III.3. The State: External Sovereignty, International Law, World-History

§ 321. Internal sovereignty (§ 278) is this ideality in so far as the elements of spirit, and of the state as the embodiment of spirit, are unfolded in their necessity, and subsist as organs of the state. But spirit, involving a reference to itself, which is negative and infinitely free, becomes an independent existence, which has incorporated the subsistent differences, and hence is exclusive. So constituted, the state has an individuality, which exists essentially as an individual, and in the sovereign is a real, direct individual (§ 279).

§ 322. Individuality, as exclusive and independent existence, appears as a relation to other self-dependent states. The independent existence of the actual spirit finds an embodiment in this general self-dependence, which is, therefore, the first freedom and highest dignity of a people.

Note.—Those who, out of a desire for a collective whole, which will constitute a more or less self-dependent state, and have its own centre, are willing to abandon their own centre and self-dependence, and form with others a new whole, are ignorant of the nature of a collective whole, and underrate the pride of a people in its independence.—The force, which states have on their first appearance in history, is this self-dependence, even though it is quite abstract and has no further internal development. Hence, in its most primitive manifestation, the state has at its head an individual, whether he be patriarch, chief, or what not.

§ 323. In actual reality, this negative reference of the state to itself appears as reference to each other of two independent things, as though the negative were some external thing. This negative reference has, therefore, in its existence the form of an event, involving accidental occurrences coming from without. But it is in fact its own highest element, its real infinitude, the idealization of all its finite materials. The substance, as the absolute power, is here brought into contrast with all that is individual and particular, such as life, property, the rights of property, or even wider circles, and makes their relative worthlessness a fact for consciousness.

§ 324. The phase, according to which the interest and right of individuals is made a vanishing factor, is at the same time a positive element, forming the basis of their, not accidental and fleeting, but absolute individuality. This relation and the recognition of it constitute their substantial duty. Property and life, not to speak of opinions and the ordinary routine of existence, they must sacrifice, if necessary, in order to preserve the substantive individuality, independence, and sovereignty of the state.

Note.—It is a very distorted account of the matter when the state, in demanding sacrifices from the citizens, is taken to be simply the civic community, whose object is merely the security of life and property. Security cannot possibly be obtained by the sacrifice of what is to be secured.

Herein is to be found the ethical element in war. War is not to be regarded as an absolute evil. It is not a merely external accident, having its accidental ground in the passions of powerful individuals or nations, in acts of injustice, or in anything which ought not to be. Accident befalls that which is by nature accidental, and this fate is a necessity. So from the standpoint of the conception and in philosophy the merely accidental vanishes, because in it, as it is a mere appearance, is recognized its essence, namely, necessity. It is necessary that what is finite, such as life and property, should have its contingent nature exposed, since contingency is inherent in the conception of the finite. This necessity has in one phase of it the form of a force of nature, since all that is finite is mortal and transient. But in the ethical life, that is to say, the state, this force and nature are separated. Necessity becomes in this way exalted to the work of freedom, and becomes a force which is ethical. What from the standpoint of nature is transient, is now transient because it is willed to be so; and that, which is fundamentally negative, becomes substantive and distinctive individuality in the ethical order.

It is often said, for the sake of edification, that war makes short work of the vanity of temporal things. It is the element by which the idealization of what is particular receives its right and becomes an actuality. Moreover, by it, as I have elsewhere expressed it, “finite pursuits are rendered unstable, and the ethical health of peoples is preserved. Just as the movement of the ocean prevents the corruption which would be the result of perpetual calm, so by war people escape the corruption which would be occasioned by a continuous or eternal peace.”—The view that this quotation contains merely a philosophical idea, or, as it is sometimes called, a justification of providence, and that actual war needs another kind of justification, will be taken up later. The idealization, which comes to the surface in war, viewed as an accidental foreign relation, is the same as the ideality by virtue of which the internal state functions are organic elements of the whole. This principle is found in history in such a fact as that successful wars have prevented civil broils and strengthened the internal power of the state. So, too, peoples, who have been unwilling or afraid to endure internal sovereignty, have been subjugated by others, and in their struggles for independence have had honour and success small in proportion to their failure to establish within themselves a central political power; their freedom died through their fear of its dying. Moreover, states, which have no guarantee of independence in the strength of their army, states, e.g., that are very small in comparison with their neighbours, have continued to subsist because of their internal constitution, which merely of itself would seem to promise them neither internal repose nor external security. These phenomena are illustrations of our principle drawn from history.

