III.2. The Civic Community

§ 182. The concrete person, who as particular is an end to himself, is a totality of wants and a mixture of necessity and caprice. As such he is one of the principles of the civic community. But the particular person is essentially connected with others. Hence each establishes and satisfies himself by means of others, and so must call in the assistance of the form of universality. This universality is the other principle of the civic community.

Addition.—The civic community is the realm of difference, intermediate between the family and the state, although its construction followed in point of time the construction of the state. It, as the difference, must presuppose the state. On the self-dependent state it must rely for its subsistence. Further, the creation of the civic community belongs to the modern world which alone has permitted every element of the idea to receive its due. When the state is represented as a union of different persons, that is, a unity which is merely a community, it is only the civic community which is meant. Many modern teachers of political science have not been able to develop any other view of the state. In this society every one is an end to himself all others are for him nothing. And yet without coming into relation with others he cannot realize his ends. Hence to each particular person others are a means to the attainment of his end. But the particular purpose gives itself through reference to others the form of universality, and in satisfying itself accomplishes at the same time the well-being of others. Since particularity is bound up with the conditioning universal, the joint whole is the ground of adjustment or mediation, upon which all individualities, all talents, all accidents of birth or fortune disport themselves. Here the fountains of all the passions are let loose, being merely governed by the sun of reason. Particularity limited by universality is the only standard to which the particular person conforms in promoting his well-being.

§ 183. The self-seeking end is conditioned in its realization by the universal. Hence is formed a system of mutual dependence, a system which interweaves the subsistence, happiness, and rights of the individual with the subsistence, happiness, and right of all. The general right and well-being form the basis of the individual’s right and well-being, which only by this connection receives actuality and security. This system we may in the first instance call the external state, the state which satisfies one’s needs, and meets the requirements of the understanding.

§ 184. When the idea is thus at variance with itself, it imparts to the phases of the peculiarly individual life, i.e., to particularity, the right to develop and publish themselves on all sides, and to universality it concedes the right to evince itself as the foundation and necessary form, overruling power and final end of the particular. In this system the ethical order is lost in its own extremes. It is a system characterized by external appearance and constituted by the abstract side of the reality of the idea. In it the idea is found only as relative totality, and inner necessity.

Addition.—The direct unity of the family is here broken up into a multiplicity, and the ethical is lost in its extremes. Reality is at this stage externality, involving the dissolution of the conception, the liberation and independence of its realized elements. Although in the civic community particular and universal fall apart, they are none the less mutually connected and conditioned. While the one seems to be just the opposite of the other, and is supposed to be able to exist only by keeping the other at arm’s length, each nevertheless has the other as a condition. Thus most people, for example, regard the payment of taxes as injuring their particularity, and as opposing and crippling their plans. True as this may seem to be, the particular purpose cannot be carried out apart from the universal. A land, in which no taxes were paid, would not be allowed to distinguish itself for the strength of its individuals. In the same way it might appear as if it would be better for the universal to draw to itself the resources of the individual, and become a society such as was delineated by Plato in his “Republic.” But this, too, is only a mere appearance, since both elements exist only through and for each other, and are wrapped up in each other. When I promote my end, I promote the universal, and the universal in turn promotes my end.

§ 185. When independent particularity gives free rein to the satisfaction of want, caprice, and subjective liking, it destroys in its extravagance both itself and its substantive conception. On the other hand the satisfaction whether of necessary or of contingent want is contingent, since it contains no inherent limit, and is wholly dependent on external chance, caprice, and the power of the universal. In these conflicts and complexities the civic community affords a spectacle of excess, misery, and physical and social corruption.

Note.—The independent development of particularity (compare § 124, note), is the element which was revealed in the ancient states as an inflow of immorality causing ultimately their decay. These states, founded as they were partly upon a patriarchal and religious principle, partly upon a spiritual though simple ethical life, and originating in general in native intuitions, could not withstand the disunion and infinite reflection involved in self-consciousness. Hence, so soon as reflection arose, the state succumbed, first in sentiment and then in fact. Its as yet simple principle lacked the truly infinite power implied in a unity, which permits the opposition to reason to explode with all its force. In this way it would rise superior to the opposition, preserve itself in it, and take it into itself.

Plato in his “Republic” represents the substantive ethical life in its ideal beauty and truth. But with the principle of independent particularity, which broke in upon Greek ethical life at his time, he could do nothing except to oppose to it his “Republic,” which is simply substantive. Hence he excluded even the earliest form of subjectivity, as it exists in private property (§ 46, note) and the family, and also in its more expanded form as private liberty and choice of profession. It is this defect, which prevents the large and substantive truth of the “Republic” from being understood, and gives rise to the generally accepted view that it is a mere dream of abstract thought, or what we are used to calling an ideal. In the merely substantive form of the actual spirit, as it appears in Plato, the principle of self-dependent and in itself infinite personality of the individual, the principle of subjective freedom does not receive its due. This principle on its inner side issues in the Christian religion, and on its outer side in the Roman world, where it was combined with abstract universality. It is historically later than the Greek world. So, too, the philosophic reflection, which fathoms the depth of this principle, is later than the substantive idea found in Greek thought.

Addition.—Particularity, taken abstractly, is measureless in its excess, and the forms of excess are likewise measureless. A man’s appetites, which are not a closed circle like the instinct of the animal, are widened by picture-thought and reflection. He may carry appetite even to the spurious infinite. But on the other side privation and want are also measureless. The confusion, due to the collision of appetite and privation, can only be set to rights by the state. If the Platonic state excludes particularity, no hope can be held out to it, as it contradicts the infinite right of the idea to allow to particularity its freedom. In the Christian religion, the right of subjects and also the existence, which is self-referring and self-dependent, have received a marked expansion. And at the same time the whole is sufficiently strong to establish harmony between particularity and the ethical unity.

§ 186. But the principle of particularity develops of its own accord into a totality, and thus goes over into universality. In this universality it has its truth and its right to positive realization. Since at the standpoint of dualism, which we now occupy (§ 184), the principles of particularity and universality are independent, their unity is not an ethical identity. It does not exist as freedom, but as a necessity. That is to say the particular has to raise itself to the form of universality, and in it it has to seek and find its subsistence.

§ 187. Individuals in the civic community are private persons, who pursue their own interests. As these interests are occasioned by the universal, which appears as a means, they can be obtained only in so far as individuals in their desire, will, and conduct, conform to the universal, and become a link in the chain of the whole. The interest of the idea as such does not, it is true, lie in the consciousness of the citizens; yet it is not wholly wanting. It is found in the process, by means of which the individual, through necessity of nature and the caprice of his wants, seeks to raise his individual natural existence into formal freedom and the formal universality of knowing and willing. Thus, without departing from its particular nature, the individual’s character is enlarged.

Note.—The view that civilization is an external and degenerate form of life is allied to the idea that the natural condition of uncivilized peoples is one of unsophisticated innocence. So also the view that civilization is a mere means for the satisfaction of one’s needs, and for the enjoyment and comfort of one’s particular life, takes for granted that these selfish ends are absolute. Both theories manifest ignorance of the nature of spirit and the end of reason. Spirit is real only when by its own motion it divides itself, gives itself limit and finitude in the natural needs and the region of external necessity, and then, by moulding and shaping itself in them, overcomes them, and secures for itself an objective embodiment. The rational end, therefore, is neither the simplicity of nature nor the enjoyments resulting from civilization through the development of particularity. It rather works away from the condition of simple nature, in which there is either no self or a crude state of consciousness and will, and transcends the naive individuality, in which spirit is submerged. Its externality thus in the first instance receives the rationality, of which it is capable, namely, the form of universality characteristic of the understanding. Only in this way is spirit at home and with itself in this externality as such. Hence in it the freedom of spirit is realized. Spirit, becoming actualized in an element, which of itself was foreign to its free character, has to do only with what is produced by itself and bears its own impress.—In this way the form of universality comes into independent existence in thought, a form which is the only worthy element for the existence of the idea.

Culture or education is, as we may thus conclude, in its ultimate sense a liberation, and that of a high kind. Its task is to make possible the infinitely subjective substantiality of the ethical life. In the process we pass upwards from the direct and natural existence to what is spiritual and has the form of the universal.—In the individual agent this liberation involves a struggle against mere subjectivity, immediate desire, subjective vanity, and capricious liking. The hardness of the task is in part the cause of the disfavour under which it falls. None the less is it through the labour of education that the subjective will itself wins possession of the objectivity, in which alone it is able and worthy to be the embodiment of the idea.—At the same time the form of universality, into which particularity has moulded itself and worked itself up, gives rise to that general principle of the understanding, in accordance with which the particular passes upward into the true, independent existence of the individual. And since the particular gives to the universal its adequate content and unconditioned self-direction, it even in the ethical sphere is infinitely independent and free subjectivity. Education is thus proved to be an inherent element of the absolute, and is shown to have infinite value.

Addition.—We call those men educated or cultured, who can perform all that others do without exhibiting any oddities of behaviour. Uneducated men thrust their eccentricities upon your notice, and do not act according to the universal qualities of the object. It easily happens that the uneducated man wounds the feelings of others, since he lets himself go, and does not trouble himself about their sensibilities. Not that he desires to injure them at all, but his conduct is not in unison with his will. Education refines particularity, and enables it to conduct itself in harmony with the nature of the object. True originality, which creates its object, desires true culture, while untrue originality adopts insipidities, which are characteristic of a lack of culture.

