of the various kinds of thought and sentiment. The isolation with which the Jews have been blamed it is better to preserve. It would have been a reproach and wrong for any state to have excluded them for this reason. To do so would be to misunderstand its own principle, the nature and power of its objective institutions (§ 268, end of note). To expel the Jews on the pretence that this course is in accordance with the highest justice, has proved an unwise measure, while the actual method employed by the government has been shown to be wise and honourable.
relations are essentially relations of actual rationality, the rights of these relations are the first to be maintained in reality, and to them is added ecclesiastical confirmation, simply as their inner and more abstract side.—As to other forms of ecclesiastical communion, such as doctrine, the internal is more important than the external. The same is true of overt acts of worship and kindred matters, whose legal side appears as independent, and belongs to the state. The ministers and property of churches, it is true, are exempt from the power and jurisdiction of the state. Churches have also assumed jurisdiction over worldly persons in all matters involving the co-operation of religion, such as divorce and the administration of the oath.—In all affairs bearing the aspects of both church and state, the political side, owing to its nature, is ill-defined. This is observable even in relation to acts which are wholly civic (§ 234). In so far as individuals, assembling for religious worship, have formed themselves into a congregation or corporation, they come under the supervision of the superior officers of state.
Doctrine has its province in conscience, and is founded upon the right of the subjective freedom of self-consciousness. This is the inner region, which as such does not come within the sphere of the state. However, the state also has a doctrine, in which its regulations, and whatever in right, in the constitution, etc., is valid generally, exist essentially in the form of thought, as law. And as the state is not a mechanism, but the reasonable life of self-conscious freedom and the system of the ethical world, so sentiment or feeling for it, and the conscious expression of this feeling in the form of principles, are an essential element in the actual state. Then, again, the doctrine of the church is not merely the edict of conscience, but in the form of doctrine is rather an outward expression, and that, too, regarding a content, which has the most intimate connection with ethical principles and the laws, and may directly concern them. Here also church and state meet either harmoniously or in opposition. The difference between the two realms may be driven by the church to extreme antagonism. It, containing as it does the absolute content of religion, may contemplate the spiritual element and therefore the ethical element also, as its own, and may regard the state as a mere mechanical scaffolding for unspiritual, external ends. It may esteem itself as the kingdom of God or at least as the way to it and its forecourt, and the state as the kingdom of this world, the sphere of the transient and finite. It may count itself as end for itself, and the state as merely a means. United with such a presumptuous attitude is the demand of the church that the state should let it have its own way, and should show to its doctrines unreserved respect, simply because they are doctrines, no matter what the substance of them may be. The reason advanced by the church is that the formation of doctrine is exclusively its function. Just as the church makes this claim on the wide ground that the spiritual has been entrusted solely to its keeping, science and knowledge generally may occupy a similar position. Like the church, they may fashion themselves into an independent, exclusive organization, and may with even greater justice look upon themselves as filling the place of the church. Hence would be asked for science also independence of the state; the state would be only a means for it, while it would be its own end.
In this connection it is unimportant whether the individuals and representatives, who minister to the congregation, have gone the length of secluding themselves, leaving only the congregations at large in subjection to the state, or whether they abide in the state, and withdraw only their church character. This general position, it may first of all be observed, coincides with the view that the state in its fundamentals takes into its protection and care the life, property, and free-will of every person, simply in so far as he does not injure the life, property, and free-will of any other. The state is thus considered as answering simply to our needs. The higher spiritual element, absolute truth, is counted as subjective religiosity or theoretical science, and placed outside of the state. The state is merely the laity, and must be absolutely respectful. That which is peculiarly ethical falls beyond its reach. Now it is a matter of history that there have been barbaric times and circumstances, in which all high spiritual matters had their seat in the church, and the state was only a worldly rule of force, lawlessness, and passion. Abstract opposition was then the main principle of actuality (§ 358). But it is too blind and shallow a proceeding to consider this view as true and in accordance with the idea. The development of the idea has rather demonstrated that the spirit as free and rational is in itself ethical, that the true idea is actualized rationality, and that this rationality exists as the state. From this idea it is quite easy to infer that its ethical truth assumes for the thinking consciousness a content, which is worked up into the form of universality, and is realized as law. The state in general knows its own ends, recognizes them with a clear consciousness, and busies itself with them in accordance with fundamental principles.
As before remarked, religion has truth for its universal object, but this content is merely given, and its fundamental principles are not recognized through thinking and conceptions. Thus the individual is under an obligation, which is grounded upon authority, and the testimony of his own spirit and heart, in which is contained the element of freedom, takes the form of faith and feeling. But it is philosophic insight, which clearly recognizes that church and state are not opposed to each other on the question of truth and rationality, but differ only in form. There were, it is true, and still are, churches, which have nothing more than a form of public worship; but there are others, which, though in them the form of worship is the main thing, have also doctrine and instruction. Whenever the church takes up the point of doctrine, and deals in its teaching with objective thought and the principles of the ethical and rational, it passes over into the province of the state. It pronounces authoritatively upon the ethical and right, upon the law and institutions, and its utterance is believed. In contrast with faith and the authority of the church, in contrast also with the subjective convictions which it requires, the state is that which knows. In its principles the content does not remain in the form of feeling and faith, but belongs to the formed thought.
In so far as the self-caused and self-existing content makes its appearance in religion as a particular content, namely, in the form of doctrines peculiar to the church as a religious community, it does not fall within the scope of the state. In Protestantism, it may be said, there are no clergy who are considered to be the sole depositary of church doctrine, because in this form of religion there is no laity. Since ethical and political principles pass over into the realm of religion, and not only are established, but must be established, in reference to religion, the state is thus on the one hand furnished with religious confirmation. On the other hand there remains to the state the right and the form of self-conscious objective rationality, the right, that is, to maintain objective reason against the assertions, which have their source in the subjective form of truth, no matter what depth of certitude and authority surrounds them. Because the principle of the state’s form is universal, and hence essentially the thought, freedom of thought and scientific investigation issue from the state. It was a church that burnt Giordano Bruno, and forced Galileo, who advocated the Copernican system, to recant upon his knees. Hence science, also, has its place on the
' Laplace, in his “Darstellung des Weltsystems,” Book V., ch. 4, writes, “When Galileo published his discoveries, to which side of the state, as it has the same element of form as the state; its end is knowledge, and indeed thought out objective truth and rationality. Thought knowledge may, it is true, fall from science to mere opinion, and from principles to mere reasonings. Applying itself to ethical objects and lie was assisted by the telescope and the phases of Venus, he proved incontestably that the earth moved. But the view that the earth is in motion was declared by an assembly of cardinals to be heretical. Whereupon Galileo, the famous advocate of this view, was summoned before the Inquisition, and compelled to retract on pain of a severe imprisonment. In a man of mind the passion for truth is one of the strongest passions.—Galileo, convinced by his own observations of the motion of the earth, thought for a long time upon a new work in which he would undertake to develop all the proofs of his theory. But in order at the same time to escape the persecution, of which he would have been the victim, he resolved to issue his work in the form of a dialogue between three persons. Naturally, the advantage lay with the advocate of the Copernican system. . But since Galileo did not decide between them, and gave every possible weight to the objections of the follower of Ptolemaus, he had a right to expect that he would not be disturbed in the enjoyment of that rest which his great age and services deserved. But in his sixtieth year he was a second time summoned before the tribunal of the Inquisition, was imprisoned, and again asked to retract his views under the threat of the punishment which is meted out to a heretic twice fallen. They induced him to subscribe to the following form of abjuration: ' I, Galileo, who in my sixtieth year find myself in person before the court, kneeling and looking upon the holy Gospels, which I touch with my hands, forswear, abjure, and execrate with honest heart and true faith, the preposterous, false, and heretical doctrine of the motion of the earth, etc.” What a spectacle! An honourable old man, celebrated through a long life devoted to the investigation of nature, against the witness of his own conscience, recants upon his knees the truth, which he had so convincingly proved. By the sentence of the Inquisition he was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. A year afterwards, through the mediation of the Grand-duke of Florence, he was set at liberty.—He died in 1642. His loss was deplored by Europe, which had been enlightened by his labours and stirred to indignation by the sentence passed by so detested a tribunal upon so great a man. "
the organization of the state, it may oppose their fundamental principles. This it may do with something of the same pretentious claims, as the church makes with regard to its peculiar belongings. It may rely upon mere opining, as if it were reason, and upon the right, advanced by subjective self-consciousness, to be in its opinion and conviction free.
Already (§ 140, note) the principle of the subjectivity of knowledge has been examined, and only a single remark need now be added. On the one hand the state may treat with infinite indifference opinion, in so far as it is mere opinion, and has hence a mere subjective content. This opinion, let it plume itself to any extent it pleases, contains no true strength or force. The state is in the position of the painter, who in his work confines himself to the three ground colours, and may treat with indifference the school wisdom which maintains that there are seven. But there is another side to the question. This opining of bad principles constitutes itself a universal fact and corrodes actuality. It is manifested as the formalism of unconditioned subjectivity, which would adopt as a basis the scientific starting-point, would exalt the state-academies to the presumptuous level of a church, and would then turn them against the state. In opposition to this proceeding the state must take under its protection objective truth and the principle of the ethical life; and on the other side, in opposition to the church, which claims unlimited and unconditional authority, the state has to uphold as a general thing the formal right of self-consciousness to its own insight, conviction, and thought of what shall be reckoned as objective truth.
There may also be mentioned here the unity of state and church, a union which is much canvassed in modern times, and praised as the highest ideal. If the essential unity of these two is the unity of true principles with sentiment, it is also essential that along with this unity should come into specific existence the difference, which is in the form of their consciousness. In an oriental despotism there already exists the so frequently wished for unity of church and state. Yet in it the state is not present, at least not that self-conscious form of it, which is alone worthy of spirit and includes right, free ethical life and organic development. If the state is to have reality as the ethical selfconscious realization of spirit, it must be distinguished from the form of authority and faith. But this distinction arises only in so far as the ecclesiastical side is in itself divided into separate churches. Then only is the state seen to be superior to them, and wins and brings into existence the universality of thought as the principle of its form. To understand this we must know what universality is, not only in itself, but also in its existence. It is far from being a weakness or misfortune for the state that the church has been divided. Only through this division has the state been able to develop its true character, and become a self-conscious, rational, and ethical reality. This division was an event of the happiest augury, telling in behalf of the freedom and rationality of the church, and also in behalf of the freedom and rationality of thought.
Addition.—The state is real. Its reality consists in its realizing the interest of the whole in particular ends. Actuality is always the unity of universality and particularity. Universality exists piecemeal in particularity. Each side appears as if self-sufficient, although it is upheld and sustained only in the whole. In so far as this unity is absent, the thing is unrealized, even though existence may be predicated of it. A bad state is one which merely exists. A sick body also exists, but it has no true reality. A hand, which is cut off, still looks like a hand and exists, though it is not real. True reality is necessity. What is real is in itself necessary. Necessity consists in this, that the whole is broken up into the differences contained in the conception. Then, as so broken up, it furnishes a fast and enduring character, not that of the fossil, but of that which in giving itself up always begets itself anew.
To the complete state essentially belong consciousness and thought. Hence the state knows what it wills, and knows it as something thought. Since consciousness has its seat only in the state, science has its place also there, and not in the church. In despite of that which has in modern times been said to the effect that the state has sprung into existence out of religion. The state is the developed spirit, and exhibits its elements in the daylight of consciousness. Owing to the fact that what lies in the idea walks forth into visible being, the state appears to be something finite, whose province is of this world, while religion represents itself as the realm of the infinite. Thus, the state seems to be subordinate, needing, since the finite cannot subsist by itself, the basis of the church. As finite, it is thought to have no verification, and only in and through religion to become holy and appertain to the infinite. But this version of the matter is highly onesided. The state is certainly in its essence of the world and finite, having particular ends and functions. But its being worldly is only one side of it. Only to a perception, which is void of spirit, is the state merely finite. The state has a vital soul, and this vitalizing power is subjectivity, which both creates distinctions and yet preserves their unity. In the kingdom of religion there are also distinctions and finitudes. God is triune. Thus there are three determinations, whose unity alone is the spirit. If we would apprehend in a concrete way the divine nature, we do so only through distinctions. In the divine kingdom as in the worldly occur limits, and it is a one-sided view to say that the worldly spirit or the state is merely finite, for reality is nothing irrational. A bad state is indeed purely finite and worldly, but the rational is in itself infinite.
Secondly, it is said that the state must accept its justification from religion. The idea, as present in religion, is spirit in the inner condition of feeling, but this same idea it is which gives itself worldliness in the state, and procures for itself in consciousness and will an outward place and reality. If we say that the state must be grounded on religion, we mean only that the state must rest upon and proceed from rationality. But this sentence can be understood wrongly to mean that when the spirit of man is bound by a religion which is not free, he is most adroitly brought to political obedience. The Christian religion, however, is the religion of freedom. Yet even Christianity may be infected by superstition, and converted into an instrument of bondage. Thus, the doctrine that the state should be founded on religion is perverted, when it is interpreted to mean that individuals must have religion in order that their spirit, enchained by it, may be the more readily oppressed in the state. But if we mean that reverence should be felt for the state as the whole, of which individuals are the branches, this feeling flows most easily from philosophic insight into the nature of the state, although if that insight should be lacking, religious sentiment may lead to the same result. So the state may need religion and faith. It yet remains essentially distinguished from religion in that its commands are a legal duty, it being a matter of indifference in what spirit the duty is performed, while the empire of religion, on the contrary, is the internal. Just as the state, if it were to make such a claim as religion makes, would endanger the right of the inner mind, so the church degenerates into a tyrannical religion, if it acts as a state and imposes punishments.
