Chapter XIII: Section II: Mind Objective (1)

§ 483. The objective Mind is the absolute Idea, but only existing _in posse_: and as it is thus on the territory of finitude, its actual rationality retains the aspect of external apparency. The free will finds itself immediately confronted by differences which arise from the circumstance that freedom is its _inward_ function and aim, and is in relation to an external and already subsisting objectivity, which splits up into different heads: viz. anthropological data (i.e. private and personal needs), external things of nature which exist for consciousness, and the ties of relation between individual wills which are conscious of their own diversity and particularity. These aspects constitute the external material for the embodiment of the will.

§ 484. But the purposive action of this will is to realise its concept, Liberty, in these externally-objective aspects, making the latter a world moulded by the former, which in it is thus at home with itself, locked together with it: the concept accordingly perfected to the Idea. Liberty, shaped into the actuality of a world, receives the _form of Necessity_ the deeper substantial nexus of which is the system or organisation of the principles of liberty, whilst its phenomenal nexus is power or authority, and the sentiment of obedience awakened in consciousness.

§ 485. This unity of the rational will with the single will (this being the peculiar and immediate medium in which the former is actualised) constitutes the simple actuality of liberty. As it (and its content) belongs to thought, and is the virtual _universal_, the content has its right and true character only in the form of universality. When invested with this character for the intelligent consciousness, or instituted as an authoritative power, it is a _Law_(150). When, on the other hand, the content is freed from the mixedness and fortuitousness, attaching to it in the practical feeling and in impulse, and is set and grafted in the individual will, not in the form of impulse, but in its universality, so as to become its habit, temper and character, it exists as manner and custom, or _Usage_(151).

§ 486. This “reality,” in general, where free will has _existence_, is the _Law_ (Right),—the term being taken in a comprehensive sense not merely as the limited juristic law, but as the actual body of all the conditions of freedom. These conditions, in relation to the _subjective_ will, where they, being universal, ought to have and can only have their existence, are its _Duties_; whereas as its temper and habit they are _Manners_. What is a right is also a duty, and what is a duty, is also a right. For a mode of existence is a right, only as a consequence of the free substantial will: and the same content of fact, when referred to the will distinguished as subjective and individual, is a duty. It is the same content which the subjective consciousness recognises as a duty, and brings into existence in these several wills. The finitude of the objective will thus creates the semblance of a distinction between rights and duties.

In the phenomenal range right and duty are _correlata_, at least in the sense that to a right on my part corresponds a duty in some one else. But, in the light of the concept, my right to a thing is not merely possession, but as possession by a _person_ it is _property_, or legal possession, and it is a _duty_ to possess things as _property_, i.e. to be as a person. Translated into the phenomenal relationship, viz. relation to another person—this grows into the duty of some one _else_ to respect _my_ right. In the morality of the conscience, duty in general is in me—a free subject—at the same time a right of my subjective will or disposition. But in this individualist moral sphere, there arises the division between what is only inward purpose (disposition or intention), which only has its being in me and is merely subjective duty, and the actualisation of that purpose: and with this division a contingency and imperfection which makes the inadequacy of mere individualistic morality. In social ethics these two parts have reached their truth, their absolute unity; although even right and duty return to one another and combine by means of certain adjustments and under the guise of necessity. The rights of the father of the family over its members are equally duties towards them; just as the children’s duty of obedience is their right to be educated to the liberty of manhood. The penal judicature of a government, its rights of administration, &c., are no less its duties to punish, to administer, &c.; as the services of the members of the State in dues, military services, &c., are duties and yet their right to the protection of their private property and of the general substantial life in which they have their root. All the aims of society and the State are the private aim of the individuals. But the set of adjustments, by which their duties come back to them as the exercise and enjoyment of right, produces an appearance of diversity: and this diversity is increased by the variety of shapes which value assumes in the course of exchange, though it remains intrinsically the same. Still it holds fundamentally good that he who has no rights has no duties and _vice versa_.

Distribution.

§ 487. The free will is

A. itself at first immediate, and hence as a single being—the _person_: the existence which the person gives to its liberty is _property_. The _Right as_ right (law) is _formal, abstract right_.

B. When the will is reflected into self, so as to have its existence inside it, and to be thus at the same time characterised as a _particular_, it is the right of the _subjective_ will, _morality_ of the individual conscience.