§ 188. The civic community contains three elements:

A. The recasting of want, and the satisfaction of the individual through his work, through the work of all others, and through the satisfaction of their wants. This is a system of wants.

B. Actualization of the general freedom required for this, i.e., the protection of property by the administration of justice.

C. Provision against possible mischances, and care for the particular interest as a common interest, by means of police and the corporation.

§ 189. The particularity, which is in the first instance opposed to the universal will (§ 60), is subjective want. It gets objectivity, i.e., is satisfied (α), through external objects, which are at this stage the property of others, and the product of their needs and wills, and (β) through active labour, as connecting link between subjective and objective. Labour has as its aim to satisfy subjective particularity. Yet by the introduction of the needs and free choice of others universality is realized. Hence rationality comes as an appearance into the sphere of the finite. This partial presence of rationality is the understanding, to which is assigned the function of reconciling the opposing elements of the finite sphere.

Note.—It is the task of political science, which originates at this point, to detect the laws governing the movement of the masses in the intricacy of their qualitative and quantitative relations. This science has sprung from the soil of modern times. Its development reveals the interesting process by which thought (see Smith, Say, Ricardo) examines the infinite multitude of particulars lying before it, and exposes their simple, active, regulating principles. These principles belong to the understanding. As on the one side the principle of reconciliation involves a recognition of the external presence or appearance in the sphere of want of the reason which is active in the object so, on the exact contrary, is this also the sphere in which the understanding with its subjective aims and moral opinions lets loose its discontent and moral vexation.

Addition.—It depends altogether on accident how such universal wants, as those of food, drink, and clothing, are to be satisfied. The soil is more fertile in one place than another; years differ in their yield one man is diligent, while another is lazy. But this swarm of arbitrary things begets universal features, and what appears to be pure abstraction and absence of thought becomes bound by a necessity, which enters of itself. To discover the element of necessity is the object of political science, a science which does honour to thought, because it finds laws in a mass of accidents. Interesting is it to witness the action and reaction of the different relations, how the special circles group themselves, influence others, and in turn receive from them help or hindrance. So remarkable is this interpretation of facts in a sphere, where everything seems to be postponed to the free will of the individual, that it almost passes belief. It resembles the planets, which though to the eye always complex and irregular in their movements, are yet governed by ascertained laws.

§ 190. The animal has a limited range of ways and means for satisfying his limited wants. Man in his dependence proves his universality and his ability to become independent, firstly, by multiplying his wants and means, and, secondly, by dissecting the concrete want into parts. The parts then become other wants, and through being specialized are more abstract than the first.

Note.—The object is in right a person, in morals a subject, in the family a member, in the city generally a burgher (bourgeois); and here, at the standpoint of want (§ 123, note), he is the concrete product of picture-thought which we call man. Here, and properly only here, is it that we first speak of man in this sense.

Addition.—The animal is particular in its being, having instinct, and a strictly limited means of satisfaction. Some insects are confined to a certain kind of plant; other animals have a wider circle and can inhabit different climates, but still their range is limited in contrast with that of man. Man’s need of shelter and clothing, his having to destroy the natural form of food, and adapt it by cooking to his changed taste, give him less aplomb than the animal. Indeed, as spirit, he ought to have less. The understanding, with its grasp of differences, brings multiplicity into wants: and, when taste and utility become criteria of judgment, they change even the wants themselves. It is in the end not the appetite, but the opinion which has to be satisfied. It is the province of education or culture to dissect the concrete need into its elements. When wants are multiplied, the mere appetites are restricted; for, when man uses many things, the propulsion to any one of them is not so strong, a sign that the force of physical need in general is diminished.

§ 191. The means for satisfying the specialized wants are similarly divided and increased. These means become in their turn relative ends and abstract wants. Hence the multiplication expands into an infinite series of distinctions with regard to these phases, and of judgments concerning the suitability of the means to their ends. This is refinement.

Addition.—What the English call “comfortable” is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.

§ 192. The satisfaction of want and the attainment of means thereto become a realized possibility for others, through whose wants and labour satisfaction is in turn conditioned. The abstraction, which becomes a quality of wants and means (§ 191), helps to determine the mutual relation of individuals. This general recognition of others is the element which makes the isolated abstract wants and means concrete and social.

Addition.—Through the compulsion I am under to fashion myself according to others arises the form of universality. I acquire from others the means of satisfaction, and must accordingly fall in with their opinions. At the same time I am compelled to produce the means for the satisfaction of the wants of others. One plays into the other; and the two are interdependent. Everything particular becomes in this way social. In the matter of dress, time of eating, etc., we follow convention, because it is not worth while exercising our insight and judgment. He is the most prudent who does as others do.

§ 193. The social element is a special instrument both of the simple acquisition of the means, and also of the reduplication of the ways by which want is satisfied. Further, it contains directly the claim of equality with others. Both the desire for equality, including the imitation of others, and also the desire of each person to be unique, become real sources of the multiplication and extension of wants.

§ 194. Social want joins the direct or natural want with the spiritual want due to picture-thinking; but the spiritual or universal factor outweighs the other. The social element brings a liberation, by which the stringent necessity of nature is turned aside, and man is determined by his own universal opinion. He makes his own necessity. He has arbitrary choice, being in contact with a contingency which is not external but internal.

Note.—It has been held that man as to want is free in a so-called state of nature, in which he has only the so-called simple wants of nature, requiring for their satisfaction merely the means furnished directly and at random by nature. In this view no account is taken of the freedom which lies in work, of which more hereafter. Such a view is not true, because in natural want and its direct satisfaction the spiritual is submerged by mere nature. Hence, a state of nature is a state of savagery and slavery. Freedom is nowhere to be found except in the return of spirit and thought to itself, a process by which it distinguishes itself from the natural and turns back upon it.

§ 195. This liberation is formal, since the particular side of the end remains the fundamental content. The tendency of the social condition indefinitely to increase and specialize wants, means, and enjoyments, and to distinguish natural from unrefined wants, has no limits. Hence arises luxury, in which the augmentation of dependence and distress is in its nature infinite. It operates upon an infinitely unyielding material, namely, an external means, which has the special quality of being the possession of the free will. Hence it meets with the most obdurate resistance.

Addition.—Diogenes in his completely cynical character is properly only a product of Athenian social life. That which gave birth to him was the public opinion, against which his behaviour was directed. His way of life was therefore not independent, but occasioned by his social surroundings. It was itself an ungainly product of luxury. Wherever luxury is extreme, there also prevail distress and depravity, and cynicism is produced in opposition to over-refinement.

§ 196. The instrument for preparing and acquiring specialized means adequate to specialized wants is labour. By labour the material, directly handed over by nature for these numerous ends, is specialized in a variety of ways. This fashioning of the material gives to the means value and purpose, so that in consumption it is chiefly human products and human effort that are used up.

Addition.—The direct material, which requires no working up, is small. Even air must be acquired, since it has to be made warm. Perhaps water is the only thing which man can use, simply as it is. Human sweat and toil win for men the means for satisfying their wants.

§ 197. Training on its theoretical side is developed by the great variety of objects and interests, and consists not only in numberless picture-thoughts and items of knowledge, but also in mobility and quickness of imagination, a mental alertness in passing from one image, or idea, to another, and in the apprehension of intricate general relations. This is the training of the understanding, with which goes the development of language. Practical training, or training by labour, consists in habituation to an employment, which satisfies a self-caused want. Its action is limited partly by the nature of the material, but chiefly by the caprice of others. It involves an habitual use of skill acquired by practice and implying objective conditions.

Addition.—The barbarian is lazy, and is distinguished from the civilized man by his brooding stupidity. Practical training consists in habitual employment and the need of of it. The unskilled workman always makes something different from what he intended, because he is not master of his own hands. A workman is skilled, who produces what he intended, whose subjective action readily accords with his purpose.

§ 198. The universal and objective in work is to be found in the abstraction which, giving rise to the specialization of means and wants, causes the specialization also of production. This is the division of labour. By it the labour of the individual becomes more simple, his skill in his abstract work greater, and the amount he produces larger. The result of the abstraction of skill and means is that men’s interdependence or mutual relation is completed. It becomes a thorough necessity. Moreover, the abstraction of production causes work to be continually more mechanical, until it is at last possible for man to step out and let the machine take his place.

§ 199. Through the dependence and co-operation involved in labour, subjective self-seeking is converted into a contribution towards the satisfaction of the wants of all others. The universal so penetrates the particular by its dialectic movement, that the individual, while acquiring, producing, and enjoying for himself, at the same time produces and acquires for the enjoyment of others. This is a necessity, and in this necessity arising out of mutual dependence is contained the fact of a general and permanent wealth (§ 170). In it each person may share by means of his education and skill. Each, too, is by it assured of subsistence, while the results of his labour preserve and increase the general wealth.

§ 200. But particular wealth, or the possibility of sharing in the general wealth, is based partly on skill, partly on something which is directly the individual’s own, namely, capital. Skill in its turn depends on capital, and on many accidental circumstances. These also in their manifold variety make more pronounced the differences in the development of natural endowments, physical and mental, which were unequal to begin with. These differences are conspicuous everywhere in the sphere of particularity. They, along with other elements of chance and accident, necessarily produce inequalities of wealth and skill.