Addition.—In peace the civic life becomes more and more extended. Each separate sphere walls itself in and becomes exclusive, and at last there is a stagnation of mankind. Their particularity becomes more and more fixed and ossified. Unity of the body is essential to health, and where the organs become hard death ensues. Everlasting peace is frequently demanded as the ideal towards which mankind must move. Hence, Kant proposed an alliance of princes, which should settle the controversies of states, and the Holy Alliance was probably intended to be an institution of this kind. But the state is individual, and in individuality negation is essentially implied. Although a number of states may make themselves into a family, the union, because it is an individuality, must create an opposition, and so beget an enemy. As a result of war peoples are strengthened, nations, which are involved in civil quarrels, winning repose at home by means of war abroad. It is true that war occasions insecurity of possessions, but this real insecurity is simply a necessary commotion. From the pulpit we hear much regarding the uncertainty, vanity, and instability of temporal things. At the very same time every one, no matter how much he is impressed by these utterances, thinks that he will manage to retain his own stock and store. But if the uncertainty comes in the form of hussars with glistening sabres, and begins to work in downright earnest, this touching edification turns right about face, and hurls curses at the invader. In spite of this, wars arise, when they lie in the nature of the matter. The seeds spring up afresh, and words are silenced before the earnest repetitions of history.

§ 325. Sacrifice for the sake of the individuality of the state is the substantive relation of all the citizens, and is, thus, a universal duty. It is ideality on one of its sides, and stands in contrast to the reality of particular subsistence. Hence it itself becomes a specific relation, and to it is dedicated a class of its own, the class whose virtue is bravery.

§ 326. Dissensions between states may arise out of any one specific side of their relations to each other. Through these dissensions the specific part of the state devoted to defence receives its distinguishing character. But if the whole state, as such, is in danger of losing its independence, duty summons all the citizens to its defence. If the whole becomes a single force, and is torn from its internal position and goes abroad, defence becomes converted into a war of conquest.

Note.—The weaponed force of the state constitutes its standing army. The specific function of defending the state must be intrusted to a separate class. This proceeding is due to the same necessity by which each of the other particular elements, interests, or affairs, has a separate place, as in marriage, the industrial class, the business class, and the political class. Theorizing, which wanders up and down with its reasons, goes about to contemplate the greater advantages or the greater disadvantages of a standing army. Mere opinion decides against an army, because the conception of the matter is harder to understand than are separate and external sides. Another reason is that the interests and aims of particularity, expenses, consequent higher taxation, etc., are counted of greater concern by the civic community than is the absolutely necessary. On this view the necessary is valuable only as a means to the preservation of the various special civic interests.

§ 327. Bravery taken by itself is a formal virtue, since in it freedom is farthest removed from all special aims, possessions, and enjoyments, and even from life. But it involves a negation or renunciation of only external realities, and does not carry with it a completion of the spiritual nature. Thus, the sentiment of courage may be based upon any one of a variety of grounds, and its actual result may be not for the brave themselves, but only for others.

Addition.—The military class is the class of universality. To it are assigned the defence of the state and the duty of bringing into existence the ideality implicit in itself. In other words it must sacrifice itself. Bravery is, it is true, of different sorts. The courage of the animal, or the robber, the bravery due to a sense of honour, the bravery of chivalry, are not yet the true forms of it. True bravery in civilized peoples consists in a readiness to offer up oneself in the service of the state, so that the individual counts only as one amongst many. Not personal fearlessness, but the taking of one’s place in a universal cause, is the valuable feature of it. In India five hundred men conquered twenty thousand, who were by no means cowardly but lacked the sense of co-operation.

§ 328. The content of bravery as a sentiment is found in the true absolute final end, the sovereignty of the state. Bravery realizes this end, and in so doing gives up personal reality. Hence, in this feeling are found the most rigorous and direct antagonisms. There is present in it a self-sacrifice, which is yet the existence of freedom. In it is found the highest self-control or independence, which yet in its existence submits to the mechanism of an external order and a life of service. An utter obedience or complete abnegation of one’s own opinion and reasonings, even an absence of one’s own spirit, is coupled with the most intense and comprehensive direct presence of the spirit and of resolution. The most hostile and hence most personal attitude towards individuals is allied with perfect indifference, or even, it may be, a kindly feeling towards them as individuals.