A third distinction, related to the foregoing, is that the content of religion is and remains veiled; feeling, sensibility, and fancy are the ground on which it is built, and on this ground everything has the form of subjectivity. The state, on the other hand, actualizes itself, and gives its phases a solid reality. If religiosity were to insist upon making itself good within the state, as it is wont to do in its own territory, it would overturn the political organization. Each several distinction has a broad and fair field in the state, while in religion everything is always referred to the totality. If this totality were to seize upon all the political relations, it would be fanaticism. It would be bent upon having the whole in every particular part, and could not accomplish its desire except by the destruction of the particular. Fanaticism will not allow particular differences to have their way. The expression,”The pious are subject to no law,”is nothing more than the decree of fanaticism. Piety, when it replaces the state, cannot tolerate that which is definitely constituted and destroys it. A kindred type of mind is shown by him who permits conscience or internality to judge, and does not decide on general grounds. This internality does not in its development proceed to principles, and gives itself no justification. If piety is counted as the reality of the state, all laws are cast to the winds, and subjective feeling legislates. This feeling may be nothing but caprice, and yet this cannot be ascertained except by its acts. But in so far as it becomes acts or commands, it assumes the shape of laws, and is directly opposed to subjective feeling. God, who is the object of this feeling, may also be regarded as a being who determines. But God is the universal idea, and is in feeling the undetermined, which is not mature enough to determine what actually exists in a developed form in the state. The fact that everything in the state is firm and secure is a bulwark against caprice and positive opinion. So religion, as such, ought not to rule.
271The political constitution is (1) the organization of the state and the process of its organic life in reference to its own self. In this process the state distinguishes within itself its elements, and unfolds them into self-subsisting distinctions. (2) It is a single, exclusive individuality, and as such is related to another. It turns its distinctive features towards foreign states, and in so doing establishes its self-subsisting distinctions within itself in their ideality.
Addition.—Just as irritability in the living organism is in one of its phases something internal, belonging to the organism as such, so here also the reference to foreign states has a bearing upon what is within. The internal state as such is the civil power; the direction outwards is the military power, which, however, has a definite side within the state itself. To balance both phases is one of the chief matters of statesmanship. Sometimes the civil power has been wholly extinguished, and rests only upon the military power, as happened during the time of the Roman emperors and Praetorian Guards. Sometimes, as in modern days, the military power proceeds only out of the civil power, as when all citizens are bound to bear arms.
I. Internal Constitution.
272The constitution is rational in so far as the active working divisions of the state are in accord with the nature of the conception. This occurs when every one of its functions is in itself the totality, in the sense that it effectually contains the other elements. These elements, too, though expressing the distinctions of the conception, remain strictly within its ideality, and constitute one individual whole.
Note.—Concerning the constitution, as concerning reason itself, there has in modern times been an endless babble, which has in Germany been more insipid than anywhere else. With us there are those who have persuaded themselves that it is best even at the very threshold of government to understand before all other things what a constitution is. And they think that they have furnished invincible proof that religion and piety should be the basis of all their shallowness. It is small wonder if this prating has made for reasonable mortals the words reason, illumination, right, constitution, liberty, mere empty sounds, and men should have become ashamed to talk about a political constitution. At least as one effect of this superfluity, we may hope to see the conviction becoming general, that a philosophic acquaintance with such topics cannot proceed from mere reasonings, ends, grounds, and utilities, much less from feeling, love, and inspiration, but only out of the conception. It will be a fortunate thing, too, if those who maintain the divine to be inconceivable and an acquaintance with the truth to be wasted effort, were henceforth to refrain from breaking in upon the argument. What of undigested rhetoric and edification they manufacture out of these feelings can at least lay no claim to philosophic notice.
Amongst current ideas must be mentioned, in connection with § 269, that regarding the necessary division of the functions of the state. This is a most important feature, which, when taken in its true sense, is rightly regarded as the guarantee of public freedom. But of this those, who think to speak out of inspiration and love, neither know nor will know anything, for in it lies the element of determination through the way of reason. The principle of the separation of functions contains the essential element of difference, that is to say, of real rationality. But as apprehended by the abstract understanding it is false when it leads to the view that these several functions are absolutely independent, and it is one-sided when it considers the relation of these functions to one another as negative and mutually limiting. In such a view each function in hostility to or fear of the others acts towards them as towards an evil. Each resolves to oppose the others, effecting by this opposition of forces a general balance, it may be, but not a living unity. But the internal selfdirection of the conception, and not any other purpose or utility, contains the absolute source of the different functions. On their account alone the political organization exists as intrinsically rational and as the image of eternal
From logic, though indeed not of the accepted kind, we know how the conception, and in a concrete way the idea, determine themselves of themselves, and thereby abstractly set up their phases of universality, particularity, and individuality. To take the negative as the point of departure, and set up as primary the willing of evil and consequent mistrust, and then on this supposition cunningly to devise breakwaters, which in turn require other breakwaters to check their activity, any such contrivance is the mark of a thought, which is at the level of the negative understanding, and of a feeling, which is characteristic of the rabble (§ 244).—The functions of the state, the executive and the legislative, as they are called, may be made independent of each other. The state is, then, forthwith overthrown, an occurrence which we have witnessed on a vast scale, Or, in so far as the state is essentially self-contained, the struggle of one function to bring the other into subjection effects somehow or other a closer unity, and thus preserves only what is in the state essential and fundamental.
Addition.—In the state we must have nothing which is not an expression of rationality. The state is the world, which the spirit has made for itself. Hence it has a definite self-begun and self-related course. Often we speak of the wisdom of God in nature, but we must not therefore believe that the physical world of nature is higher than the world of spirit. Just so high as the spirit stands above nature, the state stands above the physical life. We must hence honour the state as the divine on earth, and learn that if it is difficult to conceive of nature, it is infinitely harder to apprehend the state. That we in modern times have attained definite views concerning the state in general, and are perpetually engaged in speaking about and manufacturing constitutions, is a fact of much importance. But that does not settle the whole matter. It is necessary further that we approach a reasonable question in the mind of rational beings, that we know what is essential, and distinguish it from what is merely striking. Thus, the functions of the state must indeed be distinguished; and yet each must of itself form a whole, and also contain the other elements. When we speak of the distinctive activity of any function, we must not fall into the egregious error of supposing that it should exist in abstract independence, since it should rather be distinguished merely as an element of the conception. If the distinctions were to subsist in abstract independence, it is as clear as light that two independent things are not able to constitute a unity, but must rather introduce strife. As a result, either the whole world would be cast into disorder, or the unity would be restored by force. Thus, in the French Revolution at one time the legislative function had swallowed up the executive, at another time the executive had usurped the legislative function. It would be stupid in such a case to present the moral claim of harmony. If we cast the responsibility of the matter upon feeling, we have indeed got rid of the whole trouble. But, necessary as ethical feeling is, it cannot evolve from itself the functions of state. Whence it comes to pass that since the definite functions are the whole implicitly, they comprise in their actual existence the total conception. We usually speak of the three functions of state, the legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative corresponds to universality, and the executive to particularity; but the judicial is not the third element of the conception. The individuality uniting the other two lies beyond these spheres.
273The political state is divided into three substantive branches:
(a) The power to fix and establish the universal. This is legislation.
(b) The power, which brings particular spheres and individual cases under the universal. This is the function of government.
(c) The function of the prince, as the subjectivity with which rests the final decision. In this function the other two are brought into an individual unity. It is at once the culmination and beginning of the whole. This is constitutional monarchy.
Note.—The perfecting of the state into a constitutional monarchy is the work of the modern world, in which the substantive idea has attained the infinite form. This is the descent of the spirit of the world into itself, the free perfection by virtue of which the idea sets loose from itself its own elements, and nothing but its own elements, and makes them totalities; at the same time it holds them within the unity of the conception, in which is found their real rationality. The story of this true erection of the ethical life is the subject matter of universal world-history.
The old classification of constitutions into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy is based upon the substantive unity which has not yet been divided. This unity has no internal distinctions, is not an intrinsically developed organization, and has not attained depth and concrete rationality. From the standpoint of the ancient world the classification is correct, because the unity of the ancient state was a substantive whole, not as yet fully mature and unfolded. The distinctions predicated of it must hence be external, and refer merely to the number of persons in whom this substantive unity should find an abode. But these various forms of the state, which belong in this way to different wholes, are in constitutional monarchy lowered to their proper place as elements. In monarchy we have a single person, in its executive several, in legislation the multitude. But, as we have said, such merely quantitative distinctions are superficial, and do not account for the conception. Similarly, it is not to the point to speak so much as we do of the democratic or aristocratic element in the monarchy for the phases, described by these terms, just in so far as they occur in a monarchy, are no longer democratic and aristocratic.
It is thought by some that the state is a mere abstraction which orders and commands, and that it may be left undecided, or be regarded as a trifle, whether one or several or all stand in the chief place in the state.—” All these forms,”says Fichte (” Naturrecht,”Pt. I., p. 196),” are right, and can produce and preserve universal right, if only there be present an ephorat.”The ephorat was invented by Fichte, and defined as a needful counterpoise to the highest power. Such a view springs from a shallow conception of the state. It is true, indeed, that in a primitive condition of society these distinctions have little or no meaning. So Moses, when giving rules to the people in the case of their choosing a king, made no other alteration in the institutions than to command that the king’s horses and wives should not be too numerous, or his treasure of gold and silver too large (Deut. xvii. 16, and fol.).—Further, it is true that in one sense these three forms are even for the idea a matter of no concern. I mean monarchy in its limited and exclusive signification, in accordance with which it stands by the side of democracy and aristocracy. But such a remark has a meaning the opposite of Fichte’s. It would mean that these forms are a matter of indifference, because they collectively are not in accordance with the idea in its rational development (§ 272); nor can the idea in any one of them attain its right and actuality. Hence, it is idle to ask which of these forms is to be preferred. We speak of them now as having only an historical interest.
Here, as in so many other places, must be recognized the penetrating vision of Montesquieu, who discusses this question in his celebrated description of the principles of these forms of government. But this description we must not misunderstand, if we are to do it justice. He, as is well known, stated that virtue was the principle of democracy. Democracy does in fact rest upon sentiment as upon a form which is merely substantive. And it is still under this form that the rationality of the absolute will exists in democracy. But he goes on to say that England in the seventeenth century proved by a beautiful spectacle that its efforts to found a democracy were unavailing owing to a lack of virtue in the leaders. And he adds that, when in a republic virtue disappears, ambition seizes upon those whose minds are capable of it, and greed seizes upon all, and the state, becoming a general prey, maintains its strength only through the power of some individuals and the extravagance of all. Upon this view it must be remarked that when society becomes civilized, and the powers of particularity are developed and freed, the virtue of the rulers is not enough. Not mere sentiment, but the form of rational law is required, if the whole is to be able to keep itself together, and give to the developed powers of particularity the right to expand positively as well as negatively.
Similarly should be set aside the misconception that, since in a democratic republic the sentiment of virtue is the substantive form, it is wanting, or at least unnecessary, in a monarchy; and also the misconception that the legally constituted agencies of a systematized organization are opposed to and incompatible with virtue.
Moderation, or the principle of aristocracy, implies the incipient separation of public power and private interest. And yet these two are here in such close contact that aristocracy is always by its very nature on the verge of passing into the severest form of tyranny or anarchy, and so bringing on itself destruction. Witness Roman history.
Montesquieu, by crediting monarchy with the principle of honour, refers, it is clear, not to the patriarchal or any of the ancient monarchies, nor, on the other side, to the monarchy which has developed into an objective constitution, but to a feudal monarchy, in which the relations of political right to lawful private property and the privileges of individuals and corporations are confirmed. Since in this form of constitution state-life depends upon privileged persons, in whose liking is laid a large part of what must be done for the maintenance of the state, the objective element of these transactions is grounded not on duty but on imaginative thought and opinion. Thus, instead of duty it is only honour which keeps the state together.
Here it is natural to put a second question:—Who shall frame the constitution? This question seems intelligible at first glance, but on closer examination turns out to be meaningless. It presupposes that no constitution exists, but merely a collection of atomic individuals. How a heap of individuals is to obtain a constitution, whether by its own efforts or by means of others, whether by goodness, thought, or force, must be left to itself to decide, for with a mere mass the conception has nothing to do. If the question, however, takes for granted the existence of an actual constitution, then to make a constitution means only to modify it, the previous existence of the constitution implying that any change must be made constitutionally. But it is strictly essential that the constitution, though it is begotten in time, should not be contemplated as made. It is rather to be thought of as above and beyond what is made, as self-begotten and self-centred, as divine and perpetual.
Addition.—The principle of the modern world as a whole is freedom of subjectivity, the principle that all essential aspects of the spiritual whole should attain their right by self-development. From this standpoint one can hardly raise the idle question, as to which form is the better, monarchy or democracy. We venture to reply simply that the forms of all constitutions of the state are one-sided, if they are not able to contain the principle of free subjectivity, and do not know how to correspond to completed
274Spirit is real only in what it knows itself to be. The state, which is the nation’s spirit, is the law which permeates all its relations, ethical observances, and the consciousness of its individuals. Hence the constitution of a people depends mainly on the kind and character of its self-consciousness. In it are found both its subjective freedom and the actuality of the constitution.
Note.—To think of giving to a people a constitution a priori is a whim, overlooking precisely that element which renders a constitution something more than a product of thought. Every nation, therefore, has the constitution which suits it and belongs to it.
Addition.—The state must in its constitution penetrate all its aspects. Napoleon insisted upon giving to the Spanish a constitution a priori, but the project failed. A constitution is not a mere manufacture, but the work of centuries. It is the idea and the consciousness of what is reasonable, in so far as it is developed in a people. Hence no constitution is merely created. That which Napoleon gave to the Spanish was more rational than what they had before, yet they viewed it as something foreign to them, and rejected it because they were not sufficiently developed. In a constitution a people must embody their sense of right and reproduce their conditions. Otherwise the constitution may exist externally, but it has no significance or truth. Often, indeed, the need of and longing for a better constitution may arise in individuals, but that is different from the whole multitude’s being saturated by such a notion. This general conviction comes later. The principle of morality and inner conviction advocated by Socrates came of necessity into being in his day; but time had to elapse before it could reach general self-consciousness.
A. The Function of the Prince.
275The function of the prince contains of itself the three elements of the totality (§ 272), (1) the universality of the constitution and the laws; (2) counsel, or reference of the particular to the universal; and (3) the final decision, or the self-determination, into which all else returns and from which it receives the beginning of its actuality. This absolute self-determination, constituting the distinguishing principle of the princely function, as such, must be the first to be considered.