Note.—Nature is the element of inequality. Yet the objective right of particularity of spirit, contained in the idea itself, does not in the civic community supersede the inequality set up by nature. On the contrary, it produces inequality out of spirit and exalts it to an inequality of talents, wealth, and intellectual and moral education. To oppose to the objective right a demand for equality is a move of the empty understanding, which takes its own abstraction and mandate to be real and reasonable. In the sphere of particularity the universal images itself, forming with the particular merely a relative identity. The particular thus retains both the natural and the capricious particularity, and also a remnant of the state of nature. It is the reason immanent in the system of human wants and their activities, which fashions this system into an organic whole, of which the differences are members. (See next §.)

§ 201. The infinitely varied means and their infinitely interlacing play of mutual production and exchange are gathered together by virtue of the universality inherent in their content, and become divided into general masses. The whole is thus formed into particular systems of wants, means, and labour, ways and methods of satisfaction, and theoretical and practical training. Amongst these systems the individuals are apportioned, and compose a cluster of classes or estates.

Addition.—The manner of sharing in the general wealth is left to each particular individual, but the general differences, found in the division of the civic community, are essential. The family is the first basis of the state, and classes or estates are the second. This second is of consequence because private persons, through self-seeking, are compelled to turn themselves out towards others. This is the link by which self-seeking is joined to the universal or the state, whose care it must be to keep the connection strong and steadfast.

§ 202. Classes are, in terms of the conception, (a) the substantial or direct, (b) the reflecting or formal, and (c) the universal.

§ 203. (a) The wealth of the substantial class is contained in natural products obtained by cultivation. The soil is capable of being an exclusive, private possession, and demands not merely the taking from it what it bears naturally, but an objective working up. Since the returns of labour depend on the seasons, and harvests are influenced by variable weather and other natural conditions, provision for wants must take account of the future. However, owing to the natural conditions, this way of life involves but little reflection, and is but slightly modified by subjective volition. It therefore embodies in substantive feeling an ethical life resting directly upon trust and the family relation.

Note.—States are rightly said to come into existence with the introduction of agriculture along with the introduction of marriage. The principle of agriculture involves the cultivation of the soil, and therefore, also, private ownership of property (compare § 170, note). It takes the life of nomadic tribes back to the repose of private right and to the secure satisfaction of wants. Joined also to the agricultural life are the limitation of sexual love to marriage, the extension of this bond to an enduring universal relation, the extension of want to family maintenance and of possession to family wealth. Safety, protection by fortification, and uninterrupted satisfaction of wants are all commendable prima facie characteristics of these two fundamental ethical institutions. They are forms of universality, or ways by which reason or the absolute end seeks to realize itself. In this connection nothing can be more interesting than the ingenious and learned explanations which my much honoured friend, Mr. Creuzer, has given in the fourth volume of his “Mythologie und Symbolik” with regard to the agrarian festivals, images, and sanctuaries of the ancients. In these customs and rites the introduction of agriculture and kindred institutions was known and revered as a divine act.

From the side of private-right, especially the administration of justice, and from the side of instruction, culture, and also of religion, the substantive character of this class undergoes modifications. These modifications, however, are due to the development of reflection, and affect not the substantive content but the form.—They occur also in the other classes.

Addition.—In our time agriculture, losing some of its naturalness, is managed in a reflective way like a factory, and acquires the character of the second class. Yet it will always retain much of the substantive feeling, which pervades the patriarchal life. In it man accepts what is given with a simple mind, thanks God for it, and lives in the assurance that the goodness of God will continue. What he gets suffices him, and he uses it because it comes again. This is the simple disposition unaffected by the desire for wealth. It may be described as the type of the old nobility, who consumed simply what was there. In this class nature does the chief share of the work, and man’s diligence is in comparison secondary. In the second class the understanding is the essential factor, and the natural products are regarded simply as furnishing material.

§ 204. (b) The business of the industrial class is to alter the form of the products of nature. This class is indebted for its subsistence to its labour, to reflection, and also to the interposition of the wants and labours of others. For that which it produces and enjoys it has to thank mainly its own activity.—Its field of action is again divided into three parts:—(i.) Labour for individual wants of the more concrete kind, and at the request of particular persons. This is manual labour, or the work of single artisans, (ii.) The more abstract collective mass of labour, which is also for particular needs but due to a general demand. This is manufacture, (iii.) Business of exchange, by which one special means of subsistence is given for others, chiefly through money, the general medium of exchange, in which is realized the abstract value of all merchandise. This is commerce.

Addition.—The individual in the industrial class is referred to himself, and this self-reference is intimately connected with the demand for a legal status. Consequently the sense for freedom and order has mainly arisen in cities. The first class needs to think little about itself. What it acquires is the gift of a stranger, nature. With it the feeling of dependence is primary. With this feeling is easily associated a willingness to submit to whatever occurs. The first class is therefore more inclined to subjection, the second to freedom.

§ 205. (c) The business of the universal class is with the universal interests of society. Hence it must be relieved of the direct task of providing for itself. It must possess private means, or receive an allowance from the state, which claims his activity. His private interest may thus find satisfaction in his labour for the universal.

§ 206. A class is a particularity which has become objective, and the foregoing are the general divisions in accordance with the conception. Yet capacity, birth, and other circumstances have their influence in determining to what class an individual shall belong. But the final and essential factor in the case is subjective opinion and private freedom of choice. In this sphere free choice has its right, honour, and dignity. If a thing happens in this sphere according to internal necessity, it is ipso facto occasioned by free arbitrary choice, and for the subjective consciousness bears the stamp of its will.

Note.—In reference to the principle of particularity or subjective caprice may be clearly discerned the difference between the political life of the East and that of the West, between the ancient and the modern world. In the ancient world the division of the whole into classes was produced objectively of itself, because it is implicitly rational. But the principle of subjectivity does not receive its due, since the separation of individuals into classes is either a function of the rulers, as in Plato’s “Republic” (Rep. iii. 120), or else it rests upon mere birth, as in the caste system of India. Now subjective particularity is an essential element of communal life, and, when it is not taken up into the organization of the whole and reconciled in the whole, it must prove a hostile force and pave the way for the ruin of the social order (see § 185, note). It either overturns society, as was the case in the Greek states and the Roman republic, or, when the existing order is able to preserve itself by force or by religious authority, it then manifests itself as internal corruption and complete degradation. This happened in a measure amongst the Lacedemonians, and now is completely the case with the inhabitants of India.

But when subjective particularity is welcomed by objective order, and given its rights and place, it becomes the animating principle of the civic community, stimulates thought and promotes merit and honour. The recognition of the claim that whatever in the civic community and the state is rationally necessary should occur through subjective free choice is a fuller definition of the popular idea of freedom (§ 121).

§ 207. The particularity of the individual becomes definitely and actually realized, only by his limiting himself exclusively to one of the particular spheres of want. In this system the ethical sense is that of rectitude or class-honour. It involves the decision of the individual by means of his own native activity, diligence, and skill to make himself a member of one of these classes, preserve himself in it, and provide for himself only through the instrumentality of the universal. He should acknowledge this position, and also claim to have it recognized by others.—Morality has its peculiar place in this sphere, where the ruling factor is reflection upon one’s action, or consideration of the end involved in particular wants and in well-being. Here also the element of chance in satisfying these ends makes random and individual assistance a duty.

Note.—Youth is specially apt to struggle against the proposal that it should decide upon a particular vocation, on the ground that any decision is a limitation of its universal scope and a mere external necessity. This aloofness is a product of the abstract thinking, which clings to the universal and unreal. It fails to recognize that the conception must experience a division into conception and its reality, if it is to have a definite and particular realization (§ 7), and to win for itself reality and ethical objectivity.

Addition.—By the sentence that a man must be something we understand that he must belong to a definite class; for this something signifies a substantive reality. A human being without a vocation is a mere private person, who has no place in any real universal. Still, the individual in his exclusiveness may regard himself as the universal, and may fancy that when he takes a trade or profession, he is sinking to a lower plane. That is the false notion that a thing, when it attains the realization which properly belongs to it, limits itself and gives up its independence.

§ 208. The principle of the system of wants, namely the particularity of knowing and willing, contains absolute universality, or the universality of freedom, only in the abstract form of right of property. But here right is no longer merely implicit, but is found in valid reality as protection of property through the administration of justice.

§ 209. The relative principle of the mutual exchange of wants and labour for their satisfaction has in the first instance its return into itself in the infinite personality generally, i.e., in abstract right. Yet it is the very sphere of the relative which in the form of education gives embodiment to right, by fixing it as something universally acknowledged, known, and willed. The relative also, through the interposition of knowledge and will, supplies right with validity and objective actuality.

Note.—It is the essence of education and of thought, which is the consciousness of the individual in universal form, that the I should be apprehended as a universal person, in whom all are identical. Man must be accounted a universal being, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, or Italian, but because he is a man. This thinking or reflective consciousness, is of infinite importance. It is defective only when it plumes itself upon being cosmopolitan, in opposition to the concrete life of the citizen.

Addition.—From one point of view it is by means of the system of particularity that right becomes externally necessary as protection of individuals. Although right proceeds out of the conception, it enters into being only because it is serviceable for wants. To have the thought of right, one must be educated to the stage of thinking, and not linger in the region of the merely sensible. We must adapt the form of universality to the objects, and direct the will according to a universal principle. Only after man has found out for himself many wants, the acquisition of which is an inseparable element of his satisfaction, is he able to frame laws.

§ 210. The objective actuality of right consists partly in existing for consciousness, or more generally in its being known, and partly in having, and being generally recognized as having, the validity and force of a reality.

§ 211. What is in essence right becomes in its objective concrete existence constituted, that is, made definite for consciousness through thought. It, having right and validity, is so recognized, and becomes law. Right in this characterization of it is positive right in general.