Note.—To risk one’s life is indeed something more than fear of death, but it is yet a mere negative, having no independent character and value. Only the positive element, the aim and content of the act, gives significance to the feeling of fearlessness. Robbers or murderers, having in view a crime, adventurers bent upon gratifying merely their own fancy, risk their lives without fear.—The principle of the modern world, that is, the thought and the universal, have given bravery a higher form. It now seems to be mechanical in its expression, being the act not of a particular person, but of a member of the whole. As antagonism is now directed, not against separate persons, but against a hostile whole, personal courage appears as impersonal. To this change is due the invention of the gun; and this by no means chance invention has transmuted the merely personal form of bravery into the more abstract.

§ 329. The state has a foreign aspect, because it is an individual subject. Hence, its relation to other states falls within the princely function. Upon this function it devolves solely and directly to command the armed force, to entertain relations with other states through ambassadors, to decide upon peace and war, and to conduct other negotiations.

Addition.—In almost all European countries the individual summit is the princely function, which has charge of foreign affairs. Wherever the constitution requires the existence of classes or estates, it may be asked whether the classes, which in any case control the supplies, should not also resolve upon war and peace. In England, for example, no unpopular war can be waged. But if it is meant that princes and cabinets are more subject to passion than the houses, and hence that the houses should decide whether, there should be war or peace, it must be replied, that often whole nations have been roused to a pitch of enthusiasm surpassing that of their princes. Frequently in England the whole people have insisted upon war, and in a certain measure compelled the ministers to wage it. The popularity of Pitt was due to his knowing how to meet what the nation willed. Not till afterwards did calm give rise to the consciousness that the war was utterly useless, and undertaken without adequate means. Moreover, a state is connected not only with another but with several others, and the complications are so delicate that they can be managed only by the highest power.

§ 330. International law arises out of the relation to one another of independent states. Whatever is absolute in this relation receives the form of a command, because its reality depends upon a distinct sovereign will.

Addition.—A state is not a private person, but in itself a completely independent totality. Hence, the relation of states to one another is not merely that of morality and private right. It is often desired that states should be regarded from the standpoint of private right and morality. But the position of private persons is such that they have over them a law court, which realizes what is intrinsically right. A relation between states ought also to be intrinsically right, and in mundane affairs that which is intrinsically right ought to have power. But as against the state there is no power to decide what is intrinsically right and to realize this decision. Hence, we must here remain by the absolute command. States in their relation to one another are independent and look upon the stipulations which they make one with another as provisional.

§ 331. The nation as a state is the spirit substantively realized and directly real. Hence, it is the absolute power on earth. As regards other states it exists in sovereign independence. Hence, to exist for and be recognized by another as such a state is its primary absolute right. But this right is yet only formal, and the state’s demand to be recognized, when based on these external relations, is abstract. Whether the state exists absolutely and in concrete fact, depends upon its content, constitution, and condition. Even then the recognition, containing the identity of both inner and outer relations, depends upon the view and will of another.

Note.—Just as the individual person is not real unless related to others (§ 71 and elsewhere), so the state is not really individual unless related to other states (§ 322). The legitimate province of a state in its foreign relations, and more especially of the princely function, is on one side wholly internal; a state shall not meddle with the internal affairs of another state. Yet, on the other side, it is essential for its completeness that it be recognized by others. But this recognition demands as a guarantee that it shall recognize those who recognize it, and will have respect for their independence. Therefore they cannot be indifferent to its internal affairs.—In the case of a nomadic people, or any people occupying a lower grade of civilization, the question arises how far it can be considered as a state. The religious opinions formerly held by Jews and Mahomedans may contain a still higher opposition, which does not permit of the universal identity implied in recognition.

Addition.—When Napoleon, before the peace of Campoformio, said, “The French Republic needs recognition as little as the sun requires to be recognized,” he really indicated the strength of the existence, which already carried with it a guarantee of recognition, without its having been expressed.

§ 332. The direct reality, in which, states stand to one another, sunders itself into various relations, whose nature proceeds from independent caprice on both sides, and hence has as a general thing the formal character of a contract. The subject matter of these contracts is, however, of infinitely narrower range than of those in the civic community. There individuals are dependent upon one another in a great variety of ways, while independent states are wholes, which find satisfaction in the main within themselves.