Addition.—We begin with the princely function or the factor of individuality, because in it the three phases of the state are inter-related as a totality. The I is at once the most individual and the most universal. The individual occurs also in nature, but there reality is equal to non-ideality, and its parts exist externally to one another. Hence it is not self-complete existence; in it the different individualities subsist side by side. In spirit, on the other hand, all differences exist only as ideal or as a unity. The state as spiritual is the interpretation of all its elements, but individuality is at the same time the soul, the vital and sovereign principle, which embraces all differences.
276(1) The basal principle of the political state is the substantive unity, which is the ideality of its elements, (a) In this ideality the particular functions and offices of the state are just as much dissolved as retained. Indeed, they are retained only as having no independent authority, but such and so extensive an authority as is yielded them in the idea of the whole. They proceed, therefore, from the power of the state, and are the flexible limbs of the state as of their own simplified self.
Addition.—This ideality of elements is like the life of an organized body. Life exists in every part. There is but one life in all points, and there is no opposition to it. Any part separated from it is dead. Such is also the ideality of all individual occupations, functions, and corporations, great as may be their impulse to subsist and do for themselves. It is as in the organism, where the stomach assumes independence, and yet is at the same time superseded and sacrificed by becoming a member of one whole.
277. (β) The particular offices and agencies of the state, being its essential elements, are intimately connected with it. To the individuals, who manage and control them, they are attached in virtue not of their direct personality but of their objective and universal qualities. With particular personality, as such, they are joined only externally and accidentally. The business and functions of the state cannot therefore be private property.
Addition.—The agencies of the state are attached to individuals, who nevertheless are not authorized to discharge their offices through natural fitness, but by reason of their objective qualification. Capacity, skill, character, belong to the particularity of the individual, who must, however, be adapted to his special business by education and training. An office can, therefore, be neither sold nor bequeathed. Formerly in France seats in parliament were saleable, and this is still the case with any position of officer in the English army below a certain grade. These facts depended, or depend, upon the mediaeval constitution of certain states, and are now gradually vanishing.
278These two characteristics, namely (a) that the particular offices and functions of the state have independent and firm footing neither in themselves, nor in the particular will of individuals, but (b) ultimately in the unity of the state as in their simple self, constitute the sovereignty of
Note.—This is sovereignty on its inner side. It has an outer side also, as we shall see.—In the older feudal monarchy the state had an outer aspect, but on its inner side not only was the monarch at no time sovereign, but neither was the state. Partly were the several offices and functions of the state and civic life dispersed in independent corporations and communities (§ 273, note), while the whole was rather an aggregate than an organism. Partly, too, were these functions the private property of individuals who, when it was proposed that they should act, consulted their own opinion and wish.
The idealism, which constitutes sovereignty, is that point of view in accordance with which the so-called parts of an animal organism are not parts but members or organic elements. Their isolation or independent subsistence would be disease. The same principle occurs in the abstract conception of the will (see note to next §) as the negativity, which by referring itself to itself reaches a universality, which definitely moulds itself into individuality (§ 7). Into this concrete universality all particularity and definiteness are taken up, and receive a new significance. It is the absolute self -determining ground. To apprehend it we must be at home with the conception in its true substance and subjectivity.
Because sovereignty is the ideality of all particular powers, it easily gives rise to the common misconception, which takes it to be mere force, empty wilfulness, and a synonym for despotism. But despotism is a condition of lawlessness, in which the particular will, whether of monarch or people (ochlocracy) counts as law, or rather instead of law. Sovereignty, on the contrary, constitutes the element of the ideality of particular spheres and offices, in a condition which is lawful and constitutional. No particular sphere is independent and self-sufficient in its aims and methods of working. It does not immerse itself in its own separate vocation. On the contrary, its aims are led by and dependent upon the aim of the whole, an aim which has been named in general terms and indefinitely the wellbeing of the state.
This ideality is manifested in a twofold way. (1) In times of peace the particular spheres and businesses go their way of satisfying their particular offices and ends. According to mere unconscious necessity self-seeking here veers round to a contribution in behalf of mutual preservation and the preservation of the whole (§ 183). But, also, through a direct influence from above is it that these employments are continually brought back and limited by the aim of the whole (see” Function of Government,”§ 289), and led to make direct efforts for its preservation. (2) In circumstances of distress, internal or external, the organism consisting of its particulars, comes together into the simple conception of sovereignty, to which is intrusted the safety of the state, even at the sacrifice of what is at other times justifiable. It is here that idealism attains its peculiar realization (§ 321).
279(2) Sovereignty, at first only the universal thought of this ideality, exists merely as a subjectivity assured of itself, and as the abstract and so far groundless self-direction and ultimate decision of the will; by virtue of this quality the state is individual and one. But in the next place subjectivity exists in its truth only as a subject, and personality as a person. In the constitution, which has matured into rational reality, each of the three elements of the conception has its own independent, real, and separate embodiment. Hence, the element which implies absolute decision is not individuality in general but one individual, the monarch.
Note.—The internal development of a science, whose whole content is deduced out of the simple conception—the only method which is deserving of the name philosophic,—reveals the peculiarity that one and the same conception, here the will, which at the beginning is abstract because it is the beginning, yet contains itself, condenses of itself its own characteristics, and in this way acquires a concrete content. Thus it is fundamental in the personality, which is at first in simple right abstract. It then develops itself through the different forms of subjectivity, and at last in absolute right, the state or the complete, concrete objectivity of the will, attains to the personality of the state and its conscious assurance of itself. This final term gives to all particularities a new form by taking them up into its pure self. It ceases to hesitate between reasons pro and con., and deciding by an” I will,”initiates all action and reality.
Personality, further, or subjectivity generally, as infinite and self-referring, has truth only as a person or independent subject. This independent existence must be one, and the truth which it has is of the most direct or immediate kind. The personality of the state is actualized only as a person, the monarch.—Personality expresses the conception as such, while person contains also the actuality of the conception. Hence the conception becomes the idea or truth, only when it receives this additional character.—A so-called moral person, a society, congregation, or family, be it as concrete as it may, possesses personality only as an element and abstractly. It has not reached the truth of its existence. But the state is this very totality, in which the moments of the conception gain reality in accordance with their peculiar truth.—All these phases of the idea have been already explained, both in their abstract and in their concrete forms, in the course of this treatise. Here, however, they need to be repeated, because we, while easily admitting them piecemeal in their particular forms, do not so readily recognise and apprehend them in their true place as elements of the idea.
The conception of monarch offers great difficulty to abstract reasonings and to the reflective methods of the understanding. The understanding never gets beyond isolated determinations, and ascribes merit to mere reasons, or finite points of view and what can be derived from them. Thus the dignity of the monarch is represented as something derivative not only in its form but also in its essential character. But the conception of the monarch is not derivative, but purely self-originated. Akin to this mistaken notion is the idea that the right of the monarch is based upon and receives its unconditional nature from divine authority. The misconceptions that are allied to this idea are well-known; besides, philosophy sets itself the task of conceiving the divine.
The phrase” sovereignty of the people,”can be used in the sense that a people is in general self-dependent in its foreign relations, and constitutes its own state. Such are the people of Great Britain, for example. But the people of England, Scotland, Ireland, Venice, Genoa, or Ceylon, have ceased to be a sovereign people, since they no longer have independent princes, and the chief government is not exclusively their own. Further, it may be said that internal sovereignty resides in the people if, as was already pointed out (§§ 277–278), we speak in general terms, and mean that sovereignty accrues to the whole state. But the sovereignty of the people is usually in modern times opposed to the sovereignty of the monarch. This view of the sovereignty of the people may be traced to a confused idea of what is meant by”the people.”The people apart from their monarch, and the common membership necessarily and directly associated with him, is a formless mass. It is no longer a state. In it occur none of the characteristic features of an equipped whole, such as sovereignty, government, law-courts, magistrates, professions, etc., etc. When these elements of an organized national life make their appearance in a people, it ceases to be that undefined abstraction, which is indicated by the mere general notion
If by the phrase”sovereignty of the people”is to be understood a republic, or more precisely a democracy, for by a republic we understand various empirical mixtures which do not belong to a philosophic treatise, all that is necessary has already been said (§ 273, note). There can no longer be any defence of such a notion in contrast with the developed idea.—When a people is not a patriarchal tribe, having passed from the primitive condition, which made the forms of aristocracy and democracy possible, and is represented not as in a wilful and unorganized condition, but as a self-developed truly organic totality, in such a people sovereignty is the personality of the whole, and exists, too, in a reality, which is proportionate to the conception, the person of the monarch.
The element of the ultimate self-determining decision of will does not appear as an immanent vital element of the actual state in its peculiar reality, so long as the classification of constitutions into democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy can be made. When this classification prevails we are, as we have said, at the stage of the undeveloped substantive unity, which has not yet reached infinite difference and self-immersion. But even in these incomplete forms of the state the summit must be occupied by an individual. Either he appears in actual fact, as in those monarchies, which are of this type. Or, under aristocratic, or more especially under democratic governments, he appears in the person of statesmen or generals, according to accident and the particular need of the time. Here all overt action and realization have their origin and completion in the unity of the leader’s decision. But this subjectivity of decision, confined within a primitive and unalloyed unity of functions, must be accidental in its origin and manifestation, and also on the whole subordinate. Accordingly, a pure and unmixed decision was looked for outside of and beyond this conditional summit, and was found in a fate which pronounced judgment from without. As an element of the idea it had to enter actual existence, but yet it had its root outside of human freedom, and the compass of the state.—To this source is to be traced the need of oracles, the daimon of Socrates, the consultation of the entrails of animals, the flight of birds, and their way of eating, etc., methods resorted to on great occasions, when it was necessary to have final judgment upon weighty affairs of state. As mankind had not yet realized the profundity of self-consciousness, or come forth from the pure virginity of the substantive unity into self-conscious existence, they had not yet strength to discover such a judgment within the pale of human existence.—In the daimon of Socrates (§ 138) we can discern the beginning of a change; we can see that the will, formerly set upon an object wholly outside of itself, has begun to transfer itself into itself, and recognize itself within itself. This is the beginning of self-conscious and therefore true freedom. This real freedom of the idea, since it gives its own present self-conscious reality to every one of the elements of rationality, imparts to the function of consciousness the final self-determining certitude, which in the conception of the will is the cope-stone. But this final self-determination can fall within the sphere of human liberty only in so far as it is assigned to an independent and separate pinnacle, exalted above all that is particular and conditional.
Only when so placed, has it a reality in accordance with the
Addition.—In the organization of the state, that is to say, in constitutional monarchy, we must have before us nothing except the inner necessity of the idea. Every other point of view must disappear. The state must be regarded as a great architectonic building, or the hieroglyph of reason, presenting itself in actuality. Everything referring merely to utility, externality, etc., must be excluded from a philosophic treatment. It is easy for one to grasp the notion that the state is the self-determining and completely sovereign will, whose judgment is final. It is more difficult to apprehend this” I will “as a person. By this is not meant that the monarch can be wilful in his acts. Rather is he bound to the concrete content of the advice of his councillors, and, when the constitution is established, he has often nothing to do but sign his name. But this name is weighty. It is the summit, over which nothing can climb. It may be said that an articulated organization has already existed in the beautiful democracy of Athens. Yet we see that the Greeks extracted the ultimate judgment from quite external phenomena, such as oracles, entrails of sacrificial animals, and the flight of birds, and that to nature they held as to a power, which in these ways made known and gave expression to what was good for mankind. Self-consciousness had at that time not yet risen to the abstraction of subjectivity, or to the fact that concerning the matter to be judged upon must be spoken a human”I will.”This”I will”constitutes the greatest distinction between the ancient and the modern world, and so must have its peculiar niche in the great building of state. It is to be deplored that this characteristic should be viewed as something merely external, to be set aside or used at pleasure.
280. (3) This ultimate self of the state’s will is in this its abstraction an individuality, which is simple and direct. Hence its very conception implies that it is natural. Thus the monarch as a specific individual is abstracted from all other content, and is appointed to the dignity of monarch in a directly natural way, by natural birth.
Note.—This transition from the conception of pure self-determination to direct existence, and so to simple naturalness, is truly speculative in its nature. A systematic account of it belongs to logic. It is on the whole the same transition which is well-known in the nature of the will. It is the process of translation of a content out of subjectivity, as represented end, into tangible reality (§ 8). But the peculiar form of the idea and of the transition, here passed in review, is the direct conversion of the pure self-determination of the will, the simple conception itself, into a specific object, a” this,”or natural visible reality, without the intervention of any particular content, such as an end of action.
In the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God there is the same conversion of the absolute conception into being. This conversion has constituted the depth of the idea in modern times, although it has been recently pronounced to be inconceivable. On such a theory, since the unity of conception and embodiment is the truth (§ 23), all knowledge of the truth must be renounced. Although the understanding does not find this unity in its consciousness, and harps upon the separation of the two elements of the truth, it still permits a belief in a unity. But since the current idea of the monarch is regarded as issuing out of the ordinary consciousness, the understanding, with its astute reasonings, holds all the more tenaciously to the principle of separation and its results. It thereupon denies that the element of ultimate decision in the state is absolutely, that is, in .the conception of reason, conjoined with direct nature. It maintains, on the contrary, the merely accidental character of the conjunction of these two, and hence regards as rational their absolute divergence. Finally, from the irrationality of the co-relation of these two phases proceed other consequences, which destroy the idea of the state.
Addition.—It is often maintained that the position of monarch gives to the affairs of state a haphazard character. It is said that the monarch may be ill-educated, and unworthy to stand at the helm of state, and that it is absurd for such a condition of things to exist under the name of reason. It must be replied that the assumption on which these objections proceed is of no value, since there is here no reference to particularity of character. In a completed organization we have to do with nothing but the extreme of formal decision, and that for this office is needed only a man who says” Yes,”and so puts the dot upon the” i.”The pinnacle of state must be such that the private character of its occupant shall be of no significance. What beyond this final judgment belongs to the monarch devolves upon particularity, with which we have no concern. There may indeed arise circumstances, in which this particularity alone has prominence, but in that case the state is not yet fully, or else badly constructed. In a well-ordered monarchy only the objective side of law comes to hand, and to this the monarch subjoins merely the subjective” I will.”