Note.—To constitute something as universal, i.e., to bring it as universal to consciousness, is to think (§ 13, note, and § 21, note). The content in thus being brought back to its simplest form is given its final mould. Only when what is right becomes law does it receive not merely the form of universality, but its own truest character. It is to select only one phase of law, if we consider it merely as a valid rule of conduct imposed upon all. Preceding this feature is the internal and essential element of law, namely, the recognition of the content in its definite universality. Even the rights of custom exist as thought and are known. Animals have law in the form of instinct; man alone has law in the form of custom. The difference between custom and law consists merely in this, that customs are known in a subjective and accidental way, and hence are in their actual form more indefinite than laws. In custom, the universality of thought is more obscured, and the knowledge of right is a partial and accidental possession of a few. The idea that customs rather than laws should pass over into life is a deception, because the valid laws of a nation, when written and collected, do not cease to be customs. People speak nowadays, indeed, most of all of life and of things passing over into life, when they are conversant with nothing but the deadest material and the deadest thoughts. When customs come to be collected and grouped, as takes place with every people which reaches a certain grade of civilization, there is formed a statute-book. It is somewhat different from a statute-book properly so-called. A collection is formless, indefinite, and fragmentary, whereas a real statute-book apprehends and expresses in terms of thought the principles of law in their universality. England’s land-law or common law is, as is well known, made up both of statutes, having the forms of laws, and of so-called unwritten laws. However, this unwritten law is written with a vengeance, and a knowledge of it is possible only by reading the many quartos which it fills. The monstrous confusion which prevails in that country, both in the administration of justice and in the subject-matter of the law, is graphically portrayed by those who are acquainted with the facts. They specially notice that, since the unwritten law is contained in the decisions of law-courts and judges, the judges are continually the lawgivers. Further, the judges are both directed and not directed to the authority of their predecessors. They are so directed, because their predecessors are said to have done nothing but interpret the unwritten law. They are not so directed, because they are supposed to have in themselves the Unwritten law, and hence have a right to determine whether previous decisions are in keeping with it or not.

To avoid a similar confusion, which would have arisen in the administration of justice at Rome, when in later times the views of all the celebrated lawyers were made authoritative, one of the emperors hit upon an ingenious expedient. He passed a law, by which was founded a kind of college consisting of the jurisconsults who were longest deceased. This body had a president, and came to decisions through a majority of votes (Mr. Hugo’s “History of Roman Law,” § 354).—It is the task of a nation, or at least of its jurisconsults, not indeed to make a system of laws entirely new in content, but to recognize the existing content of laws in its definite universality. They should apprehend it in thought, while also making additions with regard to its application to special cases. To refuse to a people or its lawyers this right would be a flagrant insult.

Addition.—The sun and the planets have laws, but they do not know them. Barbarians are ruled by impulses, customs, feelings, but have no consciousness of them. When right is established as law and known, all random intuitions and opinions, revenge, compassion, and selfinterest, fall away. Only then does right attain its true character and receive its due honour. In being apprehended right is purified from all mixture of chance elements, and thus becomes for the first time capable of universal application. Of course, in the administration of the laws collisions will necessarily occur, which must be settled by the understanding of the judge; otherwise, the execution of the law would be merely mechanical. But to do away with collisions by giving full scope to the judge’s well-meant opinions would be the poorest solution of the difficulty. Collisions, in fact, belong to the nature of thought, the thinking consciousness and its dialectic, while the mere decision of a judge is arbitrary.

In favour of rights of custom it is usually adduced that they are living; but life, consisting in simple identity with the subject, does not constitute the essence of the matter. Right must be known in thought. It must be a system in itself, and only as a system can’ it be valid for civilized peoples. Very recently the vocation of making laws has been abolished. This is not only an affront, but also implies the absurdity that to no individual has been given the capacity to systematize the infinite multitude of existing-laws, and expose the universal contained in them, when this task is precisely the most pressing need of the day Similarly, it has been held that a digest of decisions, such as the Corpus juris, is preferable to a statute-book giving a detailed exhibition of the universal. A certain particularity and reminiscence of the historical is supposed to be contained in the decisions, and in a statute-book it is thought that these advantages would be wanting. But the mischievous nature of a mere collection is clearly manifest in the practice of the English law.

§ 212. Through this identity of the abstract or implicit with what is actually constituted, only that right is binding which has become law. But since to constitute a thing is to give it outer reality, there may creep into the process a contingency due to self-will and other elements of particularity. Hence, the actual law may be different from what is in itself right.

Note.—Hence, in positive right that which is lawfully established is the source of the knowledge of what is right, or, more accurately, is the final resort in litigation. Positive jurisprudence is to that extent an historical science based on authority. Additions are a matter of the understanding, and concern outward arrangements, combinations, results, further applications, and the like. But when the understanding meddles with the essential substance of the matter, it may serve up singular-theories, of which those regarding criminal law are an illustration.—It is not only the right but the necessary duty of positive science, it is true, to deduce out of its positive data the historic progress and also applications and ramifications. Yet it cannot be wondered at if it be regarded as a fair cross-question whether a specific finding is after all wholly in accordance with reason (compare on this point § 3 note).

§ 213. Right is realized in the first instance in the form of constituted law. But it must in its content have further realization. It must apply to the matter of the relations bearing on property and contract, complicated and ramified as these relations in the civic community become. It must apply also to the ethical relations of feeling, love, and confidence, but only in so far as they contain the phase of abstract right (§ 159). The moral commands, touching the will in its most private subjectivity and particularity, cannot be the object of positive legislation. But additional material for legislation is furnished by the rights and duties which flow from the administration of justice itself and from the state.

Addition.—Of the higher relations of marriage, love, religion, and the state, only those aspects can be objects of legislation, which are by their nature capable of having an external embodiment. Here the laws of different nations are very different. Amongst the Chinese, for example, it is a law of the state that the husband shall love his first wife more than any of the others. If he is convicted of the contrary, he is flogged. So, too, in the older laws may be found many prescripts concerning integrity and honour, things that are wholly internal and do not fall within the province of legislation. But as to the oath, where the matter is laid upon the conscience, integrity and honour must be viewed as in it outwardly substantive.

§ 214. Besides applying to the particular as a whole, the constituted law applies to the special case. Here it enters the quantitative region left unoccupied by the conception. This is, of course, the abstract quantitative, which is found in exchange as value. The conception furnishes in this region only a general limit, inside of which there is room for considerable uncertainty. But fluctuations of opinion must be cut short, and a conclusion reached. Hence, inside of this limit a decision has the character of accident and caprice.

Note.—To whittle the universal down not only to the particular but to the individual case is the chief function of the purely positive in law. It cannot, for example, be determined by reason, or decided by any phase of the conception itself, whether forty lashes or thirty-nine, a fine of four dollars or three dollars and ninety-nine cents, imprisonment for a year or three hundred and sixty-four or three hundred and sixty-six days, be the just punishment for a crime. And yet a lash, a cent, or a day too much or too little is an injustice.

Reason itself recognizes that contingency, contradiction, and appearance have their sphere or right, limited though it is, and is not at pains to rectify these contraditions. Here the purpose is solely to reach actuality, that is, somehow or other within the given limit to get the matter settled. This settlement is the office of formal self-certitude or abstract subjectivity, which, observing the prescribed limit, may bring the matter to issue simply for settlement’s sake. Or its reasons for its decision are, if it has any, of this kind, that it should use round numbers, or that the number should be forty less one.

It is of no real significance that the law does not make the final decision demanded by reality, but hands it over to the judge, limiting him merely by a maximum and minimum. The maximum and minimum are themselves round numbers, and do not do away with the requirement that the judge shall pronounce a finite purely positive sentence. On the contrary, this action devolves upon him necessarily.

Addition.—Undoubtedly the laws and the administration of justice contain in one of their aspects something contingent, since the law, though of a universal character, must nevertheless be applied to special cases. If we were to declare against this element of contingency, we would pronounce in favour of an abstraction. The exact quantity of punishment cannot be found in any factor of the conception; and whatever judgment may be made, it is to some extent arbitrary. But this contingency is itself necessary. If one were to argue from the presence of contingency that a code of laws was imperfect, he would overlook the fact that perfection of such a kind is not to be attained. Law must, hence, be taken as it stands.

§ 215. Since the binding force of law rests upon the right of self-consciousness (§ 132 and note), the laws ought to be universally made known.

Note.—To hang up the laws, as did Dionysius the Tyrant, so high that no citizen could read them, is a wrong. To bury them in a cumbrous apparatus of learned books, collections of decisions and opinions of judges, who have deviated from the rule, and, to make matters worse, to write them in a foreign tongue, so that no one can attain a knowledge of them, unless he has made them a special subject of study, is the same wrong in another form.—The rulers, who have given their people a definite and systematized book of common law, or even an unshapely collection such as that of Justinian, should be thanked and lauded as public benefactors. Moreover, they have done a decisive act of justice.

Addition.—Jurists, who have a detailed knowledge of the law, often look on it as their monopoly. He who is not of their profession, they say, shall not be heard. The physicists treated Goethe’s theory of colours harshly, because he was not of their vocation, and was a poet besides. But we do not need the services of a shoemaker to find out if the shoe fits, nor do we need to belong to a particular trade in order to have a knowledge of the objects which are of universal interest in it. Right concerns freedom, the worthiest and holiest thing in man, the thing which he must know in so far as he is answerable to it.