§ 333. International law, or the law which is universal, and is meant to hold absolutely good between states, is to be distinguished from the special content of positive treaties, and has at its basis the proposition that treaties, as they involve the mutual obligations of states, must be kept inviolate. But because the relation of states to one another has sovereignty as its principle, they are so far in a condition of nature one to the other. Their rights have reality not in a general will, which is constituted as a superior power, but in their particular wills. Accordingly the fundamental proposition of international law remains a good intention, while in the actual situation the relation established by the treaty is being continually shifted or abrogated.

Note.—There is no judge over states, at most only a referee or mediator, and even the mediatorial function is only an accidental thing, being due to particular wills. Kant’s idea was that eternal peace should be secured by an alliance of states. This alliance should settle every dispute, make impossible the resort to arms for a decision, and be recognized by every state. This idea assumes that states are in accord, an agreement which, strengthened though it might be by moral, religious, and other considerations, nevertheless always rested on the private sovereign will, and was therefore liable to be disturbed by the element of contingency.

§ 334. Therefore, when the particular wills of states can come to no agreement, the controversy can be settled only by war. Owing to the wide field and the varied relations of the citizens of different states to one another, injuries occur easily and frequently. What of these injuries is to be viewed as a specific breach of a treaty or as a violation of formal recognition and honour remains from the nature of the case indefinite. A state may introduce its infinitude and honour into every one of its separate compartments. It is all the more tempted to make or seek some occasion for a display of irritability, if the individuality within it has been strengthened by long internal rest, and desires an outlet for its pent-up activity.

§ 335. Moreover, the state as a spiritual whole cannot be satisfied merely with taking notice of the fact of an injury, because injury involves a threatened danger arising from the possible action of the other state. Then, too, there is the weighing of probabilities, guesses at intentions, and so forth, all of which have a part in the creation of strife.

§ 336. Each self-dependent state has the standing of a particular will and it is on this alone that the validity of treaties depends. This particular will of the whole is in its content its well-being, and well-being constitutes the highest law in its relation to another. All the more is this so since the idea of the state involves that the opposition between right or abstract freedom on one side and the complete specific content or well-being on the other is superseded. It is to states as concrete wholes that recognition (§ 331) is first granted.

§ 337. The substantive weal of the state is its weal as a particular state in its definite interests and condition, its peculiar external circumstances, and its particular treaty obligations. Thus the government is a particular wisdom and not universal providence (§ 324, note). So, too, its end in relation to other states, the principle justifying its wars and treaties, is not a general thought, such as philanthropy, but the actually wronged or threatened weal in its definite particularity.

Note.—At one time a lengthy discussion was held with regard to the opposition between morals and politics, and the demand was made that politics should be in accordance with morality. Here it may be remarked merely that the commonweal has quite another authority than the weal of the individual, and that the ethical substance or the state has directly its reality or right not in an abstract but in a concrete existence. This existence, and not one of the many general thoughts held to be moral commands, must be the principle of its conduct. The view that politics in this assumed opposition is presumptively in the wrong depends on a shallow notion both of morality and of the nature of the state in relation to morality.

§ 338. Although in war there prevails force, contingency, and absence of right, states continue to recognize one another as states. In this fact is implied a covenant, by virtue of which each state retains absolute value. Hence, war, even when actively prosecuted, is understood to be temporary, and in international law is recognized as containing the possibility of peace. Ambassadors, also, are to be respected. War is not to be waged against internal institutions, or the peaceable family and private life, or private persons.

Addition.—Modern wars are carried on humanely. One person is’ not set in hate over against another. Personal hostilities occur at most in the case of the pickets. But in the army as an army, enmity is something undetermined, and gives place to the duty which each person owes to another.

§ 339. For the rest, the capture of prisoners in time of war, and in time of peace the concession of rights of private intercourse to the subjects of another state, depend principally upon the ethical observances of nations. In them is embodied that inner universality of behaviour, which is preserved under all relations.

Addition.—The nations of Europe form a family by virtue of the universal principle of their legislation, their ethical observances, and their civilization. Amongst them international behaviour is ameliorated, while there prevails elsewhere a mutual infliction of evils. The relation of one state to another fluctuates; no judge is present to compose differences; the higher judge is simply the universal and absolute spirit, the spirit of the world.