281Both elements, the final motiveless self of the will, and the like motiveless existence on the side of nature, indissolubly unite in the idea of that which is beyond the reach of caprice, and constitute the majesty of the monarch. In this unity lies the actualized unity of the state. Only by means of its unmotived directness on both its external and its internal side is the unity taken beyond the possibility of degradation to the wilfulness, ends, and views of particularity. It is thus removed also from the enfeeblement and overthrow of the functions of state and from the struggle of faction against faction around the throne.
Note.—Right of birth and right of inheritance constitute the basis of legitimacy, not as regards positive right merely, but likewise in the idea.—Through the self-determined or natural succession to the vacant throne all factious disputes are avoided. This has rightly been reckoned as one of the advantages of inheritance. However, it is only a consequence, and to assign it as a motive is to drag majesty down into the sphere of mere reasonings. The character of majesty is unmotived directness, and final self-involved existence. To speak of grounds is to propound as its basis not the idea of the state, which is internal to it, but something external in its nature and alien, such as the thought of the well-being of the state or of the people. By such a method inheritance can indeed be deduced through medii termini; but there might be other medii termini with quite other consequences. And it is only too well known what consequences may be drawn from the well-being of the people (salut du peuple).—Hence, philosophy ventures to contemplate majesty only in the medium of thought. Every other method of inquiry, except the speculative method of the infinite self-grounded idea, absolutely annuls the nature of majesty.
Freely to elect the monarch is readily taken as the most natural way. It is closely allied to the following shallow thought:—” Because it is the concern and interest of the people which the monarch has to provide for, it must be left to the people to choose whom it will depute to provide for them, and only out of such a commission arises the right of governing.”This view, as well as the idea that the monarch is chief-officer of state, and also the idea of a contract between him and the people, proceed from the will of the multitude, in the form of inclination, opinion, and caprice. These views, as we long ago remarked, first make themselves good, or rather seek to do so, in the civic community. They can make no headway against the principle of the family, still less that of the state, or, in general, the idea of the ethical system.—That the election of a monarch is the worst of proceedings may be even by ratiocination detected in the consequences, which to it appear only as something possible or probable, but are in fact inevitable. Through the relation involved in free choice the particular will gives the ultimate decision, and the constitution becomes a free-capitulation, that is, the abandonment of the functions of state to the discretion of the particular will. The specific functions of state are thus transformed into private property, and there ensue the enfeeblement and injury of the sovereignty of the state, its internal dissolution and external overthrow.
Addition.—If we are to apprehend the idea of the monarch, it is not sufficient for us to say that God has established kings, since God has made everything, even the worst of things. Nor can we proceed very far under the guidance of the principle of utility, since it is always open to point out disadvantages. Just as little are we helped by regarding monarchy as positive right. That I should have property is necessary, but this specific possession is accidental. Accidental also appears to be the right that one man should stand at the helm of state, if this right, too, be regarded as abstract and positive. But this right is present absolutely, both as a felt want and as a need of the thing itself. A monarch is not remarkable for bodily strength or intellect, and yet millions permit themselves to be ruled by him. To say that men permit themselves to be governed contrary to their interests, ends, and intentions is preposterous, since men are not so stupid. It is their need and the inner power of the idea which urge them to this in opposition to their seeming consciousness, and retain them in this relation.
Although the monarch comes forward as summit and essential factor of the constitution, it must be admitted that in the constitution a conquered people is not identical with the prince. An uprising occurring in a province conquered in war is different from a rebellion in a wellorganized state. The conquered are not rising against their prince, and commit no crime against the state, because they are not joined with their master in the intimate relation of the idea. They do not come within the inner necessity of the constitution. In that case only a contract is to the fore, and not a state-bond.” Je ne suis pas votre prince, je suis votre maître,”replied Napoleon to the delegation from Erfurt.
282Out of the sovereignty of the monarch flows the right of pardoning criminals. Only to sovereignty belongs that realization of the power of the spirit, which consists in regarding what has happened as not having happened, and cancels crime by forgiving and forgetting.
Note.—The right of pardon is one of the highest recognitions of the majesty of spirit. This right belongs to the retrospective application of the character of a higher sphere to a lower and antecedent one.—Similar applications are found in the special sciences, which treat of objects in their empirical environment (§ 270, footnote).—It belongs to applications of this kind that injury done to the state generally or to the sovereignty, majesty, and personality of the prince, should fall under the conception of crime, as it has already been discussed (§§ 95–102), and should indeed be declared to be a specific crime of the gravest
Addition.—Pardon is the remission of punishment, but does not supersede right. Rather right remains, and the pardoned is a criminal as much after the pardon as he was before. Pardon does not imply that no wrong has been committed. Remission of the penalty may occur in religion, for by and in spirit what has occurred can be made not to have occurred. But in so far as remission of penalty is completed in the world, it has place only in majesty, and can be effected only by its unmotived edict.
283The second element contained in the princely function is that of particularity, involving a definite content and the subsumption of it under the universal. In so far as it receives a particular existence, it is the supreme council, and is composed of individuals. They present to the monarch for his decision the content of the affairs, as they arise, and of the legal cases which necessarily spring out of actual wants. Along with these they furnish also their objective sides, namely, the grounds for decision, the laws which bear on the case, the circumstances, etc. As the individuals who discharge this office have to do with the monarch’s immediate person, their appointment and dismissal lie in his unlimited, free, arbitrary will.
284The objective side of decision, including knowledge of the special content and circumstances, and the legal and other evidence, is alone responsible. It, that is to say, is alone able to furnish proof of objectivity. It must, therefore, come before a council other than the personal will of the monarch, as such. These councils, advising boards or individual advisers, are alone answerable. The peculiar majesty of the monarch, as the final deciding subjectivity, is exalted above all responsibility for the acts of govern-
285The third element of the princely function concerns the absolutely universal, which consists subjectively in the conscience of the monarch, objectively in the whole constitution and the laws. The princely function presupposes these other elements, just as much as they presuppose it.
286The objective guarantee of the princely office, or the securing of the lawful succession to the throne by inheritance, lies in the fact that, just as this office has a reality distinct from the other elements determined by reason, so the others have also their independent and peculiar rights and duties. Every member of a rational organism, while preserving itself in independence, preserves also the peculiarities of the others.
Note.—One of the later results of history is such a modification of the monarchical constitution that the succession to the throne is determined by the law of primogeniture. This is, as it were, a return to the patriarchal principle, out of which this mode of succession has historically arisen, although it now bears the higher form of an absolute pinnacle of an organically developed state. This result has a most significant bearing upon public liberty, and is one of the most important elements in a rational constitution, although, as has already been observed, it is not so generally understood as it is respected. The earlier and merely feudal monarchies, and despotism also, reveal in their history the alternation of revolutions, high-handed dealings of princes, rebellion, overthrow of princely individuals and houses, and a general desolation and destruction, internal and external. The reason is that their division of state offices, entrusted as they were to vassals, pashas, etc., was only mechanical. It was not a distinction inherent in the essential character and form, but one of merely greater or less power. Accordingly, each part, preserving and producing only itself, did not preserve and produce the rest. All the elements were thus completely isolated and independent.
In the organic relation, in which members, and not parts, are related to one another, each one preserves the rest while fulfilling its own sphere. The preservation of the other members is the substantial end and product of each one in preserving itself. The guarantees asked for, be they for the stability of succession, for the stability of the princely office generally, or for justice and public liberty, are secured in institutions. Love of the people, character, oaths, force, etc., may be regarded as subjective guarantees; but when we speak of a constitution, we are engaged with only objective guarantees, institutions, or organically intertwined and self-conditioned elements. Thus, public freedom and hereditary succession are mutual guarantees, and are absolutely connected. Public liberty is the rational constitution, and hereditary succession of the princely function lies, as has been shown, in the conception of the constitution.
B. The Executive.
287Decision is to be distinguished from its execution, and application, and in general from the prosecution and preservation of what has been already resolved, namely, the existing laws, regulations, establishments for common ends, and the like. This business of subsumption or application is undertaken by the executive, including the judiciary and police. It is their duty directly to care for each particular thing in the civic community, and in these private ends make to prevail the universal interest.
288Common interests of private concern occur within the civic community, and fall outside of the self-constituted and self-contained universal of the state (§ 266). They are administered in the corporations (§ 251) of the societies, trades, and professions, by their superintendents and representatives. The affairs, overseen by them, are the private property and interest of these particular spheres, whose authority depends upon the mutual trust of the associates, and confidence in the securities. Yet these circles must be subordinate to the higher interest of the state. Hence, in filling these posts generally, there will occur a mingling of the choice of the interested parties with the ratification of a higher authority.
289To secure the universal interest of the state and to preserve the law in the province of particular rights, and also to lead these rights back to the universal interest, require the attention of subordinates of the executive. These subordinates are on one side executive officers and on the other a college of advisers. These two meet together in the highest offices of all, which are in contact with the monarch.
Note.—The civic community is, as we saw, the arena for the contest of the private interests of all against all. It is also the seat of battle between private interest and the collective special interest, and likewise of both private and collective special interests with the higher standpoint and order of the state. The spirit of the corporation, begotten in the course of regulating the particular spheres, becomes by a process internal to itself converted into the spirit of the state. It finds the state to be the means of preserving particular ends. This is the secret of the patriotism of the citizens in one of its phases. They are aware that the state is their substantive being, because it preserves their particular spheres, sustains their authority, and considers their welfare. Since the spirit of the corporation contains directly the riveting of the particular to the universal, it exhibits the depth and strength of the state as it exists in sentiment.
The administration of the business of the corporation through its own representatives is often clumsy, because, while they see and know their own peculiar interests and affairs, they do not discern the connection with remote conditions or the universal standpoint. Other elements contribute to this result, as, e.g., an intimate private relation between the representatives and their subordinates. Circumstances often tend to equalize these two classes which are in many ways mutually dependent. This peculiar territory can be looked on as handed over to the element of formal freedom, in which the knowledge, judgment, and practice of individuals, as also their small passions and fancies, may have room to wrestle with one another. This may all the more easily happen, the more trivial from the universal side of the state is the mismanaged affair, especially when the mismanagement stands of itself in direct relation to the satisfaction and opinion, which are derived from it.
290In the business of the executive also there is a division of labour (§ 198). The organized executive officers have therefore a formal though difficult task before them. The lower concrete civil life must be governed from below in a concrete way. And yet the work must be divided into its abstract branches, specially officered by middlemen, whose activity in connection with those below them must from the lowest to the highest executive offices take the form of a continuous concrete oversight.
Addition.—The main point which crops up in connection with the executive is the division of offices. This division is concerned with the transition from the universal to the particular and singular; and the business is to be divided according to the different branches. The difficulty is that the different functions, the inferior and superior, must work in harmony. The police and the judiciary proceed each on its own course, it is true, but they yet in some office or other meet again. The means used to effect this conjunction often consists in appointing the chancellor of state and the prime minister, ministers in council. The matter is thus simplified on its upper side. In this way also everything issues from above out of the ministerial power, and business is, as they say, centralized. With this are associated the greatest possible despatch and efficiency in regard to what may affect the universal interests of state. This régime was introduced by the French Revolution, developed by Napoleon, and in France is found to this day. But France, on the other hand, has neither corporations nor communes, that is to say, the sphere in which particular and general interests coincide. In the Middle Ages this sphere had acquired too great an independence. Then there were states within the state, who persisted in behaving as if they were self-subsistent bodies. Though this ought not to occur, yet the peculiar strength of states lies in the communities. Here the government meets vested interests, which must be respected by it. These interests are inspected, and may be assisted by the government. Thus the individual finds protection in the exercise of his rights, and so attaches his particular interest to the preservation of the whole. For some time past the chief task has been that of organization carried on from above, while the lower and bulky part of the whole was readily left more or less unorganized. Yet it is of high importance that it also should be organized, because only as an organism is it a power or force. Otherwise it is a mere heap or mass of broken bits. An authoritative power is found only in the organic condition of the particular spheres.
291The offices of the executive are of an objective nature, which is already independently marked out in accordance with their substance (§287). They are at the same time conducted by individuals. Between the objective element and individuals there is no direct, natural connecting tie. Hence individuals are not set aside for these offices by natural personality or by birth. There is required in them the objective element, namely, knowledge and proof of fitness. This proof guarantees to the state what it needs, and, as it is the sole condition, makes it possible for any citizen to devote himself to the universal class.
292The subjective side is found in this, that out of many one individual must be chosen, and empowered to discharge the office. Since in this case the objective element does not lie in genius, as it does in art, the number of persons from whom the selection may be made is necessarily indefinite, and whom finally to prefer is beyond the possibility of absolute determination. The junction of individual and office, two phases whose relation is always accidental, devolves upon the princely power as decisive and sovereign.
293The particular state-business, which monarchy transfers to executive officers, constitutes the objective side of the sovereignty inherent in the monarch. The distinguishing feature of this state-business is found in the nature of its matter. Just as the activity of the officials is the discharge of a duty, so their office is not subject to chance but a right.
294The individual, who by the act of the sovereign (§ 292) is given an official vocation, holds it on the condition that he discharges his duty, which is the substantive factor in his relation. By virtue of this factor the individual finds in his official employment his livelihood and the assured satisfaction of his particularity (§ 264), and in his external surroundings and official activity is free from subjective dependence and influences.
Note.—The state cannot rely upon service which is capricious and voluntary, such, for example, as the administration of justice by knights-errant. This service reserves to itself the right to act in accordance with subjective views, and also the right to withhold itself at will, or to realize subjective ends. The opposite extreme to the knight-errant in reference to public service would be the act of the public servant, who was attached to his employment merely by want, without true duty or right.
The public service requires the sacrifice of independent self-satisfaction at one’s pleasure, and grants the right of finding satisfaction in the performance of duty, but nowhere else. Here is found the conjunction of universal and particular interests, a union which constitutes the conception and the internal stability of the state (§ 260).
