:jfev x a- GIFT OF MICHAEL REE&E GERMAN PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS FOK ENGLISH READERS AND STUDENTS. EDITED BY GEORGE S. MORRIS. HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE AND OF HISTORY. GRIGGS'S PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS. Under the editorial supervision of Prof. G. S. Morris. Devoted to a Critical Exposition of the Master- pieces of German Thought. Kant's Critique of Pure Eeason. By Prof. G. S. MORRIS, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan. $1.25. Schilling's Transcendental Idealism. By Prof. JOHN WATSON, LL.D., of Queen's University, Kingston, Cana- da. $1.25. Fichte's Science of Knowledge. By Prof. C. C. EVERETT, D.D., of Harvard University. $1 .25. Hegel's .Esthetics. By Prof. J. S. KEDNEY, S.T.D., of the Seabury Divinity School. $1.25. Kant'S Ethics. By President NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D., of Yale College. $1.25. Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of History. By Prof. G. S. MORRIS, Ph.D. $1.25. Other Volumes in Preparation. A handy series of the great German thinkers; of much interest and great convenience to scholars and to the more general reader. Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette, This series offers an exceedingly valuable compendium of German philosophic thought, valuable in any tongue, and especially so in the English, in which there is nothing to compare with it. Chicago Times. These excellent books, as remarkable for ability as for clear- ness, will do much to clear the way and make the mastery of the German systems a comparatively easy task. New York Examiner. HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE AND OP HISTORY. AN EXPOSITION BY GEORGE S. MORRIS, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 1887. Copyright, 1887, BY S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. <$) The Governing or Executive Power . . 96 (c) The Legislative Power 97 Representation 99 Public Opinion 103 2. External Sovereignty 105 War as an Ethical Factor 106 B. External Polity 109 CONTENTS. Part Second THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. CHAPTER IV. INTRODUCTORY IDEA.S. The Philosophy of History a Sequel to the Philosophy of the State m History an Ethical Development 114 God in History 116 Law of the Growth of Freedom 118 Geographical Conditions 126 Historical Characterization of Africa 132 CHAPTER V. THE ORIENTAL WORLD. Beginning of the Process of History 138 A. China 139 The Chinese Empire a Magnified Family . . . 140 B. India 146 The Hindu Spirit a Dreaming One 147 C. Persia and the Persian Empire 153 I. The Zend People 156 II. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians 158 CONTENTS. XI ITI. The Persian Empire and its Component Parts 1GO (1) Persia 161 (2) Syria and other Semitic Nations . . 162 (3) Judaea 165 (4) Egypt 169 (5) Transition to the Grecian World . . 176 CHAPTER VI. THE GRECIAN WOULD. Greece presents the "joyous view of the youthful fresh- ness of spiritual life " 179 A. First Period: The Elements of the Grecian Spirit 180 Geographical Environment 181 Heterogeneous and Foreign Origin of the Elements of the Grecian People 181 The Early Royal Houses and their Extinction . . 182 Relation of the Grecian Spirit to Nature . . . 184 The Grecian Spirit essentially Artistic . . . . 187 B. Second Period: The Creations of the Grecian Spirit 189 I. The Subjective Creation : Mastering the Body 1S9 II. The Objective Creation : the Religion and Mythology of the Greeks 190 III. The Political Creation , ... 193 Grecian Democracy 194 (a) The Wars with the Persians . . . 197 (6) Athens 199 0) Sparta 201 ll CONTENTS. 00 The Peloponnesian War ..... 203 'The ruin of Greece proceeding from the development of Individualism . 207 (?) The Macedonian Empire 208 C. Third Period : The Destruction of the Grecian Spirit 210 CHAPTER VII. THE ROMAN WORLD. Grecian and Roman Civilization contrasted . . . . 212 A. Rome till the Second Punic War 214 I. The Elements of the Roman Spirit .... 214 II. History of Rome till the Second Punic War . 217 The Early Kings 217 Gradual Advancement of the Plebeians . 218 B. From the Second Panic War to the Empire . . 220 C. Later History of the Roman World 223 I. The Empire 223 II. Christianity 226 Preparation for Christianity in the Roman World . 228 Christianity fully revealed Man to himself as a Spiritual Being 238 Christian Truth as formulated in the Doc- trine of the Trinity 239 The Historic and the Spiritual Christ ... 243 The Christian Principle as first announced by Jesus 244 Its Development 246 The Organization of the Church .... 250 III. The Byzantine Empire 251 CONTENTS. Xlll CHAPTER VIII. THE GERMANIC WORLD. The Principle of the Germanic World, derived from Christianity, is Universal freedom 255 A. The Elements of the Christian-Germanic World . 255 I. The Barbarian Migrations 255 Original Character of the Germanic Nations 256 II. Mahometanism 260 III. The Empire of Charlemagne 263 B. The Middle Ages 264 I. The Feudal System and the Hierarchy . . 265 II. The Crusades 273 III. The Transition from Feudal Rule to Mon- archy 277 C. Modern Times 231 I. The Reformation 282 Its Watchwords "Faith" and "the witness of the Spirit," or Christian Freedom . 284 II. Influence of the Reformation on Political Development 289 III. " Illumination " and Revolution .... 291 The Revolution in France 300 Contre-coups of the Revolution in other Lands . 304 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE AND OF HISTORY. $art THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. 1 INTRODUCTION. IT is necessary to preface our exposition of Hegel's political and historical philosophy by a few words of explanation regarding the general character and method of his treatment of the whole subject. In his u Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sci- ences " our author distributes the whole matter of philosophy under three main heads, (1) Logic; (2) Philosophy of Nature ; (3) Philosophy of Spirit. The Philosophy of Spirit is primarily the Philosophy of Man, and is again subdivided into three parts,! entitled, respectively, Subjective Spirit, Objective. Spirit, and Absolute Spirit. The first of these sub- 1 G. W. F. Hegel's Grnndlinien der Philosophic des Rechts, oder Naturrecht und Staatsmssenschaft im Grundrisse, Berlin, 1821 ; in Hegel's Complete Works, vol. viii., edited by Eduard Gans, with additions from Hegel's lectures. 1 2 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. divisions considers what may be termed the natural character of man as a spiritual being, and includes such tributary sciences as Anthropology and Psy- chology. The second is the philosophy of the State, or of man in his domestic, economic, and political .relations. The third exhibits man in the perfec- tion of his spiritual character and functions, and comprises the Philosophy of Art, the Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy pure and simple, the supreme and perfect object of which is the Abso- lute Spirit, the self-conscious and self -revealing- God, through whom and for whom are all things. For man, it is found, approaches the character of absolute spirituality only so far as he recognizes and lives in conscious and voluntary dependence on the everlasting and truly Absolute Spirit, which is God. Thus the " Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sci- ences " is not, as the name might at first suggest, a mere aggregate of separate and unconnected disci- plines, brought together for convenience in a single compendium, like the words in a dictionary. These u Sciences " constitute a system, all the parts of which belong together, and stand in a definite and necessary relation to each other. The " Encyclo- paedia " exhibits them in their systematic order and their articulate relation the one to the other.- All the u Philosophical Sciences " are parts of one high argument, the conclusion of which is for- mally announced in the words of the title of the last subdivision of the Philosophy of Spirit, as men- tioned above. It is to the fuller recognition and INTRODUCTION. 3 comprehension of Absolute Spirit that all knowl- edge progressively tends. Of all human experi- ence, deeply, accurately, philosophically considered, God is the Alpha and the Omega ; He is the begin- ning and the end of all absolute reality. This is the argument of the " Encyclopaedia," this is the argument of Philosophy as exhibited in all of Hegel's works. The order of the Philosophical Sciences is from the abstract to the concrete. It is otherwise and variously described from the part to the whole, from the surface to the centre, from the conditioned effect to the conditioning cause, from that which needs explanation to that which explains itself and all things. Logic considers abstract notions. It is a scientific exposition of the fundamental and determining categories of all thinking experience. Beginning with the most abstract, elementary, and contentless of all thoughts, the thought of pure being, it ends with the " Idea " of an absolute self-conscious personality, as the thought in which all other thoughts are included, the one which they all imply, to which in their order they with increas- ing fulness point, and which they collectively and in their system demonstrate. But abstract thoughts, as such, are shadowy and void ; they are ideal and / subjective, and presuppose an objective realm in which they have reality, and, so to speak, actual; validity. Nature is such a realm, and the second part of the "Encyclopaedia" considers Nature ac- cordingly as the scene of a progressive (though but partial) realization or objectification of what Logic 4 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. contemplates only as abstract terms of thought. So it appears that the proximate ground or condi- tion of thought is the objective reality called Nature. Its fuller or more concrete (though still not final) ground is found in that being -A Man in whom Nature culminates, and who constitutes the primary subject of the " Encyclopaedia's " third part. Man,\ self-conscious, thinking, willing, acting, is subjective and objective, ideal and real, in one. What Nature is implicitly and imperfectly, Man is (or is to be) explicitly and more perfectly. Nature, we may say, is spiritual in a figure or in potency : in man the figure and potency are measurably converted into literal and accomplished fact. So the Philosophy of Man is in a conspicuous sense the Philosophy of Spirit. It extends the experimental demonstration, begun in Logic and carried forward in the Philosophy of Na- ture, that the common and eternal, self-explaining and all-explaining, ground, both of thought and of objective reality, is Absolute or Perfect Spirit. For every step forward in the argument is, as Hegel repeatedly reminds us, a step " backward " toward the eternal cause, or " inward" toward the eternal ground, of all development and all reality. God is not the result of development, but its eternal, omni- present, and ever efficient pre-condition. The " po- tency " of Nature is not a power lodged in Nature to bring forth man independently of God. It is wholly relative to, and is but the sign or index of, a power and a nature eternally actualized in God, without whom neither thought nor Nature nor man were in any degree possible. All existence is, in INTRODUCTION. 5 varying degrees, an incarnation of living Reason, and reflects, as in an image, its spiritual source. In man, self-knowing and self-acting, the incarnation and reflection are most complete. Man, conspicu- - ously, is " in the image of God." In him the finite, experimental revelation of Absolute Being becomes most perfect. In knowing his own thought, in knowing Nature, and in knowing himself, he is raised, as on a stepping-stone, to an elevation from which he knows God. ~Such is the character of the great argument of philosophy, as Hegel understands and develops it. And now some things may be mentioned with refer- ence to his special treatment of the topic which is immediately to engage our attention. First, it is impossible for Hegel, in considering man in his so- cial and historical relations, to abstract him from the ties that bind him to Nature. Apart from these ties man is not intelligible. It is a necessary and demonstrable part of the character of man that he should have a side of unity and correlation with Na- ture and her laws. Nature is his matrix, and the umbilical cord that connects him with her is never in this life severed. Because man is a spiritual be-> ing he is not therefore merely supernatural, and can- not in a scientific treatment be so regarded. Nor is he thus regarded, by Hegel, a fact which becomes even more conspicuously evident in his handling of the Philosophy of History. It cannot justly be com- plained that the method of Hegel is inhospitable or indifferent to any application of the " physical method " in the treatment of man and his relations 6 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. which is warranted by the facts. But while man not merely supernatural, while he is subject to na1 ural conditions and to the secondary influences ol environment, he has yet a side of distinction abov< Nature ; and this is the characteristic thing about? him. To neglect or ignore this would be to miss the most essential thing in the science of man ; it would be Hamlet minus the rdle of Hamlet. This is the error and defect illustrated in the works of . those numerous and influential writers on political philosophy in modern times, to whom " there is no logic of spirit ; " who, in other words, profess and practise agnosticism with reference to the spiritual nature of man (as also with reference to the really spiritual side of Nature herself) , and apply exclu- sively an abstract " physical method," which would make of all human problems mere problems in mechanics. Against this narrowness the work of Hegel will be found to constitute a most energetic, practical protest. To him man, the State, history, are decidedly spiritual values. As such, however, they do not run counter to Nature ; they enter into no rivalry with her. The rather, they find in her tneir connatural servant and instrument, and they ^konor her by fulfilling her prophecies. Secondly, the work of Hegel has nothing in com- mon with theories, ancient and modern, devoted to the speculative construction of a merely " ideal State." " This treatise," he says, in the preface to the Phi- losophic des Rechts, " must, as a philosophical work, be furthest of all removed from an attempt to con- struct an ideal State ; as a work of possible instruct INTRODUCTION. 7 I tion its end cannot be to show the State how it must be, but rather to show how it, the ethical universe, is \to be comprehended." And our author immediately adds, "The task of philosophy is to comprehend that which is ; for that which is, is Reason. The in- dividual man is always a son of his times ; so, too, philosophy is the time in which it exists $ appre- hended in thought* It is just as foolish to suppose that any philosophy is in advance of its present world as to suppose the like in regard to any individ- ual. ... If the theory of an individual does in fact transcend [and so exist out of direct relation to] the actual world of which he is a member, if in his theory he constructs for himself a world ' as it must be,' then we may say of his theory that it exists, indeed, but only in the wax of his fancy, a pliant material, in whicli all things indifferently may be rep- resented." To the eye of an unfriendly criticism Hegel has seemed, in his Philosopliie des Reclits, to carry out these views so rigorously as to warrant the charge that this treatise was occupied only with the attempt to comprehend, as the perfect work to date of civic reason, "the practical and political condi- tions existing in Prussia in 1821," l the year of the original publication of the work. Whatever of ap- parent justice there may be in the charge, there is not enough to deprive Hegel's work of its conspic- uous worth and character as a contribution to the experimental philosophy of the State, and of social relations, taken universally. Thirdly, while the collected works of our author i See Haym's Hegel und seine Zeit, p. 366. Berlin, 1857. 8 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP THE STATE. contain no treatise bearing the express title of ' ' Eth- ics," his PJiilosophie des Reclits is distinctly and pro- foundly ethical, and is a very substantial contribution to ethical science. Any different treatment of the subject would have been impossible for him, in view of his conception of the connection of all of man's social relations with man himself. This connection is viewed by him, not as accidental, but as essential. The language of a recent writer, who declares the State to be " simply the res interna of human nature changed to a res publica or external fully expresses, as far as it goes, the thought of Hegel. Only Hegel would go further, and say explicitly that the res interna is a mere unknown potentiality until it has become a res externa. To him, therefore, all the organic- social relations of man, as included in the State and in universal history, are simply, and in their measure, the objective manifestation or actuali- zation of man. Without them man were not man ; without them he were not the spiritual being that he is. The State, says Hegel, is the human spirit "as it stands in the world." The State exists in obedience to the command which man's spiritual nature lays upon him, tot,Jo_^]ftaaUiimself ; and, secondly, 4&Jie_Jiiaiself. The science of the State cannot, therefore, but be ejiiical. It is, in its meas- ure, the science of man coming to the knowledge of himself through the objective realization and organi- zation of his existence in social relations, and at the same time, on the basis of the self-knowledge thus acquired, going on to perfect this his existence. It is the science of man at work in " the laboratory INTRODUCTION. of moral experiment ; " or, rather, it is the science of what man accomplishes in this " laboratory," and of how he accomplishes it. Fourthly, it will appear in the progress of this > work how, bearing the relation above described to the essential spiritual nature of man, the State c - is vitally connected with that final sphere of hu- man consciousness and activity which is termed ,.. Religion. Fifthly, with reference to the subject of method, it is the professed aim and claim of Hegel in all his works not to approach the subjects treated by him with a preconceived method to be arbitrarily applied to them, but simply to trace and exhibit the method /^ followed by the things treated themselves in their own development. In the present instance the sub-\ ject-matter is man himself, as a spiritual being, j " standing in the world." Thus regarded, man is a being who, with the aid of a growing self-knowledge, , progressively realizes himself, or approaches to the stature of the perfect man ; in other words man, cen- ) trally considered, is ' ' thinking will." Now, Will thus ^ and truly considered is not merely a brute force, nor j simply an original and full-fledged endowment ; it V is something to be acquired, or, more accurately, to J be developed. The method of its development must determine the method to be followed in the present work. In the introduction to his P/iilosophie fas Reclits Hegel treats at length of the laws of the development of Will from its purely formal begin- nings to the stage of concrete and ' ' substantial " fulness. It is enough to state that the order of de- 10 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. velopment is not different from that illustrated in all cases of organic growth, u first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear ; " or first the " abstract " and finally the u concrete ; " first the par- tial and tentative, and then the complete, the state of finished achievement. A still more exact illus-\ tration would perhaps be, first, the advancing foot ;( then the resisting earth; and then, as the " unity/ of these two, actual locomotion (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). The terms mentioned in parenthesis indicate the relation to. each other of the three chap- ters of the Philosophy of the State, the respective . subjects of which might be expressed as (1) Will Objective ; (2) Will Subjective ; (3) Will both Ob- jective and Subjective. It must not be forgotten that this order is to Hegel primarily a logical one, or an order adapted to meet the necessities of a scientific treatment, rather than a temporal one. And, above all, it must be remembered that Will in its completed conception is not regarded by our author as an abstract faculty, but as the whole spiritual and intelligent nature of man in action. Accordingly, one of the intended results" "of Tliapters I. and II. is to show that the attempt to conceive Will as merely objective, that is, on the side of its visible manifestations alone, as is mainly done in abstract treatises on civil law, and to found thereon the whole theory of man in his social existence, or to regard it with the like end in view as purely sub- jective, must fail. Objective (or objectified) Will presupposes subjective Will, and points to it as its INTRODUCTION. 11 immediate and necessary condition. Hence the ne- cessity of the transition from the subject-matter of Chapter I. to that of Chapter II. In like manner subjective Will presupposes and points to, not sim- ply the Will that is merely objective, but the Will in which, as also in all true intelligence, the subjective and objective exist in vital unity. This is the con- crete and actual Will, which realizes itself in the social-organic relations of humanity. Objective and subjective Will, or Abstract Right and Morality, are therefore relative abstractions. The concrete from which they are abstracted is the Ethical World, or Man as he concretely exists and realizes himself in that world. Finally, it must not be forgotten that, as just in- dicated, to Hegel the term ethical has a broader and more concrete meaning than moral. To overlook this circumstance would lead to fatal misunderstand- ings. The temptation to overlook it arises from the fact that in popular usage no such precise distinc- tion is made between the two mentioned terms. CHAPTER I. ABSTRACT RIGHT. OUR beginning is to be made with the abstract conception of Will, by which Hegel means the conception of Will as an " immediate," or un- developed, potentiality. Thus viewed, Will is the attribute of the single individual, placed in the midst of a world having manifold particular rela- tions to him. Into any or all of these relations he may, with his will, actively enter, and so practically identify them and the world with himself, or him- self with the world. But into none of them has he, by hypothesis, yet entered. He simply possesses the abstract power of entering into, or "willing," any or all or none of them. This power, unexercised, is of course only formal. But the possession of it is the possession of formal freedom. The subject possessing such freedom is a Person. Personality is the condition of legal competence. The conception of personality " constitutes the basis itself abstract of abstract and hence formal Right." l The whole sum and substance of Abstract 1 The word " right," as here, in accordance with German usage, employed by Hegel (German Recht^ as distinguished from Gesetz ; compare the French droit and loi), carries with it the notion of or- ganic law. It is law considered as organic to human will and pur- pose. It is, as Hegel remarks, on account of this organic relation between " right " and "freedom," that the former is usually termed " sacred." ABSTRACT RIGHT. Right, or law, is therefore contained in the command, " Be a person, and respect others as persons." This command in form is positive, but in substance and application negative. If the question is respecting particular things to be done, in order that one may 44 be a person and respect others as persons," Ab- stract Right is silent. At most it only extends to the authorizing of particular actions, on the nega- tive condition that the action shall not tend to the violation of personality or of anything that depends thereon. Abstract Right contains therefore only"^ prohibitions, and its apparently positive commands \ are ultimately founded on a prohibition. (Com-^ pare the Ten Commandments, which are mainly prohibitory.) Let us now return to our " person," as abstractly considered and defined, with his formally universal but as yet undeveloped, or unexercised, freedom. As thus defined, he cannot and does not exist. The truth of the latter part of this statement the em- pirical statement of fact is obvious enough. The former part is true, because there is a formal con- tradiction contained in the notion of an inactive, undeveloped Will. Such a Will would be something purely " subjective," possessed by definition of the formal, or potential, attributes of infinitude and uni-j versality, and yet distinguished from and so limited by a whole universe of objective nature with which as yet it has no real connection. The very actuality of Will must consist in and result from an activity whereby this limitation is in some degree annulled, and a measure of objective reality is given to the 14 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. Will. In other words, the Will must first acquire for itself objective existence, and so actualize itself, by usurping as it were, or appropriating, the natural existence with which it is confronted. The sphere of Abstract Right will include whatever is immedi- ately contained in or directly flows from this act. Under this head we have therefore to consider (a) Possession, or Property, in which the free personality of the individual gives itself objective manifestation ; (6) Contract, as concerned with the legal trans- mission of property from one person to another ; (c) Injustice and Crime, consisting in the invol- untary failure or inability to conform to, or else in wilful transgression of, a standard of justice as yet unformulated, but which the development of the contract-relation itself obliges persons to recognize as a binding ideal of all voluntary activities, and as the implicit presupposition of all legal relations. A. PROPERTY. (1) Possession. That which man reduces, or elevates, to the rank of property is a natural ob- ject, which as such is^ self -less, impersonal, unfree. It is a mere thing, without rights of its own. Man's right to appropriate it is absolute. Having the ap- pearance of independence, it is in reality dependent. It is not self-centred, having a " soul of its own." This lack, man, as far as the nature of the case per- mits, supplies, by making it his own, or through his identifying it with himself. ABSTRACT RIGHT. 15 For property is objectified Will. 1 It is an object into which I have introduced my will, which by my will I have made mine, have made to become, as it were, an attribute or property of me; have, in short, *o identified with myself that he who touches it therein touches me, and touches that Will which is my living substance. In property, or possession, my will first acquires objective existence. The necessity of the existence ;of property, or of the appropriation by man of ob- jects external to his formal will, is as great as the necessity that, if man is to be man and a person, his will shall not remain a mere subjective possi- bility, but by objectifying itself become actual. The circumstance that I find the occasion for mak- ing something mine in some special need, instinct, or fancy, and that property is a means of satisfying the same, is accidental. The essential point is that my free-will takes the first necessary step toward becoming objectively real in the possession of actual objects ; and the essential truth is that just as the free-will cannot be conceived as a mere means to an end foreign to itself, but only as an end for and in itself, so property, being according to its true conception and definition simply the primary form in which the free-will renders itself objectively real, has something of the like character of an absolute end, and is proportionately sacred and inviolable. 1 Legal science recognizes " things " only so far as they are cap- able of standing in relation to the human will. T. E. HOLLAND, Jurisprudence, p. 78, 2d ed., Oxford, 1882. 16 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. i From the conception of property now before us it pnly follows that the possession of external things as property is something essentially rational. But noth- ing follows as to just what or how much property any individual shall possess. This is something that, at least in the sphere of Abstract Right, 1 is quite acci- dental, being determined by the special needs of the individual, his arbitrary preference, his talents, ex- ternal circumstances, and the like. From the nat- ural abstract equality of all individuals, considered simply as so many persons, can be inferred neither a natural equality, nor a natural right to equality, in possessions. The assertion of this right on such a ground is " empty and superficial," since it is made in forgetfulness of the fact that abstract equality may and must co-exist with concrete or actual inequality. All persons are abstractly equal, since each in the census counts for one and no more ; or they are, as we may say, formally equal ; but materially, or considered with reference to the substance, character, and development of their per- sonality, they are unequal ; and if one must indulge in abstract argument, one might with better reason argue from the actual inequality of persons to the natural justice of an unequal distribution of. prop- erty among them. But what is more important is that the assertion in question is made without due appreciation of the truth (to be developed in sub- sequent chapters) that the free-will, or practical 1 " Abstract Right" is distinguished from "concrete " right, the s nature and conditions of which are the real subject of the third chapter. ABSTRACT RIGHT. 