§ 340. As states are particular, there is manifested in their relation to one another a shifting play of internal particularity of passions, interests, aims, talents, virtues, force, wrong, vice, and external contingency on the very largest scale. In this play even the ethical whole, national independence, is exposed to chance. The spirit of a nation is an existing individual having in particularity its objective actuality and self-consciousness. Because of this particularity it is limited. The destinies and deeds of states in their connection with one another are the visible dialectic of the finite nature of these spirits. Out of this dialectic the universal spirit, the spirit of the world, the unlimited spirit, produces itself. It has the highest right of all, and exercises its right upon the lower spirits in world-history. The history of the world is the world’s court of judgment.

§ 341. The universal spirit exists concretely in art in the form of perception and image, in religion in the form of feeling and pictorial imaginative thinking, and in philosophy in the form of pure free thought. ( In world-history this concrete existence of spirit is the spiritual actuality in the total range of its internality and externality. It is a court of judgment because in its absolute universality the particular, namely, the Penates, the civic community, and the national spirit in their many-coloured reality are all merely ideal. The movement of spirit in this case consists in visibly presenting these spheres as merely ideal.

§ 342. Moreover, world-history is not a court of judgment, whose principle is force, nor is it the abstract and irrational necessity of a blind fate. It is self-caused and self-realized reason, and its actualized existence in spirit is knowledge. Hence, its development issuing solely out of the conception of its freedom is a necessary development of the elements of reason. It is, therefore, an unfolding of the spirit’s self-consciousness and freedom. It is the exhibition and actualization of the universal spirit.

§ 343. The history of spirit is its overt deeds, for only what it does it is, and its deed is to make itself as a spirit the object of its consciousness, to explain and lay hold upon itself by reference to itself. To lay hold upon itself is its being and principle, and the completion of this act is at the same time self-renunciation and transition. To express the matter formally, the spirit which again-apprehends what has already been grasped and actualized, or, what is the same thing, passes through self-renunciation into itself, is the spirit of a higher stage.

Note.—Here occurs the question of the perfection and education of humanity. They who have argued in favour of this idea, have surmised something of the nature of spirit. They have understood that spirit has γνῶθι σεαυτόν as a law of its being, and that when it lays hold upon what it itself is, it assumes a higher form. To those who have rejected this idea, spirit has remained an empty word and history a superficial play of accidental and so-called mere human strife and passion. Though in their use of the words “providence” and “design of providence,” they express their belief in a higher control, they do not fill up the notion, but announce that the design of providence is for them unknowable and inconceivable.

§ 344. States, peoples, and individuals are established upon their own particular definite principle, which has systematized reality in their constitutions and in the entire compass of their surroundings. Of this systematized reality they are aware, and in its interests are absorbed. Yet are they the unconscious tools and organs of the world-spirit, through whose inner activity the lower forms pass away. Thus the spirit by its own motion and for its own end makes ready and works out the transition into its next higher stage.

§ 345. Justice and virtue, wrong, force, and crime, talents) and their results, small and great passions, innocence and guilt, the splendour of individuals, national life, independence, the fortune and misfortune of states and individuals, have in the sphere of conscious reality their definite meaning and value, and find in that sphere judgment and their due. This due is, however, as yet incomplete. In world-history, which lies beyond this range of vision, the idea of the world-spirit, in that necessary phase of it which constitutes at any time its actual stage, is given its absolute right. The nation, then really flourishing, attains to happiness and renown, and its deeds receive completion.

§ 346. Since history is the embodiment of spirit in the form of events, that is, of direct natural reality, the stages of development are present as direct natural principles. Because they are natural, they conform to the nature of a multiplicity, and exist one outside the other. Hence, to each nation is to be ascribed a single principle, comprised under its geographical and anthropological existence.

§ 347. To the nation, whose natural principle is one of these stages, is assigned the accomplishment of it through the process characteristic of the self-developing self-consciousness of the world-spirit. In the history of the world this nation is for a given epoch dominant, although it can make an epoch but once (§ 346). In contrast with the absolute right of this nation to be the bearer of the current phase in the development of the world-spirit, the spirits of other existing nations are void of right, and they, like those whose epochs are gone, count no longer in the history of the world.

Note.—The special history of a world-historic nation contains the unfolding of its principle from its undeveloped infancy up to the time when, in the full manhood of free ethical self-consciousness it presses in upon universal history. It contains, moreover, the period of decline and destruction, the rise of a higher principle being marked in it simply as the negative of its own. Hence, the spirit passes over into that higher principle, and thus indicates to world-history another nation. From that time onward the first nation has lost absolute interest, absorbs the higher principle positively, it may be, and fashions itself in accordance with it, but is, after all, only a recipient, and has no indwelling vitality and freshness. Perhaps it loses its independence, perhaps continues to drag itself on as a particular state or circle of states, and spends itself in various random civil enterprises and foreign broils.