C. When the free will is the substantial will, made actual in the subject and conformable to its concept and rendered a totality of necessity,—it is the ethics of actual life in family, civil society, and state.

Sub-Section A. Law.(152)

(a) Property.

§ 488. Mind, in the immediacy of its self-secured liberty, is an individual, but one that knows its individuality as an absolutely free will: it is a _person_, in whom the inward sense of this freedom, as in itself still abstract and empty, has its particularity and fulfilment not yet on its own part, but on an external _thing_. This thing, as something devoid of will, has no rights against the subjectivity of intelligence and volition, and is by that subjectivity made adjectival to it, the external sphere of its liberty;—_possession_.

§ 489. By the judgment of possession, at first in the outward appropriation, the thing acquires the predicate of “mine.” But this predicate, on its own account merely “practical,” has here the signification that I import my personal will into the thing. As so characterised, possession is _property_, which as possession is a _means_, but as existence of the personality is an _end_.

§ 490. In his property the person is brought into union with itself. But the thing is an abstractly external thing, and the I in it is abstractly external. The concrete return of me into me in the externality is that I, the infinite self-relation, am as a person the repulsion of me from myself, and have the existence of my personality in the _being of other persons_, in my relation to them and in my recognition by them, which is thus mutual.

§ 491. The thing is the _mean_ by which the extremes meet in one. These extremes are the persons who, in the knowledge of their identity as free, are simultaneously mutually independent. For them my will has its _definite recognisable existence_ in the thing by the immediate bodily act of taking possession, or by the formation of the thing or, it may be, by mere designation of it.

§ 492. The casual aspect of property is that I place my will in _this_ thing: so far my will is _arbitrary_, I can just as well put it in it as not,—just as well withdraw it as not. But so far as my will lies in a thing, it is only I who can withdraw it: it is only with my will that the thing can pass to another, whose property it similarly becomes only with his will:—_Contract_.

(b) Contract.

§ 493. The two wills and their agreement in the contract are as an _internal_ state of mind different from its realisation in the _performance_. The comparatively “ideal” utterance (of contract) in the _stipulation_ contains the actual surrender of a property by the one, its changing hands, and its acceptance by the other will. The contract is thus thoroughly binding: it does not need the performance of the one or the other to become so—otherwise we should have an infinite regress or infinite division of thing, labour, and time. The utterance in the stipulation is complete and exhaustive. The inwardness of the will which surrenders and the will which accepts the property is in the realm of ideation, and in that realm the word is deed and thing (§ 462)—the full and complete deed, since here the conscientiousness of the will does not come under consideration (as to whether the thing is meant in earnest or is a deception), and the will refers only to the external thing.

§ 494. Thus in the stipulation we have the _substantial_ being of the contract standing out in distinction from its real utterance in the performance, which is brought down to a mere sequel. In this way there is put into the thing or performance a distinction between its immediate specific _quality_ and its substantial being or _value_, meaning by value the quantitative terms into which that qualitative feature has been translated. One piece of property is thus made comparable with another, and may be made equivalent to a thing which is (in quality) wholly heterogeneous. It is thus treated in general as an abstract, universal thing or commodity.

§ 495. The contract, as an agreement which has a voluntary origin and deals with a casual commodity, involves at the same time the giving to this “accidental” will a positive fixity. This will may just as well not be conformable to law (right), and, in that case, produces a _wrong_: by which however the absolute law (right) is not superseded, but only a relationship originated of right to wrong.

(c) Right versus Wrong.

§ 496. Law (right) considered as the realisation of liberty in externals, breaks up into a multiplicity of relations to this external sphere and to other persons (§§ 491, 493 seqq.). In this way there are (1) several titles or grounds at law, of which (seeing that property both on the personal and the real side is exclusively individual) only one is the right, but which, because they face each other, each and all are invested with a _show_ of right, against which the former is defined as the intrinsically right.

§ 497. Now so long as (compared against this show) the one intrinsically right, still presumed identical with the several titles, is affirmed, willed, and recognised, the only diversity lies in this, that the special thing is subsumed under the one law or right by the _particular_ will of _these_ several persons. This is naïve, non-malicious wrong. Such wrong in the several claimants is a simple _negative judgment_, expressing the _civil suit_. To settle it there is required a third judgment, which, as the judgment of the intrinsically right, is disinterested, and a power of giving the one right existence as against that semblance.