17 reason, of man fully realizes itself only in an " or- ganism of reason " called the State, wherein are many members, having necessarily different and unequal positions and functions, though they con- stitute together one body. The State itself, in which alone property can be permanently held, presup- poses and is conditioned on the perpetual mainten- ance of concrete differences and "inequalities" among its members. An object is converted into property either by simply taking actual possession of it, or by the expenditure of "formative" labor upon it (e.g., cultivation of the earth), or by putting upon it some token of my will. (2) Use, or Consumption. We have seen that property involves fundamentally the relation be- tween an appropriating personal Will and an ap- propriated object. Now, it is plain that the terms between which this relation subsists are neither simi- lars nor equals. The appropriating Will is active, internal, positive ; it exists, and in its action mani- fests itself, as an end in and for itself, and so corre- sponds to the philosophic conception of a true sub- stance. The appropriated object, on the other hand, is passive, external, negative ; its nature, as an ar- ticle of property, is to exist not for itself but for an- other, and in this sense it is properly to be termed, not substantial, but insubstantial. Now, property is not fully property unless it be treated by its pos- sessor according to this its negative and insubstan- tial nature ; that is, unless it be used, or, as the case may be, consumed. Moreover, true proprietorship 2 18 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. implies that both use, or consumption, and posses- sion shall be more than merely partial or temporary. The complete liberty of using that the abstract title to which belongs to another, constitutes me no pro- prietor. " It belongs therefore to the essential nature of proprietorship that the latter be free and complete." Hegel adds that " something like a millennium and a half have passed since, under the influence of Christianity, the doctrine of personal freedom began to be accepted, so that among a re- stricted portion of the human race it has come to be acknowledged as a universal principle. But the principle of freedom of proprietorship has, we may say, only since yesterday, and then only here and there, been acknowledged." The active and permanent manifestation of the personal appropriating Will, through the use or consumption of the appropriated object, is then essential to the perfection of the property relation, or to true proprietorship. So it is that merely through such constant manifestation I may ac- quire property, as it is said, by prescription; while through continued neglect or disuse of my posses- sions I cease to be their proprietor, and may forfeit my title to them. 1 1 Hegel adds, in a note, that " the principle of prescription has been introduced into the law, not merely in view of some extrinsic consideration in conflict with strict justice, such as the desirability of preventing the disputes and confusion affecting the security of property that would arise through the admission of old claims or the like. On the contrary, prescription has its intrinsic reason in that note of proprietorship which constitutes its very reality ; namely, the actual manifestation of the will to possess." ABSTRACT RIGHT. 19 The holder of an article of property being pro- prietor of its use, is proprietor of its value. For in the usefulness of an object so far as this is cap- able of quantitative comparison and determination consists its value. (3) Eelinquisliment of Property. Property in a purely, external object may be relinquished just because it is and remains external. My free-will, which alone is inalienable, is objectified in it only per acddens. The connection established between it and me is therefore not essential, and may be broken up at will. B.- CONTRACT. Property does not really become property until it is at least constructively relinquished, and then reacquired by virtue of contract. If the human race consisted of only one individual, the property relation would never be developed. There is no " mine " except in relation to a correlative " thine ; " and there is no mine or thine except so far as both thou and I have consented to hold our possessions, not alone on the basis of our own individual wills respectively, but on the basis of a common will, in y which we both agree. The property which is mine becomes thus the obj edification, not simply of my own individual appropriating will, but also of the consenting will of my neighbor ; and the important point is, that my will is not really objectified in the object that I may de facto possess until it is re- cognized therein and allowed by another. Such 20 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. recognition and allowance constitute the logical essence of Contract. The general necessity of contracts is implied in the notion of property. But respecting all contracts in particular it is to be noted (1) that they are subject to the arbitrary determination of the parties concerned ; (2) that the " common will" expressed in them is " only common, and not intrinsically and essentially universal ; " l and (3) that their subject- matter is " only particular external things, for such only can be relinquished at the arbitrary choice of the individual." C. INJUSTICE AND CRIME; OR, WRONG. The common Will expressed by contract differs, as just mentioned, from the universal Will which flows from the essential nature of man as a rational being. The latter Will is, or in case of its realization would be, perfect practical reason, and its fruit absolute justice ; in it nothing would be accidental or arbi- trary, but everything would be necessarily and fully determined, or would have its complete and suffi- cient and all-reconciling reason. In contrast with i The family and the State exist, not by contract, but byji neces- sity grounded in the nature of man. They are the objective expres- sion, therefore, not of a merely accidental or " common" will, but of a "will essentially and intrinsically universal." The modern "subsumption of marriage under the conception of contract" is therefore stigmatized by Hegel, in passing, as "infamous;" Avliile in the like error with regard to the State our author finds the origin of the greatest confusions in the theory of public law, 'and in many modern attempts at the actual constitution or reconstitution of political relations. ABSTRACT RIGHT. 21 this ideal of universal and essential, perfectly ra- tional and just, Will, the Will of Contract, which we have been considering, is particular and accidental. Further, what we are terming universal Will must be realized, if at all, in and through particular Will. But the particular Will of Contract, as we are now considering it, has come into existence without any express reference to the universal Will. It is a product which has been exposed, in its genesis, to the effects of accident and caprice. It is the result of the accidental intelligence and the capricious volition (the arbitrary liking, or good pleasure) of the contracting parties. It contains no guarantee of its own agreement with the universal Will or of its essential justice, and no assurance of that good faith on the part of the contracting parties on which it must depend for its own maintenance. Under these circumstances nothing but accident can pro- tect it from being, or becoming, essential wrong. Having it in mind, we may well say, "It must needs be that offences come." (1) Unconscious Wrong. The wrong now in question may be unconscious or guileless (iiribe- fangen) . The making and recognition of contracts implies. the establishment of particular rights, on the ground of which, in case of dispute, correspond- ing claims may be set up and defended. But the subject-matter of contracts being external things, incapable of immediate and visible identification with the persons and wills of any particular owners, it is obvious that different parties, both acting in perfect good faith, may conceivably acquire at one 22 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. and the same time what they suppose to be per- fectly valid claims to the possession of the same objects. In the assertion of his claim, each con- testant necessarily supposes his opponent to be in the wrong. Such contentions involve the recogni- tion of right as the universal and decisive factor, " so that the thing is to belong to him who has the right to it." (2) Fraud. Fraud is conscious wrong. It respects the form of right, which form it employs for the concealment of its own disregard of the substance of right. (3) Constraint, or Violence, and Crime. My will, projected into an external object or article of property, becomes obviously so far exposed to at- tack. Through my property the hand of violence /may be laid upon my will, or through such violence I may be coerced into making some sacrifice or per- forming some action, as the condition of my retain- ing any possession. Such use of violence or constraint contradicts itself; it attacks the foundation of right, and is therefore wrong (unrechtlich) . It attacks the foun- dation of right ; for this foundation is the free-will, and the use of violence or constraint is an attack upon free-will as practically objectified in an ex- ternal object or relation. And it contradicts itself ; for the act of constraining violence proceeds, pre- sumably, from the free-will of the aggressor : in it we are therefore to see an attack of freedom upon freedom, freedom turned against itself. The case would indeed be relieved of contradiction, if we ABSTRACT RIGHT. 23 could regard the freedom of the aggressor and the freedom of him who is violently attacked as two separate things, whose relation to each other is in- different./ But this we cannot do. Freedom is something which in its nature is incapable of being merely an article of private individual use and pos- session, like a member of the physical organism or a material instrument ; besides being a particular and private possession, it is of necessity also a urii- versal and, as it were, public attribute. In this^ sense the freedom of one is the freedom of all ; and he who first employs aggressive violence against an- other's freedom wars, not only against his neighbor, but against himself. His act is thus inherently, or " in conception," self-contradictory and self-destruc- tive ; it is in accordance with its own nature that it should defeat itself and come to naught. 1 When, therefore, by the hand of resisting violence it is in fact defeated and brought to naught, it but meets the fate the seeds of which are sown in its own nature. Hence, while we may justly say that tht use of violence or constraint is " abstractly consid- ered " wrong, we must also admit that where it is employed to resist and defeat the results of a first act of aggression, it is not only conditionally right, but ideally necessary. 2 1 In the English language, the negative, ideally empty character of an act such as that considered in the text, and at the same time its ethical turpitude, are expressed by the term naughty. 2 Hegel mentions, in a note, that any infringement, whether posi- tive or negative, of a contract, is to be considered as an act of aggres- sive violence. The use of measures of constraint by the pedagogue against a natural tendency of the will of his pupil toward rudeness and unculture, may at first appear to be purely aggressive and 24 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. v From the point of view now reached, we may say hat abstract right is right of compulsion. For that wrong which may be defined as an infringement of abstract right consists in attacks on my freedom as it exists in, or in relation to, an external object ; and the defence of my freedom against such attack must consequently be itself an external action and a use of force. But it is obvious that the foregoing description could not be regarded as a strict defini- tion. To define abstract right as right of coercion would be to define it in relation to a consequence which comes in at the door of wrong, the negation of right, rather than in relation to its positive principle. 1 hence abstractly wrong; but it is not so in fact. "The purely natural will is per se violence against the essential idea of freedom, which it is at once the business of the pedagogue to protect against the violence of such uncultured will, and to bring to realization in the latter." Hence, also, the justification of the State in the employ- ment of coercive measures for the like ends, or, antecedently to the existence of States, of " the heroes who founded States and *itroduced marriage and agriculture ; " whose actions, though not authorized as they could not be by existing and recognized or formulated law, and so appearing arbitrary, were yet essentially lawful and right, being justified by the higher law and right of the idea of man and of his freedom, as against the insurrectionary and usurping pretensions of the "state of nature," that is, the state of universal and unregulated violence. It may be added that the "dialectic'' of the general situation under consideration is expressed by one of Shakspeare's charac- ters : " But such is the infection of the times, That, for the very health arid physic of our right, We cannot deal but with the very hand Of stern injustice and confused wrong." K. JOHN, v. 2. 1 Samples of such definition (taken from Bentham and Kant) are given by Professor Holland (Jurisprudence, p. 58). ABSTRACT RIG II \j M \ -L. i v r i i The act of aggressive wrong; considered on its external side, consists in a damage done to the property or fortune of an individual. The cancel- ling of the wrong is termed, under established social conditions, civil satisfaction, and takes the form of restitution or compensation. But the act of wrong, viewed on its internal side as a manifestation of free-will, is an offence against freedom in its universal sense. It is an attack on the foundation of right as right, and thus regarded is a crime. Where, now, does the crime have its " positive existence " ? Where can we find it so as to undo it, and by undoing it to maintain and manifest the inviolability of right ? Damage we can easily find ; it exists in an external object, where it can be mea- sured and repaired. Crime has no such existence. Right, of which crime is the violation, is not an ex- ternal existence, and is in this sense inviolable. We are compelled to say that crime has no positive ex- istence except in the particular will of the criminal. Here, then, it must be attacked ; here its denial of right must be contradicted and defeated. Such treatment of crime is Punishment. Punishment is per se just ; and its justification follows, first of all and essentially, from the circum- stance that notwithstanding the flat contradiction in which it at first appears to stand to the will of the criminal, it is in reality but the completion, or actual and full development, of his own act con- sidered as an act of will. For a real act of will can proceed only from a rational being ; and the 26 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. peculiarity of such an act proceeding from such a source is, that, besides its particular side or char- acter, it has a universal one, or that by it there is virtually set up a universal law of action for all men, a law which the agent thereby implicitly recognizes, and in accordance with which he in effect demands to be judged and treated. The law thus implied in a free act of aggressive wrong is indeed a law of violence, or of abstract wrong. But when the law recoils, in the form of punish- ment, on the head of the offender, he is treated in accordance with his right ; his act is developed to its logical consequence, and the offender in receiv- ing punishment is really being treated simply with the honor due to a presumptively rational being. 1 Further, we are not to forget that the act of wrong- doing is an inherently negative one ; it is a nega- tion of right as right. We are to beware, therefore, of thinking of it as something original and positive. What is original and positive is right as such, which is eternal, absolute, and inviolable ; and if punish- ment is itself negation, it is the negation not of something purely affirmative and positive. Punish- ment is a mode of making visible the negative (or naughty) character of crime, and is at the same time simply the negation of negation, and thereby the declaration, manifestation, and restoration of the positive character of right. In view of the foregoing results, derived from 1 The true attitude of the criminal as a rational being is that of Socrates, who desired that if injustice were found in him he might be punished. ABSTRACT RIGHT. 27 analysis of the nature of crime as proceeding from that free-will of man which is the proximate source of right, our author finds himself compelled to com- ment adversely on various theories regarding the nature and ground of punishment that are often brought forward. In these theories crime is re- garded merely as an unfortunate and regrettable evil, and punishment as another evil of like charac- ter, to which society must resort in order, by fright- ful example, to deter others from committing crime ; or for the maintenance of public safety, the protec- tion of property, the improvement of the criminal, orthe like. These theories are to be termed rather superficial than abstractly false. They are founded on considerations incidental to punishment, and which constitute its extrinsic justification, rather than on a perception of its intrinsic nature and justification. The considerations mentioned " are in their place though mainly only in regard to the modality of punishment of essential consequence," but the theories founded on them all tacitly presup- pose u the previous demonstration that punishment is intrinsically just." And this is the main point. The principal question is not respecting a mere un- toward circumstance (a disturbing criminal act), nor respecting this or that prospective good re- sult (prevention, protection, improvement), but distinctly respecting wrong and right, or injustice and justice. " In our present discussion, the only essential point is that crime, considered not simply as the production of a public evil, but as a viola- tion of right as right, is to be negated, and then to 28 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. determine of what nature is the existence that crimfe*. has and that is to be negated ; for this is the true evil that is to be abrogated, and the question re- specting its nature and location is the essential one. So long as theorists are without definite conceptions on this point, confusion must reign in their views respecting punishment." Punishment, considered as negation of a nega- tion, or the injuring of the injurer, contains the element or aspect of retaliation. And this aspect remains ever deeply engraven on the popular con- science, which declares that crime deserves punish- ment, and that the criminal should receive accord- ing to his deeds. Its most literal expression is in such maxims as : " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed ; " and " An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." But in this sphere of abstract, or as Hegel also terms it immediate, right (that is, right not mediated by those forms of law which depend on the full or- ganization of social relations in the State) , the puni- tive negation of crime takes the form of vengeance. An act of vengeance may in substance be just, and in this sense ideally necessary, or beyond criticism. But in form such an act has the defect of apparent or possible arbitrariness, contingency, injustice. It has the air of proceeding from the subjective, par- ticular, and unreflecting will of the avenger, and such is indeed ordinarily its source. But the origi- nal act of wrong, or crime, against which vengeance is directed, consisted precisely in the arbitrary assertion of the particular will of the individual offender, in disregard of the true will that is uni- ABSTRACT RIGHT. 29 versal. Formally, therefore, the act of vengeance is identical in kind with crime itself. Crime followed by vengeance is but one step removed from crime followed by crime. Accordingly, vengeance pro- vokes second vengeance, and so on, in a false pro- cess, which may extend, if unchecked, in injinitum^ without ever coming any nearer to the positive, per- manent, concrete, and organized realization of right. With insight into the inherent contradiction involved in reliance on vengeance as a means of negating wrong and maintaining right, comes perception of the need of a justice that shall be freed from subjec- tive interest or its appearance, as well as from the appearance of being determined by the accident of brute force, a justice, therefore, that shall not be avenging, but strictly punitive. And what is first of all required is, that there be found in some per- son destined to act as ruler and judge a will that shall know and will the universal as such. In other words, there is required a will that not merely unre- flectingly and spontaneously manifests itself in par- ticular objective acts of vengeful justice, but that also reflects, reflects upon itself, becomes thus conscious of its universal nature, and finds therein a principle of just and unimpassioned judgment, by the application of which pure justice may be meted out. Or, still again, purely abstract right, the sphere of will in its first, immediate, objec- tive manifestation, cannot logically or practically stand alone. It forces us, it forces mankind, by its own inherent defect and contradiction, forward into that stage of subjective, reflective will which is termed Morality. 30 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. CHAPTER II. MORALITY. IN the sphere of Abstract (or Objective) Right the individual was a Person, as previously de fined (p. 12). Possessed of a will formally or poten- tially universal, he proceeded, without suspicion or without reflective consciousness of this universality and of its meaning, to manifest his will spontane- ously, immediately, in particular objective acts. His fellows did the like ; and the result was contradiction and discord. In the sphere of Morality, which may also be termed the sphere of Subjective Right, or of the u Right of the Subjective Will," the Person becomes a Subject. His personality, his will, no longer ex- ists merely for others, in a pure " state of nature," or in the form of an aggregate of purely objective acts and relations ; it exists for the person himself, in the inward forum of consciousness, of reflective' thought, of conscience. In this more favorable soil is now planted his freedom, which thus first demon- strates itself to be more fundamentally a thing of the mind, or of the inward spirit, than of external possessions and relations. But the merely subjective Will which is the sub- ject-matter of Morality, and the purely Subjective Right which corresponds to and is determined by it, MORALITY. 31 are still less than the concrete Will and the concrete Right, the Will and the Right to whose fulness and completeness nothing is lacking, and in which, as the sequel must illustrate, the objective and the subjective, the particular and the universal, are united in a vital and inseparable union. The merely subjective, like the merely objective, Will " is there- fore abstract, limited, and formal ; " and the view- point of Morality is that of abstract difference and relation, or of obligation and requirement. We may, for convenience, define an action as an intentional act, or an act so far forth as it -is in- tended; and we may then say that the "Right of Moral Will" has three sides, respecting (1) the im- mediate relation of actions to the subjective Will of the agent, as involving objective Purpose and Re- sponsibility ; (2) their special character, as deter- mined by the particular object of Intention, such as the Welfare of the individual ; (3) their universal character, as determined by comparison, in the forum of Conscience, with the absolute aim of all will, the Good. A. PURPOSE AND RESPONSIBILITY. The purely subjective Will is finite, limited, im- perfect. Its finitude consists in the fact that it presupposes, as the condition of the actions it deter- mines, an external object belonging to a realm for- eign to and so limiting the Will, and containing in itself a variety of circumstances and relations of its own. In this realm the reflective Will conceives the 32 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. idea of a change to be effectuated through its own agency. This change it proposes to itself ; this is its purpose. In the change, when effectuated, the Will recognizes its work, for which it holds itself responsible. But what is the extent of this responsibility, and what its condition? For the "change" proposed may be indefinite in its extent. The realm of ex- ternal things, in which the change is to be effect- uated, being one in which every part is inextricably bound up in an indefinite variety of circumstances and relations, it follows that a change introduced at any point through the interfering agency of human will may be followed by an incalculable variety of consequences. Any of these consequences which were not contemplated, and hence included, in the original purpose are, with reference to the purpose, accidental, while as determined by the objective re- lations of things they are also necessary. The sub- jective Will now claims as its right that it shall be held- responsible only for those consequences which it foresaw. It claims "the right of knowledge;" it demands that the extent of its responsibility shall be measured by the extent of^its knowledge, and that its knowledge shall be regarded as the sole condition of its responsibility. 1 1 "The heroic self-consciousness (as in the tragedies of the ancients, Oedipus, etc.) has not advanced from its primitive state of simplicity and unity to the point of making the distinction " between the objective and subjective in relation to the Will and its actions, or "between external deed or event and internal purpose and knowledge of cinmmstances J it makes no distinction among consequences, but assumes the responsibility for its action in its whole extent." MORALITY. 33 B. INTENTION AND WELFARE. It is not enough that we regard an act of subjec- tive Will merely as a purpose. As such, it is only an immediate internal fact, a psychological phenom- enon, a particular state of conscious knowledge or conception, of interest to us only in the point of view of its bare quantity, as a measure of the extent of responsibility. But in reality an act of Will is not simply a particular psychological quantity ; it has also a certain universal quality. It is not merely one in a series of~Tndependent conscious states, the whole significance of which is exhausted when it is measured; it is also an active function, proceeding from a thinking being, and hence shares in the uni- versal nature of thought, and in particular in the special character of the thought of the individual from whom it proceeds. , In this point of view, an act of subjective W^ill is said to involve Intention. Suppose, by way of illustration, that an act of mine consists in setting fire to a bit of wood. I have, by hypothesis, a distinct idea of my act and of its immediate consequence, in the burning up of a whole building; and so I may be said to have acted with purpose : I proposed to myself this par- ticular act. All this may be true, and yet I may have been an idiot ; in which case no one will attrib- ute to me intention, whether good or bad. Being an idiot, and hence not a thinking being, I acted with- out conception of the universal quality of my deed ; I acted thoughtlessly. But that such a deed, pro- ceeding from one who is not an idiot, has a uni- 3 34 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. versal quality is made obvious through the fact that a, judgment is passed upon it ; that by this judgment the deed is subsumed under a general category, and a universal predicate is attributed to it, such as arson; and that, in accordance therewith, the deed is finally pronounced either right or wrong. An action has then, per se, considered as an ob- jective fact, a universal quality ; and the " right of intention " is conditioned upon the agent's knowl- edge of this quality. But the objective action, viewed in its universal character, is not coextensive with the whole content of the agent's intention. The agent is, by hypothe- sis, a conscious subject. This means that all his objective relations are, as it were, reflected in and upon himself ; in him, as in a centre, they converge. His outward actions, therefore, stand in immediate relation to himself as an individual, and are per- formed, not merely for their own sake, but for the ^ sake of their relation to himself. They are means to an end, or ends, in himself. It is this that gives them subjective wortJi, or constitutes their interest, for him. Thus the actions that proceed from the subjec- tive Will have, in turn, their ideal termination in the subject. It is this that constitutes subjective freedom, in the concrete sense of the term, found- ing "the right of the Subject to find in his action his own satisfaction." v Intention, then, includes the willing of a particu- lar act, with conscious knowledge of its objectively universal character and of its relation to a universal MORALITY. 35 subjective end, the satisfaction or happiness of the agent. The recognition and emphatic assertion of this subjective element in Right mark the turning-point between antiquity and the modern era, and are due to the influence of Christianity. The results are visible in many of the peculiar phases and princi- ples of civilization in the Christian era, such as. love, romanticism, the pursuit as a supreme aim of the eternal happiness of the individual, morality, conscience, in principles of civil society also, in political constitutions, and in history generally, espe- cially in the history of art, the sciences, and philos- ophy. A false and petty, yet far too common, result has also been that men have defined Inten- tion with reference to its subjective element alone, leaving entirely out of consideration the objective character which, as we have'seen, also belongs neces- sarily to it, or what amounts to the same thing making the objective element to be only an unes- sential incident of the subjective, or a mere means to the latter. Thus we have the "psychological view " of history, which seeks to depreciate all great deeds and individuals by the ostensible discovery that the main intention of the latter was, not the great work which they really accomplished, but the glory and honor, or other subjective gratification and personal advantage, which accrued to them. This is the view of the "psychological valets to whom no men are heroes, not because the latter are not heroes, but because the former are only valets." The objective element is not .to be thus excluded in 36 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. judging of intention. "What the individual sub- ject is, is the series of his actions. If these consti- tute a series of worthless productions, the subjective Will whence they proceed is equally worthless ; if, | on the other hand, the series of his deeds is of a substantial nature, the like is true of the inner Will of the individual." But the right to have regard in my volition to my own particular satisfaction, the right to realize my freedom in the subjective realm and form of my in- dividual weal and happiness, is bounded by limita- tions similar to those which condition the purely objective realization of freedom. In this case, as in the other, freedom cannot be merely an individual property. In the exercise of my freedom I must ex- ercise a freedom that is common to all, otherwise, freedom quickly defeats itself by inward self-con- tradiction ; in seeking my own welfare or happiness, I must seek also the happiness of others. The subjective Will is therefore bound to seek, for its particular intentions, a universal and justify- ing form or principle, the universal and absolute Good, the real or supposed knowledge of which will be to men their Conscience. C. THE GOOD, AND CONSCIENCE. The Good is the ideal of the unity and harmony of the universal or essential Will of humanity, and of the particular Will of the individual man. In this ideal that which we have termed Abstract Right, as well as the pleasure of the individual, the vanity of MORALITY. 