§ 216. We are in the presence of an antinomy. Simple universal characteristics are needed in a public statute-book and yet the finite material by its nature gives rise to endless definition; the context of any law should be a rounded-off and complete whole, and yet there must continually be new legal findings. But the right to a completed statute-book remains unimpaired, since this antinomy does not occur in the case of fixed general principles, but only with their specialization. General principles can be apprehended and presented apart from special cases.

Note.—One chief source of complexity in legislation occurs in the case of any historic institution, which in its origin contains an injustice. In the course of time it is sought to infuse into this institution reason and absolute right. An illustration of this procedure was cited above from Roman law (§ 180,note). It occurs also in the old feudal law and elsewhere. But it is essential to understand that, owing to the nature of finite material, any application to it of principles, absolutely reasonable and in themselves universal, must be an infinite process. To require of a statute-book that it should be absolutely finished, and incapable of any modification—a malady which is mainly German—and to base this demand upon the reason that, if the book cannot be completed, it cannot come up to the so-called imperfect and therefore falls short of reality, rest upon a twofold misunderstanding. This view implies a misconception of the nature of such finite objects as private right, whose so-called perfection consists simply in a perennial approximation. It implies, too, a misconception of the difference between the universal of the understanding and that of reason, and also of their application to the finite and particular material, which goes on to infinity. Le plus grand ennemi du Bien c’est le Meilleur is the expression of the truly sound human understanding in contrast with empty reasonings and reflections.

Addition.—If completeness means the complete collection of every individual thing or instance which belongs to a given sphere, no science can be complete. If we say that philosophy or any other science is incomplete, it seems like saying that we must wait till it is perfected, as the best thing may yet be lacking. In this way there is no getting on at all, neither in the seemingly completed science of geometry, in which, nevertheless, new elements are being introduced, nor in philosophy, which, though dealing with the universal idea, may be continually more and more’ specialized. The universal law cannot be forever merely the ten commandments. Yet it would be absurd to refuse to set up the law “Thou shalt not kill” on the ground that a statute-book cannot be made complete. Every statute-book can, of course, be better. It is patent to the most idle reflection that the most excellent, noble, and beautiful can be conceived of as still more excellent, noble, and beautiful. A large old tree branches more and more without becoming a new tree in the process; it would be folly, however, not to plant a new tree for the reason that it was destined in time to have new branches.

§ 217. In the civic society what is intrinsically right becomes law. What was formerly the simple and abstract realization of my private will becomes, when recognized, a tangible factor of the existing general will and consciousness. Acquisition of property and other such transactions must therefore be settled in accordance with the form assigned to this realized right. Hence, property now depends upon contract, and, in general, upon those formalities, which furnish legal proof of possession.

Note.—The original or direct titles to property and methods of acquisition (§ 54 and fol.) disappear in the civic community, or occur in it only as separate accidents and limited elements.—Forms are rejected by feeling, which holds to the subjective, and by reflection, which clings to the abstract side of the necessary formality. On the other hand the dead understanding clings to formalities in opposition to the thing itself, and infinitely increases their number.—For the rest it is involved in the whole process of education to win oneself free by hard and long endeavour from the sensuous and direct form, and attain to the form of thought with its appropriate simple expression. It is only in the earliest stages of legal science that ceremony and formalities are significant. They are then esteemed as the thing itself rather than its outer symbol. In Roman law is found a host of details and expressions, which formerly belonged to religious ceremonies, and should in law have given place to phases of thought and their appropriate expression.

Addition.—In law what is in itself right is constituted. In property I possess something which was without an owner; this must now be recognized and constituted as mine. Hence, with regard to property arise in a community legal forms. We place boundary stones as a sign for others to take notice of; we have registers of mortgages and lists of properties. In the civic community property is generally obtained by contract, a legal process which is fixed and definite. Against forms the objection may be urged that they exist merely to bring money to the authorities. Or they may be held to be objectionable as indicating a lack of confidence. It may be said that the maxim “A man is his word” has lost its force. But the essential thing about the form is that what is really right should be constituted as right. My will is rational; it has validity; and this validity is to be recognized by others. Here my subjectivity and that of others must fall away, and the will must attain a certainty, assurance, and objectivity, which can be realized only through the form.

§ 218. In the civic community property and personality have a legal recognition and validity. Hence, crime is injury done not merely to an infinite subject, but to a universal fact, which has firm and sure reality. Here occurs, therefore, the view that crime is a menace to society. On the one hand the magnitude of the crime is increased, but on the other hand the security, felt by society, lessens the external importance of the injury. As a result, crime is now often punished more lightly.

Note.—The fact that, when one member of a community suffers, all others suffer with him, alters the nature of crime, not indeed in its conception, but in its external existence. The injury now concerns the general thought and consciousness of the civic community, and not merely the existence of the person directly injured. In the heroic ages, portrayed in the tragedies of the ancients, the citizens did not regard themselves as injured by the crimes which the members of the royal houses committed against one another.—Crime, which in its inner nature is an infinite injury, must as a realized fact submit to a qualitative and quantitative measure (§ 96). This outward fact is conditioned by the general idea and consciousness of the validity of the laws. Hence, the danger to the civic community is one way of measuring the magnitude of a crime, or one of its attributes.—The quality or magnitude varies with the condition of a community. In the circumstances lies the justification of inflicting upon a theft of a few cents or a turnip the penalty of death, while it imposes a mild punishment upon a theft of a hundred or several hundred times the amount. Although the idea of danger to the civic community seems to aggravate the crime, it has really ameliorated the penalty. A penal code belongs to its time and to the condition in which the civic community at that time is.

Addition.—An offence seems to be aggravated, if it is perpetrated in a community, and yet in such a case it is treated with more leniency. This appears to be self-contradictory. But although a crime could not be allowed by the community to go unpunished, since it would then be constituted as right, yet, because a community is sure of itself, a crime is always merely a single, isolated act of hostility without any foothold. By means of the very steadfastness of the community crime becomes a mere subjective act, which appears to spring not so much out of deliberate will as out of natural impulse. Hence, a more lenient view is taken of crime, and punishment also is ameliorated. If the community is still unsettled, an example must be made by means of punishment, for punishment is itself an example against the example of crime. But in the sure and firm community the position of crime is so unstable, that a lesser measure of punishment is sufficient to supersede it. Severe punishments are not absolutely unjust, but are due to the condition of the time. A criminal code cannot apply to all times, and crimes are mere seeming existences, which draw after them a greater or less rejection of themselves.

§ 219. Right, having entered reality in the form of law, and having become an actual fact, stands in independent opposition to the particular will and opinion of right, and has to vindicate itself as a universal. The recognition and realization of right in each special case without the subjective instigation of private interests, is the office of a public power, the court of justice.

Note.—The office of judge and the court of justice may have originated historically in the patriarchal relation, in force, or in voluntary choice. This is for the conception of the object a matter of indifference. To regard the administration of justice by princes and rulers merely as a courtesy and favour, as does Herr von Haller in his “Restoration of Political Science,” is to have no inkling of the fact that, when we speak of law and the state, we mean that its institutions are reasonable and absolutely necessary and that, when we consider the reasonable basis of the laws, we have nothing to do with the form of their origin. The extreme opposite to this view is the crude idea that the administration of justice is club-law or despotism, which suppressed liberty by violence. But the administration of the law is to be looked upon as the duty quite as much as the right of the public authority. Whether to delegate the discharge of this office to some power or not is not at the option of any individual.

§ 220. Revenge, or the right against crime (§ 102), is right only in itself. It is not right in the form of law, i.e., it is not in its actual existence just. The place of the injured person is now taken by the injured universal, which is actualized in a special way in the court of justice. To pursue and punish crime is its function, which therefore ceases to be a mere subjective retaliation or revenge, and is in punishment transformed into a true reconciliation of right with itself. In the act of punishment, viewed objectively, right is reconciled to itself, and restores itself by superseding the crime and realizing its own inherent validity. In punishment, viewed subjectively, or from the standpoint of the criminal, the law, known by him and available for his protection, is atoned for. The execution of the law upon him, or the satisfaction of justice, he finds to be simply the completed act of his own law.

§ 221. A member of the civic community has the right to bring a cause before the court of justice, and is also in duty bound to appear in the court, and accept from it the decision of the point in dispute.

Addition.—Every individual has the right to bring his case before the court. But he must know the laws, otherwise the privilege would be of no service to him. But it is also a duty for him to appear before the court. Under the feudal system the prince or noble defied the court, and refused to appear, regarding it as a wrong if the court’ summoned him before it. This condition of things is contradictory of the real function of the court. In more recent times the prince has in private affairs recognized the courts as superior to him, and in free states his cases are usually lost.

§ 222. By the court it is required that a right be proved: The legal process gives the contending parties an opportunity to substantiate their claim by evidence, and put the judge in possession of a knowledge of the case. The necessary steps are themselves rights; their course must be legally fixed; and they form an essential part of theoretical jurisprudence.

Addition.—It may stir men to revolt if they have a right, which is refused to them on the score that it cannot be proved. But the right, which I have, must be at the same time constituted. I must be able to present and prove it, and only when that, which it really is, is constituted as law, is it of any avail to me in a community.

§ 223. The stages of the legal process may be more and more minutely subdivided, and each stage has its right. As this subdivision has no inherent limit, the legal process, which is already of itself a means, may be opposed to the end, and become something external. Though this extensive formality is meant for the two contending parties and belongs to them as their right, it may become an evil and an instrument of wrong. Therefore, in order that the two parties, and right itself as the substantive basis, may be protected against the legal process and its misuse, it is by way of law made a duty for them to submit themselves to a simple court, the civil court of arbitration, for a preliminary trial, before going to the higher court.