§ 348. At the summit of all actions, including world-historical actions, stand individuals. Each of these individuals is a subjectivity who realizes what is substantive (§ 279, note). He is a living embodiment of the substantive deed of the world-spirit, and is, therefore, directly identical with this deed. It is concealed even from himself, and is not his object and end (§ 344). Thus they do not receive honour and thanks for their acts either from their contemporaries (§ 344), or from the public opinion of posterity. By this opinion they are viewed merely as formal subjectivities, and, as such, are simply given their part in immortal fame.

§ 349. A people is not as yet a state. The transition from the family, horde, clan, or multitude into a state constitutes the formal realization in it of the idea. If the ethical substance, which every people has implicitly, lacks this form, it is without that objectivity which comes from laws and thought-out regulations. It has neither for itself nor for others any universal or generally admitted reality. It will not be recognized. Its independence, being devoid of objective law or secure realized rationality, is formal only and not a sovereignty.

Note.—From the ordinary point of view we do not call the patriarchal condition a constitution, or a people in this condition a state, or its independence sovereignty. Before the beginning of actual history there are found uninteresting stupid innocence and the bravery arising out of the formal struggle for recognition and out of revenge (§§ 331, 57, note).

§ 350. It is the absolute right of the idea to come visibly forth, and proceeding from marriage and agriculture (§ 203,note) realize itself in laws and objective institutions. This is true whether its realization appears in the form of divine law and beneficence or in the form of force and wrong. This right is the right of heroes to found states.

§ 351. In the same way civilized nations may treat as barbarians the peoples who are behind them in the essential elements of the state. Thus, the rights of mere herdsmen, hunters, and tillers of the soil are inferior, and their independence is merely formal.

Note.—Wars and contests arising under such circumstances are struggles for recognition in behalf of a certain definite content. It is this feature of them which is significant in world-history.

§ 352. The concrete ideas, which embody the national minds or spirits, has its truth in the concrete idea in its absolute universality. This is the spirit of the world, around whose throne stand the other spirits as perfecters of its actuality, and witnesses and ornaments of its splendour. Since it is, as spirit, only the movement of its activity in order to know itself absolutely, to free its consciousness from mere direct naturalness, and to come to itself, the principles of the different forms of its self-consciousness, as they appear in the process of liberation, are four. They are the principles of the four world-historic kingdoms.

§ 353. In its first and direct revelation the world-spirit has as its principle the form of the substantive spirit, in whose identity individuality is in its essence submerged and without explicit justification.

In the second principle the substantive spirit is aware of itself. Here spirit is the positive content and filling, and is also at the same time the living form, which is in its nature self-referred.

The third principle is the retreat into itself of this conscious self-referred existence. There thus arises an abstract universality, and with it an infinite opposition to objectivity, which is regarded as bereft of spirit.

In the fourth principle this opposition of the spirit is overturned in order that spirit may receive into its inner self its truth and concrete essence. It thus becomes at home with objectivity, and the two are reconciled. Because the spirit has come back to its formal substantive reality by returning out of this infinite opposition, it seeks to produce and know its truth as thought, and as a world of established reality.

§ 354. In accordance with these four principles the four world-historic empires are (1) the Oriental, (2) the Greek, (3) the Roman, and (4) the Germanic.

§ 355. (1) The Oriental Empire:—The first empire is the substantive world-intuition, which proceeds from the natural whole of patriarchal times. It has no internal divisions. Its worldly government is theocracy, its ruler a high priest or God, its constitution and legislation are at the same time its religion, and its civic and legal regulations are religious and moral commands or usages. In the splendour of this totality the individual personality sinks without rights; external nature is directly divine or an ornament of God, and the history of reality is poetry. The distinctions,.which develop themselves in customs, government, and the state, serve instead of laws, being converted by mere social usage into clumsy, diffuse, and superstitious ceremonies, the accidents of personal power and arbitrary rule. The division into classes becomes a caste fixed as the laws of nature. Since in the Oriental empire there is nothing stable, or rather what is firm is petrified, it has life only in a movement, which goes on from the outside, and becomes an elemental violence and desolation. Internal repose is merely a private life, which is sunk in feebleness and lassitude.