Official position is not based upon contract (§ 75), although it involves the consent of the two sides and also a double performance. The public servant is not called to a single chance act of service, as is the attorney, but finds in his work the main interest of both his spiritual and his particular existence. So also it is not a matter merely external and particular, the performance of which is intrusted to him. The value of such a matter on its inner side is different from the externality of it, and thus is not as yet injured, as a stipulation is (§ 77), merely by nonperformance. That which the public servant has to perform is as it stands of absolute value. Hence positive injury or non-performance, either being opposed to the essence of service, is a wrong to the universal content (§ 95, a negative-infinite judgment), and therefore a fault or crime.
The assured satisfaction of particular want does away with external need. There is no occasion to seek the means for alleviating want at the cost of official activity and duty. In the universal function of state those who are commissioned with the affairs of state are protected also against the other subjective side, the private passion of subjects, whose private interests, etc., may be injured by the furtherance of the universal
295Security for the state and its subjects against misuse of power by the authorities and their officers is found directly in their responsibility arising out of their nature as a hierarchy. But it is also found in the legitimate societies and corporations. They hold in check the inflow of subjective wilfulness into the power of the officers. They also supplement from below the control from above, which cannot reach down to the conduct of individuals.
Note.—In the conduct and character of the officers the laws and decisions of government touch individuality, and are given reality. On this depend the satisfaction and confidence of the citizens in the government. On this also depends the execution of the government’s intentions, or else the weakening and frustration of them, since the manner in which the intention is realized is by sensibility and sentiment easily estimated more highly than the act itself, even though it be a tax. It is due to this direct and personal contact that the control from above may incompletely attain its end. This end may find an obstacle in the common interest of the official class, which is distinct from both subjects and superiors. Especially when institutions are perhaps not yet perfected, the higher interference of sovereignty for the removal of these hindrances (as for example that of Friedrich II. in the famous Müller-Arnold affair) is demanded and justified.
296Whether or no integrity of conduct, gentleness, and freedom from passion pass into social custom depends upon the nature of the direct ethical life and thought. These phases of character maintain the spiritual balance over against the merely mental acquisition of the so-called sciences, dealing with the objects of these spheres of government, against also the necessary practice of business, and the actual labour of mechanical and other trades. The greatness of the state is also a controlling element, by virtue of which the importance of family relations and other private ties is diminished, and revenge, hate, and the like passions become inoperative and powerless. In concern for the great interests of a large state, these subjective elements sink out of sight, and there is produced an habitual regard for universal interests and affairs.
297The members of the executive and the state officials constitute the main part of the middle class, in which are found the educated intelligence and the consciousness of right of the mass of a people. The institutions of sovereignty operating from above and the rights of corporations from below prevent this class from occupying the position of an exclusive aristocracy and using their education and skill wilfully and despotically.
Note.—At one time the administration of justice, whose object is the peculiar interest of all individuals, had been converted into an instrument of gain and despotism. The knowledge of law was concealed under a pedantic or foreign speech, and the knowledge of legal procedure under an involved formalism.
Addition.—The state’s consciousness and the most conspicuous education are found in the middle class, to which the state officials belong. The members of this class, therefore, form the pillars of the state in regard to rectitude and intelligence. The state, if it has no middle class, is still at a low stage of development. In Russia, for example, there is a multitude of serfs and a host of rulers. It is of great concern to the state that a middle class should be formed, but this can be effected only in an organization such as we have described, namely, by the legalization of particular circles, which are relatively independent, and by a force of officials, whose wilfulness has no power over these legalized circles. Action in accordance with universal right, and the habit of such action, are consequences of the opposition produced by these self-reliant independent circles.
298The legislature interprets the laws and also those internal affairs of the state whose content is universal. This function is itself a part of the constitution. In it the constitution is presupposed, and so far lies absolutely beyond direct delimitation. Yet it receives development in the improvement of the laws, and the progressive character of the universal affairs of government.
Addition.—The constitution must unquestionably be the solid ground, on which the legislature stands. Hence, the prime essential is not to set to work to make a constitution. It exists, but yet it radically becomes, that is, it is formed progressively. This progress is an alteration which is not noticed, and has not the form of an alteration. For example, the wealth of princes and their families was at first a private possession in Germany; then, without any struggle or opposition it was converted into domains, that is, state wealth. This came about through the princes feeling the need of an undivided possession and demanding from the country, and the landed classes generally, security for the same. There was in this way developed a kind of possession, over which the princes had no longer the sole disposition. In a similar way, the emperor was formerly judge, and travelled about in his kingdom giving the law. Through the merely seeming or external progress of civilization, it has become necessary that the emperor should more and more delegate this office of judge to others. Thus the judicial function passed from the person of the prince to colleagues. So the progress of any condition of things is a seemingly calm and unnoticed one. In the lapse of time a constitution attains a position quite other than it had before.
299These objects are defined in reference to individuals more precisely in two ways, (a) what of good comes to individuals to enjoy at the hands of the state, and (β) what they must perform for the state. The first division embraces the laws of private right in general, also the rights of societies and corporations. To these must be added universal institutions, and indirectly (§ 298) the whole of the constitution. But that which, on the other hand, is to be performed, is reduced to money as the existing universal value of things and services. Hence, it can be determined only in so equitable a way that the particular tasks and services, which the individual can perform, may be effected by his private will.
Note.—The object-matter of universal legislation may be in general distinguished from that of the administrative and executive functions in this way. Only what is wholly universal in its content falls under legislation, while administration deals with the particular and also the special way of carrying it out. But this distinction is not absolute, since the law, as it is a law, and not a mere general command such as” Thou shalt not kill”(§ 140, note, p. 142), must be in itself definite, and the more definite it is, the more nearly its content approaches the possibility of being carried out as it is. But at the same time such a complete settlement of the laws would give them an empirical side, which in actual execution would make them subject to alteration. This would be detrimental to their character as laws. The organic unity of the functions of state implies that one single spirit both fixes the nature of the universal and also carries it out to its definite reality.
It may occur that the state lays no direct claim upon the many kinds of skill, possessions, talents, faculties, with the manifold personal wealth which is contained in them and is tinged with subjective sentiment, but only upon that form of wealth which appears as money.—The services referring to the defence of the state against enemies belong to the duty discussed in the next section of this treatise. Money is, in fact, not a special kind of wealth, but the universal element in all kinds, in so far as they in production are given such an external reality as can be apprehended as an object. Only at this external point of view is it possible and just to estimate performances quantitatively.
Plato in his”Republic”allows the rulers to appoint individuals to their particular class, and assign to them their particular tasks (§ 185, note). In feudal-monarchy vassals had to perform a similarly unlimited service, and simply in their particularity to discharge such a duty as that of a judge. Services in the East, such as the vast undertakings in architecture in Egypt, are also in quality particular. In all these relations there is lacking the principle of subjective freedom. In accordance with this principle, the substantive act of the individual, which even in the above-mentioned services is in its content particular, should proceed from his particular will. This right is possible only when the demand for work rests upon the basis of universal value. Through the influence of this right the substitution of money for services has been introduced.
Addition.—The two aspects of the constitution refer to the rights and the services of individuals. The services are now almost all reduced to money. Military duty is perhaps the only remaining personal service. In former times claim was made to the concrete individual, who was summoned to work in accordance with his skill. Now the state buys what it needs. This may seem abstract, dead, and unfeeling. It may also seem as if to be satisfied with abstract services were for the state a retrograde step. But the principle of the modern state involves that everything which the individual does should be occasioned by his will. By means of money the justice implied in equality can be much better substantiated. The talented would be more heavily taxed than the man without talents if respect were had to concrete capacity. But now, out of reverence for subjective liberty, the principle is brought to light that only that shall be laid hold upon which is of a nature to be laid hold upon.
300In the legislative function in its totality are active both the monarchical element and the executive. The monarchical gives the final decision, and the executive element advises. The executive element has concrete knowledge and oversight of the whole in its many sides and in the actual principles firmly rooted in them. It has also acquaintance with the wants of the offices of state. In the legislature are at last represented the different
Addition.—It proceeds from a wrong view of the state to exclude the members of the executive from the legislature, as was at one time done by the constituent assembly. In England the ministers are rightly members of parliament, since those who share in the executive should stand in connection with and not in opposition to the legislature. The idea that the functions of government should be independent contains the fundamental error that they should check one another. But this independence is apt to usurp the unity of the state, and unity is above all things to be desired.
301By admitting the classes the legislature gives not simply implicit but actual existence to matters of general concern. The element of subjective formal freedom, the public consciousness, or the empirical universality of the views and thoughts of the many, here becomes a reality.
Note.—The expression” The Many “(οἱ πολλοί) characterizes the empirical universality better than the word” All,”which is in current use. Under this” all,”children, women, etc., are manifestly not meant to be included. Manifestly, therefore, the definite term”all”should not be employed, when, it may be, some quite indefinite thing is being discussed.
There are found in current opinion so unspeakably many perverted and false notions and sayings concerning the people, the constitution, and the classes, that it would be a vain task to specify, explain, and correct them. When it is argued that an assembly of estates is necessary and advantageous, it is meant that the people’s deputies, or indeed, the people itself, must best understand their own interest, and that it has undoubtedly the truest desire to secure this interest. But it is rather true that the people, in so far as this term signifies a special part of the citizens, does not know what it wills. To know what we will, and further what the absolute will, namely reason, wills, is the fruit of deep knowledge and insight, and is therefore not the property of the people.
It requires but little reflection to see that the services performed by the classes in behalf of the general well-being and public liberty cannot be traced to an insight special to these classes. The highest state officials have necessarily deeper and more comprehensive insight into the workings and needs of the state, and also greater skill and wider practical experience. They are able without the classes to secure the best results, just as it is they who must continually do this when the classes are in actual assembly. General well-being does not therefore depend upon the particular insight of the classes, but is rather the achievement of the official deputies. They can inspect the work of the officers who are farthest removed from the observation of the chief functionaries of state. They, too, have a concrete perception of the more urgent special needs and defects. But to this intelligent oversight must be added the possibility of public censure. This possibility has the effect of calling out the best insight upon public affairs and projects, and also the purest motives; its influence is felt by the members of the classes themselves. As for the conspicuously good will, which is said to be shown by the classes towards the general interest, it has already been remarked (§ 272, note) that the masses, who in general adopt a negative standpoint, take for granted that the will of the government is evil or but little good. If this assumption were replied to in kind, it would lead to the recrimination that the classes, since they originate in individuality, the private standpoint and particular interests, are apt to pursue these things at the expense of the universal interest; while the other elements of the state, being already at the point of view of the state, are devoted to universal ends. As for the pledge to respect the public welfare and rational freedom, it should be given especially by the classes, but is shared in by all the other institutions of state. This guarantee is present in such institutions as the sovereignty of the monarch, hereditary succession, and the constitution of the law-courts, much more pronouncedly than in the classes. The classes, therefore, are specially marked out by their containing the subjective element of universal liberty. In them the peculiar insight and peculiar will of the sphere, which in this treatise has been called the civic community, is actualized in relation to the state. It is here as elsewhere by means of the philosophic point of view that this element is discerned to be a mark of the idea when developed to a totality.
This inner necessity is not to be confounded with the external necessities and utilities of this phase of state
Addition.—The attitude of the government to the classes must not be in its essence hostile. The belief in the necessity of this hostile relation is a sad mistake. The government is not one party which stands over against another, in such a way that each is seeking to wrest something from the other. If the state should find itself in such a situation, it must be regarded as a misfortune and not as a sign of health. Further, the taxes, to which the classes give their consent, are not to be looked upon as a gift to the state, but are contributed for the interest of the contributors. The peculiar significance of the classes or estates is this, that through them the state enters into and begins to share in the subjective consciousness of the
302The classes, considered as a mediating organ, stand between the government and the people at large in their several spheres and individual capacities. This specific designation of the classes requires of them a sense and sentiment both for the state and government and for the interests of special circles and individuals. This position of the classes has, in common with the organized executive, a mediatorial function. It neither isolates the princely function as an extreme, causing it to appear as a mere ruling power acting capriciously, nor does it isolate the particular interests of communities, corporations, and individuals. Furthermore, individuals are not in it contrasted with the organized state, and thus are not presented as a mass or heap, as unorganized opinion and will, or as a mere collective force.
Note.—It is one of the fundamental principles of logic, that a definite element, which, when standing in opposition, has the bearing of an extreme, ceases to be in opposition and becomes an organic element, when it is observed to be at the same time a mean. In this present question it is all the more important to make prominent this principle, since the prejudice is as common as it is dangerous, which presents the classes as essentially in opposition to the government. Taken organically, that is, in its totality, the element of the classes proves its right only through its office of mediation. Thus the opposition is reduced to mere appearance. If it, in so far as it is manifested, were not concerned merely with the superficial aspect of things but became a substantive opposition, the state would be conceived of as in decay.—That the antagonism is not of this radical kind is shown by the fact that the objects, against which it is directed, are not the essential phases of the political organism, but things that are more special and indifferent. The passion, which attaches itself to this opposition, becomes mere party seeking for some subjective interest, perhaps for one of the higher offices of state.
Addition.—The constitution is essentially a system of mediation. In despotic lands where there are only princes and people, the people act, if they act at all, in such a way as to disturb or destroy the political organization. But when the multitude has an organic relation to the whole, it obtains its interests in a right and orderly way. If this middle term is not present, the utterance of the masses is always violent. Therefore, the despot treats the people with indulgence, while his rage affects only those in his immediate neighbourhood. So also the people in a despotism pay light taxes, which in a constitutional state become larger through the people’s own consciousness. In no other land are taxes so heavy as they are in England.
303The universal class, the class devoted to the service of the government, has directly in its structure the universal as the end of its essential activity. In that branch of the legislative function, which contains the classes, the private individual attains political significance and efficiency. Hence, private persons cannot appear in the legislature either as a mere undistinguished mass, or as an aggregate of atoms. In fact, they already exist under two distinct aspects. They are found in the class, which is based on the substantive relation, and also in the class based upon particular interests and the labour by which they are secured (§ 201 and fol.). Only in this way is the actual particular in the state securely attached to the universal.