37 private opinion, and the contingencies of external existence are conceived as subordinate to the ideal power of a universal law. They are subordinated, but not destroyed. In and through them the uni- versal is to be realized. The Good is nothing less than the ideal of "realized Freedom, the absolute Goal of the World." Happiness (das Wohl) , regarded from the point of view of the Good, has no validity as an end except in its character as universal happiness, that is, as resulting from the realization of universal freedom ; in other words, " Happiness is not a good without Right." On the other hand, " the Right is not the Good without Happiness : the consequence of fiat justitia must not be pereat mundus." Since the Good is that which the particular Will of the indi- vidual is under an ideal necessity of realizing, and in which at the same time it truly finds its own proper realization, it follows that in case of collision be- tween the Good and the abstract right of Property, or the particular ends of private happiness, abso- lute right belongs to the former. The latter have no justification except so far as they are conformed and subordinated to the Good. But to the subjective, reflective Will the Good is an abstract and as yet unfulfilled ideal, which is nevertheless in some way to be realized through the Will. In this connection the preliminary right which the Will claims is the right to know the Good, and to have its actions judged in the light of its knowl- edge. But, on the other hand, the Good itself has also a right of the most absolute and imperative 38 kind, the right and the demand to be known, and to be realized through the particular actions of the individual. In this view the Good, as an abstract universal, not yet brought into harmony with the particular forms of individual action, stands forth in the character of a vague but inviolable ideal of Duty ; it is that which absolutely must be, or which has an absolute right and claim to be, realized ; it is the ideal of Duty to be done for Duty's sake. Such an abstract ideal of Duty being merely formal is devoid of definite content. The contem- plation of it will give to no man an answer to the specific question, What is my duty? The nearest approach to an answer supplied in our discussions up to this point, or capable of being given from the view-point of " Morality," or of the purely -subjec- tive Will, is the indefinite one, Do right ^ and seek \ the happiness of all men. Accordingly, abstract moralists, like Kant, whose industry is only formal, and who do not get beyond this indefinite notion of duty as unconditioned but unspecified obligation, find insurmountable difficulties in the way of the development of the doctrine of particular duties. Particular duties ought to be and to appear as the necessary organic members of a living whole called Duty. In other words, Duty ought to appear and be conceived as what it is in fact a concrete and not merely an abstract universal, and so as an organic whole, rich in articulated details, with which it is inseparably and livingly one in thought as in fact. So a tree, for example, is a concrete univer- sal, standing complete only as it is realized in and MORALITY. 89 through the system of its members. An abstract tree would be a tree only in name ; it would be at most only the conception of something that has members, without knowledge of what the members are and how they are related to each other in the tree. And he who should on the basis of such an empty conception go about to supply this missing knowledge, would resemble perfectly the abstract moralist who on the basis of an abstract conception of universal Duty attempts to determine what are the members of Duty, or what are particular duties. Obviously the labor of such a one must be wholly unintelligent, or can be guided, as Kant's is, only by purely formal principles, such as that whatever is to be regarded as a duty must not stand in abstract contradiction with itself. But judged by this cri- terion there is no action whaTever, whether good or bad, that cannot be " proved " to be a duty. The subjective Will, then, simply arrives at the conscious recognition, under the general name and ideal of Duty, of a something unconditioned in na- ture and authority, which is to be realized through the conscious self-determination of the individual. By what means and in what form this is to be done, this is something for the discovery and determi- nation of which the individual fancies himself to be alone responsible. He is to trust to his own pri- vate consciousness, judgment, or conscience with- out dictation from another, and of course without the possibility of illumination from the purely for- mal ideal of Duty which he acknowledges. The universal the fact of unconditional obligation 40 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP THE STATE. is conceived as something objective, independent of the particular volition of the individual. It is like an empty vessel destined to be a vessel of honor or dishonor, of life or death, according to the nature of the practical content with which the individual fills it. But precisely this content the particular, the detail of individual duties is regarded as sub- jective, or a matter of purely subjective and indi- vidual determination. The foregoing is the description of the subjec- tive Conscience, which is one-sided and imperfect, and not to be confounded with the " true Con- science," or Conscience in its complete and perfect development. The true Conscience is the consciousness and vol- untary acceptance of Duty, not merely as an ab- stract and formal universal whose content is to be subjectively and privately determined, but as a con- crete one, having a systematic and objective content of fixed principles and duties. " But the objective system of these principles and duties " first meets us at a later stage in " The Ethical World." Here, at this formal view-point of Morality, Conscience is without the mentioned objective content. It is only the unqualified " formal certainty" or conviction of a being an individual being having a centre of independent and responsible self-determination in himself. From the fountain of such a Conscience such a purely formal and subjective 1 self-consciousness 1 Self-consciousness, or self-knowledge, at the stage of moral de- velopment which we are now considering, is only subjective. As MORALITY. 41 it is obvious that bitter waters are as likely to flow as sweet. Being unaware of, or at all events not yet accepting as authoritative, any principles of Duty that are at once truly objective and universal, it may indeed arbitrarily or by accident adopt in a particular case, and act upon, such a principle. But it is even more likely to make caprice its law, to exalt the individual's own particular views and desires above the universal, and to act accordingly ; and so to be distinctly evil. It is here at this stage in the development of human Will that we are to look for the " origin of evil." The subjective Will claiming the right to deter- mine for itself what is good, and acting in accord- ance with this claim, is prone to affirm the excellence its actions on the ground of their " good inten- tion." When this affirmation is addressed to others, it is hypocrisy ; when the agent addresses it to him- self, we have " the still more exaggerated extreme of subjectivity asserting itself as the absolute," or of evil. The Good, or Duty, we must repeat, cannot be a merely abstract universal, that is, without determi- nate content. And the true Conscience cannot be a merely subjective and indeterminate consciousness of an abstractly universal power and right of self- determination. The Good must, indeed, be univer- such it is imperfect, and if persisted in becomes morbid. True or perfected self-knowledge, to which corresponds the true Will and the "true Conscience," is, as we shall subsequently see, objective as well as subjective. It is both in organic unity. It is the knowledge which man has of himself in his concrete, social, and religious rela- tions, and in his unity with them. 42 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP THE STATE. sal and objective, and it must also be definitely realized through the self-determining activity of the individual subject. But the subjective Will, on the other hand, must find its own true substance, and so the motive and law of its particular self-deter- mining actions, in an objective concrete system of Good or of duties, to which the caprice and even the so-called subjective "-conviction" of the indi- vidual shall be subordinated. Objective Good, or Duty, and subjective Will must be integrated. The two must be in active organic unity. Then alone will each exist according to its true nature. And thus they do exist in the concrete Ethical World. ., THE ETHICAL WORLD. 43 CHAPTER III. THE ETHICAL WORLD. IT is in the Ethical World, the world of concrete social relations, such as the Family, the State, Universal History, or Humanity, and supremely Religion, or the living, willing partnership of man with God in working "the works of God," that the idea of Freedom is realized. It is realized as a "living Good," known and willed and embodied in actual historic existence, in and through the self- conscious activity of men. In this "ethical sub- stance" man finds the essential basis of his own true self-consciousness, or self-knowledge, and the motive principle of his action. In brief, the ideal v content of the conception of Freedom is unfolded and actualized in a present, actual world of organ- ized human and spiritual relations, in which free- dom is objectively demonstrated to be, not the at- tribute of " merely conscious " individuals (brutes are such individuals), but of beings, such as men, who are capable of finding in a consciousness of the universal the true substance of their own proper self-consciousness and the true motive of their own that is, of all genuinely human activity. / The realization of these relations involves neither the disgrace nor the destruction of individuality. & On the contrary, individuality is maintained. It is 44 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. provided with a content, a ballast of ideal substance and motive, without which it would move on quickly to self-destruction. The regulation of the individ- ual will by a fixed or " universal " principle, e. g., by the law of one's station, and consequent duty, as member of a family, of the State, of the universal parliament of humanity, or of the " city of God," so far from involving the annihilation of individual- ity, is the supremely essential condition of its true preservation, and of its becoming clothed in the gar- ments of life and truth and beauty, essential to the concealment of its otherwise apparent and inherent nakedness. And, on the other hand, the descent of the universal the Good, Right, Duty from its throne of abstract, cold, and colorless authority into the hearts and into the particular actions of individ- ual men, does not involve either the destruction or the sacrilegious violation of the universal. The rather, it is only through such descent that, from being merely potential and indeterminate, it can come to its right and be indeed actual, determinate, and effectively commanding. The Ethical World is a system of essential rela- tions, of essential laws, and of Ethical Powers, which govern the life of individuals. In the con- sciousness of these powers of the moral organ- isms of which the individual is a living member the true self-consciousness of the individual first becomes veritably actualized. Their life is his life, and their power is his power. They are, in their measure, the objective reality of that organic reason which is the essential and defining substance of the THE ETHICAL WORLD. 45 individual as a distinctively human that is, a spir- itual, rational, and rationally self-conscious being. As therefore in knowing these Powers the indi- vidual, as a human being, is only truly coming to the knowledge of himself, so, on the other hand, it may be said that they can never be truly known and comprehended except through- the development of genuine human self-knowledge (not, for example, by the way of purely objective " observation") ; as also they can never exist in a form at all adequate to their nature except through the will of men, the moving-spring of whose activity is, explicitly or implicitly, precisely the rational self-knowledge in question. Into the realm, now, of these Powers, or Moral Organisms, which constitute the Ethical World, the individual is born. He finds them existing. They exist, and in immediate relation to the individual ; and the preceding paragraph indicates why they exist for him in the recognized possession of " inde- pendence in the highest sense of this term, and of an absolute authority and power, an authority and power infinitely more positive than that of Nature." The laws of Nature that is, the reason that is in Nature he must know and respect conditionally, as far as such knowledge and respect constitute a means to the attainment of the ends of his specifi- cally human activity. The laws of the Ethical World / he must respect and obey unconditionally, for they / are the laws of his own specific nature as a rational being ; and in them the voice of the Organic Reason, which is the source and goal of all being, speaks in 46 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. far purer and more adequate tones than in the external forms and laws of natural existence. The laws of the Ethical World, then, are not merely formal, abstract, and dead, but substantial and living ; and not merely subjective, but also ob- jective, they are the laws of living moral organ- isms. To the individual, whom as a morally inde- terminate subjective entity they confront as that in which alone he can come into possession of his own true moral substance, they constitute or define a sys- tem of duties, binding upon his will. " The ethical Doctrine of Duties that is, the objective doctrine, in distinction from the one that moralists so often attempt to build up on the empty principle of moral subjectivity, which the rather determines nothing is consequently the systematic develop- ment of that realm of ethical necessity with which this Third Part is concerned. ... A real and con- sistent doctrine of duties can be nothing else than the development of the relations which necessarily flow from the idea of Freedom, and are therefore actualized in their full extent in the State," which is nothing but the organized existence on earth of the substantial Freedom of Man, or is " the divine idea as it objectively exists on earth." Is Duty, thus conceived, a limitation? So it appears, when regarded from the view-point of indeterminate subjectivity or abstract Freedom, or from that of the impulses of the natural Will, or of the u moral" Will, which seeks to determine the good by the light of the merely subjective and hence capricious private " Conscience." But, really, THE ETHICAL WORLD. 47 Duty respected brings with it l^ie liberation of the individual from the bondage of natural impulse, as well as from the inelastic sensToTmofaT suffocation and depression which attends him to whom Duty, instead of being concrete, is an indeterminate and indefinable, though imperative, ideal. "In Duty the individual liberates and elevates himself to substantial Freedom." The spiritual substance of the Ethical World, re- flected in the individual character of its members, is Virtue ; and Virtue, so far as it simply implies the conformity of the individual to the duties of his sta- tion, is Probity (Rechtsckaffenheii) . But this sub- stance, as an immanent and universally determining principle of action in all individuals, takes the form of Ethos (Sitte, mores) or Custom " a second na- ture, which takes the place of the original and merely natural will, and becomes the permeating soul " of the individual, giving meaning and reality to his existence as a human and rational being. In the social-moral organisms of the Family and the State the ethical substance of man comes to its right, and right becomes a living and effective and moulding power. Here, too (as also and supremely in the social-moral relation with God, which both Family and State imply) , the freedom of the individ- ual is perfected. /It exists, or vainly seeks to exist, no longer in purely objective fashion as in material property, nor in purely subjective fashion, as in the ^ inner forum of indeterminate conscience, but in a realm at once objective and subjective, / a spiritual realm, which is the realized substance of freedom 48 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP THE STATE. itself y Here duty and right are one, and man has rights as far as he has duties, and duties as far as he has rights. In Abstract Right, on the contrary, right and duty are separated : if I have a right, the corresponding duty of respecting this right belongs to another. And in the realm of Morality the ethi- cal union of right and duty is conceived or implied only as an imperative but unrealized ideal. The term substance in the Ethical World means what we express when we speak of the Spirit of a Family or of a People. Family and People, or State, are terms in a series of stages through which the ethical substance of mankind realizes itself. () The Family is the ethical spirit of mankind in its immediate or natural form. (6) In Civil Society families and members of families go apart from each other and are re-united as independent units or individuals, for the security of person and property, under an external order, in a realm of merely " formal universality," the " external," or visible, State. (c) T'le invisible State, with its constitution writ- ten in the hearts as well as in the customs and laws of a people,"- the State as the seat, the organ, and the self -controlling power of the public life, unites in a more intimate and vital sense the Family and the Civil Order ; it integrates and ideally com- pletes them, by taking them up as living members into its own ideal-real organism. THE FAMILY. 49 SECT I. THE FAMILY. The immediate and active principle of the Family is love. Love is the attribute of a self -consciousness and a will which are objective as well as subjective, or which transcend the sphere of private indi- viduality, and in their scope are, in the etymologi- cal sense of this term, generous (generic, kind-ly). Subjectively considered love is the sentiment of such a self-consciousness and will. As sensation is the "immediate" or naturally first term in objective cognition, so love is the like term in human self- knowledge. Love is the sentiment of an ideal social unity, and in the experience of love as the organizing and controlling principle of the Family the individual person finds a measurable fulfilment of his own true self-consciousness as a human being. He finds therein that his proper human existence is not achieved in abstract indepen- dence and isolation, but as the member of a moral- social organism, and that the true consciousness of himself is the consciousness of himself ..as such a member. The Family, like every finite organic existence, is a process, and involves three terms : (a) Marriage. (b) The Property or P'ortune of the Family and care for the same. (c) The Education of Children and the dissolu- tion of the Family. 4 50 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP THE STATE. A. MARRIAGE. The merely physical union of male and female for the propagation of the species is a step to which other animals than man are prompted by the instinct of their species. But man is more than an animal. In him blind instinct is illuminated and transfigured by reflective self-knowledge, and the merely external union of the natural sexes becomes transformed into a spiritual one, or Into self-conscious love. Whatever the particular " subjective " origin of the personal relation that culminates in marriage, such as a particular and unprompted fondness of the, two persons involved for each other, the choice of the parents, and the like, the objective origin of the relation is to be found in the free consent of the persons to constitute henceforth one person ; to merge their natural and single personalities in a new unity ; to submit, therefore, in this respect to a self- limitation, but with the exceeding great reward since by merging themselves in this new unity they " win their substantial self-consciousness" of gaining thereby a true emancipation. Apparently losing their lives, they in reality thus take a first and long step toward finding them. From this point of view it is to be said that it is an objective " ethical duty " of mankind to enter into and main- tain the marriage relation. Marriage is essentially a spiritual relation. The acknowledgment and maintenance of this relation is an express enthronement of the spiritual over the natural. It involves the subjection of the passions, THE FAMILY. 51 and of the special changing likes and dislikes of the individual to the law of a common life, a common love, and a common good. That marriage is not simply a contract relation was remarked above (p. 21, note). A contract im- plies parties who retain fully their independent per- sonality, and is an outward relation. Marriage is an inward relation involving not only the limitation of independent personality, but even its absorption in the ocean of a larger life, in which it emerges trans- formed and transfigured, revitalized and essentially " a new creature." The fitting " celebration " of a marriage is therefore not the mechanical work of a lawyer, who fills out a blank form of contract which the parties concerned coolly sign, and to whose sig- natures the lawyer as a third party, who may be morally indifferent to the whole transaction except as he is moved by the expectation of a fee, ap- pends his own signature as a witness. It is, the rather, a ceremony, whose proper witnesses are those spiritual powers the Family, the Community, the Church, and which is accomplished through the sim- ple and significant means of spoken language, the most spiritual form in which a spiritual reality or process can express itself. Marriage has for the parties concerned both an intellectual and an ethical consequence. On the one hand, it solicits and elevates both the intelli- gence and the will of the individual to recognize their true object in something universal, something larger than the individual with his " Miserable aims that end with self," 52 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. namely, in a common good, a common life, a really objective and substantial end. It moves to knowl- edge and to action. On the other hand, it is fol- lowed by the personal consciousness of a spiritual increase, and prompts to the jealous guarding of this increase in the sphere of an interior home-life and through the patience of love. These comple- mentary and ideally inseparable consequences are represented respectively in the active outward life of the husband, whose lovingly intelligent labor provides for the visible support and enrichment of the family ; and in the wife, whose no less intelli- gent love is the bond and sign of its invisible and indestructible unity. True marriage is monogamic. For, as previously indicated, an essential character of the marriage re- lation is that in it personality finds and is to find a substantial fulfilment or realization. In it inde- pendent individual personality loses itself in order to find itself ; it merges itself in another in order thus to become more truly conscious of itself. But this it cannot do unless that other be not many, but, like itself, a single personality ', on the part of whom and of itself there takes place a mutual and undivided giving away of single personality. So " marriage, and particularly and essentially monogamy, is one of the absolute principles on which the ethical character of a social state rests. The institution of marriage is therefore customarily cited as one of the essential incidents in the found- ing of States by gods or heroes." The Family, as constituting a single moral per- THE FAMILY. 53 son, has its external reality the visible sign and means of its existence in its property or fortune (to which also the specific name of " means " is given) . B.-THE FORTUNE OF THE FAMILY. Property is a category of " Abstract Right." Under this head it was treated as the possession of the single individual, existing for the immediate satisfaction of his particular needs, and subject to the perturbations flowing from the capricious varia- tions of his selfish desires. But a family, which has more the character of a universal and unchangeably enduring person, must and can have, not simply ''property," but an enduring and sure possession, or a Fortune. In the labor devoted to its acquisi- tion and the care expended in its preservation and administration, the element of individual caprice is subordinated to the thought of a common good. The labor and the care have an essentially ethical character. In the legends respecting the founding of States, or at least of social and orderly life, the introduction of fixed property appears in connection with the introduction of marriage. The defence of the Family as a legal person against the aggressions of others belongs to the husband, as the Family's head. In his hands lie also the disposition and administration of the for- tune of the Family. This fortune being a common property, no member of the Family as such is in possession of a particular property of his own, but each has a right to the common possession. 54 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP THE STATE. Through the marriage of a scion of the Family a new family is founded, having again an independent existence of its own. Into this new relation the individual carries with him the property which be- fore he held only by a right subject to the executive will of his father, and as part of the common fortune of the Family. C. THE BRINGING UP OF THE CHILDREN AND THE DISSOLUTION OF THE FAMILY. In children the invisible unity of married love is visibly objectified and embodied. " In the child the mother loves her husband, and the husband his wife ; in it both behold their love." The child has the right to be supported and reared at the cost of the common fortune of the family. The parents, on their part, have to remember that the child is a potentially free and spiritual being, never to be treated as a mere soulless thing. The moral education of the child has for its first and positive end to enable the ethical substance the heart and will of the little one to come to its first flowering and fruitage in the form of love and con- fidence and obedience. Its further end a nega- tive one with respect to the family relation is so to develop in the children the seeds of independence and free personality, that they shall be prepared in due time to go out from the fold of the natural unity of the family. The dissolution of the family occurs in three ways : First, and abnormally, through the complete aliena- < >\ CIVIL SOCIETm ;f| 65> tion of husband and wife from eacnbther^. and their consequent separation or divorce. Secondly, and normally, through the growth and development of the dependent members, or children, into the pos- session of a mature and free personality as legal persons, capable of holding property and founding new families. And thirdly, through the death of the parents, and the following distribution of the common fortune amon the natural heirs. SECT. II. THE CIVIL SOCIETY. If the Family is, on the one hand, a necessarily permanent member of the larger Ethical World, it may also, on the other hand, be said to contain in itself that world in germ. Viewed in this way, it is a natural, organic, vital synthesis of elements, which in order to enter into the larger social unities or syn- theses of State and Historic Humanity must first be separated and brought, in a measure, into the atti- tude and quality of mutually repellent and indepen- dent atoms. The dissolution of the Family, as we have just above seen, is its resolution into elements of this character. What we may term the natural process of the Family eventuates in the multiplica- tion of families and of individuals, separated and opposed by differing and conflicting interests. The world of these interests becomes the sphere of Civil Society, which is " the arena for the combat of the individual private interest of all against all." The realm of Civil Society is the realm of " par- 56 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. ticularity," or self-interest. And Civil Society itself otherwise denominable as " the State on its exter- nal side," or as Government - is the mechanical sub- ordination, whether by measures of constraint or of restraint, of particular self-interest to a universal law of security and protection for all. The elements of Civil Society are concrete per- sons, as distinguished from the abstract persons of Abstract Right. In other words, they are not merely abstract and indeterminate " free-wills." Each one has come to conceive himself as an end to himself, and each is characterized by a definite set of per- sonal needs and desires, to the satisfying of which each is moved by a strange mixture in him of natu- ral necessity and wilful caprice. And Civil Society is an outcome from the fact that each such person can assert and satisfy himself only through the posi- tive or negative co-operation of others, and subject to forms of law common in their application to all. / / Law, or " the universal,'" is here characteristically conceived as alien and external to the will of the par- ticular individual. The universal and the partic- ular thus exist, or are conceived as existing, apart, the latter in possession of the right to develop and assert itself in all directions, and the former with the right to exercise a forcible control over the par- ticular, and to be regarded as (proximately) the true basis, the necessary form, and the ultimate end of the latter. The relation is similar to that above *% exhibited in the chapter on Morality, between the subjective will, with its indefinite freedom of sub- jective choice, and the ideal of universal and abso- CIVIL SOCIETY. 