Note.—Equity includes a departure from formal right through moral and other regards, and refers directly to the content of the suit. A court of equity decides upon the particular case, without adhering to the formalities of the legal process. It is not confined to the objective evidence, as is formal law. It decides upon the interest peculiar to each particular suit. Its judgment is not meant to be applied generally.

§ 224. As the public promulgation of the laws is one of the rights of the subjective consciousness (§ 215), so also is the possibility of knowing how in any special case the law is carried out. The course of the external proceedings should be public, and also the legal principles involved. The order of procedure is of itself a thing of general value. Though the special content of the case is of interest only to the contending parties, the universal content, involving right and a legal decision, is of interest to all. Hence is demanded the publicity of the administration of the law.

Note.—Deliberations by the members of a court amongst themselves over the judgment to be given, are only private opinions and views, and are not of public import.

Addition --Honest common sense holds that the publicity of legal proceedings is right and just. A strong reason to the contrary was always the rank of the judiciary. They were not to be seen by everybody, and regarded themselves as the warders of a law, into which laymen ought not to intrude. But law should possess the confidence of the citizens, and this fact calls for the publicity of the sentence. Publicity is a right, because the aim of the court is justice, which as a universality belongs to all. Moreover, the citizens should be convinced that the right sentence has actually been pronounced.

§ 225. In the application of the law by the judicial authorities to special cases are to be distinguished two separate aspects. There must be firstly an acquaintance with the direct facts of the case, whether a contract has taken place, an injurious act done, and who the doer is. In criminal law the act must be known also in its intention, which contains its substantive criminal quality (§ 119, note). In the second place the act must be brought under the law of the restoration of right. This in criminal law includes the punishment. Decisions in connection with these two aspects are two different functions.

Note.—In the constitution of the Roman law-courts these two functions occurred in this way. The Pretor gave his decision on the condition that the case was of such and such a kind, and then he commanded a certain Judex to makes inquiries into its exact nature. The fixing of the exact criminal quality of an act, whether, for example, it be murder or manslaughter, is in English judicial procedure left to the insight or caprice of the accuser, and the court is restricted to his view, even if it is seen to be wrong.

§ 226. To conduct the whole inquiry, to arrange the procedure of the parties, which is itself aright (§ 222), and to pass sentence, are the special functions of the judge (§ 225). For him, as the organ of the law, the case must be prepared and brought under some law. It must be raised out of its empirical nature, and made a recognized fact with general attributes.

§ 227. That aspect of the case, which consists in knowing and estimating the direct facts, contains no distinctively judicial elements. The knowledge is possible to any intelligent man. When, in order that an estimate of the act may be made, the subjective factor of the insight or intention of the agent is essential (see Second Part), when the evidence concerns no abstract object of reason or the understanding, but mere particulars, circumstances, and objects of sensible perception and subjective certitude, when the case contains no absolutely objective element, and the duty of deciding must fall to subjective conviction and conscience (animi sententia), and when the evidence rests on depositions and statements, the oath, though a subjective confirmation, is ultimate.

Note.—In this question it is a cardinal point to keep before our eyes the nature of the available evidence, and to distinguish it from knowledge and evidence of other kinds. To prove a phase of reason, such as is the conception of right itself, that is, to recognize its necessity, requires another method than the proof of a geometrical theorem. Moreover, in a theorem the figure is determined by the understanding, and is already abstractly made according to a law. But in the case of an empirical content, such as a fact, the material for knowledge is composed of sense-perceptions, and attestations based on the subjective certitude of sense. These depositions, testimonies, and circumstances must be put together, and from them a conclusion must be drawn. With such material and such a means of making it independent and objective there is attained only partial proofs. In obedience to a true logic, which nevertheless is formally illogical, the punishments are consequently exceptional. This objective truth is quite different from the truth of a rational principle or of a proposition, whose matter has already been abstractly fixed by the understanding. In so far as an empirical truth can be recognized in the specific judicial finding of a court, and so far as in the finding can be shown to lie an unique quality, that is, an exclusive implicit right and necessity, the formal judicial court is entitled to pass judgment upon the fact as well as upon the point of law.

Addition.—There is no reason for supposing that the judge is the only one to decide upon matters of fact. For this not the legal mind alone but any man of ordinary intelligence is competent. Judgment as to matter of fact depends upon empirical circumstances, witnesses of the act, and similar data of perception. There may also be other facts, by means of which one can infer the nature and probability of the act in dispute. Here at most we reach an assurance, but not a truth in the sense of something eternal. Assurance is subjective conviction or conscience, and the question to decide is what form to give this certitude at a law court. The demand, usually made in German law, for a confession on the part of the criminal has this right, that by it satisfaction is given to the right of the subjective consciousness. The judge’s decision must agree with the criminal’s consciousness; and, not until the culprit has confessed, is the sentence free from an element which is foreign to him. But the criminal may deny the act, and thus imperil the course of justice. Yet it is a harsh measure to treat him according to the subjective conviction of the judge, since then he is no longer regarded as free. Hence, it is still required that the decree of guilt or innocence should come from the soul of the criminal, and this requisite is secured through trial by jury.

§ 228. When the facts of the case have been decided on, and the judge in his sentence brings the case, so qualified, under a certain law, the accused’s right of self-consciousness is not violated. In the first place, the law is known, and is itself the law of the accused. In the second place the proceedings, by which the case is brought under a certain law, are public. But when a decision is not yet reached upon the particular subjective and external content of the matter, a knowledge of which comes under the first of the two aspects given in § 225, the accused’s right of self-consciousness is preserved by intrusting the case to the subjectivity of jurors. This procedure is based on the equality of the jurors with the accused, both as regards class and in general.

Note.—The right of self-consciousness, or the element of subjective freedom, can be regarded as the substantive point of view in the question of the necessity of a public trial, or trial by a jury. To this point of view all that is essential and needful in these institutions may be reduced. From any other standpoint disputes may arise as to whether this or that feature is an advantage or disadvantage, but such reasonings either are of secondary consequence and decide nothing, or they are taken from other and perhaps higher spheres. It is possible that the law might be as well administered by courts of judges, or even better by them than by other institutions. But grant the possibility, or let the possibility become a probability or even a certainty, there remains always on the other hand the right of self-consciousness, which maintains its claims and must be satisfied. Because of the general nature of the law, it can happen that the knowledge of right, the course of legal proceedings, and the possibility of prosecuting the law, may become the exclusive property of a class. This class may use a language which is to those in whose interest it was made a foreign tongue. The members of a civic community, who have to rely for their subsistence upon their own activity, knowledge, and will, then become strangers not only to what is most private and personal in the law, but also to its substantive and rational essence. Hence, they fall under a kind of bodily vassalage to the legal class. They may have the right to present themselves in person before the court (in judicio stare), but of what use is that, if they are not present as intelligent spirits? The justice, which they receive, remains for them an external fate.

§ 229. In the civic community the idea is lost in particularity, and dispersed by the separation of inner and outer. But in the administration of justice the community is brought back to the conception, that is, to the unity of the intrinsic universal with subjective particularity. But as subjective particularity is present only as one single case, and the universal only as abstract right, the unification is in the first instance relative. The realization of this relative unity over the whole range of particularity is the function of the police, and within a limited but concrete totality constitutes the corporation.

Addition.—In the civic community universality is only necessity. In the relation of wants, right as such is the only steadfast principle. But the sphere of this right is limited, and refers merely to the protection of what I have. To right as such, happiness is something external. Yet in the system of wants well-being is an essential element. The universal, which is at first only right, has to spread itself over the whole field of particularity. Justice, it is true, is a large factor in the civic community. The state will flourish, if it has good laws, of which free property is the fundamental condition. But since I am wholly environed by my particularity, I have a right to demand that in connecting myself with others I shall further my special happiness. Regard to my particular well-being is taken by the police and the corporation.

§ 230. In the system of wants the subsistence and happiness of every individual is a possibility, whose realization is conditioned by the objective system of wants. By the administration of justice compensation is rendered for injury done to property or person. But the right, which IS actualized in the particular individual, contains the two following factors. It asks firstly that person and property should be secured by the removal of all fortuitous hindrances, and secondly that the security of the individual’s subsistence and happiness, his particular well-being should be regarded and actualized as a right.

§ 231. So far as the particular will is the principle of a purpose, the force, by which the universal guarantees security, is limited to the realm of mere accident, and is an external arrangement.

§ 232. Crimes are in their nature contingent or casual, taking the form of capricious choice of evil, and must be prevented or brought to justice by the general force. Apart from them, however, arbitrary choice must be allowed a place in connection with acts in themselves lawful, such as the private use of property. Here it comes into external relation with other individuals, and also with public institutions for realizing a common end. In this way a private act is exposed to a haphazard play of circumstances, which take it beyond my control. It thus may or actually does effect an injury or wrong to others.

§ 233. This is, indeed, only a possibility of harm. But that no actual injury is done is now no longer a matter of accident, since the aspect of wrong in private acts is the ultimate ground for the right of police control.

§ 234. The relations of external reality occur within the realm of the infinity created by the understanding, and have accordingly no inherent limit. Hence, as to what is dangerous and what not, what suspicious and what free from suspicion, what is to be forbidden, or kept under inspection, or pardoned with a reprimand, what is to be retained after pardon under police supervision, and what is to be dismissed on suspended sentence, no boundary can be laid down. Custom, the spirit of the constitution as a whole, the condition of the time, the danger of the moment, etc., furnish means for a decision.