Note.—This view makes against another widespread idea, that since the private class is in the legislature exalted to participation in the universal business, it must appear in the form of individuals, be it that representatives are chosen for this purpose, or that every person shall exercise a voice. But even in the family this abstract atomic view is no longer to be found, nor in the civic community, in both of which the individual makes his appearance only as a member of a universal. As to the state, it is essentially an organization, whose members are independent spheres, and in it no phase shall show itself as an unorganized multitude. The many, as individuals, whom we are prone to call the people, are indeed a collective whole, but merely as a multitude or formless mass, whose movement and action would be elemental, void of reason, violent, and terrible. When in reference to the constitution we still hear the people, that is, this unorganized mass, spoken of, we may take it for granted that we shall be given only generalities and warped declamations.
The view leading to the disintegration of the common existence found in the various circles, which are elements in the political world or highest concrete universality, would seek to divide the civic from the political life. The basis of the state would then be only the abstract individuality of wilfulness and opinion, a foundation which is merely accidental, and not absolutely steadfast and authoritative. That would be like building political life in the air. Although in these so-called theories the classes of the civic community generally and the classes in their political significance lie far apart, yet speech has retained their unity, a union which indeed existed long ago.
304The distinction of classes, which is already present in the earlier spheres, is contained also within the strict circumference of the political classes generally. Their abstract position is the extreme of empirical universality in opposition to the princely or monarchical principle. In this abstract position there is only the possibility of agreement, and hence quite as much the possibility of antagonism. It becomes a reasonable relation, and leads to the conclusion of the syllogism (§ 302, note), only if its middle term, or element of mediation, becomes a reality. Just as from the side of the princely function the executive (§ 300) has already this character of reconciliation, so also from the side of the classes should one of their elements be converted into a mediating term.
305. Of the classes of the civic community one contains the principle, which is really capable of filling this political position. This is the class, whose ethical character is natural. As its basis it has family life, and as regards subsistence it has the possession of the soil. As regards its particularity it has a will, which rests upon itself, and, in common with the princely function, it bears the mark of
306In its political position and significance this class becomes more clearly defined, when its means are made as independent of the wealth of the state as they are of the uncertainty of trade, the desire for gain, and the fluctuations of property. It is secure from the favour at once of the executive and of the multitude. It is further secured even from its own caprice, since the members of this class, who are called to this office, do without the rights exercised by the other citizens. They do not freely dispose of their property, nor do they divide it equally among their children, whom they love equally. This wealth becomes an inalienable inheritance burdened by primogeniture.
Addition.—This class has a more independent volition. The class of property owners is divided into two broad parts, the educated and the peasants. In contradistinction to these two kinds stand both the industrial class, which is dependent on and directed by the general wants, and the universal class, which is essentially dependent upon the state. The security and stability of this propertied class may be increased still more by the institution of primogeniture. This, however, is desirable only in reference to the state, since it entails a sacrifice for the political purpose of giving to the eldest son an independent life. Primogeniture is instituted that the state may reckon upon, not the mere possibility belonging to sentiment, but upon something necessary. Now sentiment, it is true, is not bound up with a competence. But it is relatively necessary that some having a sufficient property and being thereby freed from external pressure, should step forth without hindrance and use their activity for the state. But to establish and foster primogeniture where there are no political institutions would be nothing but a fetter clogging the freedom of private right. Unless this freedom is supplemented by the political sense, it goes to meet its dissolution.
307The right of this part of the substantive class is based upon the nature-principle of the family. But through heavy sacrifices for the state this principle is transformed, and by the transformation this class is set apart for political activity. Hence it is called and entitled to this sphere by birth, without the accident of choice. It thus receives a stable substantive situation intermediate between the subjective caprice and the accidents of the two extremes. While it resembles the princely function (§ 306), it participates in the wants and rights of the other extreme. It thus becomes a support at once to the throne and to the community.
308Under the other part of the general class element is found the fluctuating side of the civic community, which externally because of its numerous membership, and necessarily because of its nature and occupation, takes part in legislation only through deputies. If the civic community appoints these deputies, it does so in accordance with its real nature. It is not a number of atoms gathering together merely for a particular and momentary act without any further bond of union, but a body systematically composed of constituted societies, communities, and corporations. These various circles receive in this way political unity. Through the just claim of this part to be represented by a deputation to be summoned by the princely power, and also through the claim of the first part to make an appearance (§ 307), the existence of the classes and of their assembly finds its peculiar constitutional guarantee.
Note.—It is held that all should share individually in the counsels and decisions regarding the general affairs of state. The reason assigned is that all are members of the state, its affairs are the affairs of all, and for the transaction of these affairs all with their knowledge and will have a right to be present. This is a notion which, although it has no reasonable form, the democratic element would insert into the organism of state, notwithstanding the fact that the state is an organism only because of its reasonable form. This superficial view fastens upon and adheres to the abstraction” member of the state.”But the rational method, the consciousness of the idea, is concrete and is combined with the true practical sense, which is itself nothing else than the rational sense or the sense for the idea. Yet this sense is not to be confounded with mere business routine, or bounded by the horizon of a limited sphere. The concrete state is the whole, articulated into its particular circles, and the member of the state is the member of a circle or class. Only his objective character can be recognized in the state. His general character contains the twofold element, private person and thinking person, and thinking is the consciousness and willing of the universal. But consciousness and will cease to be empty only when they are filled with particularity, and by particularity is meant the characteristic of a particular class. The individual is species, let us say, but has his intrinsic general actuality in the species next above it. He attains actual and vital contact with the universal in the sphere of the corporations and societies (§ 251). It remains open to him by means of his skill to make his way into any class, for which he has the capacity, including the universal class. Another assumption, found in the current idea that all should have a share in the business of state, is that all understand this business. This is as absurd as it, despite its absurdity, is widespread. However, through the channel of public opinion (§ 316) every one is free to express and make good his subjective opinion concerning the universal.
309Counsels and decisions upon universal concerns require delegates, who are chosen under the belief that they have a better understanding of state business than the electors themselves. They are trusted to prosecute not the particular interest of a community or a corporation in opposition to the universal, but the universal only. Hence, to the deputies are not committed specific mandates or explicit instructions. But just as little has the assembly the character merely of a lively gathering of persons, each of whom is bent upon instructing, convincing, and advising the rest.
Addition.—In the case of representation consent is not given directly by all, but by those who are qualified, since here the individual voter is no longer a mere infinite person. Representation is based upon confidence; but confidence is different from simply casting a vote. To be guided by the majority of votes is antagonistic to the principle that I must meet my duty as a particular person. We have confidence in a person when we believe in his insight and his willingness to treat my affair as his own according to the best light of his knowledge and conscience. The principle of the individual subjective will also disappears, for confidence is concerned with a thing, the guiding ideals of a man, his behaviour, his acts, his concrete understanding. A representative must have a character, insight, and will capable of participating in universal business. He speaks not in his character as an abstract individual, but as one who seeks to make good his interests in an assembly occupied with the universal. And the electors merely ask for some guarantee that the delegate shall carry out and further this universal.
310Independent means has its right in the first part of the classes. The guarantee implied in a qualification and sentiment adequate to public ends is found in the second part, which arises out of the fluctuating, variable element of the civic community. It is chiefly found in sentiment, skill, and practical knowledge of the interests of the state and civic community, all of which qualities are acquired through actual conduct of business in the magistracies and public offices, and are preserved by practical use. It is found present, too, in the official or political sense, which is fashioned and tested by actual experience.
Note.—Subjective opinion readily finds the demand for guarantees superfluous or injurious, when it is made upon the so-called people. But the state contains the objective as its distinguishing trait, and not subjective opinion with its self-confidence. Individuals can be for the state only what in them is objectively recognizable and approved. Since this second part of the class-element has its root in particular interests and concerns, where accident, change, and caprice have the right to disport themselves, the state must here look the more closely after the objective.
The external qualification of a certain property appears, when taken abstractly, a one-sided external extreme, in contrast with the other just as one-sided extreme, namely, the mere subjective confidence and opinion of the electors. Each in its abstraction is distinguished from the concrete qualifications, indicated in § 302, which are required of those who advise concerning the business of state.—Nevertheless, in the choice of a magistrate or other officer of a society or an association, a property qualification is rightly made a condition, especially as much of the business is administered without remuneration. This qualification has also direct value in regard to the political business of the classes, if the members receive no salary.
311Deputies from the civic community should be acquainted with the particular needs and interests of the body which they represent, and also with the special obstacles which ought to be removed. They should therefore be chosen from amongst themselves. Such a delegation is naturally appointed by the different corporations of the civic community (§ 308) by a simple process, which is not disturbed by abstractions and atomistic notions. Thus they fulfil the point of view of the community directly, and either an election is altogether superfluous, or the play of opinion and caprice is reduced to a minimum.
Note.—It is a manifest advantage to have amongst the delegates individuals who represent every considerable special branch of the community, such as trade, manufacture, etc. These individuals must be thoroughly acquainted with their branch and belong to it. In the idea of a loose, indefinite election this important circumstance is given over to accident. Every branch, however, has an equal right to be represented. To regard the deputies as representatives has a significance that is organic and rational, only if they are not representatives of mere separate individuals or of a mere multitude, but of one of the essential spheres of the community and of its larger interests. Representation no longer means that one person should take the place of another. Rather is the interest itself actually present in the person of the representative, since he is there in behalf of his own objective nature.
Of elections by means of many separate persons it may be observed that there is necessarily little desire to vote, because one vote has so slight an influence. Even when those who are entitled to vote are told how extremely valuable their privilege is, they do not vote. Hence occurs just the opposite of what is sought. The selection passes into the hands of a few, a single party, or a special accidental interest, which should rather be neutralized.
312Of the two elements comprised under the classes, each brings into council a particular modification. As one of these elements has within the sphere of the classes the peculiar function of mediation, and that, too, between two things which both exist, it has a separate existence. The assembly of the classes is thus divided into two chambers.
313By this separation the number of courts is increased, and there is a greater certainty of mature judgment. Moreover, an accidental decision, secured on the spur of the moment by a simple majority of the votes, is rendered much less probable. But these are not the main advantages. There is, besides, smaller opportunity or occasion for direct opposition to arise between the class element and the government. Or in the case when the mediating element is also found on the side of the lower chamber, the insight of this lower house becomes all the stronger, since it in this case appears to be more unpartisan and its opposition to be neutralized.
314The classes are not the sole investigators of the affairs of state and sole judges of the general interest. Rather do they form merely an addition (§ 301). Their distinctive trait is that, as they represent the members of the civic community who have no share in the government, it is through their co-operating knowledge, counsel, and judgment that the element of formal freedom attains its right. Besides, a general acquaintance with state affairs is more widely extended through the publicity given to the transactions of the classes.
315By means of this avenue to knowledge public opinion first attains to true thoughts, and to an insight into the condition and conception of the state and its concerns. It thus first reaches the capacity of judging rationally concerning them. It learns, besides, to know and esteem the management, talents, virtues, and skill of the different officers of state. While these talents by receiving publicity are given a strong impulse towards development and an honourable field for exhibiting their worth, they are also an antidote for the pride of individuals and of the multitude, and are one of the best means for their education.
Addition.—To open the proceedings of the assembly of classes to the public is of great educational value, especially for the citizens. By it the people learn most certainly the true nature of their interests. There prevails extensively the idea that everybody knows already what is good for the state, and that this general knowledge is merely given utterance to in a state assembly. But, indeed, the very opposite is the fact. Here, first of all are developed virtues, talents, skill, which have to serve as examples. Indeed, these assemblies may be awkward for the ministers, who must here buckle on their wit and eloquence to resist the attacks of their opponents. Publicity is the greatest opportunity for instruction in the state interests generally. Amongst a people, where publicity is the rule, there is seen quite a different attitude towards the state than in those places where state assemblies are not found or are secret. By the publication of every proceeding, the chambers are first brought into union with the larger general opinion. It is shown that what a man fancies when he is at home with his wife and friends is one thing, and quite another thing what occurs in a great gathering where one clever stroke annihilates the preceding.
316Formal subjective freedom, implying that individuals as such should have and express their own judgment, opinion, and advice concerning affairs of state, makes its appearance in that aggregate, which is called public opinion. In it what is absolutely universal, substantive, and true is joined with its opposite, the independent, peculiar, and particular opinions of the many. This phase of existence is therefore the actual contradiction of itself; knowledge is appearance, the essential exists directly as the unessential.
Addition.—Public opinion is the unorganized means through which what a people wills and thinks is made known. That which is effective in the state must indeed be in organic relation to it; and in the constitution this is the case. But at all times public opinion has been a great power, and it is especially so in our time, when the principle of subjective freedom has such importance and significance. What now shall be confirmed is confirmed no longer through force, and but little through use and wont, but mainly by insight and reasons.
317Public opinion contains therefore the eternal substantive principles of justice, the true content and result of the whole constitution, of legislation, and of the universal condition in general. It exists in the form of sound human understanding, that is, of an ethical principle which in the shape of prepossessions runs through everything. It contains the true wants and right tendencies of actuality.
But when this inner phase comes forth into consciousness, it appears to imaginative thinking in the form of general propositions. It claims to be of interest partly on its own separate account; but it also comes to the assistance of concrete reasoning upon felt wants and upon the events, arrangements, and relations of the state. When this happens, there is brought forward also the whole range of accidental opinion, with its ignorance and perversion, its false knowledge and incorrect judgment. Now, as to the consciousness of what is peculiar in thought and knowledge, with which the present phenomenon has to do, it may be said that the worse an opinion is, the more peculiar and unique it is. The bad is in its content wholly particular and unique; the rational, on the contrary, is the absolutely universal. Yet it is the unique upon which opinion founds its exalted self-esteem.
Note.—Hence it is not to be regarded merely as a difference in the subjective point of view when it is declared on one side
“Vox populi, vox dei; "
and on the other side (in Ariosto, for example),’
" Che ‘1 Volgare ignorante ogn’ un riprenda E parli piu di quel che meno intenda; "
both phases are found side by side in public opinion. Since truth and endless error are so directly united in it,
' Or in Goethe:
" Zuschlagen kann die Masse, Da 1st sie respektabel; Urtheilen gelingt ihr miserabel.”
either the one or the other is not truly in earnest. It may seem hard to decide which is in earnest; and it would still be hard, even if we were to confine ourselves to the direct expression of public opinion. But since in its inner being public opinion is the substantive, it is truly in earnest only about that. Yet the substantive cannot be extracted from public opinion; it, by its very nature as substantive, can be known only out of itself and on its own account. No matter what passion is expended in support of an opinion, no matter how seriously it is defended or attacked, this is no criterion of its practical validity. Yet least of all would opinion tolerate the idea that its earnestness is not earnest at all.