57 lute obligation ; except that here the universal is, for the purposes of civil order, measurably and arti- ficially defined in formal law. Law, with its formal universality, thus first confronts the individual as a task-master and as a limitation of freedom, while all its formal demands are met by outward obedience, let the inward disposition be what it may. But if the law of Civil Society is a task-master, it is also a schoolmaster. If it imposes a limitation on formal and undisciplined freedom, obedience to it is really an education in the direction of substan- tial freedom. Particularity (or individualism) seeking to be a law to itself tends to its own destruction. And even the attainment of its own transient ends and satisfactions is subject to many contingencies. Thus Civil Society, as the arena in which individualism seeks the greatest amount of unrestrained satisfac- tion, offers a spectacle of excesses, of misery, and of consequent physical and moral corruption. 1 Absolute individualism is absolute civil anarchy. In order that individualism may exist at all it must limit itself ; it must submit to law, and so take at least the outward form of universality. The indi- vidual must consent to become a link in the chain of Civil Society. If, indeed, law and society are thus to him no more than means for the satisfaction of his private interests, yet even so they exercise a tuitional influence on him. They are a brake on c* * 1 Hegel points out how, in the ancient States, the "independent development of particularity," resulted in moral corruption and ultimately in national extinction. 58 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. the rude unculture of natural caprice ; they bring in proportion to their efficiency particular interest into at least outward agreement with the forms of universal rule, and so prepare the way for the final and saving increment of ethico-social grace, which is added when particular and universal subsist, not f merely in outward agreement, but in inward spirit- / ual unity, when the individual recognizes that the I centre and circumference of his true interest as a \ human being are public as well as private ; and I when he discovers for himself that the realm of his \ substantial or real freedom is not the land of his ) purely private wishes and whims, but the broader / region of a common and public life, and of a stable \and divine good. In treating of Civil Society we have to consider, (a) The System of Wants, the satisfaction of the needs of the individual through his labor, and through the labor and through the satisfaction of the needs of all others. (6) The Protection of Property through the Ad- ministration of Justice, or the maintenance of civil ' freedom. (c) Police and Corporations. A. THE SYSTEM OF WANTS. Wants are particular needs of the individual, to be satisfied by means, first, of external things ; and, second, of labor. (a) Human Wants and their Satisfaction. The brute has a limited circle of means and ways for the CIVIL SOCIETY. 59 satisfaction of his likewise limited needs. Man gives proof of his greater universality through the multiplication of wants and means, the multipli- cation taking place in part through his resolution of concrete wants (such as the want of food, clothing, or shelter) into single parts or sides, which then constitute new, more special, and more abstract wants. 1 In this process, whereby wants are special- ized and rendered more abstract, consists what is termed their refinement. But a refined want, by very reason of its specialized and abstract charac- ter, has an element of generality or universality about it. More plainly, a refined want is a social want ; it is a want which exists only as it comes to be generally recognized, to have a place in the general esteem or opinion of society, or of a class in society. In it there is built up on the henceforth concealed basis of " immediate or natural " want a larger " spiritual" one, the existence of which is conditioned upon reflection and opinion. The de- velopment of social wants is thus one distinct step toward the emancipation of man, that is, of that spiritual side of man's nature in which alone his specific freedom and perfection can reside. Still, it is only one step, where many others are needed. The emancipation is only formal, and not substan- tial ; for the subject of man's interest here remains, or may remain, purely personal and selfish ; and the growth of mere luxury, unqualified by a public life and a public will absorbed in larger interests, is 1 Man alone, as has been said, has, or rather creates, le besoin du superflu. 60 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP THE STATE. found to bring with it an indefinite augmentation. of dependence and even of distress. (b) Labor. Specialized wants require equally specialized means for their satisfaction. Labor is the activity directed to the production and acqui- sition of these means. Labor takes the material immediately furnished by Nature, and by the most varied processes shapes and adapts it to these mani- fold ends. By this formative labor the means re- quired for the satisfaction of specialized human needs acquire their worth and fitness ; and so it comes to pass that human consumption is conspicu- ously a consumption of, not merely natural, but specifically human productions. Labor has a direct relation to the development of both theoretical and practical culture on the part of man. It involves, on the one hand, not only the possession of a multiplicity of ideas, but also a peculiar facility in inward imaginative representa- tion in the transition from one idea to another, and in the comprehension of complicated and general relations, in short, the cultivation of the under- standing in general, and so also of language. On the other hand, it contributes to practical culture, or to the training of the will, by inducing the habit first of occupation in general, and then of limiting one's activity in obedience to the nature of the ma- terial employed, and also, and more especially, in obedience to the demands of others. It is a whole- some habituation of the will to objective activities, and to the cultivation of talents having a general or quasi-public utility. CIVIL SOCIETY. 61 The specialization of production in conformity with the specialization of wants leads to the divi-' sion of labor. In this way the labor of the indi- vidual becomes more simple, his skill greater, and the number of its products indefinitely increased. At the same time the dependence of men upon each other for the satisfaction of their multiform needs grows more absolute. Labor also becomes more and more mechanical, so enabling man in the end to substitute for the labor of the hand the work of the machine. (c) Wealth. In the manner now described, in- dividual self-interest is converted into a ministry for the satisfaction of the wants of all. The result is what may be termed a permanent and common wealth, in which the individual by his theoretical and practical culture and skill may render himself a partaker, and so assure for himself the means of subsistence. But the possibility of such participa- tion in the common wealth, or of amassing a pri- vate and special fortune of one's own, depends on numerous conditions. First, it may depend on the previous possession of a certain fortune, to be used as capital. Again, it will vary with one's special skill, aptitude, or ability, points in which a great inequality exists among men, arising partly from a difference of natural endowment, whether of body or of mind, and partly from the influence of accidental conditions in rendering easy or difficult the develop- ment and use of one's endowments. This inequality, or rather difference, among men, which is an ine- radicable attribute of their natural individuality, and which consequently the abstract understanding in "the framing of its social ideals vainly ignores or aims to annihilate, reappears in a modified form in what may be termed the natural classes of Civil Society. Of these classes there are three, which may be termed respectively the " substantial or im- mediate class, the reflecting or formal, and finally the universal class." The first of these classes is made up of tillers of the soil, and their wealth is derived from the natural productions of the soil. Being obliged to govern themselves in their labor with reference to the chang- ing seasons, and the fruit of their labor being de- pendent on other variable natural conditions, they are obliged to cultivate the virtue of providence. For the rest, independent reflection and active will play a subordinate part in the life of the agriculturist, and the ethical character developed has prevailingly the quality of "immediate and substantial" (that is, natural, unbroken, undisturbed) wholeness, hav- ing its roots directly in the confiding life of the family. With reason, therefore, have the proper beginning and first founding of States been identified with the introduction of agriculture along with marriage. For with agriculture, the formative culture of the soil, comes necessarily exclusive private possession of the soil, the exchange of the roving life of the savage for the orderly quiet of domestic law, the secured satisfaction of human wants, the regulation of the intercourse of the sexes through the institu- tion of permansnt marriage, and the consequent CIVIL SOCIETY. 63 merging of private interest in the larger interest of the family, and of private possession in the posses- sions of the family. In all these results we may see the element of universality coming to the front ; or, in other words, we may see in them the work of chat unifying, constructive, law-instituting reason which, in one way or another, is the active principle of all existence. And so, especially, we must regard them as steps tending distinctly toward the mani- festation and the actual realization by man of his own nature, as a creature " endowed with reason." We need not wonder at the agronomic festivals, images, and rites of the ancients, whereby they ex- pressed their sense of the introduction of agriculture and of the institutions connected with it as divine acts, and so devoted to them a distinctly religious reverence. If to the success of the agriculturist's labor Nature contributes the principal share, and his own indus- try a relatively subordinate one, the case is different when we come to the second of the classes in Civil Society above enumerated. This may be termed t the industrial class. Its members depend for their subsistence less on the immediate beneficence of Nature, and more directly on their own labor, reflec- tion, and intelligence, as also and essentially on the correlation of their labor with the wants and labors of others. This class is subdivided, according to the character or form of its occupation, into three classes, the class of artisans, or manual labor- ers, whose work is directed to the supplying, on de- mand, of single wants of single persons ; the class 64 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. of manufacturers, who control and direct the collec- tive labor of a number of employe's in providing particular articles, for which there is a more gen- eral demand ; and the commercial or trading class, engaged in the exchange of articles of demand, by means of a universal medium of exchange, namely, money, representing the abstract value of all wares. In the industrial class the individual is specially forced to rely on himself ; and the consciousness of this fact causes him to be among the first to de- mand the establishment of protecting civil institu- tions. It is, consequently, mainly in the cities that the spirit of liberty and civil order has first made its appearance. To the third or "universal" class, finally, are committed the general interests of the civil associa- tion. Its members must therefore be relieved of the necessity of engaging in labor for the immediate supply of their personal needs, either through their possession of a private fortune, or through the inter- vention of the State, which by remunerating them provides that their private interests shall not suf- fer while they are wholly occupied in caring for the interests of the public. These classes constitute (as a logician would say) the " particular" or specific differences of Civil Society. As such, they are not arbitrary, but ideally necessary. But to which class a particular individ- ual shall belong is a matter upon the determination of which natural disposition, birth, and other ac- cidental circumstances may have their influence, CIVIL SOCIETY. 65 though the ultimate and essential ground of deci- sion must lie in the subjective opinion and indepen- dent choice of the individual himself. Thus, what takes place by an inner necessity to wit, the divi- sion of Civil Society into the classes mentioned appears immediately dependent on private choice. To the subjective consciousness of the individual it has the form of a work of his own will ; and so the principle of subjectivity receives in this sphere its due right, desert, and honor. This is one of the points in which the difference between the political life of the Orient and the Occi- dent, or the ancient and the modern world, mani- fests itself. In the former the division of society into classes arises objectively, as we may say, of itself, because it is per se rational, the nature of Civil Society necessarily involving such a division ; but the principle of subjective individuality is de- prived of its right, inasmuch as the assignment of individuals to the respective classes is wholly left to the rulers (as in the Platonic Republic), or deter- mined by the mere circum stance of birth, as in the Hindu castes. Thus, not being recognized in the supreme organization of society and so harmonized with it, the principle of subjective individuality, which is an essential factor of society, is rendered hostile, and either wholly succeeds in overthrowing the social order, as in the Grecian States and the Roman Republic, or else shows its fruit in the form of internal corruption and complete degradation, as was to a certain degree the case among the Lacede- monians, and as is now (Hegel was writing in 1820) 66 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. most completely illustrated among the Hindus. But when the principle in question is recognized in the public order, is integrated with it, and so is main- tained in its right, it becomes the all-animating principle of Civil Society, bringing with it the devel- opment of the thinking activity of men, and of per- sonal merit and honor. Such integration of the immanently necessary reason of Civil Society and the State with the liberty of individual choice, is what is mainly contained in the ordinary idea of civil freedom. The individual, now, by his own choice and by his own activity, industry, and skill, makes himself and maintains himself as a member of one of the integrant orders of Civil Society ; makes provision for his own wants through this his connection with the public whole, and so acquires recognized indi- viduality in his own sight, as well as in the sight of others. Tli3 ethical quality thus developed is that of class-honor and probity. In particular, what we have heretofore distinguished by the name of " morality" has its peculiar place in this sphere, where private reflection on one's own activity and care for particular individual wants and personal welfare occupy so prominent a place. B. THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. AYe have seen that the " system of wants" leads to a civil order, founded on the recognized right of individuality in the matter both of knowledge and of volition. This right is in kind universal, and is the CIVIL SOCIETY. 67 right to liberty, but only in an abstract and conse- quently formal and negative sense, the sense of freedom from outside interference. The " adminis- tration of justice" (ReclitspflegeY \$ the protection of this right, particularly in the form of protection of property. The conception involved is that of a right which belongs to all men equally ; a justice, which is no respecter of persons. The law protects all individuals in respect of that in which they are unequal, their property, or, better, their proper- ties, whatever pertains to them as individual per- sons, whether in the form of material possessions, acquired talents, gifts of fortune, or what not ; and it protects them all equally. All men are conceived as constituting, so to speak, one universal Per- son, as members of which all possess an abstract equality. Right or Justice, then, in the sphere of Civil Society, is grounded in the notion of the abstract equality of all men. Its "objective reality" de- pends on, or consists in, its existing for the con- sciousness of men, or being known, and its being equipped with sufficient power to enable it to take and assert its place in the world of effective and objective realities, and make itself recognized as possessing a universal authority. (a) Right in the Form of Law. Right becomes positive in the form of law ; and Law is the formal and, from the nature of the case, universal defini- tion of Right. It is from the nature of the case universal ; for definition is the work of thought, and it is the peculiarity of thought that it clothes all its 68 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. objects in the form of universality. Right, or Jus- tice, in assuming the form of Law, not only takes on the form of universality, but also then first becomes truly definite, simple, and intelligible. " Laws of custom," as they are termed, since they are laws of the custom of thinking beings, have implicitly, and so as we may say tend toward, the same form of universality ; and one of the functions of legislation is to give them explicitly this form. In Civil Society, as such, and from its point of view, right is binding or obligatory only so far as it has been defined in the form of law. The subject- matter of civil.law, and the sphere of its application, are the indefinitely individualized and complicated relations and kinds of both property and contracts, as well as those ethical relations which spring up in the spiritual atmosphere of the family, so far as these involve questions of " abstract right." Morality and its commands, as being most intimately concerned with the subjective will and private conscience of the individual, cannot be made the subject of positive legislation. (b) The Existence of the Law. It belongs to the proper existence or being of civil law that it be pub- lished and generally known. It is, for example, "one and the same wrong to suspend the laws, as Dionysius the Tyrant did, so high that no citizen could read them, or to bury them in an extensive apparatus of learned books, collections of differ- ing decisions, opinions, customs, and the like, and that, too, perhaps in a foreign language, so that the knowledge of what is legally right is accessible only CIVIL SOCIETY. 69 to the learned few." The codification of law is therefore not only a benefit to a people, but an act of justice. Abstract right takes form in the laws of Civil Society. So through the due institution and publi- cation of the laws, what was before only the " imme- diate " or " natural " right of the individual acquires the attribute of being recognized, or of existing in the general will and knowledge of society. Trans- actions in regard to property must therefore now be accompanied by a form or formality, as the sign and condition of legal existence. Property now rests on civil contract, and on the formalities which render it capable of proof and legal. In Civil Society, where property and individuality acquire legal recognition, crime becomes no longer a merely private but a public offence. The injury of one member of society becomes the injury of all. The inherent nature of the crime is not altered, but its external relations are. In estimating its magni- tude therefore, or its gravity, it is now necessary to take into consideration the new point of view of its dangerousness to society. But this very considera- tion, in the case of a society firmly established, may operate to produce a sensible reduction of the severity with which crime is punished. (c) The Court of Justice. Right enters, in the form of law, into objective existence. It stands forth, independent of and superior to the particular volition and opinion of the individual, with the at- tribute of universal authority. The assertion and realization of this authority in particular cases is the 70 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. function of the Court of Justice, whose voice (to apply an expression of Aristotle) is the voice of " intelligence without passion." To this court it is the right of every member of Civil Society to appeal, as it is also his duty to appear before it, and to accept only at its hands the justice he claims. A right, in order to receive the approval and pro- tection of the courts, must be provable. Legal Pro- cedure is the name given to the steps themselves regulated by law by which the parties concerned are required to produce their proofs and arguments, and the judge is made acquainted with the case in dispute. The forms of legal procedure are neces- sary, and so are an essential part of organized right or justice itself. But as they become more minute and exact, they become indefinitely more numerous and complicated ; the difficulty of mastering and fol- lowing them is increased, till at last, instead of being an aid to justice, they are, in themselves or through their easy misuse, a positive hindrance. Hence the need and the duty of establishing for certain classes of cases courts with simplified methods of proce- dure, courts of " arbitration," or of " equity." The administration of justice must be public. The particular subject-matter of a case under litigation is, it is true, the immediate concern only of the par- ties directly involved. But by virtue of its being brought forward for legal discussion and decision, it acquires a public or general character, and the deci- sion of it involves the interests of all. It need hardly be added, that it is the right of the accused party a right of his " subjective freedom " to be CIVIL SOCIETY. 71 a witness of the administration of justice in his own case. This right is completed when the determina- tion of the facts in his case, to which the law is to be applied, is committed to those in whose impartial intelligence he can confide, trial by one's peers, or by jury. C. POLICE AND CORPORATION. We have seen that the true relation between the Universal and Particular is one of agreement and unity ; and in fact in Civil Society law is expressly established to be the universal guide and rule of par- ticular or individual conduct. The latter is to con- form to the former. The administration of justice is the enforcement or restoration of such conformity, in cases where conformity is imperilled or interfered with. But the very fact that it may be imperilled shows that the union of universal and particular is not here what it is, for example, in the realms of organic Nature, namely, vital, concrete, inviolable. Their relation here is in a distinct degree external and mechanical ; and the maintenance of conformity depends immediately on the subjective will and free- dom of the individual, and mediately on the exist- ence of an executive power, strong and intelligent ( enough to enforce the authority of law. Indeed, it is just because Civil Society, which is directly founded on or correlative to the " system of indi- vidual wants," is concerned only with that sphere of the public life in which law and conduct bear this relation to each other, that it is called " the 72 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. external State," or the State on its external, visi- ble, and mechanical side. Law and conduct, or law and private interest, bearing then this external and mechanical relation to each other, it becomes possible to look upon one of them as a means exist- ing for the sake of the other. It is thus that law is regarded in the sphere of Civil Society. It is not enough that the law should be administered through courts of justice for the punishment of actual offences against property and person ; the law must also be an instrument for the actual prevention of such offences. The security and welfare of the indi- vidual must be treated as something which he may claim to have positively guarded and promoted through the administration of the law. (a) Police. The sphere of police regulation is the contingent actions of private individuals, each pursuing his own interest in his own way. Its first object is to provide that no one shall, by actions in themselves harmless, prejudice the interests of oth- ers or the public order. The decision of the ques- tion as to what actions are thus prejudicial must always be to a certain degree arbitrary. It will vary with varying external conditions, for exam- ple, peace and war, and with the changing cus- toms, morals, and spirit of a people. Again, the relations between producers (or deal- ers) and consumers involve sides -that are of common and public concern. For example, the public ex- posure for sale of wares of daily and general use can be permitted to the individual, subject only to the right of the buying public to be protected from CIVIL SOCIETY. 73 fraud through the examination in all needed cases, by an officer of the law, of the wares exposed. But especially the dependence of great branches of in- dustry on foreign conditions and remote combina- tions, which the individuals dependent on them cannot survey in all their connections, renders neces- sary a degree of protective oversight and direction on the part of the civil power. Still, when in these and other ways the civil arm has done all in its power to enable the individual to provide for his own subsistence, his success is yet exposed to many and contingent individual condi- tions, skill, health, capital, and the like. And if in the first resort the responsibility in the matter of enabling the individual to meet these conditions rests on the family, yet to the Civil Society belongs the function of supplementing the efforts of the family, of supplying its deficiencies or neglects, and even, when occasion arises, of overruling its will. For the Civil Society recognizes each member of the family as an independent person. Further, it sub- stitutes for external, inorganic Nature and the pa- ternal acre, from which the individual originally derived his subsistence, its own artificial soil (so to speak) , thus rendering the very maintenance of the family itself dependent on it, that is, on a relative contingency. " So the individual has be- come a son of the Civil Society, which just as much has claims on him as he too upon it." The society acquiring thus, in some true sense, the character of a universal family, has the right and the duty to see that the education of its members is 74 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. not left to the capricious and uncertain determina- tion of parents, so far, at least, as education is required in order to fit the individual for citizenship, and is of such character that the parents themselves cannot generally and personally superintend it. In like manner it is the right and duty of the Civil So- ciety to treat as minors, and assume the guardian- ship of, those who by prodigality destroy the means of their own and of their families' assured sup- port and subsistence, and this both for the good of society and of the individuals concerned. But the loss or absence of means of support may be due, not to wilful waste or indolence, but to accidental physical or external circumstances. In this case we have the social phenomenon of poverty, a class of persons having all the wants which the existence of Civil Society presupposes, without the ability to provide for them. With regard to them, the " public power" is to assume the place of the family, with a view not only to the supplying of immediate material needs, but also to the correction of the disposition to idleness and the other vices that arise from such a condition, and from the feel- ing of its injustice. Poverty and all sorts of human distress are not merely external "objective" phenomena. They have a subjective side, by which they appeal espe- cially to the sympathy, charity, and love of the more fortunate. So they furnish an abundant occa- sion for that kind of assistance which is prompted by Morality (private or individual benevolence, and the like) ; and this they will continue to do, no CIVIL SOCIETY. 75 matter how perfect the public arrangements insti- tuted by legislation for their relief. But Hegel dis- tinctly insists that these arrangements should in fact be made as perfect as possible, in opposition to the theory which would shift all responsibility in this matter as much as possible on the shoulders of pri- vate philanthropy, that is, on something which by its nature is variable and contingent. The unimpeded life of a civil society is accom- panied by a constant growth in population and in the industrial sphere. The dependence of men on each other for the supply of their wants becomes more general, while industrial enterprise takes on larger forms. This tends, on the one hand, to facilitate the accumulation of wealth ; and, on the other, to specialize and limit the sphere of individ- ual labor, and so to aggravate the dependence of the laborer, with which is connected an increasing incapacity to appreciate and enjoy the larger liber- ties, and especially the spiritual or intellectual ad- vantages of Civil Society. When by an extension of this latter tendency a great mass of the popula- tion has in its means and mode of living fallen be- low a certain standard, which naturally determines itself as the one necessary for a member of the so- ciety, and has thus suffered a loss of that feeling of justice and honor which accompanies the conscious- ness of self-support through one's own activity and labor, we have the phenomenon of a proletarian class (Pobel). And the existence of such a class again only increases the facility with which dispro- portionate wealth is concentrated in a few hands. 