Note.—The element of substantive natural spirituality is present in the first forming of every state, and constitutes the absolute starting-point of its history. This assertion is presented and historically established by Dr. Stuhr in his well-reasoned and scholarly treatise “Vom Untergange der Naturstaaten” (Berlin, 1812), who, moreover, suggests in this work a rational method of viewing constitutional history and history in general. The principle of subjectivity and self-conscious freedom he ascribes to the German nation. But since the treatise is wholly taken up with the decline of the nature-states, it simply leads to the point at which this modern principle makes its appearance. At that time it assumed in part the guise of restless movement, human caprice, and corruption, in part the particular guise of feeling, not having as yet developed itself into the objectivity of self-conscious substantivity or the condition of organized law.

§ 356. (2) The Greek Empire:—This empire still contains the earlier substantive unity of the finite and infinite, but only as a mysterious background, suppressed and kept down in gloomy reminiscence, in caves and in traditional imagery. This background under the influence of the self-distinguishing spirit is recreated into individual spirituality, and exalted into the daylight of consciousness, where it is tempered and clarified into beauty and a free and cheerful ethical life. Here arises the principle of personal individuality, although it is not as yet self-centred, but held in its ideal unity. One result of this incompleteness is that the whole is broken up into a number of particular national minds or spirits. Further, the final decision of will is not as yet intrusted to the subjectivity of the independent self-consciousness, but resides in a power, which is higher than, and lies beyond it (§ 279, note). Moreover, the particularity, which is found in wants, is not yet taken up into freedom, but segregated in a class of slaves.

§ 357. (3) The Roman Empire:—In this empire the distinctions of spirit are carried to the length of an infinite rupture of the ethical life into two extremes, personal private self-consciousness, and abstract universality. The antagonism, arising between the substantive intuition of an aristocracy and the principle of free personality in democratic form, developed on the side of the aristocracy into superstition and the retention of cold self-seeking power, and on the side of the democracy into the corrupt mass. The dissolution of the whole culminates in universal misfortune, ethical life dies, national individualities, having merely the bond of union of a Pantheon, perish, and individuals are degraded to the level of that equality, in which they are merely private persons and have only formal rights.

§ 358. (4) The German Empire:—Owing to the loss of itself and its world, and to the infinite pain caused by it, a loss of which the Jewish people were already held to be the type, spirit is pressed back into itself, and finds itself in the extreme of absolute negativity. But this extreme is the absolute turning-point, and in it spirit finds the infinite and yet positive nature of its own inner being. This new discovery is the unity of the divine and the human. By means of it objective truth is reconciled with freedom, and that, too, inside of self-consciousness and subjectivity. This new basis, infinite and yet positive, it has been charged upon the northern principle of the Germanic nations to bring to completion.

§ 359. The internal aspect of this northern principle exists in feeling as faith, love, and hope. Although it is in this form still abstract, it is the reconciliation and solution of all contradiction. It proceeds to unfold its content in order to raise it to reality and self-conscious rationality. It thus constructs a kingdom of this world, based upon the feeling, trust, and fellowship of free men. This kingdom in this its subjectivity is an actual kingdom of rude caprice and barbarism in contrast with the world beyond. It is an intellectual empire, whose content is indeed the truth of its spirit. But as it is yet not thought out, and still is veiled in the barbarism of picture-thinking, it exists as a spiritual force, which exercises over the actual mind a despotic and tyrannical influence.

§ 360. These kingdoms are based upon the distinction, which has now won the form of absolute antagonism, and yet at the same time are rooted in a single unity and idea. In the obdurate struggle, which thus ensues, the spiritual has to lower its heaven to the level of an earthly and temporal condition, to common worldliness, and to ordinary life and thought. On the other hand the abstract actuality of the worldly is exalted to thought, to the principle of rational being and knowing, and to the rationality of right and law. As a result of these two tendencies, the contradiction has become a marrowless phantasm. The present has stripped off its barbarism and its lawless caprice, and truth has stripped off its beyond and its casualness. The true atonement and reconciliation has become objective, and unfolds the state as the image and reality of reason. In the state, self-consciousness finds the organic development of its real substantive knowing and will, in religion it finds in the form of ideal essence the feeling and the vision of this its truth, and in science it finds the free conceived knowledge of this truth, seeing it to be one and the same in all its mutually completing manifestations, namely, the state, nature, and the ideal world.