A great mind has publicly raised the question, whether it be permitted to deceive a people. We must answer that a people does not allow itself to be deceived in regard to its substantive basis, or the essence and definite character of its spirit; but in regard to the way in which it knows this, and judges of its acts and phases, it deceives itself.
Addition.—The principle of the modern world demands that what every man is bound to recognize must seem to him justified. He, moreover, has had a voice in the discussion and decision. If he has given his word and indicated that he is responsible, his subjectivity is satisfied, and he allows many things to go unchallenged. In France freedom of speech has always proved less dangerous than silence. One fears that if a man is silent he will retain his aversion to an object; but reasoning upon it furnishes a safety-valve and brings satisfaction, while the object, in the meantime, pursues its way unmolested.
318Public opinion deserves, therefore, to be esteemed and despised; to be despised in its concrete consciousness and expression, to be esteemed in its essential basis. At best, its inner nature makes merely an appearance in its concrete expression, and that, too, in a more or less troubled shape. Since it has not within itself the means of drawing distinctions, nor the capacity to raise its substantive side into definite knowledge, independence of it is the first formal condition of anything great and reasonable, whether in actuality or in science. Of any reasonable end we may be sure that public opinion will ultimately be pleased with it, recognize it, and constitute it one of its prepossessions.
Addition.—In public opinion all is false and true, but to find out the truth in it is the affair of the great man. He who tells the time what it wills and means, and then brings it to completion, is the great man of the time. In his act the inner significance and essence of the time is actualized. Who does not learn to despise public opinion, which is one thing in one place and another in another, will never produce anything great.
319The liberty of taking part in state affairs, the pricking impulse to say and to have said one’s opinion, is directly secured by police laws and regulations, which, however, hinder and punish the excess of this liberty. Indirect security is based upon the government’s strength, which lies mainly in the rationality of its constitution and the stability of its measures, but partly also in the publicity given to the assemblies of the classes. Security is guaranteed by publicity in so far as the assemblies voice the mature and educated insight into the interests of the state, and pass over to others what is less significant, especially if they are disabused of the idea that the utterances of these others are peculiarly important and efficacious. Besides, a broad guarantee is found in the general indifference and contempt, with which shallow and malicious utterances are quickly and effectually visited.
Note.—One means of freely and widely participating in public affairs is the press, which, in its more extended range, is superior to speech, although inferior in vivacity.—To define the liberty of the press as the liberty to speak and write what one pleases is parallel to the definition of liberty iu general, as liberty to do what one pleases. These views belong to the undeveloped crudity and superficiality of fanciful theorizing. Nowhere so much as in this matter does formalism hold its ground so obstinately, and so little permits itself to be influenced by reasons. And this was to be expected, because the object is here the most transient, accidental, and particular in the whole range of opinion, with its infinite variety of content and aspect. Of course, there is no obscurity about a direct summons to steal, murder, or revolt. But, aside from that, much depends on the manner and form of expression. The words may seem to be quite general and undefined, and yet may conceal a perfectly definite significance. Besides, they may have consequences, which are not actually expressed. Indeed, it may even be debated whether these consequences are really in the expression and properly follow from it. This indefiniteness in the form and in the substance does not admit of the laws attaining in this case the precision usually demanded of laws. Since in this field crime, wrong, and injustice have their most particular and subjective shape, the indefiniteness of the wrong causes the sentence also to be completely subjective. Besides, the injury is in this matter sought to be done to and make itself real in the thought, opinion, and will of others. But it thus comes into contact with the freedom of others, upon whom it depends whether the act is actually an injury or not.
Hence, the laws are open to criticism because of their indefiniteness. By the skilful use of terms they may be evaded; or, on the other hand, it may be contended that the sentence is merely subjective. It may be maintained further that an expression is not a deed but only an opinion, or thought, or a simple saying. Thus, from the mere subjectivity of content and from the insignificance of a mere opinion or saying the inference is drawn that these words should pass unpunished. Yet in the same breath there is demanded as great a respect and esteem for that very opinion of mine as for my real mental possession, and for the utterance of that opinion as for the deliberate utterance of a mental possession.
The fact remains that injury to the honour of individuals generally, as libel, abuse, disdainful treatment of the government, its officials and officers, especially the person of the prince, contempt for the laws, incitement to civil broil, etc., are all crimes or faults of different magnitudes. The greater indefiniteness of these acts, due to the element in which they find utterance, does not annul their real character. It simply causes the subjective ground, on which the offence is committed, to decide the nature and shape of the reaction. It is this subjective nature of the offence, which in the reaction converts subjectivity and uncertainty into necessity, whether this reaction be mere prevention of crime by the police or specific punishment. Here, as always, formalism relies on isolated aspects, belonging to the external appearance, and seeks by these abstractions of its own creation to reason away the real and concrete nature of the thing.
As to the sciences, they, if they are sciences in reality, are not found in the region of opinion and subjective thought, nor does their method of presentation consist in the adroit use of terms, or allusions, or half-uttered, half-concealed opinions, but in the simple, definite, and open expression of the sense and meaning. Hence, the sciences do not come under the category of public opinion (§ 316).
For the rest, the element in which public opinion finds utterance and becomes an overt and tangible act is, as we have already observed, the intelligence, principles, and opinions of others. It is this element which determines the peculiar effect of these acts or the danger of them to individuals, the community or the state (§ 218), just as a spark, if thrown upon a heap of gunpowder, is much more dangerous than if thrown on the ground, where it goes out and leaves no trace.—Hence, as the right of science finds security in the content of its matter, so also may an uttered wrong find security, or, at least, toleration, in the contempt with which it is received. Offences, which are in strictness punishable at law, may thus partly come under a kind of nemesis. Internal impotence, by opposing itself to the talents and virtues, by which it feels oppressed, comes in this way to itself, and gives self-consciousness to its own nothingness. A more harmless form of nemesis was found amongst the Roman soldiers in the satirical songs directed against their emperors on the triumphal march. Having gone through hard service, and yet failing to secure mention in the list of honours, they sought to get even with the emperor in this jesting way. But even the nemesis which is bad and malevolent is, when treated with scorn, deprived of its effect. Like the public, which to some extent forms a circle for this kind of activity, it is limited to a meaningless delight in others’ misfortunes and to a condemnation, which is inherent in itself.
320There is the subjectivity, which is the dissolution of the established state life. It has its external manifestation in the opinion or reasoning, which, in seeking to make good its own random aims, destroys itself. This subjectivity has its true reality in its opposite, namely, in that subjectivity, which, being identical with the substantive will, and constituting the conception of the princely power, is the ideality of the whole; This higher subjectivity has not as yet received in this treatise its right and visible embodi-
Addition.—We have already regarded subjectivity as existing in the monarch, and in that capacity occupying the pinnacle of the state. The other side of subjectivity manifests itself arbitrarily and quite externally in public opinion. The subjectivity of the monarch is in itself abstract, but it should be concrete, and should as concrete be the ideality which diffuses itself over the whole. In the state which is at peace, all branches of the civic life have their subsistence, but this subsistence beside and outside of one another the branches have only as it issues out of the idea of the whole. This process or idealization of the whole must also have its own manifestation.
II. External Sovereignty.
321Internal sovereignty (§ 278) is this ideality in so far as the elements of spirit, and of the state as the embodiment of spirit, are unfolded in their necessity, and subsist as organs of the state. But spirit, involving a reference to itself, which is negative and infinitely free, becomes an independent existence, which has incorporated the subsistent differences, and hence is exclusive. So constituted, the state has an individuality, which exists essentially as an individual, and in the sovereign is a real, direct individual (§ 279).
322Individuality, as exclusive and independent existence, appears as a relation to other self-dependent states. The independent existence of the actual spirit finds an embodiment in this general self-dependence, which is, therefore, the first freedom and highest dignity of a
Note.—Those who, out of a desire for a collective whole, which will constitute a more or less self-dependent state, and have its own centre, are willing to abandon their own centre and self-dependence, and form with others a new whole, are ignorant of the nature of a collective whole, and underrate the pride of a people in its independence.—The force, which states have on their first appearance in history, is this self-dependence, even though it is quite abstract and has no further internal development. Hence, in its most primitive manifestation, the state has at its head an individual, whether he be patriarch, chief, or what not.
323In actual reality, this negative reference of the state to itself appears as reference to each other of two independent things, as though the negative were some external thing. This negative reference has, therefore, in its existence the form of an event, involving accidental occurrences coming from without. But it is in fact its own highest element, its real infinitude, the idealization of all its finite materials. The substance, as the absolute power, is here brought into contrast with all that is individual and particular, such as life, property, the rights of property, or even wider circles, and makes their relative worthlessness a fact for consciousness.
324The phase, according to which the interest and right of individuals is made a vanishing factor, is at the same time a positive element, forming the basis of their, not accidental and fleeting, but absolute individuality. This relation and the recognition of it constitute their substantial duty. Property and life, not to speak of opinions and the ordinary routine of existence, they must sacrifice, if necessary, in order to preserve the substantive individuality, independence, and sovereignty of the state.
Note.—It is a very distorted account of the matter when the state, in demanding sacrifices from the citizens, is taken to be simply the civic community, whose object is merely the security of life and property. Security cannot possibly be obtained by the sacrifice of what is to be
Herein is to be found the ethical element in war. War is not to be regarded as an absolute evil. It is not a merely external accident, having its accidental ground in the passions of powerful individuals or nations, in acts of injustice, or in anything which ought not to be. Accident befalls that which is by nature accidental, and this fate is a necessity. So from the standpoint of the conception and in philosophy the merely accidental vanishes, because in it, as it is a mere appearance, is recognized its essence, namely, necessity. It is necessary that what is finite, such as life and property, should have its contingent nature exposed, since contingency is inherent in the conception of the finite. This necessity has in one phase of it the form of a force of nature, since all that is finite is mortal and transient. But in the ethical life, that is to say, the state, this force and nature are separated. Necessity becomes in this way exalted to the work of freedom, and becomes a force which is ethical. What from the standpoint of nature is transient, is now transient because it is willed to be so; and that, which is fundamentally negative, becomes substantive and distinctive individuality in the ethical order.
It is often said, for the sake of edification, that war makes short work of the vanity of temporal things. It is the element by which the idealization of what is particular receives its right and becomes an actuality. Moreover, by it, as I have elsewhere expressed it,” finite pursuits are rendered unstable, and the ethical health of peoples is preserved. ] Just as the movement of the ocean prevents the corruption which would be the result of perpetual calm, so by war people escape the corruption which would be occasioned by a continuous or eternal peace.”—The view that this quotation contains merely a philosophical idea, or, as it is sometimes called, a justification of providence, and that actual war needs another kind of justification, will be taken up later. The idealization, which comes to the surface in war, viewed as an accidental foreign relation, is the same as the ideality by virtue of which the internal state functions are organic elements of the whole. This principle is found in history in such a fact as that successful wars have prevented civil broils and strengthened the internal power of the state. So, too, peoples, who have been unwilling or afraid to endure internal sovereignty, have been subjugated by others, and in their struggles for independence have had honour and success small in proportion to their failure to establish within themselves a central political power; their freedom died through their fear of its dying. Moreover, states, which have no guarantee of independence in the strength of their army, states, e.g., that are very small in comparison with their neighbours, have continued to subsist because of their internal constitution, which merely of itself would seem to promise them neither internal repose nor external security. These phenomena are illustrations of our principle drawn from history.
Addition.—In peace the civic life becomes more and more extended. Each separate sphere walls itself in and becomes exclusive, and at last there is a stagnation of mankind. Their particularity becomes more and more fixed and ossified. Unity of the body is essential to health, and where the organs become hard death ensues. Everlasting peace is frequently demanded as the ideal towards which mankind must move. Hence, Kant proposed an alliance of princes, which should settle the controversies of states, and the Holy Alliance was probably intended to be an institution of this kind. But the state is individual, and in individuality negation is essentially implied. Although a number of states may make themselves into a family, the union, because it is an individuality, must create an opposition, and so beget an enemy. As a result of war peoples are strengthened, nations, which are involved in civil quarrels, winning repose at home by means of war abroad. It is true that war occasions insecurity of possessions, but this real insecurity is simply a necessary commotion. From the pulpit we hear much regarding the uncertainty, vanity, and instability of temporal things. At the very same time every one, no matter how much he is impressed by these utterances, thinks that he will manage to retain his own stock and store. But if the uncertainty comes in the form of hussars with glistening sabres, and begins to work in downright earnest, this touching edification turns right about face, and hurls curses at the invader. In spite of this, wars arise, when they lie in the nature of the matter. The seeds spring up afresh, and words are silenced before the earnest repetitions of history.
325. Sacrifice for the sake of the individuality of the state is the substantive relation of all the citizens, and is, thus, a universal duty. It is ideality on one of its sides, and stands in contrast to the reality of particular subsistence. Hence it itself becomes a specific relation, and to it is dedicated a class of its own, the class whose virtue is bravery.
326Dissensions between states may arise out of any one specific side of their relations to each other. Through these dissensions the specific part of the state devoted to defence receives its distinguishing character. But if the whole state, as such, is in danger of losing its independence, duty summons all the citizens to its defence. If the whole becomes a single force, and is torn from its internal position and goes abroad, defence becomes converted into a war of conquest.
Note.—The weaponed force of the state constitutes its standing army. The specific function of defending the state must be intrusted to a separate class. This proceeding is due to the same necessity by which each of the other particular elements, interests, or affairs, has a separate place, as in marriage, the industrial class, the business class, and the political class. Theorizing, which wanders up and down with its reasons, goes about to contemplate the greater advantages or the greater disadvantages of a standing army. Mere opinion decides against an army, because the conception of the matter is harder to understand than are separate and external sides. Another reason is that the interests and aims of particularity, expenses, consequent higher taxation, etc., are counted of greater concern by the civic community than is the absolutely necessary. On this view the necessary is valuable only as a means to the preservation of the various special civic interests.