§ 498. But (2) if the semblance of right is willed as such _against_ right intrinsical by the particular will, which thus becomes _wicked_, then the external _recognition_ of right is separated from the right’s true value; and while the former only is respected, the latter is violated. This gives the wrong of _fraud_—the infinite judgment as identical (§ 173),—where the nominal relation is retained, but the sterling value is let slip.

§ 499. (3) Finally, the particular will sets itself in opposition to the intrinsic right by negating that right itself as well as its recognition or semblance. [Here there is a negatively infinite judgment (§ 173) in which there is denied the class as a whole, and not merely the particular mode—in this case the apparent recognition.] Thus the will is violently wicked, and commits a _crime_.

§ 500. As an outrage on right, such an action is essentially and actually null. In it the agent, as a volitional and intelligent being, sets up a law—a law however which is nominal and recognised by him only—a universal which holds good _for him_, and under which he has at the same time subsumed himself by his action. To display the nullity of such an act, to carry out simultaneously this nominal law and the intrinsic right, in the first instance by means of a subjective individual will, is the work of _Revenge_. But, revenge, starting from the interest of an immediate particular personality, is at the same time only a new outrage; and so on without end. This progression, like the last, abolishes itself in a third judgment, which is disinterested—_punishment_.

§ 501. The instrumentality by which authority is given to intrinsic right is (α) that a particular will, that of the judge, being conformable to the right, has an interest to turn against the crime (—which in the first instance, in revenge, is a matter of chance), and (β) that an executive power (also in the first instance casual) negates the negation of right that was created by the criminal. This negation of right has its existence in the will of the criminal; and consequently revenge or punishment directs itself against the person or property of the criminal and exercises _coercion_ upon him. It is in this legal sphere that coercion in general has possible scope,—compulsion against the thing, in seizing and maintaining it against another’s seizure: for in this sphere the will has its existence immediately in externals as such, or in corporeity, and can be seized only in this quarter. But more than _possible_ compulsion is not, so long as I can withdraw myself as free from every mode of existence, even from the range of all existence, i.e. from life. It is legal only as abolishing a first and original compulsion.

§ 502. A distinction has thus emerged between the law (right) and the subjective will. The “reality” of right, which the personal will in the first instance gives itself in immediate wise, is seen to be due to the instrumentality of the subjective will,—whose influence as on one hand it gives existence to the essential right, so may on the other cut itself off from and oppose itself to it. Conversely, the claim of the subjective will to be in this abstraction a power over the law of right is null and empty of itself: it gets truth and reality essentially only so far as that will in itself realises the reasonable will. As such it is _morality_(153) proper.

The phrase “Law of Nature,” or Natural Right(154), in use for the philosophy of law involves the ambiguity that it may mean either right as something existing ready-formed in nature, or right as governed by the nature of things, i.e. by the notion. The former used to be the common meaning, accompanied with the fiction of a _state of nature_, in which the law of nature should hold sway; whereas the social and political state rather required and implied a restriction of liberty and a sacrifice of natural rights. The real fact is that the whole law and its every article are based on free personality alone,—on self-determination or autonomy, which is the very contrary of determination by nature. The law of nature—strictly so called—is for that reason the predominance of the strong and the reign of force, and a state of nature a state of violence and wrong, of which nothing truer can be said than that one ought to depart from it. The social state, on the other hand, is the condition in which alone right has its actuality: what is to be restricted and sacrificed is just the wilfulness and violence of the state of nature.

Sub-Section B. The Morality Of Conscience(155).

§ 503. The free individual, who, in mere law, counts only as a _person_, is now characterised as a _subject_, a will reflected into itself so that, be its affection what it may, it is distinguished (as existing in it) as _its own_ from the existence of freedom in an external thing. Because the affection of the will is thus inwardised, the will is at the same time made a particular, and there arise further particularisations of it and relations of these to one another. This affection is partly the essential and implicit will, the reason of the will, the essential basis of law and moral life: partly it is the existent volition, which is before us and throws itself into actual deeds, and thus comes into relationship with the former. The subjective will is _morally_ free, so far as these features are its inward institution, its own, and willed by it. Its utterance in deed with this freedom is an _action_, in the externality of which it only admits as its own, and allows to be imputed to it, so much as it has consciously willed.