76 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. Now, to make the support of this class upon a proper plane of living a direct tax on the rich, or to provide for the same through public and richly- endowed foundations, would be against the prin- ciple of Civil Society and the feeling which its in- dividual members must have of independence and honor. Or if it were sought to accomplish the same end by providing labor (the opportunity to labor), the result would only be the further increase of that mass of productions in the surplus of which, and the comparative lack of paying consumers, the evil in question consists. So, " through this its dialectic," the particular civil society is forced to transcend itself, that is, first of all, to seek among other peoples that lack , what it has in abundance, or that are generally in- ferior to it in skilled industry, consumers, and thus the necessary means of subsistence. This involves a movement of great significance in its bearing on the development of general culture. It involves the use of the seas as a commercial highway. As the development of the principle of family life has its condition in the fixed earth, in the possession of a determinate portion of the soil, so the sea is the changing and inappropriable natural element which gives life to industry in its external relations. Searching for gain, men expose themselves and their goods to the perils of the waves. In this way they prove their superiority to motives of mere mate- rial profit. Among the results are, that the attach- ment of men to the soil and to the limited spheres of civil life is tempered with an element of flux, and CIVIL p . that remote lands are brought into relations of inter- course, governed by principles accepted by all par- ties. Such intercourse constitutes a most important means of civilization, and commerce in promoting it becomes a factor of universal history. A further sequel is the opening up of the way for the planting of colonies, with all that this implies in the way of industrial enlargement and relief. (b) The Corporation. The Civil Society has general and particular interests. The care for the former falls within the province of what we have termed Police. The latter are organized, for their special protection and direction, in Corporations. The Corporation is conceived by Hegel as the formal and legal union of those members of the industrial class who follow a common trade. The relations of the Corporation to its members are such that it may be called, in relation to them, a " second family." It has an ethical character. It subordi- nates the arbitrary action of the individual member to rules established for the common good, and culti- vates in him, as an ideal regulating principle, the " honor of his craft." But the ethical aim of the Corporation, like that of the Family, is restricted in its scope. Both pre- suppose, and by their ideal limitations demonstrate, a larger, more universal aim of man, which is, as matter of fact, organized in the State, in which latter, as an ethical organism, and the larger world of man and of human self-realization, both Family and Corporation have their existence as constituent and subordinate members. 78 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. Under the head of ' ' Abstract Right " we contem- plated the self -developing Will of man in its purely objective aspect or relation. From this we passed under the head of ' ' Morality " to the consideration of the same subject in a purely subjective point of view. Both of these views were found to be alike abstract and therefore imperfect. The whole and substantial and actual Will of man, which is noth- ing other than the intrinsic nature of man develop- ing, asserting, and realizing itself, could be (as we saw) and is neither purely objective nor purely sub- jective, but both, in organic harmony and unity, and can only exist in a moral organism, of which the individual shall be a member. We next regarded the Will of man as thus existing, in a "natural" or "immediate" form, in the Family. This form, though natural and in its measure appropriate to the ideal substance contained in it, was found to be really incommensurate with the whole nature of this substance. Accordingly, we saw the members of the Family going forth from its fold, assuming the character of independent units, and forming groups of a new kind, held together in the external bonds of coercive regulation. But here, again, the end of our search is not reached. The defect of Civil So- ciety in this regard is of the same kind as though less extreme than that of Abstract Right. The substantial will of man is not adequately actual- ized in the mainly objective sphere of the External State. The rather, the true apprehension of Civil Society, or the External State, forces us for the per- fect comprehension of the latter to pass on to the THE STATE. 79 Invisible State, the Nation, in which man knows and wills himself as both a spiritual and a world- subduing power. Here it is that Civil Society finds the proximate ground of its authority, its right, and its power, as well as the ideal and regulative princi- ple of its external arrangements. In Civil Society we consider man as governed ; in the State, as self- governing. In the former case we make abstraction from human and especially, national character and individuality ; in the latter, these are essential and all-determining. SECT. III. THE STATE. The ethical idea of man has actuality in the State. The State is the ethical spirit, the manifest, self- conscious, substantial Will of man, ''thinking and knowing itself, and suiting its performance to its knowledge, or to the proportion of its knowledge." This spirit exists unreflectingly in what may be termed the ethical genius of a people, and reflec- tively in the self-consciousness, the knowledge, and activity of the individual, who in turn finds in and through it regarded as his own spiritual substance, as the determining goal of his own higher aims, and as the product of his own activity his substantial freedom. The State is thus essentially a living ra- tional value and a rational power. It is a universal or public reason, the spring of a public or national life, and the foundation of a national consciousness. This consciousness has actual existence in the par- ticular self-consciousness of the individual. But it 80 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. cannot be termed an external or mechanical addition to the latter; the rather, the "public conscious- ness," the u national conscience," is, in its measure, nothing but the development and completion of the particular self-consciousness of the individual con- sidered as a rational being. It is the particular self-consciousness of the individual elevated to that character of universality which belongs to it by its own nature. Thus the individual finds in the State a revelation and actualization of his own larger and better self ; its service is a ministry of freedom, and kindles in him the flame of an unselfish patriotism ; its claims on him are perfect, and membership in it is a duty of the highest order. In modern discussion the State has often been /confounded with Civil Society, and has accordingly been regarded only as a mechanical expedient for the security and protection of property and individual liberty. The final end of political union has thus ;n viewed as the interest of individuals as such : whence the natural inference that no inherent obli- gation rests on the individual to accept the respon- sibilities of citizenship ; that it depends on his own \V arbitrary choice, whether he shall or shall not be the " member of a State." 1 But the real relation of the State to the individual is of quite a different nature. The State being objective reason, or spirit, the in- dividual himself has real human objectivity, true individuality, and a truly ethical quality only as he is a member of the State. Social union is, con- sequently, not merely a means to an end, it is 1 Compare, for example, Mr. Herbert Spencer's " Social Statics." THE STATE. 81 itself the true end ; and the nature of the individual marks him as destined to lead a universal or pub- lic life. This latter is to be at once the back- ground and the result of all his special activities, desires, and the like. It was the merit of Rousseau that he recognized the State as founded in a princi- ple which not only as regards its form (like, say, the social instinct, or the divine authority) , but also in respect of its content, is of the general nature of thought, nay, is thought itself ; namely, the Will. * But as he took the Will only in the limited form of the single Will, the particular, private Will of the individual, it followed that the universal Will, which as such should be the Will of man, should express the organic nature of man, and should hence be in nothing different from the rational per se, was understood by him merely as the common Will, 1 derived from a comparison of various single wills, arrived at by special agreement, and only by abstracting from all that was separately peculiar to the different wills. Hence the theory which ascribed the union of individuals in the State to a contract founded on their arbitrary opinion and volition, with all the consequences, theoretical and practical, that flow from the theory. History has already shown how baneful was the result of attempting to put these abstractions into practice. The idea of the State (a) has immediate actuality in the individual State, an independent organism, with its own constitution or internal polity (Staats- recht) ; (6) passes into the relation of the single 1 Compare above, p. 20. (j 82 State to other States, external policy ; (c) reveals itself as universal idea, or genus (specified in single States), and so as a power superior to the individual State, reveals itself, in short, as a Spirit of Humanity, progressively actualizing itself in the process of Universal Human History. A. INTERNAL POLITY. The State is the actualization of concrete free- dom. Concrete freedom is the vital union of the particular interests of the individual with the uni- versal aims of man. The former are allowed their full development, and in the system of the Family and of Civil Society their independent right is rec- ognized. But they cannot and do not stand alone. They tend, partly of themselves, to pass over into and become identified with the interest of the uni- versal, the public interest; while, partly (and what is of even greater consequence), the indi- vidual comes with his own intelligence and knowl- edge to recognize the intrinsic need and right of such identification, to recognize in the universal the groundwork and substance of his own spirit, and to subordinate his activities to it as to their (proximately) final end. In other words, in the State, as the actualization of concrete freedom, neither is the universal established in authority and carried into realization in abstraction from the par- ticular interests, opinions, and volitions of individ- uals, nor do the latter live, as private persons, in exclusive devotion to their special interests ; the THE STATE. 83 rather, the universal enters concretely into their wills, and consciously determines the direction of their activity. " The tremendous strength and depth of- the principle of modern States" are derived from the circumstance that the principle of subjectivity, or private personality, is allowed to be carried to its fullest and extreme development, and is yet at the same time reduced into substantial harmony and unity with, and made a vehicle of realization for, the' universal Will of man. With reference to the spheres of private right and welfare, the Family and Civil Society, the State appears, on the one hand, as an external and superior power, to which their own laws and interests are subordinate, and from which they depend. But, on the other hand, it also appears as their immanent end, and as having its strength in the unity of its own universal aim with the particular interests of its individual members, or in the consequent fact that the duties of its members toward it are measured by the rights which they enjoy in it. On this last point Hegel lays the greatest empha- sis. In the State, " duty and right are united in one and the same relation." In this u conception of the union of duty and right is contained one of the most important notes of the State and the inner ground of its strength. In the abstract view of duty, particular interest is overlooked or condemned as aa unessential and even unworthy factor. But the con- crete view shows this factor to be just as essential as its correlative (the universal one) , and the satis- faction of it to be absolutely necessary^ The indi- 84 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. vidual in accomplishing his duty must in some way find the satisfaction of his own interest ; from his relation to the State there must flow for him a status, such that the public affair shall become his own par- ticular affair. His particular interest must not be left out of consideration, or even suppressed, but brought into agreement with the universal interest," so that the securing of the one shall be at the same time the securing of the other. And this is accom- plished when to the relatively mechanical relation of enforced obedience or external legality, by which in the sphere of Civil Society the individual is out- wardly and visibly kept in his place, there is added the inward grace of an enlightened and truly self- knowing will ; when the public interest is compre- hended, or at least felt, as the true private interest, and vice versa ; when, accordingly, outward obedi- ence becomes the natural and spontaneous garb and expression of an inward spirit, of an all-pervading ethos, and mere government is changed to moral and substantial self-government. In the State this end is consummated. The State, we have said, is the actualization of concrete freedom. And this is the same as to say that the State is in its measure the actualization of the Idea of Man ; that it is not simply a contingent means of human perfection, but is also this perfec- tion itself ; that, in brief, the State is Man, standing relatively 1 complete in that fulness and wholeness 1 " Relatively," I say, in order to prevent a possible misconcep- tion. Relatively, though with an inferior degree of truth, the same may be said of the Family which, in the text, is asserted of the THE STATE. 85 of developed being which the idea of man as a rational being implies. And it is this by virtue of a process which, just because it is rather organic than merely mechanical, has the form of a process of self-realization. To illustrate : The actual tree is such only by virtue of a process of growth. In this process the tree becomes nothing other than itself, it realizes itself. It does this, further, by separating itself into its natural parts or members, roots and branches. To each it allows a separate or dictinct existence, and yet holds them all to- gether in the unity of one organic and living whole. We may say that the tree disperses or distributes itself among its members, and this as the very con- dition on the fulfilment of which the manifestation of its universal life and power, and the actualiza- tion of its organic unity (or the actualization of the " idea of the tree ") irrevocably depend. More- over, the tree is not an after result of the existence of the roots and branches : when they begin to exist, its existence also begins. So it is with the State. The roots of the State are families, and its branches are the institutions of civil society. Its material is individuals. These take their places under the mentioned institutions, directed by cir- State. But, as we shall see later, the State itself is organic to a larger life and actuality of the human spirit, or of the "idea of man," in universal history; while universal history, again, is organic to the perfect consummation of humanity through the discovery of the true will of man in the will of God, the adoption of the latter as the inviolable norm of human action, and the consequent estab- lishment of man in his spiritual perfection and completeness as a co-worker with and child of God. 86 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. cumstances, by caprice, or by personal choice. The element of " subjective freedom" has here its play. But the institutions themselves have obviously a universal or general character ; and the individual in recognizing them, and maintaining himself in his own chosen place under them, recognizes and de- votes himself to the service of a universal with which by his own deliberate choice he has identified himself. But the universality of the institutions has its ground in, and is the manifestation and reflection of, that ethical " universal " which we term the in- visible State or Nation, or, more explicitly, the spirit of the nation, the universal spirit of man, as it takes form and declares itself in the particular life of the nation. Thus regarded, they make up the constitution of the nation ; they are the reason of the nation, developed and actualized in particular forms. They are, therefore, the " steadfast basis of the State ; they immediately determine the temper of the individual citizens toward the State, and espe- cially their confidence in it ; and they are the pillars of the public freedom, since in them particular (in- dividual) freedom is realized in a rational form ; and they thus involve an intrinsic union of freedom and necessity," or are, as it were, the living and visible body of an interior, organic, and steadfast liberty. But institutions by themselves are impersonal and unconscious. Their existence, as the above com- parison of them to the branches of a tree implies, is assimilated in kind to that of a natural organism. The law of freedom, as exemplified in them alone, is like a natural law, inflexible, unreflecting, without THE STATE. 87 shadow of turning. In particular, they contain in themselves, as thus viewed and existing, no germ of development. 1 They are the phenomenon and product of a public spirit, which they accordingly implicitly presuppose, and which must distinctly declare and develop itself in the form of clear, self -know ing intelligence and will, in order that the form of necessity under which institutional freedom existed may itself be changed to freedom. This spirit we must consider and speak of as the true substance of the State. A subjective form or reflection of the spirit in ques- tion is 'what may be called the political temper in the individual, or patriotism. But objectively the substantial spirit, or spiritual substance of the State, exists in the form of an organism of different so- called "powers" intrusted to different men, or classes of men, in whom the State, the national spirit, is particularly embodied ; in whose intelli- gence it especially knows itself, and in whose will it wills itself, and through whom, therefore, the State may be said to " work and act in view of aims consciously known, according to principles con- sciously recognized, and conformably to laws which are not only laws per se, but also for consciousness ; and so, too, as far as its actions relate to particular 1 The Chinese empire is a social organism, an organism of social institutions, existing mainly in the character of a natural organism. Hence its relative fixedness and permanence, and its withdrawal from the laws of political growth and development. Cf. J. Happel, Die altchinesische Reichsreligion vom Standpunkte der vergleichen- den Religionsgeschichte, Leipzig, 1882. 88 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. circumstances and relations, with definite knowledge of them." l 1 At this point our author introduces a long digression on the relation of the State to religion. Is religion the foundation of the State ? Undoubtedly it is, and the whole philosophy of the State and of history is a progressive demonstration of this truth, and of the sense in which it must be understood. The State, history, and indeed all natural existence, are the gradual actualization or mani- festation of an Absolute Reason, which can and must exist in its eternal fulness only as Absolute Spirit, or God. In the ethical world, in particular, we are in process of seeing how each lower grade presupposes, as its substantial foundation, proximately the next higher one, and then absolutely all higher ones. So the Family presupposes or calls for Civil Society, while the State is similarly presupposed by both. The particular State, again, the nation, with its definite national spirit, is organic to, and hence presupposes, a still larger life of the human spirit, a life which at once takes up into itself and also transcends the limits of separate national exist- ences, and of which universal history is both the expression and the demonstration. But man, conceived and known as the spirit imma- nent in universal history, as universal humanity, or Weltgeist, is found to be unable to stand alone. Pie is relative to something else, which he presupposes as his "substantial foundation;" he is not absolute. The whole historic life of humanity is organic to, and dependent on, the life and operation of the absolute and eternal Spirit, of whose thought and will it closes the demonstration, begun at the lowest grade of finite existence. When the natural and ethi- cal worlds are comprehended as the progressive incarnation of rea- son in "reality," God, who is the "absolute truth," is seen to be the eternal presupposition and the omnipresent and actual condition of all existence whatever, but most conspicuously of the existence of the "ethical world." If all things whatsoever are, in their degree, the revelation and incarnation of that supreme reason in which abso- lute and eternal Being God, Absolute Spirit consists, and if it is thus true of all things that they are a present and actual revela- tion of divine will and spiritual being, much more obviously is this true of an ethical organism, an historic power, like the State. So Hegel declares that "the State is divine will, in the form of a pres- ent [national] spirit, unfolding itself in the actual shape and organi- zation of an [ethical] world." The whole normal process of history, THE STATE. 89 The Political Constitution is (1) the organization of the State and the process of its organic life in re- lation to itself, the inner articulation of the State and its consolidation as an independent whole ; and this involves (2) the existence of the State in the form of individuality, as an exclusive unit, with external relations to other similar units. 1. Internal Constitution. When is a political constitution rational? It is when the inner articu- lation of the State or, as it is called, the division and distribution of powers repeats the inner articu- lation of reason itself. The law of this articulation to which all the life of man, in Family, Civil Society, and State is organic, consists in the progressive realization of concrete human freedom, that is, of the essential spiritual nature of man, through the conscious recognition of God as the " foundation " of all the true life of the human spirit, and of the divine will as the true substance or content of the human will. In the whole process of history, or of the "ethical world," humanity is progressively learning, and showing that it is learning, that its true language is, " Lo ! I am come to do thy will, God ! " And so the foundation of the State is indeed, and in the most radical and comprehensive sense, religion, which, says Hegel, has ideally " the absolute truth for its content." Upon this general truth, both in its generality and in its specific applications, our author finds occasion, as we shall see, to insist at almost every step in the development of the philosophy of history, the spiritual story of humanity. But when religion is otherwise regarded ; when it is identified with immediate feeling, or with an intuition which claims exemp- tion from the arduous labor of philosophic comprehension ; when, accordingly, it degenerates into fanaticism and narrow dogmatism, restricting the presence of God in history within the limits of a select religious organization, and treating the State as at the best only a soulless and godless mechanism, then the claim that religion is the foundation of the State must be rejected, or rather corrected. Then, especially, must the spiritual character of the State and its inherent right divine be emphasized. 90 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATK. is neither obscure nor arbitrary ; it is read on every page of real existence ; it is the law of the distinc- tion of the universal, the particular,/ and the indi- vidual, and of their combination in a concrete and living unity ; it is the law of organic and individ- ualized unity, or of many members in one body, each of which, while having its own independent character, reflects and shares the life and character of the whole. In such a unity the members are natural, and not artificial ; they flow, so to speak, in their distinction from the nature of the case, and do not exist like a clumsy makeshift, as the result of an afterthought. Hegel remarks on the circumstance that the start- ing-point of so much of modern theorizing respect- ing political constitutions has been purely negative. Theorists have begun with the assumed fact of o, general ill-will, fear, distrust, or hatred among men, and then , have proceeded to set up in theory a gov- erning power as a dike against this " natural " evil. But the governing power is conceived by them as intrinsically an evil, though a necessary one, to counteract which another power must be set up, and so on. Thus the State is conceived only as an aggregate of powers, which are not members one of ajQother, but are inherently independent and sepa- rate, existing only or mainly for the artificial pur- pose of checking and limiting one another. The State is thus viewed only as a kt universal equipoise, but not a living unity." It is a piece of artificial mechanism, and its ostensible growth is merely the product of an equally artificial and continued tink- THE STATE. 91 ering. The true criticism on all this is simply the positive science of the State as we are seeking to develop it. The essential factors in the inner articulation of the " political State " are (a) The power to define and determine the uni- versal in the form of law, the Legislative Power ; (b) The power to apply this " universal" in par- ticular spheres and to single cases, the governing or Executive Power ; and (c) The power of ultimate decision, or the Power of the Prince, in which the different powers are brought together in individual unity. The reigning prince is thus truly the head of the State. He con- spicuously stands for it as a whole, and the State itself is a constitutional monarchy. Hegel declares that the development of the State into the form and character of constitutional mon- archy is the peculiar work and achievement of the modern world.- He regards the ancient division of political constitutions into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy as superficial, and due to the fact that the State, which is a growth, had not then at- tained to its full development. The reverse, he holds, is now true. In the fulness of the modern time the ideal nature of the State has been histori- cally unfolded has unfolded itself in the form and substance of the constitutional monarchy. In the light of this result, simple monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy appear as forms having only a tem- porary and accidental justification. In the consti- tutional monarchy, whatever is true in each of these 92 special forms is retained : it is retained, but only in the character of a subsidiary, though organic and hence vital factor. Simple monarchy is the rale of one ; aristocracy is the rule of some ; democracy is the rule of many. In the constitutional monarchy all of these three sides are combined, being sever- ally represented in the three " powers," of which the modern State is the organic union. However, as Hegel remarks, these merely quantitative or numer- ical distinctions lie only on the surface of the case. The main point is, that the modern State, the con- stitutional State, is the ideal one, because, or so far as, there is recognized and realized in it the " prin- ciple of free subjectivity," and the substantial rea- son of the national spirit comes in it to a condition of self -mastering actuality. 1 1 It will be noticed that the considerations which are decisive with Hegel are in no sense merely formal. And it is obvious that the ideal State, as he conceives it, with its three orders of powers, may exist in a republic like the American, as well as in a constitu- tional monarchy like that of England. It were no exaggeration to term our constitution that of a monarchical democracy (the President being the monarch, the "one" in rule), and the British constitution that of a democratic monarchy. "The President" of the United States " probably enjoys more real power than any constitutional monarch in the world" (N. Y. Evening Post, editorial," Feb. 1, 1886). " If Hamilton had lived a hundred years later, his compari- son of the President with the King would have turned on very different points. He must have conceded that the Eepublican functionary was much the more powerful of the two. . . . The Con- stitutional King, according to M. Thiers, reigns, but does not gov- ern. The President of the United States governs, but he does not rejgn" (Sir H. S. Maine, Popular Government, Am. ed., N. Y., 1886, pp. 214, 250). Hegel remarks, in his ^Esthetik, i. 248, that "the monarchs of our time are no longer, like the heroes of the mythi- cal ages, persons in whom an entire social order is concretely THE STATE. 93 It is to be noted that the real existence of a constitution in distinction from its merely formal existence, in the shape of a written and published document is in the self-consciousness of the peo- ple to whom it is said to belong. A formal consti- tution must correspond to and express that national spirit, that spirit of the people, which as a living law permeates the customs, the consciousness, and all the relations of the individuals who compose the people. A constitution is a thing having a natural growth ; it cannot be manufactured a priori and forced upon a people irrespective of the grade and kind of culture that the people has attained, without revolutionary and self-destructive results. (a) The Power of the Prince. 1 The power of the Prince represents the power of the State in its totality. It is the power of the constitution and the laws (the element of universality in the total con- ception of the State) ; it involves the power of deliberation (application of the universal to the particular) ; and it is the power of ultimate deci- sion (peculiar to the single individual, the reigning Prince) . It is by this last element that the power of the Prince is peculiarly distinguished. The Prince is sovereign, because the State is sovereign. The sovereignty of the Prince is the sovereignty of the State ; or, the State is sovereign in its Prince. But what is the sovereignty of the summed up, but rather more or less abstract foci within the sphere of an order already developed and firmly embedded in law and constitution." 1 Hegel considers the three "powers " in an order the reverse of that in which they were first enumerated by him (see p. 91). 