327Bravery taken by itself is a formal virtue, since in it freedom is farthest removed from all special aims, possessions, and enjoyments, and even from life. But it involves a negation or renunciation of only external realities, and does not carry with it a completion of the spiritual nature. Thus, the sentiment of courage may be based upon any one of a variety of grounds, and its actual result may be not for the brave themselves, but only for others.
Addition.—The military class is the class of universality. To it are assigned the defence of the state and the duty of bringing into existence the ideality implicit in itself. In other words it must sacrifice itself. Bravery is, it is true, of different sorts. The courage of the animal, or the robber, the bravery due to a sense of honour, the bravery of chivalry, are not yet the true forms of it. True bravery in civilized peoples consists in a readiness to offer up oneself in the service of the state, so that the individual counts only as one amongst many. Not personal fearlessness, but the taking of one’s place in a universal cause, is the valuable feature of it. In India five hundred men conquered twenty thousand, who were by no means cowardly but lacked the sense of co-operation.
328The content of bravery as a sentiment is found in the true absolute final end, the sovereignty of the state. Bravery realizes this end, and in so doing gives up personal reality. Hence, in this feeling are found the most rigorous and direct antagonisms. There is present in it a selfsacrifice, which is yet the existence of freedom. In it is found the highest self-control or independence, which yet in its existence submits to the mechanism of an external order and a life of service. An utter obedience or complete abnegation of one’s own opinion and reasonings, even an absence of one’s own spirit, is coupled with the most intense and comprehensive direct presence of the spirit and of resolution. The most hostile and hence most personal attitude towards individuals is allied with perfect indifference, or even, it may be, a kindly feeling towards them as individuals.
Note.—To risk one’s life is indeed something more than fear of death, but it is yet a mere negative, having no independent character and value. Only the positive element, the aim and content of the act, gives significance to the feeling of fearlessness. Bobbers or murderers, having in view a crime, adventurers bent upon gratifying merely their own fancy, risk their lives without fear.—The principle of the modern world, that is, the thought and the universal, have given bravery a higher form. It now seems to be mechanical in its expression, being the act not of a particular person, but of a member of the whole. As antagonism is now directed, not against separate persons, but against a hostile whole, personal courage appears as impersonal. To this change is due the invention of the gun; and this by no means chance invention has transmuted the merely personal form of bravery into the more abstract.
329The state has a foreign aspect, because it is an individual subject. Hence, its relation to other states falls within, the princely function. Upon this function it devolves solely and directly to command the armed force, to entertain relations with other states through ambassadors, to decide upon peace and war, and to conduct other negotiations.
Addition.—In almost all European countries the individual summit is the princely function, which has charge of foreign affairs. Wherever the constitution requires the existence of classes or estates, it may be asked whether the classes, which in any ease control the supplies, should not also resolve upon war and peace. In England, for example, no unpopular war can be waged. But if it is meant that princes and cabinets are more subject to passion than the houses, and hence that the houses should decide whether there should be war or peace, it must be replied, that often whole nations have been roused to a pitch of enthusiasm surpassing that of their princes. Frequently in England the whole people have insisted upon war, and in a certain measure compelled the ministers to wage it. The popularity of Pitt was due to his knowing how to meet what the nation willed. Not till afterwards did calm give rise to the consciousness that the war was utterly useless, and undertaken without adequate means. Moreover, a state is connected not only with another but with several others, and the complications are so delicate that they can be managed only by the highest power.
B. International Law.
330International law arises out of the relation to one another of independent states. Whatever is absolute in this relation receives the form of a command, because its reality depends upon a distinct sovereign will.
Addition.—A state is not a private person, but in itself a completely independent totality. Hence, the relation of states to one another is not merely that of morality and private right. It is often desired that states should be regarded from the standpoint of private right and morality. But the position of private persons is such that they have over them a law court, which realizes what is intrinsically right. A relation between states ought also to be intrinsically right, and in mundane affairs that which is intrinsically right ought to have power. But as against the state there is no power to decide what is intrinsically right and to realize this decision. Hence, we must here remain by the absolute command. States in their relation to one another are independent and look upon the stipulations which they make one with another as provisional.
331The nation as a state is the spirit substantively realized and directly real. Hence, it is the absolute power on earth. As regards other states it exists in sovereign independence. Hence, to exist for and be recognized by another as such a state is its primary absolute right. But this right is yet only formal, and the state’s demand to be recognized, when based on these external relations, is abstract. Whether the state exists absolutely and in concrete fact, depends upon its content, constitution, and condition. Even then the recognition, containing the identity of both inner and outer relations, depends upon the view and will of another.
Note.—Just as the individual person is not real unless related to others (§ 71 and elsewhere), so the state is not really individual unless related to other states (§ 322). The legitimate province of a state in its foreign relations, and more especially of the princely function, is on one side wholly internal; a state shall not meddle with the internal affairs of another state. Yet, on the other side, it is essential for its completeness that it be recognized by others. But this recognition demands as a guarantee that it shall recognize those who recognize it, and will have respect for their independence. Therefore they cannot be indifferent to its internal affairs.—In the case of a nomadic people, or any people occupying a lower grade of civilization, the question arises how far it can be considered as a state. The religious opinions formerly held by Jews, and Mahomedans may contain a still higher opposition, which does not permit of the universal identity implied in
Addition.—When Napoleon, before the peace of Campoformio, said, “The French Republic needs recognition as little as the sun requires to be recognized,” he really indicated the strength of the existence, which already carried with it a guarantee of recognition, without its having been expressed.
332The direct reality, in which, states stand to one another, sunders itself into various relations, whose nature proceeds from independent caprice on both sides, and hence has as a general thing the formal character of a contract. The subject matter of these contracts is, however, of infinitely narrower range than of those in the civic community. There individuals are dependent upon one another in a great variety of ways, while independent states are wholes, which find satisfaction in the main within themselves.
333International law, or the law which is universal, and is meant to hold absolutely good between states, is to be distinguished from the special content of positive treaties, and has at its basis the proposition that treaties, as they involve the mutual obligations of states, must be kept inviolate. But because the relation of states to one another has sovereignty as its principle, they are so far in a condition of nature one to the other. Their rights have reality not in a general will, which is constituted as a superior power, but in their particular wills. Accordingly the fundamental proposition of international law remains a good intention, while in the actual situation the relation established by the treaty is being continually shifted or abrogated.
Note.—There is no judge over states, at most only a referee or mediator, and even the mediatorial function is only an accidental thing, being due to particular wills. Kant’s idea was that eternal peace should be secured by an alliance of states. This alliance should settle every dispute, make impossible the resort to arms for a decision, and be recognized by every state. . This idea assumes that states are in accord, an agreement which, strengthened though it might be by moral, religious, and other considerations, nevertheless always rested on the private sovereign will, and was therefore liable to be disturbed by the element of 334. Therefore, when the particular wills of states can come to no agreement, the controversy can be settled only by war. Owing to the wide field and the varied relations of the citizens of different states to one another, injuries occur easily and frequently. What of these injuries is to be viewed as a specific breach of a treaty or as a violation of formal recognition and honour remains from the nature of the case indefinite. A state may introduce its infinitude and honour into every one of its separate compartments. It is all the more tempted to make or seek some occasion for a display of irritability, if the individuality within it has been strengthened by long internal rest, and desires an outlet for its pent-up activity.
335Moreover, the state as a spiritual whole cannot be satisfied merely with taking notice of the fact of an injury, because injury involves a threatened danger arising from the possible action of the other state. Then, too, there is the weighing of probabilities, guesses at intentions, and so forth, all of which have a part in the creation of strife.
336Each self-dependent state has the standing of a particular will; and it is on this alone that the validity of treaties depends. This particular will of the whole is in its content its well-being, and well-being constitutes the highest law in its relation to another. All the more is this so since the idea of the state involves that the opposition between right or abstract freedom on one side and the complete specific content or well-being on the other is superseded. It is to states as concrete wholes that recognition (§ 331) is first granted.
337The substantive weal of the state is its weal as a particular state in its definite interests and condition, its peculiar external circumstances, and its particular treaty obligations. Thus the government is a particular wisdom and not universal providence (§ 324, note). So, too, its end in relation to other states, the principle justifying its wars and treaties, is not a general thought, such as philanthropy, but the actually wronged or threatened weal in its definite particularity.
Note.—At one time a lengthy discussion was held with regard to the opposition between morals and politics, and the demand was made that politics should be in accordance with morality. Here it may be remarked merely that the commonweal has quite another authority than the weal of the individual, and that the ethical substance or the state has directly its reality or right not in an abstract but in a concrete existence. This existence, and not one of the many general thoughts held to be moral commands, must be the principle of its conduct. The view that politics in this assumed opposition is presumptively in the wrong depends on a shallow notion both of morality and of the nature of the state in relation to morality.
338Although in war there prevails force, contingency, and absence of right, states continue to recognize one another as states. In this fact is implied a covenant, by virtue of which each state retains absolute value. Hence, war, even when actively prosecuted, is understood to be temporary, and in international law is recognized as containing the possibility of peace. Ambassadors, also, are to be respected. War is not to be waged against internal institutions, or the peaceable family and private life, or private persons.
Addition.—Modern wars are carried on humanely. One person is not set in hate over against another. Personal hostilities occur at most in the case of the pickets. But in the army as an army, enmity is something undetermined, and gives place to the duty which each person owes to
339For the rest, the capture of prisoners in time of war, and in time of peace the concession of rights of private intercourse to the subjects of another state, depend principally upon the ethical observances of nations. In them is embodied that inner universality of behaviour, which is preserved under all relations.
Addition.—The nations of Europe form a family by virtue of the universal principle of their legislation, their ethical observances, and their civilization. Amongst them international behaviour is ameliorated, while there prevails elsewhere a mutual infliction of evils. The relation of one state to another fluctuates; no judge is present to compose differences; the higher judge is simply the universal and absolute spirit, the spirit of the world.
340As states are particular, there is manifested in their relation to one another a shifting play of internal particularity of passions, interests, aims, talents, virtues, force, wrong, vice, and external contingency on the very largest scale. In this play even the ethical whole, national independence, is exposed to chance. The spirit of a nation is an existing individual having in particularity its objective actuality and self-consciousness. Because of this particularity it is limited. The destinies and deeds of states in their connection with one another are the visible dialectic of the finite nature of these spirits. Out of this dialectic the universal spirit, the spirit of the world, the unlimited spirit, produces itself. It has the highest right of all, and exercises its right upon the lower spirits in world-history. The history of the world is the world’s court of judgment.
341. The universal spirit exists concretely in art in the form of perception and image, in religion in the form of feeling and pictorial imaginative thinking, and in philosophy in the form of pure free thought. (In world-history this concrete existence of spirit is the spiritual actuality in the total range of its internality and externality. It is a court of judgment because in its absolute universality the particular, namely, the Penates, the civic community, and the national spirit in their many-coloured reality are all merely ideal. The movement of spirit in this case consists in visibly presenting these spheres as merely ideal.
342. Moreover, world-history is not a court of judgment, whose principle is force, nor is it the abstract and irrational necessity of a blind fate. It is self-caused and self-realized reason, and its actual existence in spirit is knowledge.. Hence, its development issuing solely out or the conception of its freedom is a necessary development of the elements of reason. It is, therefore, an unfolding of the spirit’s self-consciousness and freedom. It is the exhibition and actualization of the universal spirit.
343. The history of spirit is its overt deeds, for only what it does it is, and its deed is to make itself as a spirit the object of its consciousness, to explain and lay hold upon itself by reference to itself. To lay hold upon itself is its being and principle, and the completion of this act is at the same time self-renunciation and transition. To express the matter formally, the spirit which again apprehends what has already been grasped and actualized, or, what is the same thing, passes through self-renunciation into itself, is the spirit of a higher stage.
Note.—Here occurs the question of the perfection and education of humanity. They who have argued in favour of this idea, have surmised something of the nature of spirit. They have understood that spirit has γνῶθι σεαυτόν as a law of its being, and that when it lays hold upon what it itself is, it assumes a higher form. To those who have rejected this idea, spirit has remained an empty word and history a superficial play of accidental and so-called mere human strife and passion. Though in their use of the words “providence” and “design of providence,” they express their belief in a higher control, they do not fill up the notion, but announce that the design of providence is for them unknowable and inconceivable.
344States, peoples, and individuals are established upon their own particular definite principle, which has systematized reality in their constitutions and in the entire compass of their surroundings. Of this systematized reality they are aware, and in its interests are absorbed. Yet are they the unconscious tools and organs of the world-spirit, through whose inner activity the lower forms pass away. Thus the spirit by its own motion and for its own end makes ready and works out the transition into its next higher stage.
345Justice and virtue, wrong, force, and crime, talents, and their results, small and great passions, innocence and guilt, the splendour of individuals, national life, independence, the fortune and misfortune of states and individuals, have in the sphere of conscious reality their definite meaning and value, and find in that sphere judgment and their due. This due is, however, as yet incomplete. In world-history, which lies beyond this range of vision, the idea of the world-spirit, in that necessary phase of it which constitutes at any time its actual stage, is given its absolute right. The nation, then really flourishing, attains to happiness and renown, and its deeds receive completion.
346Since history i s the embodimeTit of sp irit in the fo rm of events, that is, of d irect nat ural reahty, the stages of development are present as dirpft natnra,1 principles. Because they are natural, they conform to the nature of a mu Mplicity, and exist o ne outs ide the ot her. Hence, to each nation is to be ascribed a sin gle pr inciple, comprised under its geogra phical and, anthropoloBjical existence.
347To the nation, whose natural principle is one of these stages, is assigned the accomplishment of it through the process characteristic of the self-developing self-consciousness of the world-spirit.’^ fin the history of the world this nation is for a given epoch dominant, although it can make an epoch but once (§ 346). In contrast vnth the absolute right of this nation to be the bearer of the current phase in the development of the world-spirit, the spirits of other existing nations are void of right, and they, like those whose epochs are gone, count “^o longer in the history of