Addition.—No fixed definition can here be given, or absolute boundary drawn. Here everything is personal and influenced by subjective opinion. To the spirit of the constitution or the danger of the times are due any more decisive characteristics. In time of war, e.g., many things morally harmless are looked on as harmful. Because of the presence of this aspect of contingency and arbitrary personality the police are viewed with odium. They can by far-fetched conclusions draw every kind of thing within their sphere; for in anything may be found a possibility of harm. Hence, the police may go to work in a pedantic spirit, and disturb the moral life of individuals. But great as the nuisance may be, an objective limit to their action cannot be drawn.

§ 235. Although every one relies on the untrammelled possibility of satisfying his daily wants, yet, when in the indefinite multiplication and limitation of them it is sought to procure or exchange the means and it is desired to expedite the transaction, there comes into sight a common interest, which makes the business of one subserve the interest of all. There appear, likewise, ways and means, which may be of public utility. To oversee and foster the ways and means calculated to promote the public welfare is the function of a public power.

§ 236. The different interests of producers and consumers may come into conflict, and, although the right relation between the two may on the whole arise of its own accord, yet the adjustment of the two calls for a regulation standing above both sides and put into operation consciously. The right to make such a regulation in any particular case (e.g., taxation of the articles most necessary to sustain life), consists in this, that the public offer of goods, in wide and daily use, is not to the individual, as such, but to him as a universal, i.e., to the public. The people’s right to honest dealing and inspection of goods to prevent fraud may be enforced by a public functionary. But more especially does the dependence of great branches of industry upon foreign conditions and distant combinations, which the individuals engaged in these industries cannot themselves oversee, make necessary a general supervision and control.

Note.—In contrast with freedom of business and trade in the civic community stands the other extreme of the establishment and direction of the work of all by means of official regulation. Under this head comes perhaps the construction of the pyramids and other monstrous Egyptian and Asiatic works. They were built for public ends without the intervention of any work done by the individual to further his own private interests. Private interest summons the principle of freedom against interference from above, but the more blindly it is sunk in self-seeking ends, the more it stands in need of regulation, in order that it may be led back to the universal. Thus what might be a dangerous upheaval becomes largely harmless, and shorter time is left for conflicts to adjust themselves merely by unconscious necessity.

Addition.—Police control and provision are intended to intervene between the individual and the universal possibility of obtaining his wants. It takes charge of lighting the streets, building bridges, taxation of daily wants, even of health. Two main views stand out at this point. One view is that it falls to the police to look after everything, the other that the police should not interfere at all, since every one will be guided by the need of others. The individual, it is true, must have the right to earn his bread in this or the other way, but on the other hand the public has a right to ask that what is necessary shall be done. Both claims should be met, and the freedom of trade ought not to be of such a kind as to endanger the general weal.

§ 237. The possibility of sharing in the general wealth is open to the individual and secured to him by public regulations. This security, however, cannot be complete, and in any case the possibility of sharing in the general wealth is from the subjective side open to casualties, just in proportion as it presupposes conditions of skill, health, and capital.

§ 238. In the first instance the family is the substantive whole. To it falls the duty of providing for the particular side of the individual’s life, both in regard of the means and talents requisite for winning his maintenance out of the common stock, and in regard of subsistence and provision in case of disability. But the civic community tears the individual out of the family bonds, makes its members strangers to one another, and recognizes them as independent persons. Instead of external inorganic nature and the paternal soil, from which the individual drew subsistence, the community substitutes its own ground, and subjects the whole family to fortuitous dependence upon itself. Thus the individual has become the son of the civic community, which makes claims upon him, at the same time as he has rights to it.

Addition.—The family has, of course, to provide bread for individuals; but in the civic community the family is subordinate and merely forms a basis. After that it is no longer of such extensive efficacy. Rather is the civic community the monster, which snatches man to itself, claims from him that he should toil for it and that he should exist through it and act by means of it. If man is a member of such a community, he has just such rights in it or claims upon it as he had in and upon the family. The civic community must protect its members, and defend their rights, as they in turn are engaged to obey its mandates.

§ 239. The civic community, in its character as universal family, has the right and duty to supersede, if necessary, the will of the parents, and superintend the education of the young, at least in so far as their education bears upon their becoming members of the community. Especially is this the case if the education is to be completed not by the parents but by others. Further, the community must undertake general arrangements for education, in so far as they can be made.

Addition.—The boundary line between the rights of parents and those of the civic community is hard to define. The parents generally suppose themselves to possess complete liberty with regard to education, and to be able to do whatever they wish. Whenever instruction is made public, the chief opposition usually comes from the parents, who cry out and make acclaim about teachers and schools merely because they are displeased with them. In spite of this, the community has the right to proceed according to tried methods, and to compel parents to send their children to school, to have them vaccinated, etc. Contests occur in France between the demands of free instruction, i.e., of the pleasure of parents, on the one side, and the oversight of the state on the other.

§ 240. Similarly, the community has the duty and right to take under its guardianship those who wantonly squander their subsistence and that of their family. In the place of this extravagance it substitutes their real end, which it seeks to promote along with the purpose of the community.

Addition.—It was a law in Athens that every citizen should give an account of his way of life. Our view is that this is no one’s business. Of course every, individual is in one way independent, but he is also a member of the system of the civic community. In so far as every man has the right to ask maintenance from it, it must also protect him against himself. It is not simply that starvation must be guarded against. The wider view is that there never shall arise a rabble, or mass. Since the civic community is obliged to support individuals, it has also the right to insist that individuals should care for its subsistence.

§ 241. Not the arbitrary will only, but accidental circumstances, which may be physical or external (§ 200), may bring the individual to poverty. This condition exposes him to the wants of the civic community, which has already deprived him of the natural methods of acquisition (§ 217), and superseded the bond of the family stock (§ 181). Besides, poverty causes men to lose more or less the advantage of society, the opportunity to acquire skill or education, the benefit of the administration of justice, the care for health, even the consolation of religion. Amongst the poor the public power takes the place of the family in regard to their immediate need, dislike of work, bad disposition, and other vices, which spring out of poverty and the sense of wrong.

§ 242. The subjective element of poverty, or generally the distress, to which the individual is by nature exposed, requires subjective assistance, both in view of the special circumstances, and out of sympathy and love. Here, amidst all general arrangements, morality finds ample room to work. But since the assistance is in its own nature and in its effects casual, the effort of society shall be to discover a general remedy for penury and to do without random help.

Note.—Haphazard almsgiving and such foundations as the burning of lamps beside holy images, etc., are replaced by public poor-houses, hospitals, street lighting, etc. To charity enough still remains. It is a false view for charity to restrict its help to private methods and casual sentiment and knowledge, and to feel itself injured and weakened by regulations binding upon the whole community. On the contrary, the public system is to be regarded as all the more complete, the less remains to be done by special effort.

§ 243. When the civic community is untrammelled in its activity, it increases within itself in industry and population. By generalizing the relations of men by the way of their wants, and by generalizing the manner in which the means of meeting these wants are prepared and procured, large fortunes are amassed. On the other side, there occur repartition and limitation of the work of the individual labourer and, consequently, dependence and distress in the artisan class. With these drawbacks are associated callousness of feeling and inability to enjoy the larger possibilities of freedom, especially the mental advantages of the civic community.

§ 244. When a large number of people sink below the standard of living regarded as essential for the members of society, and lose that sense of right, rectitude, and honour which is derived from self-support, a pauper class arises, and wealth accumulates disproportionately in the hands of a few.

Addition.—The way of living of the pauper class is the lowest of all, and is adopted by themselves. But with different peoples the minimum is very different. In England even the poorest man believes that he has his right, and with him this standard is different from that which satisfies the poor in other lands. Poverty does not of itself make a pauper. The pauper state implies a frame of mind, associated often with poverty, consisting in inner rebellion against the wealthy, against society, and against constituted authority. Moreover, in order to descend to the class, which is at the mercy of the changes and chances of life, men must be heedless and indifferent to work, as are the Lazzaroni in Naples. Hence, in this section of the community arises the evil thing that a man has not self-respect enough to earn his own living by his work, and still he claims support as a right. No man can maintain a right against nature. Yet, in social conditions want assumes the form of a wrong done to one or other class. The important question, how poverty is to be done away with, is one which has disturbed and agitated society, especially in modern times.

§ 245. If upon the more wealthy classes the burden were directly laid of maintaining the poor at the level of their ordinary way of life, or if in public institutions, such as rich hospitals, foundations, or cloisters, the poor could receive direct support, they would be assured of subsistence without requiring to do any work. This would be contrary both to the principle of the civic community and to the feeling its members have of independence and honour.

Again, if subsistence were provided not directly but through work, or opportunity to work, the quantity of produce would be increased, and the consumers, becoming themselves producers, would be proportionately too few. Whether in the case of over-production, then, or in the case of direct help, the evil sought to be removed would remain, and, indeed, would by either method be enhanced. There arises the seeming paradox that the civic community when excessively wealthy is not rich enough. It has not sufficient hold of its own wealth to stem excess of poverty and the creation of paupers.