94 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. State ? How are we to understand it ? The sover- eignty of the State is grounded in its organic unity. A State that lacks the characters of organic unity, lacks, so far forth, the attributes or substance of sovereignty. And a State has these characters when its various powers are neither in complete indepen- dence of one another, nor treated as the private prop- erty of particular individuals ; or, positively, where organic law reigns supreme, guiding the execution of all public functions in subordination to and in harmony with the " aim of the whole," or, as it is otherwise and more indefinitely termed, the "good of the State." But the State is also (changing the emphasis) sovereign in its Prince, in a single person, the Monarch. ,/All the attributes and functions of the State have the quality of personality. The State is itself, according to our whole development, founded in, and is the concrete realization of, universal hu- man Will. But the will and personality of the State as a whole would subsist in a vacuum, that is, would not concretely and effectively subsist at all, were they not actually lodged and represented in a single individual. Only in such an individual, through whom its personal and volitional functions of self-determination and ultimate decision are in supreme and critical moments exercised, can the State attain and maintain its character as a true in- dividual in the family of nations. The State, as a moral and sovereign personality, from being merely a thing subjective becomes objective in its Prince. The selection of the Prince, too, is withdrawn from THE STATE. 95 the struggles of factions and the mutations of caprice and referred to Nature, by the rule of hereditary suc- cession according to the law of primogeniture. The Monarch thus gives no more reason for his right to be, than does the State itself. In this, as also in the power of independent self-determination, is founded at once the majesty of the Monarch and the majesty of the State. To the Monarch as sovereign belongs the power of pardon. The recognition and exercise of this power constitute one of the highest witnesses to the majesty of the spiritual. For offence and pardon k lie supremely in the spiritual realm ; and through the exercise of ths power of pardon the power of the spirit is illustrated, to "render undone that which has been done, and, in forgiving and forgetting the crime, to annihilate it." In the exercise of his power of deliberation re- specting the affairs of the State, the constitutional Monarch calls in the aid of counsellors, or " minis- ters," who alone are responsibleT For the subject- matter of responsibility is not subjective opinion, but objective facts, and the knowledge and judg- ment that are determined by the direction upon them of a purely objective intelligence. It is the business of the ministers, in any affair of State, to learn the exact facts in themselves and in their rela- tions to the laws which bear on them, to circum- stances and the like, and to report the same to the Monarch for his final decision. The objective guarantee of the power of the Prince is to be found alone in the constitution and 96 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. the laws, or, more definitely, in the organic unity of the different institutions and powers of the State. A State which is such a unity is made up, not of separate and constructively independent and hostile 44 parts," but of " members," which so consent to- gether and so involve each other that each one, in maintaining itself, contributes to the maintenance of all the rest. But such a State is, and may be defined as, the public organization and realization of substantial freedom. Of such an organization Hegel holds the constitutional and hereditary Mon- arch to be an essential factor. At all events, it follows that the Monarch's throne, if secure, is so only through its organic connection with the " public freedom." (&) The Governing or Executive Power. Under this head our author comprehends the whole Civil Service of the State, including both national and local police and judicial functions. Stress is mainly laid on the need of hitting the right mean between an unorganized and merely sporadic administration, as by knights-errant, and such an extreme of cen- tralization as was introduced into France by the Revolution. " The proper strength of States lies in the local communities, " but this only when there is in them a healthy and independent political life. In the case of a highly centralized civil administration such life is wanting. The communities constitute more a confused and fermenting mass, separated from the organized and organizing life of the whole State. In order that they may really be the strength of the State, it is necessary that they should have THE STATE. jiA97 a distinct and visible share in its power and life. Since, under the organic conception of the State, the State itself is simply public and organized self- government, it is essential that the principle of self-government should receive proportionate rec- ognition in all departments of the civil adminis- tration. Of the public officer or employee in the Civil Ser- vice a certain moral temper is required. He must abandon the independent pursuit of private aims, in order to serve the public interests. He is to iden- tify himself with the public cause. That he may do this, he must receive such compensation for his ser- vices that his private interests or needs may be pro- vided for. So his particular interest will become joined to that of the universal public. On the right quality of the Civil Service Hegel lays a very special emphasis. Its members consti- tute a ' ' middle class " between the people at large and the higher and central powers of the State. On their conduct the political intelligence and con- science of the people will largely depend. On the other hand, the character of the Civil Service will always be, in an essential measure, determined by the ethical and intellectual development of the peo- ple, as well as, also, by such considerations as that of the magnitude of the State. The point of main importance in this matter is to be aware of and strive after the realization of the right ideal. (c) The Legislative Power. Laws are " made ; " Constitutions are not made, they grow. The law- making power is itself a part of the constitution, 7 98 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. which therefore it presupposes, and which it cannot directly affect. The subjects of legislation, as it regards individ- uals, are (1) their civil and political rights and privi- leges ; and (2) their duties, or what they must render to the State. With respect to the latter point, it is to be noted that, with the exception of military ser- vice, the modern State makes no direct personal demands upon its citizens. It requires, not direct services, but their equivalent, estimated in terms of that accepted quantitative measure of all values and services which is called money. In other worcl^s,, the State buys what it needs, and the citizen renders his service by paying a tax. In many ancient States, ' in the ideal State of Plato, and under the feudal regime, it was far different. The modern method marks an advance in the direction of " subjective freedom," or individual liberty. It is of the utmost importance not to forget that in a moral unity such as the State, every member or " power " is vitally one with all the rest ; a com- plete separation is impossible. So it is, that in the legislative power the two other main powers of the State are influentially involved, the monarchical as the power of ultimate decision, and the government as the power specially qualified to participate in leg- islative deliberations through its concrete and com- prehensive knowledge of the whole condition of the State in its various divisions and departments, of the practical and actual principles of executive policy, and of the special needs of the moment. Hence Hegel approves the English practice of THE STATE. 99 allowing seats in Parliament to the members of the Government. That element in its composition which character- izes the legislative body in its distinction from the other powers of the State, is the representative one (das stdndische Element) . Through it " the element of subjective formal freedom, the public conscious- ness as an empirical average of the opinions and ideas of the many," is made a factor in the affairs of the State. The advantage of calling a repre- sentative assembly to participate in the work of legislation does not arise from any superior knowl- edge which its members can be supposed to pos- sess regarding the business and needs of the State (such knowledge belongs in much greater degree to the members of the government), but rather from their special acquaintance with the workings of gov- ernment and the deficiencies of administration in those narrower circles of Civil Society which lie comparatively remote from the observation of the officers in highest position. The moral effect of such an assembly, as an organ of public criticism, need not be more than mentioned. But the most important thing to notice in this connection is that the legislature, or parliament, as a representative assembly, exercises the organic function of mediating between the government on the one hand and the mass of the people on the other. In this point of view, it is obvious that its members are required to have no less what may be termed the political temper, or the spirit of the State and of its government, than an eye for the interests 100 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. of particular classes and individuals. Through the exercise of their mediatorial function the royal power is prevented from taking on the appearance of mere arbitrary despotism, while the conflicting and disor- dered aims and wishes of particular classes and of the masses are reduced to harmony, receive articu- late expression, and, instead of being left to event- uate possibly in a brute and blind insurrectionary resistance to the State, are organized into the qual- ity of willing, healthful, and helpful membership in the State. That view of a representative legislative assembly, therefore, which regards it primarily and essentially as a power antagonistic to the government is extremely superficial. 1 It is the particular classes of society, the " sub- stantial " and " formal," in distinction from the " universal " one, 2 whose representation in the legis- lative body gives to the latter its distinctive char- acter. The " substantial class" has by itself, and without election, its independent place in parlia- mentary representation. Like the royal element in the State, this class is constituted as if by nature 1 "A Constitution," says Hegel, "is by its nature a system of mediation. In despotic States, where there are only princes and people, the latter works, if at all, merely as a destructive mass, in opposition to all organization. ... In despotic States the ruler spares the people, and expends his fury on those who are in his im- mediate environment. In such States, too, the people pay com- paratively few taxes, while in a constitutional State taxes are increased through the veiy fact of the political intelligence of the people, which leads them to appreciate the needs of the State and voluntarily to make provision for them. In no country are so many taxes paid as in England." 2 See p. 62. THE STATE. 101 on the basis of the family principle and of an inde- pendent and inalienable landed possession. At the same time its needs and rights are those of the other classes of society. Thus it is qualified in a peculiar way to exercise a mediatorial office between prince and people, and to be "at once the prop of the throne and of society." The other element in parliamentary representation is derived from the more mobile and flexible side of Civil Society, which, both on account of its numer- ousness and still more necessarily on account of its nature and occupation, can participate only through selected delegates in the work of general legislation. But whom and what, precisely, do the delegates rep- resent, and on what theory are they selected? Is it that all men, taken singly and individually, being members of the State, and the affairs of the State being therefore the affairs of all, all have an equal abstract right to make their knowledge and will felt immediately in the direction of the State's affairs ; and that then, because it is practically impossible for all diraetfly to exercise this right, they, as an unorganized' mass of independent individuals, and on the basis of indiscriminate or universal suffrage, convey this right, with instructions as to how it shall be used, to a person or persons, selected by a pos- sibly accidental majority of votes? This view is recommended by nothing but its abstract simplicity. But this which constitutes its apparent merit is the source of its real defect. It is true that all have, abstractly, an equal interest in the affairs of the State ; but it does not thence follow that all have 102 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. that political intelligence which qualifies them equally to exercise a determining influence in the direction of those affairs. Nor is representation a right that belongs to unorganized, unclassified masses. The " concrete State," as has above been repeatedly said and shown, has the character of an organic whole. As such it has its quasi-natural m ambers, which are themselves relative wholes, made up of particular individuals. The individual is thus a member of the State only as he is a member of one of these members of the State. It is thus alone that the individual acquires the right to representation. It is not the individual as such, but the individual as member of one of the natural classes or divisions of society, that has the right to be represented in legis- lation. So the representative is chosen to stand in the parliamentary assembly for the interests of his class, community, or corporation ; and yet not for these interests alone, but for these in harmony with and subordination to the interests of the whole State. That he will do this, the body which he represents must trust in his good-will and his intelligence ; he must not be hampered with minute instructions. The guarantee of such good-will and intelligence is to be found in the previous life and practical experience of the delegate. ,How now, and with what advantages, the two main elements in representation constitute two legislative branches, these are points on which we need not enter into details. A few words only may be added respecting the relation between representation and *' public opinion." THE STATE. 103 It is not the view of Hegel that a State is or can be conducted by public opinion. But neither is it his view that public opinion is to be ignored. In fact the representative legislative assembly, with its public proceedings, is precisely the point at which, and the vehicle through which, public opin- ion conies in determining contact with the State and its affairs. Its function is not to take the place of government, not to put its reason in the place of the final reason of the State, but to aid and strengthen the government by bringing to it an increment of special knowledge derived from the fresh contact of its members with the varied special interests of their constituencies. As it does this, the more universal relations, interests, and purposes of the State are in turn laid before it ; and in this way public opin- ion itself receives a needed increment of substantial instruction. For public opinion is indeed a two-faced affair. On the one hand, it has its foundation in a public conscience, which takes the form of ordinary " com- mon-sense," is grounded in the peculiar substantial ethos of a people, and "contains the eternal sub- stantial principles of justice, the true content and result of the whole constitution, of past legislation, and of the public situation generally, as well as a sense of the veritable needs and true tendencies of the actual present." But this conscience is, in the first instance, only instinctive. Hence, on the other hand, since the instinctive is not converted into the form of explicit, conscious, and adequate knowledge all at once, but only as the result of a prolonged and 104 specific process of practical education, the form in which its contents are constantly coming forward in the consciousness of this, that, and the other individual, whose voices all go to swell the chorus of public opinion, is a contingent, superficial, and often even a perverted one. With such persons the more singular an opinion (of their own), the more important does it often appear to them. But the singularity, or peculiarity, of an opinion is a sure sign of its worthlessness. In different senses therefore, and equally, public opinion deserves to be respected and despised, the former with reference to its essential basis in the public conscience, and the latter with reference to its accidental, superficial expressions. The State cannot be abjectly dependent on it and at the same time prosper. " Independence with regard to it is the first formal condition of the accomplishment of anything great and reasonable in the world of prac- tical actuality, as well as in the world of science." And when any such thing has been accomplished, public opinion is among the first to applaud it, and to adopt it as its own. The State being the organized "Will of a people, and Will involving necessarily the side of " subjec- tivity" (subjective knowledge, conviction, assent, intention), it is essential that this side should re- ceive its rights, or its natural and full development. The growth, expansion, and influence of public opinion, with its liberty of expression, in the mod- ern State is a movement in the direction named. But mere public opinion, variable, uncertain, mis- THE STATE. 105 taking the accidental for the necessary, the apparent for the true, would, if left uncontrolled, lead to the dissolution of the State. It would be inconsistent with true individuality in the State, which implies a " subjectivity," a knowledge that is fixed, sure of itself, consistent with itself, and " identical with the substantial will " of the State and people. If is such a subjectivity which, by hypothesis, is lodged in the head of the State, the constitutional Monarch, 1 and enables the State (among other things) to take and assert its place in a family of nations. 2. External Sovereignty. True individuality is not bare, separate existence. It is, in the technical language of Hegel, ''existence for self." In its most perfect forms, it is existence plus the knowledge of one's existence, in a character inwardly known and consciously willed. Such existence then is " ex- clusive ; " it is in relation to the existence of other individuals, but is independent of them. Political independence is the independence of a national in- dividual ; it constitutes the foundation of a people's liberty and its highest honor. Further, every existence which is to maintain in any degree a healthy and positive individuality must do so by an active process described by Hegel as '" negation of negation." It is this principle, in a certain phase, that modern biology expresses by the phrase, " The struggle for existence." Individual existence affirms itself, secures and preserves for itself affirmative and positive being, only through the active negation, repulsion, and overcoming of 1 Or President. resistant and rival forces. The form and circum- stances under which these forces are encountered may appear accidental ; but that they should in fact be encountered and conquered is a necessity flowing from the nature of the being whose self- affirmation or preservation is in question. So we may accept it as a law for all finite existences that "it must needs be that offences come." The case of a national individual, or State, constitutes no exception to this law. The oppositions of States (or wars) have a natural and necessary part to play in the development and maintenance of national individuality. And since a nation is a moral individual, we must recognize in war an ethical factor. This it is not difficult to do. A nation conquering or defending its independence in war gives to its own people an instructive and important lesson regarding the true relations of ethical values. It then requires the sacrifice of, or the readiness to sacrifice, all private and par- ticular interests, including property and its rights, V and even life itself, that the independent and sover- eign life of the State may be preserved. It teaches, by a severe object-lesson, the relative vanity of purely finite and selfish relations, and that their ethical worth is wholly contingent on and subor- dinate to the maintenance of relations which in comparison may be termed infinite and universal. It teaches that the true individual is inseparably bound up, not alone with his accidental and change- able private interests, but with the individuality of the moral whole of which he is a member, and with THE STATE. 107 its interests. In times of prolonged peace this les- son is apt to be forgotten. Men forget the whole through the complete absorption of their attention in the part ; the universal is obscured for them by the particular. All things remaining with them as they were at the beginning, they come to deify, as it were, the world of their petty and personal relations ; its horizon comes to bound for them the moral universe. The result is moral petrifac- tion, or corruption. War makes an end of all this ; it is to nations what winds are to the sea, it preserves them from stagnation and putrescence. Further, the energetic and successful maintenance through war of the sovereign individuality of the State in its external relations, is found to exert a conservative influence on the internal relations and sovereignty of the State. The readiness to make sacrifices for the sovereign individuality of the State is a part of the essential, or " substantial," moral attitude of all citizens or subjects. It is a universal duty. Like other uni- versal relations, it requires to be represented in a particular class, the army, whose animating principle is bravery. Bravery, as here understood, involves the union of the extremest opposites. Its motive lies in th3 apprehension of the sovereignty of the State as the true and absolute end ; and the realization of this end, as the work of bravery, depends on the sacrifice of personal individuality, even to the point of counting life itself as nought. " It implies complete obedience, suspension of per- sonal opinion and judgment, and in this sense 108 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE. absence of a mind of one's own, and yet the most intensive and comprehensive and instantaneous presence of mind and determination, the most hos- tile and personal warfare against individuals, and at the same time a completely indifferent or even kindly disposition toward them as individuals." The external relations of a State are founded in its moral personality, its true individuality. The direction of the State in these relations is therefore a function of the u princely power" to which it belongs, " immediately and alone, to have command J; of the armed forces of the State, to maintain rela- tions with other States through ambassadors, etc., to declare war, and to conclude treaties of peace and other treaties." When war is declared and entered into, not on the ground of that knowledge of the nature and demands of the situation which the executive power alone can have, but in obedi- ence to a purely popular impulse, injustice and disaster are among the results sure to follow. " In England the whole people have repeatedly insisted on war, and in a measure compelled the ministers to enter into it. The popularity of Pitt arose from his recognizing and carrying out what the nation at the time demanded. It was only later, when the popular excitement had cooled off, that the fact that the war was useless and unnecessary, and had been undertaken without counting the cost, was brought to consciousness. For the rest, the State is involved in relations, not only with one other State, but with many States ; and the complications of these relations become so delicate that they can THE STATE. 109 only be treated by those who stand at the head of the State." B. EXTERNAL POLITY. External Polity (Das dussere /Staatsrecht) is grounded in the relation of independent States. It involves, for the single State, the existence of neighbors and the recognition by them of its inde- pendent sovereignty. Such recognition is the first absolute and inherent right of the State, and is essential for the complete establishment of its character as a true political individual. Just as the single human being is not an actual person except in relation to other persons, so the State cannot be an actual individual without relation to other States. How the State shall be constituted, what and what form of government it shall acknowledge, these and similar questions are indeed primarily to be settled by the State itself and its people, without foreign intervention or dictation ; this is the first note of the independence of the State. But the second note, no less essential than the first, is that the State receive the recognition of other States, and this depends on the opinion and the will of the latter. From a State that is to be recognized, for example, there is to be required a guarantee that it will in turn duly recognize the States that recog- nize it ; in which point of view it is plain that the constitution and internal policy of a State demand- ing recognition cannot be a subject of indifference to those on whom the demand is made. For mutual 110 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP THE STATE. recognition implies a certain degree of moral identity or likeness. Since States confront each other, in the first instance, with the claim of separate and unquali- fied independence, the special relations among them depend on their respective and arbitrary wills, and are hence clothed in the form of contracts or trea- ties. The universal principle of international law is that treaties should be respected. But indepen- dent States recognize no power superior to them- selves, authorized and able, in the case of a dispute arising from the alleged violation of a treaty, to render a decision and to enforce the same. The only way, therefore, to reach a decision - when worst comes to worst, is by war. In the conduct of war, as well as in the direction of all their affairs, separate States are guided by considerations relative to their separate and par- ticular welfare, or advantage. So a national spirit is, after all, a particular and limited one. The universal spirit of man does not come to its total realization in any one State. But it arrives at a fuller manifestation of itself and of its power in Universal History ; to which individual States are organic and subordinate, and which is, to apply the poet's word, the "world's tribunal" to pronounce and execute judgment on them. 1 1 Hegel's "Philosophic des Rechts " ends with a number of paragraphs on the logic of Universal History, which is also the subject of the independent work, to the exposition of which the remainder of this volume is devoted. $art Second THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 1 CHAPTER IV. INTRODUCTORY IDEAS. THE concluding paragraph of the preceding Part points to the Philosophy of History as a sequel to the Philosophy of the State. The former is a continuation of the Philosophy of Man begun in the latter. It is another chapter in the spiritual story of Man. The material of the Philosophy of History is universal history. In the philosophical view of universal history mankind is one vast society of nations, " The individuals of universal history are nations." What is the law of this society? What is the grand argument of human existence, regarded from the view-point of universal history ? Such are the questions to be considered here. It is obvious that the Philosophy of History in seeking to answer these questions must do more than take into consideration the separate military 1 G. W. F. Hegel's Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Ge- schichte, vol. ix. of the complete edition of Hegel's Works. English translation by J. Sibree, M. A., in Bohn's Philosophical Library (Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History, London, 1861.) 112 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. and political careers of national " individuals" plus their merely external relations to one another. The lesson of history does not lie on the surface of human events ; nor, because this lesson is not merely superficial and external, is it anything es- sentially arbitrary and subjective. The Philosophy of History is not a "pragmatic" application of historic occurrences to point a passing, arbitrarily chosen moral. It is necessary, not to abstract from, but to look through and beneath, the outward story of the nations, till we find the inward story of which the former is the visible sign and language. "The history of man," says Goethe, "is his character." We are to see in universal history a drama, in which nations are the actors. The theme of the drama is human character. The narrative histories of different epochs and of the deeds and fortunes of different peoples constitute what may be termed the analytical table of contents of the drama. The Philosophy of History undertakes to pass in review the drama as a whole, to discover its final cause, to demonstrate its motive, to indicate its total significance./ Of separate human events History may be called the artificial memory ; the Philosophy of History is the comprehension of their In the wide and free perspective of universal history the nature and significance of the role played by each nation become more evident ; here each one displays its special character, its individuality. And the role played is more than merely and nar- rowly political ; it is not simply the role of a INTRODUCTORY IDEAS. 113 " monarchy" or " aristocracy" or " democracy," of a roving people or of a nation of stay-at-homes, of conquerors or of those conquered, it is truly the role of national individuals, having each, as our author says, its " definite spirit," which manifests itself not only in the political constitution, but also in the religion, the art, the philosophy, and the whole life of the people, with all which indeed, in the higher sense, the political constitution is organically one. Moreover, this "spirit" stands in definite relations to natural conditions of geog- raphy, climate, and the like. How wide and even all-inclusive the scope of the Philosophy of History is, as involving attention to all these matters, is ob- vious. Equally obvious are the extent and thorough- ness of the preparation to be demanded of any one who would undertake an independent treatment of it. To Hegel, all the studies and labors of his life ] were directly or indirectly a preparation for his lectures on this subject, which was the last one among the various philosophical disciplines that he ventured to take up. Not until he was fifty-two years old, and had already lectured and in some cases appeared in print on the subjects of Logic, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Spirit, Philo- sophy of Right, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Art, and History of Philosophy, did Hegel in the winter semester of 1822-1823 first lecture on the Phi- losophy of History, or, in the language of Thau- low, 1 not until he " had in his studies gone through 1 Hegel's Ansichten uber Erziehung und Unterricht, 2. Theil, 1. Abtheilung, p. 55. Kiel, 1854. 8 114 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. the whole of human knowledge and the totality of all sciences, and had systematically expounded them." Dr. Thaulow adds : " Consequently it is obvious that all the other works of Hegel are presupposed by his Philosophy of History." 1 In this sense we must, with Thaulow, assent to the assertion of Pro- fessor Michelet, that Hegel's Philosophy of History is "the crown of all" his works. But if it thus presupposes all the other works of its author, and therefore in a sense requires a previous knowledge of them on the part of him who would fully com- prehend it, yet it also in turn throws a new light on many of them, and it has qualities which have led many of the best judges to regard the study of this work as the easiest introduction to the Hegelian Philosophy. The drama of history is essentially a development. The subject of this development is Man. External visible Nature constitutes the stage-setting of the drama and its locality in the literal, but here super- ficial, sense of this term. Its true location, is in the inward realm of human will and knowledge. And the true subject of development is especially the human spirit. The function of the human spirit is to think, to know, to will. An essential incident in the accomplishment of this function is the reaction of human thought, knowledge, and will on external Nature, followed by a growing mastery of Nature and reduction of her to human uses. But the thing 1 Hegel's works on History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Reli- gion, and Philosophy of Art are all and especially the last two named important studies in the Philosophy of History. INTRODUCTORY IDEAS. 115 of main importance is not man's transformation and subjugation of Nature, but his transformation and subjugation of himself ; not his reaction upon Nature, but his reaction upon himself ; not his thinking, knowing, and willing of that which at first appears, and is accordingly usually regarded, as only objective and foreign to man per se, but his thinking, knowing, and willing of himself. The prog- ress of human history is a progress in self-knowledge and self-mastery. But in self-knowledge and self- mastery consists the very substance of the freedom of a spiritual being, or, indeed, of all real and posi- tive freedom, since freedom, in the positive sense, is only a spiritual attribute ; and freedom, as thus de- fined, constitutes the very essence of spiritual being. Accordingly, we may say indifferently that the fun- damental subject of the development of history is the human spirit, or is human freedom, and especially the spirit or freedom of the race of mankind as a whole. " The spirit, viewed according to its essential Mature, as defined in the notion of freedom, this 'is the fundamental subject of Universal History, and hence also the guiding principle of development ; . . . as also, conversely, historic events are to be viewed as products of this principle, and as deriving only from it their meaning and character. . I? . Universal History is the unfolding of spiritual being in time, as Nature is the unfolding of the divine idea in space/ . . . History is progress in the consciousness of free- |\ dom." The end of history is "the consciousness of spiritual freedom, and therewith the realization of this freedom." The history of the world, at the 116 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. head of which man marches, is an aspiration and an advance marked by many irregularities of move- ment, many stumblings, many temporary failures, and yet a real advance toward an ideal, which is eternally realized in Him who is the absolute prin- ciple and end of all finite being and doing, and whom the Hebrew Psalmist characteristically ad- dresses as a " free Spirit." The goal of history is resemblance to God. Nay, more, without departing from the spirit and intent of Hegel's work, we may say that the whole labor of history (Labor are est orare), including the "groaning and travailing*' of the whole creation, is an inarticulate repetition of the supplication of the Psalmist, "Uphold me by thy free Spirit." But this inarticulate prayer is more unconscious than conscious. It is not Man, the subject of human history, but God, who sees its end from the begin- ning. " It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." And to him who looks on human affairs, having in view only the immediate thoughts and purposes of men, it may well appear that "man walketh in a vain show." It is plain enough that "man proposes," but not so immediately evident to man that " God disposes." And yet God does dispose ; and the Philosophy of History is the com- prehension and demonstration of this truth. 4 '.God," says our author, " rules the world : the substance of His rule, the execution of His plan, is the world's history. This plan it is the aim of Philosophy to grasp," not, it may be added, through any ab- surd pretence of power to fathom the divine mind INTRODUCTORY IDEAS. 117 per (?, or apart from its actual manifestation in the world and history, but only as it is revealed in these. The divine idea or plan "is no mere ideal ; " it is an historic actuality. The thought of God is the immanent, constitutive, and executive reason of all existence ; and the true action of "reason" (Vernunfl) in man consists in the "re- cognition \_Vernelimen~] of the divine work." 1 God, not apart from history, decreeing its results from afar, but in history, working hitherto and still working, revealing and showing himself in His work, this is the one essential side of the case. And the other is, Man a co-worker with God, sometimes unconscious of this divine Dartnership, sometimes blindly or even wilfully rebelling against it, yet on the whole growingly obedient to the guidance of his Father's hand, and finding in the present knowledge of Him, and in vital, willing, and active union with Him, the perfection of his true or spiritual nature and of his essential freedom. So the " progress in the consciousness of freedom " is a progress in man's 1 The "divine work," in its relation to the affairs of men, is popularly termed Providence. It is particularly thought of as "special" and relating peculiarly to the fortunes of individuals. "But," says Hegel, "in Universal History we have to do with in- dividuals that are peoples, and with wholes that are States: here, therefore, we cannot stop short with this small-trade faith in Provi- dence (so to express it) ; and just as little can we rest in the merely abstract, indefinite faith which only goes so far as to admit the general proposition that there is a Providence, without recognizing its presence in definite acts. We must, the rather, in all serious- ness, seek to recognize the ways of Providence, the means it employs, and the manifestations it makes of itself in history, and to connect these with the divine Spirit as their universal principle." 118 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. consciousness of God. The historic working out of the problem of self-knowledge is, in its essential degree, a solution of the problem of the knowledge of God. And the progressive accomplishment of the Will of humanity becomes a progressive demon- stration of the truth that the substance or motive of the perfect Will of man is identical with the sub- stance or motive of the Will of God ; that the ser- vice of God is perfect freedom ; and that man first truly knows himself and is free when he can say, in all sincerity and with full conviction, u Lo, I am come to do thy will, O God ! " "Man proposes," or, more accurately, men, individuals, propose. The successive outward phe- nomena of history are the immediate results of their proposing. The differentiating mark by which an historical phenomenon is distinguished from a purelyjphysicai one, is that there has passed upon it the transforming breath of the active interest und the personal agency of individual men or classes of men. It is to the thoughts, purposes, passions, and volitions of individuals that historical events are traced as the immediate, determining cause of their existence. And yet such is the allegation of phi- losophy and the proverb " God disposes." The particular historic event exists by the grace of the particular volition of a particular human being ; it is immediately what the individual intended, and is explained by his intention, but by the grace of God it acquires a character beyond what was in- tended, requiring a deeper and broader explanation. The results of human action are not only launched INTRODUCTORY IDEAS. upon the face of a physical universe that has its laws, which condition pro tanto both the form and the ulterior nature of the results, but they also enter into nay, they are accomplished within the realm of a spiritual cosmos, whose imperative law is the nature and will of God, the free, absolute, self- conscious Spirit, and whose empirical law is that of the growth of man in spiritual stature and spirit- ual freedom. While, therefore, man "works out," it is God who " works in" him " to will and to do according to His good pleasure." But not arbitra- rily. God is not to be conceived, according to the mind of our author, as though he were simply a second "non-natural" man, interfering with laws of Nature and of human action, which are capable of subsisting by themselves without God, and in that sense making the course of events to be differ- ent from what it would have been had God kept quiet ; on the contrary, the thought is that with- out God and his constant and omnipresent, creative and sustaining, agency no laws of Nature and no course of human events would be possible. It is the laws themselves that reveal God, and not sup- posed infractions of them. What, then, is the state of the case before us? We have the thought of history as the scene, sign, and changing result of a spiritual process which gives to history its fundamental meaning. This process, being a spiritual one, takes the form of an evolution or development. The subject of develop- ment is man as a spiritual value, a spiritual being. As being a development, and occurring therefore 120 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. in time, the process has a beginning, a middle, and an end ; it is a progress from the potential to the actual, from the implicit to the explicit. At the be- ginning of the process man is, in potency, all that in the sequel he is destined to become in developed actuality : but only in potency. At the outset, man is a spiritual being only per sdy of Christ, and was adored as God sensibly present before the eyes of the faithful. It is not necessary to condemn the doctrine of tran substantiation. The important his- toric fact to be noted is, that the Christian imagi- nation of the Middle Ages dwelt with exaggerated emphasis on the particular sensible form of the divine presence, while the eyes of its spirit were closed. As a consequence, it sought other signs and wonders, sensible manifestations of the di- vine power and presence, its finding of which is recorded in the multitudinous stories of mediaeval miracle. The Christian heart sought to realize the presence of Christ as a sensible fact. It was in pursuance of this impulse that the Crusades were THE GERMANIC WOK undertaken. The incarnate Son of G( not again to be seen, but the places frequented by him in his life, and above all his sepulchre, were still there, in Palestine. In their presence the wish of the heart could be at least in a measure satisfied ; and, besides, it was only fitting that they should be and remain in the possession of Chris- tian hands. Christendom sought its Christ in his grave. Ar- rived there it might have heard again the words, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen." Listen not to those who say, Lo here ! or, Lo there ! Christ is neither here nor there, but within you, in the living heart and conscience, the will and reason. Seek him there, welcome him there, and there shall ye find him ! The result of the Crusades was, in its practical tendency, to break up a spiritual illusion ; it meas- urably prepared the way for the practical reception of the Christian truth of the absolute right and worth of spiritual, divinely-sustained individuality. "From this time on," says Hegel, " begins the pe- riod of self-reliance and independent activity. At the holy sepulchre the Occident bade the Orient an eternal farewell, and grasped its own principle of subjective freedom. Christendom never appeared again on the historic stage as one whole." In the Crusades the power of the Church was complete. The Pope stood at the head of the powers of the Christian world. The decline of the Church from this temporal eminence was destined to be the result, not of attack from without, but of the 276 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. operation of spiritual causes within its fold. The Christian spirit, undeceived and unsatisfied by the turbulent attempt to find its treasure without itself, was to direct its search within, or else to seek sat- isfaction in the active pursuit of universal human ends, ends of mercy, of social order, of intellectual culture, and the like. All these movements were to be in the direct line of preparation for the fuller realization of the Christian spirit in the plenitude of its higher freedom. First to be mentioned in this connection is the founding of monastic and knightly orders, for the practice of those precepts of renunciation which the Church had distinctly enjoined and for the cultivation of purity of heart. Such was the Franciscan order of mendicant friars, and the Dominican order of preaching monks ; such also were the orders of knighthood, the order of Saint John, the Templars, and the Teutonic order. Of the members of these latter orders the same re- nunciation of worldly advantages was exacted as of the members of the monastic orders. Their chief virtue was to be knightly bravery ; they were to protect pilgrims, and to shield and care for the poor and the sick. The principle of these asso- ciations presented a radical contrast to the selfish principle of the feudal system. "With almost suicidal bravery the knights sacrificed themselves for the common good. So these orders rose above their environment, and formed a network of fraternal relations extending over the whole of Europe." THE GERMANIC WORLD. 277 We have also to note the development of intel- lectual interests. The Scholastic philosophy, the chief professed aim of which was the exposition and defence of Christian dogma, reached its brilliant maturity. Much of the intellectual activity of the time was indeed merely formal, and may best be described as a sort of logical fencing or tourneying, quite comparable to the contests of the knightly arena ; but even this, as a form of discipline, was far from useless. Finally, "we notice in this period after the Crusades certain beginnings of art, of painting ; and even while the Crusades were in progress, a characteristic form of poetry had sprung up. The spirit, unable to find satisfaction, created for itself fairer images, and in a calmer and freer manner, than the actual world could offer." III. The Transition from Feudal Rule to Mon- archy. The movements last mentioned tended away from selfish particularism and individualism toward the recognition of universal human aims and the pursuit of common interests. A move- ment of like direction in the political world is what we have now to consider. The feudal rule was polyarchy, an improvement no doubt on anarchy, yet removed from it by only a single step. It was a rule by might, of particular individuals, lords, princes, with no fixed standards of right. Over these petty or inferior rulers them- selves stands another, a king or emperor, whose authority is formally acknowledged, but is by them freely resisted. Feudal rule is a rule of caprice. 278 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. It is not civil rule ; it is not the rule of the State ; it denotes a social condition founded on the relation of lords and serfs. Monarchy, on the other hand, means the establishment of a single supreme au- thority, which excludes caprice, and is exercised according to law. It means the establishment of the authority of the State as a political organism, an ethico-social order, all the parts and members of which are harmonized in a common order and subject to one supreme and organic law of the whole. In a monarchy one is master, and no one a serf ; serfdom disappears under a rule of civil order and of law. So monarchy, as succeeding feudal poly- archy, became the parent of real freedom. This remains the historic fact, in spite of the circumstance that before the full development of constitutional monarchy it was often necessary to defend the cause of freedom against a residuum of obstructive caprice and tyranny, the door for which was still left open by the lodging of irresponsible power in the hands of one individual. Of course, the transition from feudalism to mon- archism did not take place in a day. It was not the result of chance, nor was it the benevolent work of a few accidental possessors of power ; it was the result of the most varied action and reaction, attack and defence, among princes, classes, cor- porations, cities. The details of all these secondary causes and incidents of the transition are naturally not to be mentioned here. We are concerned only to note that at the period in history at which we have arrived in our review, we " see the beginning of a THE GERMANIC WORLD. 279 process of the formation of States, while feudalism knew no States," and to observe the general form of the process in different Christian countries. In the Roman empire Germany and Italy the transition to monarchy took place through a repu- diation, on the part of local princes, of their feudal dependence on the Emperor. The vassal princes became independent monarchs. An essential con- dition of the success of this movement was the existence in both parts of the Empire of a number of distinct tribal or national differences, such as those by which, in Germany, Swabians, Bavarians, Saxons, etc., were distinguished ; and in Italy, Lom- bards and Normans. In the barbarous period, which in Germany followed the downfall of the Hohenstaufen, it became a maxim of the imperial electors to select weak princes as emperors ; and they even went so far as to sell the imperial office to foreigners. Thus the unity of the Empire in substance disappeared, and a number of princi- palities, or states, in the first instance mainly predatory, were constituted. (When the Hapsburgs succeeded to the imperial throne, they were reduced to the necessity of procuring for themselves, inde- pendently, the means and forces with which to maintain the imperial dignity, since the electors refused to grant them.) To the complete anarchy which was the first result of this change a limit was set by the establishment of associations or leagues for public purposes ; such was the Han- seatic League in the North, the Rhenish League formed by the cities along the Rhine, and the League 280 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. of the Swabian cities. In Switzerland the peasants united to repel invasion and defend their independent rights. We must also mention here the invention and use of gunpowder, one of the principal means of securing freedom from physical tyranny and of reducing the distance between classes. In Italy the turn of affairs was similar to that witnessed in Germany. In France it was the op- posite. The territory belonging to the kings of France was for many centuries smaller than that of many of their vassals ; but to the great advantage of the former, the hereditary principle was early es- tablished in France. So by inheritance and conquest the territory of the French kings was gradually en- larged, and instead of being, like the German empe- rors, merely feudal sovereigns, they were territorial rulers. They remained, on the whole, on good terms with the cities. " In this way the kings of France rose very soon to great power, and the successful cultiva- tion of poetry by the Troubadours, as also the de- velopment of the Scholastic theology (the chief cen- tre of which was Paris), gave to France a culture superior to that of other European countries, and which caused it to be looked up to with respect in foreign lands." In England, subdued by William the Conqueror, who introduced there the feudal regime, the barons and cities gradually acquired a position of important influence, so, especially, in the case of disputes and struggles relative to the succession to the throne. Thus the barons forced from King John the magna charta; while the cities, favored by the kings against THE GERMANIC WORLD. 281 the barons, gained representation as a third estate in the Commons. The popes meanwhile sought to exercise their authority, but to little avaiL Not to speak of other causes operating to weaken their influence, States and communities were at last coming to the con- sciousness of the inherent right of political inde- pendence. In the work of political and civil construction in which they were engaged, they were coming to recognize a universal human aim thor- oughly legitimate in itself, and worthy and able to command the will of the individual. Mankind, after passing through a disciplinary servitude both of body and of soul, began to stand upon its feet, and in its secular activity to have a good conscience. This was no insurrection against what is divine ; it was simply the manifestation of a better conscious- ness, recognizing a divine impulse within itself, per- meated by genuinely humane motives, and directing the activity of man to universal ends of rationality and beauty. In these latter results, we refer especially to the so-called revival of learning, the new bloom of art, and the discovery of America and of the way to the East Indies, we may witness at once the dissolution of the mediaeval period and the dawn of a new historic day. C. MODERN TIMES. In this third and last period of the Germanic world the human spirit, set free by Christianity, comes to a new and- fuller knowledge of its freedom. 282 If the ideal of the preceding period had been the establishment of a mechanical universality, the forcible and universal reign of a single empire, in the secular and spiritual worlds, over dependent and resistant subjects, the ideal of the modern period is what we will term concrete universality : the individual shall freely know and recognize the true universal (the true, the eternal, law, the will of God) as part and parcel of his own perfected nature, and shall direct his will accordingly. So the universal shall be realized in human affairs, not in the form of an abstract Procrustean rule over spiritual slaves, but as the free and willing work of the individual ; and in this work the individual shall find the fulfilment and present fruition of his true freedom. The " spiritual " and the " secular " shall be at one. I. The Reformation. The Reformation came because the Church was itself in an unsound con- dition. It is important to understand precisely wherein this unsoundness, perversion, or " corrup- tion" consisted. The root of it lay open before us when we were considering the motive of the Crusades, and consisted in the persistent tendency to seek and worship the divine presence in some external sen- sible object, rather than in the spirit and in the truth. Art indeed came to the rescue of the Church, fur- nishing sensible objects (paintings and statues), calculated by their spiritual significance to assist the heart of the appreciative worshipper to rise from the merely sensible and external to the spir- itual and internal ; but this means of rescue was in- THE GERMANIC WORLD. 283 sufficient. The sensuous, the external, not changed by transfiguration into the spiritual or into a wit- ness of the spiritual, remained as a dominant ele- ment within the Church itself ; and the Church, in embracing and fostering it, embraced and fostered within itself the very " negative of itself," the necessary principle of its own ruin and corruption. So the Church encouraged a superstitious piety, the " slavery of authority," and an absurd credulity, not to mention other more sensuous vices ; or, if it recommended virtue it was a virtue of a negative sort, acquirer! by fleeing from the world rather than by overcoming it. And in all this the Church was really remaining behind its times. The movements going on in the world of political and civil life, of art and polite learning, of science and discovery, were all in their way exhibitions of the spiritual character of civilized man, and of the spiritual character of the truth that sets man free, which transcended in their scope, not the essential ideas of pure Christianity on these subjects, but the ideas practically adopted by the Church. While the rest of Christendom was engaged in -|- scouring the world visiting America, India in \ the search for riches and temporal dominion, the simple, fervent German heart rose up, first to correct the corruption of the Church, and then to overthrow the corrupted Church itself. It too this German heart wished to " see Jesus," to know the present Christ, to have the comforting witness of the Spirit ; and it felt infinitely hurt and scandalized when its spiritual mother, the Church, offered it, instead of 284 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. the bread of life, a stone. What Christendom had previously sought in an earthly sepulchre of stone, a simple German monk found in that deeper sep- ulchre of the spirit, where all that is merely sensu- ous and external either lies dead or is transfigured. The true Christ, the true God, the true man also, is spiritual ; Christ is truly and fully present only to the believing spirit, through this channel God in Christ becomes the bread of the world. This is the simple doctrine of Luther, which may be summed up in the words " faith," and "the witness of the spirit.'* The Christian consciousness is not the consciousness of a sensuous object as God, nor a mere historic memory ; it is the consciousness of something actual and not sensuous. By this removal of the attri- bute of sensuous externality, all doctrines are re- constructed and all superstition is reformed away. It is especially the doctrine of works that is thus affected, works being considered as things done outwardly, not in faith, not as the natural expres- sion of the believing spirit, but by command, and the like. As to "belief," or "faith," it is not merely an assured conviction about finite things, such as " that this or that man once existed and said this or that ; or, that the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea on dry land." The knowledge of these things does not constitute knowledge of God, nor faith in Him ; whether a person possesses this knowledge or belief depends wholly on the accident of his having access to the relevant sources of historic information. Faith is not the function of the individual as individual, THE GERMANIC WORLD. 285 that is, as distinguished from other individuals by accidents of birth, talent, or historic instruction, but of the individual considered in that which constitutes the essential nature of all individuals ; to wit, his spiritual being. It is the function of that reason in him which, to appropriate the lan- guage of Heraclitus, is " common to all." It is the function of that nature in him by virtue of which he is in the image of God, and in this sense one with God. Says Hegel: "Faith is the subjective and certain assurance of the eternal, of the essen- tial truth, of the truth of God. Respecting this as- surance the Lutheran church declares that it is effectuated only by the Holy Spirit ; in other words, it is an assured certainty, of which the individual is capable, not by virtue of his particular individuality, but by virtue of his [universal] nature. The Luther- an doctrine is therefore wholly the Catholic doc- trine, excluding only the af ore-mentioned character of externality, so far as this was asserted by the Catholic church, and whatever flows from it. Hence, in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, in which all Christian doctrine is concentrated, Lu- ther had no option but to remain unyielding. To the Reformed church he could not concede that Christ was [present in the Lord's Supper only as] a mere memory, a reminiscence ; the rather, he agreed with the Catholic church that Christ is a real presence, but in faith, in the spirit. The spirit of Christ, he taught, actually fills the human heart. Christ is therefore not to be regarded merely as an historical person ; on the 286 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. contrary, man has an immediate [present] relation to him in the spirit." Faith, then, with its fruits of the present in- dwelling divine spirit, is the privilege of no in- dividual or class of individuals. An essential distinction between priest and layman, as though the former were in exclusive possession of the truth and of all spiritual and temporal treasures of the Church, is not to be admitted. Hereby the re- sponsibility of the individual is so much the more increased. Each one, working out his own sal- vation, is to look out for the accomplishment in himself of the work of spiritual reconciliation ; the individual spirit is to receive into itself the Spirit of Truth, and to give him a dwelling-place there. Thus Christian freedom, freedom in the truth, was to become, and did become, actual. 44 Hereby," says Hegel, u was the new and final standard raised, about which the nations assemble themselves, the banner of the free spirit, master of itself in the truth, and only so. This is the banner under which we serve and which we carry. The pe- riod from then till now has had, and still lias, no other work to do than to mould the world accord- ing to this principle. . . . This is the essential meaning of the Reformation ; namely, that the very nature of man defines him as free." The Reformation, first directed only against cer- tain sides of the corruption of the Catholic church, ended in complete repudiation of the authority of the Church. In the place of this, Luther put the Bible and the witness of the human spirit. On THE GERMANIC WORLD. 