Note.—These phenomena may be studied in England, where they occur on an extensive scale. In that country may also be observed the consequences of poor rates, of vast foundations, of unlimited private benevolence, and, above all, of the discontinuance of the corporation. In England, and especially in Scotland, the most direct remedy against poverty and against laziness and extravagance, which are the cause of poverty, has been proved by practical experience to be to leave the poor to their fate, and direct them to public begging. This, too, has been found to be the best means for preserving that sense of shame and honour, which is the subjective basis of society.

§ 246. By means of its own dialectic the civic community is driven beyond its own limits as a definite and self-complete society. It must find consumers and the necessary means of life amongst other peoples, who either lack the means, of which it has a superfluity, or have less developed industries.

§ 247. As the firm-set earth, or the soil, is the basis of family life, so the basis of industry is the sea, the natural element which stimulates intercourse with foreign lands. By the substitution for the tenacious grasp of the soil, and for the limited round of appetites and enjoyments embraced within the civic life, of the fluid element of danger and destruction, the passion for gain is transformed. By means of the sea, the greatest medium of communication, the desire for wealth brings distant lands into an intercourse, which leads to commercial exchange. In this intercourse is found one of the chief means of culture, and in it, too, trade receives world-historical significance.

Note.—Rivers are not natural boundaries, though people have in modern times tried to make them so. Rather do they, and more especially the sea, bind men together.

That Horace (Carm. I. 8) is wrong when he says: “... deus abscidit / Prudens Oceano dissociabili / Terras,...” is shown by the general fact that basins of rivers are inhabited by one nation or race. This is proved even more conspicuously by the relations of ancient Greece with Ionia and Magna Graecia, of Brittany with Britain, of Denmark with Norway, of Sweden with Finland and Lapland, in contrast with the slight intercourse obtaining between the inhabitants of the coast and those of the interior. We have only to compare the position of the nations, who have frequented the sea, with that the nations who have avoided it, in order to discover what a means of culture and commerce it really is. Observe how the Egyptians and Hindoos have become dull and insensible, and are sunk in the grossest and most shameful superstitions, while all the great aspiring nations press to the sea.

§ 248. The wider connection due to the sea becomes a means for colonization, to which, be it sporadic or systematic, the full-grown civic community finds itself impelled. Thus for a part of its population it provides on a new soil a return to the family principle, and also procures for itself at the same time a new incentive and field for work.

Addition.—The civic society is forced to found colonies, owing to the increase of population, but more especially because production oversteps the needs of consumption, and the growing numbers cannot satisfy their needs by their work. Sporadic colonization occurs mainly in Germany, the colonists, finding a home in America or Russia, being without any connection with and of no benefit to their native land. A different kind of colonization is the systematic, which is conducted by the state consciously and with suitable appliances. Of this kind of colonization many forms occurred amongst the ancients, especially the Greeks. In Greece the citizens did not engage in severe toil, but directed their energies to public affairs. When the population grew to such an extent that it was difficult to provide for them, the youth were sent into a new neighbourhood, which was sometimes chosen for them, sometimes left to the accident of discovery. In modern times colonists have not been granted the rights possessed by the inhabitants of the parent country. The result has been war and ultimate independence, as may be read in the history of the English and Spanish colonies. The independence of the colonies has turned out to be of the greatest advantage to the mother land, just as the liberation of the slaves was of the greatest advantage to the masters.

§ 249. The universal, which is contained in the particularity of the civic community, is realized and preserved by the external system of police supervision, whose purpose is simply to protect and secure the multitude of private ends and interests subsisting within it. It has also the higher function of caring for the interests which lead out beyond the civic community (§ 246). In accordance with the idea particularity itself makes the universal, which exists in its special interests, the end and object of its will and endeavour. The ethical principle thus comes back as a constituent element of the civic community. This is the corporation.

§ 250. In its substantive family life and life of nature the agricultural class contains directly the concrete universal in which it lives. The universal class, again, has this universal as an independent end of its activity, and as its ground and basis. The middle or commercial class is essentially engaged with the particular, and hence its peculiar province is the corporation.

§ 251. The work of the civic community spreads in different directions in obedience to the nature of its particularity. Since the implicit equality, contained in particularity, is here realized as the common purpose of an association, the particular and self-seeking end becomes something actively universal. Each member of the civic community is with his special talent a member of the corporation. The universal aim of the corporation is accordingly quite concrete, and has no wider application than what lies in trade and its distinctive interests.

§ 252. In keeping with this view, the corporation, under the oversight of the public authority, has the right to look after its own clearly-defined interests, according to the objective qualifications of skill and rectitude to adopt members, whose number is determined by the general system, to make provision for its adherents against fortuitous occurrences, and to foster the capacity necessary in any one desiring to become a member. In general it must stand to its members as a second family, a position which remains more indefinite than the family relation, because the general civic community is at a farther remove from individuals and their special needs.

Note.-The tradesman is different from the day-labourer, as well as from him who is ready for any casual employment. The trader, be he employer or employee, is a member of an association, not for mere accidental gain but for the whole circuit of gain, or the universal involved in his particular maintenance. The privileges, which are rights of a corporate branch of the civic community, are not the same as special privileges in the etymological sense of the term. Special privileges are haphazard exceptions to a general law, but the other privileges are legal phases of the particularity of an essential branch of the community.

§ 253. The corporation provides for the family a basis and steady means (§ 170), by securing for it a subsistence varying according to capacity. Moreover, both security and capacity are in the corporation publicly recognized. Hence, the member of a corporation does not need to certify his capacity or the reality of his regular income to any larger outside organization. It is also recognized that he belongs to and has active interest in a whole, whose aim is to promote the welfare of society in general. Thus, in his class he has honour.

Note.—The corporation, in making secure the means of the family, corresponds to agriculture and private property in another sphere (§ 203, note).—When it is complained that the luxury and extravagance of the commercial class give rise to paupers (§ 244), it must not be overlooked that these conditions have an ethical or social basis in such causes as the increasingly mechanical nature of work. If the individual is not a member of an authorized corporation, and no combination can be a corporation unless it is authorized, he has no class-honour. By limiting himself to the self-seeking side of trade and his own subsistence and enjoyments, he loses standing. He perhaps seeks, in that case, to obtain recognition by displaying his success in his trade; but his display has no limit, because he has no desire to live in a way becoming his class. Indeed, he has no class at all, since only what is of general purport really exists in a civic community, and can be established and recognized. As he has no class, he has not the more universal life characteristic of the class.—In the corporation the assistance received by poverty loses its lawless character, and the humiliation wrongly associated with it. The opulent, by performing their duty to their associates, lose their pride, and cease to stir up envy in others. Integrity receives its due honour and recognition.

§ 254. The corporation sets a limit to the so-called natural right to make acquisitions by the exercise of any skill, only so far as the limit is a rational one. This right is thus freed from mere opinion and random influences, and from, danger to itself and others. In this way it wins recognition and an assured place, and is exalted to the level of a conscious effort to attain a common purpose.

§ 255. As the family was the first, so the corporation, grounded upon the civic community, constitutes the second ethical root or basis of the state. The family contains the elements of subjective particularity and objective universality in substantive unity. Then, in the civic community, these elements are in the first instance dissociated and become on the one side a particularity of want and satisfaction, which is turned back into itself, and on the other side abstract legal universality. The corporation joins these two in an internal way, so that particular well-being exists and is realized as a right.

Note.—Sanctity in the marriage tie and honour in the corporation are the points which the disorganizing forces of the civic community assail.

Addition.—In modern times the corporation has been superseded, with the intention that the individual should care for himself. Grant that the intention is wise, yet the obligation of the individual to procure his own livelihood is not by the corporation altered. In our modern states the citizens participate only slightly in the general business. It is, however, needful to provide the ethical man with a universal activity, one above his private ends. This universal, with which the modern state does not always supply him, is given by the corporation. We have already seen that the individual, while maintaining himself in the civic community, acts also for others. But this unconscious necessity is not enough. It is in the corporation that a conscious and reflective ethical reality is first reached. The superintendence of the state is higher, it is true, and must be given an upper place; otherwise the corporation would become fossilized; it would waste itself upon itself, and be reduced to the level of a wretched club. But the corporation is not in its absolute nature a secret society, but rather the socializing of a trade, which without it would stand in isolation. It takes the trade up into a circle, in which it secures strength and honour.

§ 256. The limited and finite end of the corporation has its truth in the absolutely universal end and the absolute actuality of this end. This actualized end is also the truth of the division involved in the external system of police, which is merely a relative identity of the divided elements. Thus, the sphere of the civic community passes into the state.

Note.—City and country are the two as yet ideal constituents, out of which the state proceeds. The city is the seat of the civic society, and of the reflection which goes into itself and causes separation. The country is the seat of the ethical, which rests upon nature. The one comprises the individuals, who gain their livelihood by virtue of their relation to other persons possessed of rights. The other comprises the family. The state is the true meaning and ground of both.

The development of simple ethical observance into the dismemberment marking the civic community, and then forward into the state, which is shown to be the true foundation of these more abstract phases, is the only scientific proof of the conception of the state.—Although in the course of the scientific exposition the state has the appearance of a result, it is in reality the true foundation and cause. This appearance and its process are provisional, and must now be replaced by the state in its direct existence. In actual fact the state is in general primary. Within it the family grows into the civic community, the idea of the state being that which sunders itself into these two elements. In the development of the civic community the ethical substance reaches its infinite form, which contains the following elements:—(1) infinite differentiation even to the point at which consciousness as it is in itself exists for itself, and (2) the form of universality, which in civilization is the form of thought, that form by which spirit is itself in its laws and institutions. They are its thought will, and it and they together become objective and real in an organic whole.