287 the importance of this change it is unnecessary to comment. A word must be added regarding the relation of the Church, as reformed, to the secular life of man. The result of the Reformation in its spiritual char- acter was man finding and welcoming his Lord as a divine guest in his own spirit. God and man were " reconciled." With this was necessarily given the consciousness that the secular is capa- ble of being the dwelling-place of the true ; it is not, as previously held, simply and only evil. It is now perceived that the ethical and the just, in the sphere of man's social and political relations, is worthy to be termed divine ; that it is the command of God, and that nothing is in kind higher or ho- lier than it. Hence the restitution to honor of marriage and labor, and the principle of free and enlightened, in place of blind, obedience : what is rational in the secular life of man need no longer fear contradiction on the part of the religious con- science. However, it is one thing to see and adopt a principle, and another to develop and apply it. The needful objective realization of the Christian principle of freedom in the form of a system of civil and political laws of freedom could not be the work of an hour. The reformers devoted them- selves for the moment to such immediate changes as the abolition of cloisters, bishoprics, and the like ; the principle of the reconciliation of God and the world was present as an abstract convic- tion, but was not at ones " developed into a system of the ethical world." 288 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. First of all it was, and was felt to be, necessary that the reconciliation in question should be con- sciously accomplished in the individual. The indi- vidual must gain the assurance of the indwelling Spirit within himself, or, in the language of the Church, the assurance that his own heart is broken and contrite, and then filled by the influx of divine grace. Man is not man by simple nature ; only through a process of transformation does he become man in full truth. Christian dogmatics called upon each individual to realize for himself this truth in the form of a conviction of his own natural sin- fulness, and then of the forgiving and restoring grace of God manifested in his own behalf. The attempt to fulfil this condition led even the most simple and innocent natures into habits of minute introspective self-examination, which gave to Prot- estant piety for a long time a pitiable and wretched aspect of spiritual self -torment. With this was joined a strange phenomenon, common alike to the Catholic and Protestant worlds, founded in the be- lief of personified Evil as a tremendous and power- ful Prince of the World. With this power it was believed that compacts might be and were made ; by pledging one's soul to the Devil in futurum, one might purchase unlimited riches and pleasures in the present. Most deplorable of all were the wide- spread belief in witches, as persons in league with or possessed by the Devil, and the numerous trials of witches ; these spread like an epidemic over the principal countries of Europe. Father Spee, a noble-minded Jesuit, and with still more effect THE GERMANIC WORLD. 289 the Protestant Professor Thomasius in Halle set themselves in opposition to this pervading super- stition, the last vestiges of which were long in dis- appearing. II. Influence of the Reformation on Political De- velopment. This topic may be briefly treated. We note first the strengthening of the monarchy by the general adoption of the principle of the hereditary transmission of the royal power following the law of primogeniture. Because in Germany the emperor, and in Poland the king, was elective, Germany failed to become one nation, and Poland disappeared from the list of independent States. At the same time the private possessions or domains of the prince came to be treated as the property of the State, and their administration was made a State function. Another change, of no less importance, was the transformation of petty princes from the character of independent lords into that of supporters of the monarchy and of the public interest. That such a change should be accomplished was equally in the interest of the monarch and of the people. The change was not effectuated without many contests, the details of which do not concern us here. Europe came now to be constituted by a system of States. Out of the wars of these States among themselves was developed the sense of a common interest, which was defined as the maintenance of the political equilibrium. To this end diplomacy was necessary, the art of which had been brought in Italy to the highest refinement, and thence trans- mitted to the rest of Europe. Attempts to disturb 19 290 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. the political equilibrium were made by Charles V., Louis XIV., and Charles XII. of Sweden, without permanent result. Mention may be made of the common dread of the Turks, which constituted another temporary bond of union for the European States. Of particular importance as a consequence of the Reformation was the struggle of the Protestant Church for a political existence. A struggle there had to be, and wars to settle it ; for what was at stake was political powers and private possessions, which could be obtained only by wresting them violently from the Church. Such struggles were the Thirty Years' War in Germany, the Wars of the Commonwealth in England, and the resistance of the Netherlanders to Spanish rule. By the Westphalian Peace the Protestant church obtained recognition of its independence. "This Peace,", says Hegel, " has often been praised as the palladium of Germany, because it settled the political constitution of Germany."- What this Peace looked to was, in fact, "constituted an- archy, such as the world had never seen before." Germany was (ostensibly) to be one Empire, one political whole, a nation ; and yet all the civil and political relations of Germans were to be inde- pendent of imperial and determined by local law. In other words, what was inviolably protected and secured was the right of each separate State within the Empire to have in all respects its own laws, and to consult its own interests, even to the detriment of the interest of the Empire. It was complete THE GERMANIC WORLD. 291 political particularism. What this " constitution " was good for was directly made evident in the igno- minious wars of the German empire against the Turks, and in its still more ignominious impotence to prevent, in very time of peace, the acquisition by the French of flourishing cities and provinces on the western border. " This constitution, which com- pletely made an end of Germany as an empire, was chiefly the work of Richelieu, through the aid of whom, a Roman Cardinal, religious freedom had been rescued in Germany. At home, Richelieu pur- sued an opposite policy. While he reduced his enemies to political impotence by securing the au- tonomy of their empire's different parts, in France he suppressed the independence of the Protestant party, and met in consequence the fate of many great statesmen. His fellow-citizens cursed him, while his enemies looked upon the work by which he ruined them as the most sacred goal of their wishes, their rights, and their liberty." Later, the political guarantee of the Protestant church was completed by the elevation of a new Protestant State, Prussia, to the rank of one of the leading powers of Europe. III. "Illumination" and Revolution. Protes- tantism directed supreme attention to the inward man, the interior of the individual soul. But if it taught that here was the true centre of religious emancipation and spiritual peace, it also accustomed its adherents to see in the same place in the per- sonal, subjective will the seat of an original power of evil, of " worldliness." To what excesses 292 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. of subtle, self-examining, analytic introspection this led, we have previously noticed. Something analo- gous to this was to be observed in the Catholic church, whose casuists (Jesuits) instituted inquiries respecting the inner character of the will and of its motives which were as prolix and hair-splitting as anything in the earlier Scholastic theology. The result of this dialectic, which rendered everything in particular doubtful, was simply to enthrone thought in general ; namely, formal thought, the abstract function of the spirit. This it was that in the end became the principle of the so-called " Illumination,'* or "Age of Reason." Thought is peculiarly a universal activity. Its peculiar products have the form of universality ; it considers everything under the form of univer- sality. Moreover, it is the peculiarity of thought that its objects, its subject-matter, are not away from it, but absolutely present to and in it. The presumption of thought is, that all its possible ob- jects lie within and not without its own realm, or within the sphere to employ a truthful figure of the rational self of the thinker. Thought may therefore fitly be described as the development or realization of the rational self -consciousness of the thinker. Or, more plainly, thought presupposes that things are thinkable ; that it and its objects have a common nature ; that a common reason in- forms and constitutes the thinking subject and the objects of thought ; that in truly thinking and knowing things it is just as truly developing and actualizing the potentialities of the subject's own THE GERMANIC WORLD. 293 nature, or thinking and knowing itself; and so that wherever it may successfully range, whether in the sensible or in the spiritual world, it is no longer a stranger, but strictly at home, and is free. Hitherto, both in the Scholastic and in the Protes- tant theology, the exclusive (ostensible) object of thought had been the doctrines of the Church, God, the Devil, and so on. Yet this object, accord- ing to the hypothesis that had become current, was after all only a quasi-object of thought ; in reality, it was held to transcend thought, to be an indigestible morsel for it. It is, then, the principle of thought as above de- scribed that the human spirit acknowledges in the period at which we have now arrived ; it is to this stadium in its own development that it has now risen. The historic steps are as follows : First, men have the assured persuasion that there must be reason in Nature, in the world, because God, who is reason, has created it. There arises a universal interest in studying and becoming acquainted with the present world. The search for reason in Nature is the search for the universal in Nature ; the uni- versal in Nature is genera, species, force, gravity, and the like. These things are not to be discov- ered by looking away from phenomena, but by observing them. So arises the method of experi- mental science, consisting on the one hand in direct observation, and on the other in the dis- covery of laws, forces, and the like, to w T hich, as to their simplest expression, the phenomena observed 294 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. are reduced. So thought, which in Protestant in- trospection and Jesuit casuistry had found nothing certain, begins here to have an opposite experience, and thus truly to come to itself. True, this exercise of thought remains relatively abstract, and gives abstract results ; it does not go so far as to com- prehend Nature in the fulness of her (direct or re- flected) spiritual life and significance. Perhaps it is for this reason that ** in the purely Germanic nations, among whom the principle of the Spirit had arisen," this form of science was less cultivated than among the Romanic peoples, whose highest gift was mainly that of abstraction ; at all events, experimental science made specially rapid advances among the latter, and among the Protestant English as well. To the men of those times " it was as if God had then first created the sun, the moon, the stars, plants, and animals ; as though the laws of Nature had then first been determined, for now, first, men began to have an interest in these things, when they recognized in the reason that pervades them their own reason. The eye of man became clear, his mind alive, his thought industrious and illuminative. With the recognition of the laws of Nature a barrier was raised against the enormous superstition of the time, as well as against all ideas of alien and mighty powers which could be con- quered only by the use of magic." To that extent man was thereby rendered free, " free through the knowledge of Nature." In the second place the peculiar activity of thought was directed to the moral side of human THE GERMANIC WORLD. 295 experience. For law and morality previously regarded as only externally imposed by divine com- mand through the Old and New Testaments, or else as having some other equally external origin a foundation was now sought in the nature of man himself, and of human will. The empirical method was employed in ascertaining the principles of law and justice actually followed by nations in their re- lations with one another ( Grotius) . Then a source of existing civil and public law was sought, after Cicero's manner, in the natural instincts of man ; e./., the social instinct, or in the principle of secur- ity for person and property, the general good, or political necessity, or the inherent right of the State. Frederick the Great is to be regarded as the ruler who, in respect of the last principle mentioned, intro- duced a new era. Frederick thought out and com- prehended the universal aim or "reason" of the State, and was the first ruler who made this his su- preme guide, ruthlessly suppressing all particularis- tic or individualistic pretensions opposed thereto. To such formal results of the industry of thought as we have now considered laws of Nature, defi- nitions of the origin and requirements of right and justice the name of "reason" was given. In- sight into the same was "illumination," illumi- nation by the sole light of "reason." It was in France that the "illumination" so called origi- nated, whence it passed over to Germany, taking with it a new world of ideas. Its professed prin- ciple was free thought : every subject of belief or conviction must be clearly present to thought, 296 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. and stand the test of its formal and analytical examination, before being finally admitted and adopted. The defect of this principle was its abstract and formal character; it proposed to bring everything to the test of the formal principle of abstract identity and contradiction. But this latter is no principle of comprehension at all, or of penetrating intelligence ; at best it is only a principle of formal and superficial identification. It requires him who employs it only to determine that this is A and that is B, and then permits him to judge to the effect that A is A, and B is B, and neither one of them is the other, A is not B. The immense importance of this principle, and the relative u illu- mination" which results when by the application of it to the multiform objects and the confused content of thought these are elevated in the mind to the character of clear and separate and distinctly identifiable ideas, are not to be questioned. But this is only the beginning, the scaffolding, for the true work of thought or of thoughtful comprehen- sion, which requires, in addition to the formal prin- ciple of dissecting and (to derive an epithet from Wordsworth) "murdering" analysis, a substantial principle of constructive (or reconstructive) syn-; thesis. The abstract principle of the "illumina- tion " was not adequate to the sounding of the con- crete depths of the living spirit ; the " illumination " was blind to all that is deeply and essentially ra- tional and vital in human and divine things. The principle of all social relations, as we have j THE GERMANIC WORLD. 297 abundantly seen, is the will of man. If it is a ques- tion of comprehending or reforming these relations, everything depends on knowing what is the true will of man, the will essentially conformable to human nature. In Germany it was notably Kant who undertook to throw light on this subject, ap- plying the formal, abstract principle adopted by the " illumination." The result was a thoroughly formal and abstract that is, empty conception of will cut off from all intrinsic connection with the actual world of manifold rights, duties, motives ; the connection was only extrinsic, formal. The principle was, The will must will itself ; or, The will must in all things will to be free. Whatever is assumed to be right, or a duty, must be willed freely for its own sake, and not in obedience to command, or from any other foreign motive. " All this remained among the Germans a matter of peaceful theory, but the French wished to carry it out in practice. The double question arises, Why did this principle of freedom remain merely formal ; and why did the French only, and not also the Germans, undertake to realize it?" The principle in question remained formal be- cause it proceeded from abstract thought, and be- cause in the interpretation and application of it the same abstract thought the "understanding," as opposed to the " reason" prevailed. What the French revolutionists, for example, sought to define and secure was the abstract, or " natural," " rights of man." But these were all summed up in the right to liberty, from which by simple analysis they 298 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. deduced the further right of all men to abstract equality before the law. To the other question, to wit, Why did the French, and not also the Germans, undertake to pass immediately from abstract theory to practice ? it will not suffice to say in answer that the French are "hot-headed." The reason lies deeper, and is to be found in the contrasting characters of the German and French spirits, and of Protestantism and Catholicism, and in the fact that in Germany there had been a reformation, while in France there had been none. In Germany the ideas of an abstract philosophy had no power to inflame the minds of men and lead to violent revolution, because the Germans had trodden the path which leads to inward satisfaction of the spirit's needs and to a pacified conscience ; they had that moral temper, inseparable from religion, which is itself the basis of all stability and all worth in civil law and politi- rcal constitution. " Illumination " in Germany was not anti-religious, as it was in France. In regard to temporal and social affairs the Reformation had changed everything for the better ; celibacy, pov- erty, and idleness, previously encouraged by the Church, were by Protestantism held in dishonor. The Church was in Germany no longer invested with an immense amount of unproductive wealth. There was no interference of the spiritual with the secular power; and there was no veneration for the divine right of kings, except so far as the latter ruled with wisdom, justice, and an eye to the good of the whole State. To this extent the require- THE GERMANIC WORLD. 299 ments of the principle of "thought" were here already satisfied ; in addition to which the Protes- tant world had the consciousness that the principle of spiritual reconciliation, in which it had found peace, Contained the germs of further developments of good in the political and social world. In France all this was different. Here (as, according to Hegel, in all Catholic countries) it was possible for men to have what Protestantism did not admit; namely, a double conscience, on the one hand a conforming one, and on the other a conscience protesting not only against the super- stition of the religion formally accepted, but also against its truth. Besides, the actual condition of social affairs was shockingly bad, and in the perpet- uation of it the court, clergy, nobility, and even the parliaments themselves were alike interested. So "illumination" came to the front, declaring that "reason" should reform and rule the world of hu- man affairs. Abstract justice, resting on the unim- peachable authority of abstract thought, should be introduced and made to prevail ; unreasoning pre- scription and brute authority should count for nothing. This declaration was as startling and unheard-of as, to many men of noble temper, the world over, it was exciting and hope-inspiring. With it a new epoch seemed gloriously to dawn, in which it might be expected that things divine and human should reach their final and full reconciliation. It now remains for us only to consider (1) the course of the Revolution in France ; and (2) its contre-coyps in other lands. 300 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 1. The watchword of the Revolution was "lib- erty." Before considering how the abstract think- ers and the leaders of the Revolution understood this term, and how they undertook actually to realize their conception, a few words of general analysis must be permitted. Liberty, or freedom, involves at least these two sides ; namely, the side of objective fact, and the subjective consciousness of that fact. Civil liberty, accordingly, involves, (a) Objective freedom of property, of person, of occupation, and of access to positions in the pub- lic service ; this freedom can be realized only as it is defined in laws which are executed, (b) The execution and maintenance of the laws. Such exe- cution and maintenance constitute the formal office of the Government, whose more substantial offices are to defend the independence of the nation as a separate political individuality against foreign attacks, and, in the form of administration, to look after the welfare of the State internally, and of all its classes. These offices, as also the work of legislation, constitute, as we have previously re- cognized, the universal side of the State. Their ex- ercise constitutes a universal function, affecting all the members of the State, but in which, from the nature of the case, it seems that only a few and in cases calling for a supreme, immediate, and per- emptory decision only one can participate. Now, adopting the abstract notion of freedom as strictly the attribute of the individual will, and sup- posing the State to be grounded on this principle, the question arises, How shall laws made to guar- : , A - THE GERMANIC WQRU). 301 ^S^fGRNlA-^ antee the objective freedom of the "m4tv44ai ^not interfere with his subjective freedom, if he have no direct share in the making and execution of them? The difficulty is not removed by the theory of repre- sentation, nor by the doctrine of the right of the majority to have their will prevail over the will of the minority; for "representatives," instead of really representing their constituents, often misrepresent and oppress them, and the rule of a majority may be tyrannical. This collision of subjective wills leads us therefore to the recognition and mention of a third essential side of civil liberty (c) , to which we may give the name of moral temper ( Gesinnung) . "Moral temper," we say, and not merely "moral custom" (Sitte), an inward willing of the laws, and of obedience to the laws because they are laws ; a mind to regard the laws and the constitu- tion as fixed stars in the moral firmament, and to consider it a supreme duty of individual citizens as such to submit thereto their own particular wills. "There may be various views and opinions re- specting laws, constitution, and government," but the moral temper of the individual must enable him to pay to the State as such the homage of holding these opinions in due subordination to the actual will of the State, as actually defined in laws and constitution and applied by the governing power. In this way the real subjective freedom of the individual is not only preserved, but elevated into something of the quality of a universal human will in distinction from a merely private and individual one. Further, and finally, this temper will have 302 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. an essentially religious character; it will invest the law and authority of the State, for the State's sake, with something of the sacred and inviolable character that belongs to the religious sphere. " It is, indeed, regarded as a fundamental article of modern wisdom that political laws and constitutions are to be wholly separated from religion ; but though State and Religion respect different subject- matters, they are yet one in their root, and laws have their highest authentication in religion." The " illumination " in France turned against religion, and the political revolutionists took from the former the abstract principle of liberty as exclu- sively individual in its seat and in its scope. The will was viewed as wholly individual, and each will was immediately regarded as absolute. The State was only the aggregate of the multitude of particu- lar individual wills : it was not, according to the Revolutionary ideal, conceived as a substantial and organic unity, a universal will, to which the will of the individual must be rendered conformable in order that it might itself exist in the character of really true and free will. The progress of the Revolution in France was as follows. At the outset, the attempt was made to imitate the English method of parliamentary govern- ment. But the success of this attempt was hindered by a pervading element of ' ' absolute distrust : the dynasty was distrusted because it had been de- prived of its previous power, and the priests re- fused the oath. Government and constitution could not subsist under these conditions, and they were THE GERMANIC WORLD. 303 overthrown." The government was next trans- ferred in theory to the people, in reality to the Na- tional Convention and its Committees. It was now the turn for the abstract principles of "liberty" and "virtue" (or "reason") to have the rule. The " virtue" or " reason " in question was that of the " illumination ; " and the practical problem given it to solve, when placed in the seat of supreme po- litical power, was the government of the many not yet illuminated, or who through excesses of liberty and passion had become untrue to the illuminated political "virtue" it demanded. But here arose the difficulty of determining who were, and who were not, children of the new light ; this being a question of internal condition and disposition, there was no means of settling it, positively and beyond the possibility of unfavorable suspicion, in the case of any individual. And so in fact the ruling power passed at last into the hands of Suspicion ; suspicion brought the monarch to the scaffold, and inaugurated a Reign of Terror. This reign was the most fearful tyranny ; judicial forms were dispensed with, and the uniform punishment was simply death. It was impossible that this tyranny should last ; every hu- man impulse and interest nay, reason itself was opposed to the reign of this fearfully and fanati- cally logical " Liberty." A new, organized govern- ment was introduced, having at its head, instead of a monarch, a changeable Directory consisting of five members. These, again, Suspicion overthrew, while the attempts of the legislative assemblies to exercise the powers of government served but to 304 illustrate the absolute need of a governing power. Such a power Napoleon erected in the form of a military government, at the head of which he estab- lished himself ; that is, his individual will. Napoleon scattered quickly all the lawyers, ideologists, and "men of principle" that remained, and replaced the reign of Suspicion with a rule founded on re- spect and fear. In all the remainder of French political history, down to the time when he last lec- tured on the Philosophy of History (Hegel died in 1831), our author saw the outcropping of the same conflicting forces which brought on the first Revo- lution, and especially of an abstract theory of individual liberty like that above adverted to. 2. Turning, finally, to the contre-coups of the Re- volution in other lands, we note that all the Roman- ic nations, notably Spain and Italy, besides France, came under the domination of the so-called princi- ple of political liberalism. And the event proved, according to our author, that it is " a false prin- ciple that the fetters of justice and liberty should be removed without emancipation of the conscience, or that there can be a revolution without reforma- tion. . . . External power can effect nothing in the long run : Napoleon could no more force lib- erty on Spain than Philip II. could force Holland into slavery." Turning to the other nations of Europe, we re- mark that Austria and England kept out of the track of the revolutionary tornado, and gave signal proofs of their political stability. England, in particular, is no place for windy abstractions and " principles " to THE GERMANIC WORLD. 305 thrive in. England, politically, is constituted of a multiplicity of particular interests having corre- sponding rights, the administration and defence of which are largely in the hands of those to whom they belong; the bureaucratic centraliza- tion of France could not be copied in England. At the same time ^the English have the sense to see that the ability to govern requires something more than the profession of certain abstract princi- ples. It calls for specific intelligence and training, and the English have not been so silly as to think themselves less free because those who know most about government hold, and succeed in retaining, the highest places in administration. Germany, traversed by the victorious French armies, was brought to a quickened sense of the defects of her political and civil constitution. In consequence, u the lie of the Empire completely dis- appeared. The Empire fell apart into sovereign States ; feudal obligations were abolished, freedom of person and property being adopted as funda- mental principles." In Germany the civil service is open to all qualified citizens ; the power of ul- timate decision is lodged in the hands of the mon- arch, but this in great and well-organized States is a point of minor importance. The strength of such a State lies, precisely, in its rational organiza- tion ; in such a State, far more than in the unstable political constructions of the French revolutionists, the principle of freedom is realized. Not lawless- ness, as we have abundantly seen, nor independence of law, nor personal participation in the origination .20 306 HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. of law, is liberty, but the willing subjection of the capricious individual will to existing laws whose rationality is perceived and recognized. Thus far have we come in tracing the path of universal history, which " is nothing other than the development of the conception of freedom." We have been obliged to confine our attention exclu- sively to the progressive development and realiza- tion of this conception, "renouncing the attractive labor of portraying in detail the fortunes of nations, their periods of brilliant prosperity, the beauty and greatness of individuals, and the interesting picture of their fate. Philosophy is concerned only with the splendor of the Idea, which is mirrored in uni- __yersal history." The fact that history is such a development as has been described, a develop- ment of freedom and of the consciousness of free- dom, and so an actual and progressive realization of the spiritual nature of man, " this is the true theodicy, the justification of God in history. The human spirit is capable of being reconciled with the course of past and present history only when it sees that that which has happened and which is daily happening has been and is, not only not with- out God, but in an essential sense the work of God himself." THE END. RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. 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