This subjective or “moral” freedom is what a European especially calls freedom. In virtue of the right thereto a man must possess a personal knowledge of the distinction between good and evil in general: ethical and religious principles shall not merely lay their claim on him as external laws and precepts of authority to be obeyed, but have their assent, recognition, or even justification in his heart, sentiment, conscience, intelligence, &c. The subjectivity of the will in itself is its supreme aim and absolutely essential to it.

The “moral” must be taken in the wider sense in which it does not signify the morally good merely. In French _le moral_ is opposed to _le physique_, and means the mental or intellectual in general. But here the moral signifies volitional mode, so far as it is in the interior of the will in general; it thus includes purpose and intention,—and also moral wickedness.

a. Purpose(156).

§ 504. So far as the action comes into immediate touch with _existence_, _my part_ in it is to this extent formal, that external existence is also _independent_ of the agent. This externality can pervert his action and bring to light something else than lay in it. Now, though any alteration as such, which is set on foot by the subject’s action, is its _deed_(157), still the subject does not for that reason recognise it as its _action_(158), but only admits as its own that existence in the deed which lay in its knowledge and will, which was its _purpose_. Only for that does it hold itself _responsible_.

b. Intention and Welfare(159).

§ 505. As regards its empirically concrete _content_ (1) the action has a variety of particular aspects and connexions. In point of _form_, the agent must have known and willed the action in its essential feature, embracing these individual points. This is the right of _intention_. While _purpose_ affects only the immediate fact of existence, _intention_ regards the underlying essence and aim thereof. (2) The agent has no less the right to see that the particularity of content in the action, in point of its matter, is not something external to him, but is a particularity of his own,—that it contains his needs, interests, and aims. These aims, when similarly comprehended in a single aim, as in happiness (§ 479), constitute his _well-being_. This is the right to well-being. Happiness (good fortune) is distinguished from well-being only in this, that happiness implies no more than some sort of immediate existence, whereas well-being regards it as also justified as regards morality.

§ 506. But the essentiality of the intention is in the first instance the abstract form of generality. Reflection can put in this form this and that particular aspect in the empirically-concrete action, thus making it essential to the intention or restricting the intention to it. In this way the supposed essentiality of the intention and the real essentiality of the action may be brought into the greatest contradiction—e.g. a good intention in case of a crime. Similarly well-being is abstract and may be set on this or that: as appertaining to this single agent, it is always something particular.

c. Goodness and Wickedness(160).

§ 507. The truth of these particularities and the concrete unity of their formalism is the content of the universal, essential and actual, will,—the law and underlying essence of every phase of volition, the essential and actual good. It is thus the absolute final aim of the world, and _duty_ for the agent who _ought_ to have _insight_ into the _good_, make it his _intention_ and bring it about by his activity.

§ 508. But though the good is the universal of will—a universal determined in itself,—and thus including in it particularity,—still so far as this particularity is in the first instance still abstract, there is no principle at hand to determine it. Such determination therefore starts up also outside that universal; and as heteronomy or determinance of a will which is free and has rights of its own, there awakes here the deepest contradiction. (α) In consequence of the indeterminate determinism of the good, there are always _several sorts_ of good and _many kinds of duties_, the variety of which is a dialectic of one against another and brings them into _collision_. At the same time because good is one, they _ought_ to stand in harmony; and yet each of them, though it is a particular duty, is as good and as duty absolute. It falls upon the agent to be the dialectic which, superseding this absolute claim of each, concludes such a combination of them as excludes the rest.

§ 509. (β) To the agent, who in his existent sphere of liberty is essentially as a _particular_, his _interest and welfare_ must, on account of that existent sphere of liberty, be essentially an aim and therefore a duty. But at the same time in aiming at the good, which is the not-particular but only universal of the will, the particular interest _ought not_ to be a constituent motive. On account of this independency of the two principles of action, it is likewise an accident whether they harmonise. And yet they _ought_ to harmonise, because the agent, as individual and universal, is always fundamentally one identity.

(γ) But the agent is not only a mere particular in his existence; it is also a form of his existence to be an abstract self-certainty, an abstract reflection of freedom into himself. He is thus distinct from the reason in the will, and capable of making the universal itself a particular and in that way a semblance. The good is thus reduced to the level of a mere “may happen” for the agent, who can therefore resolve itself to somewhat opposite to the good, can be wicked.

§ 510. (δ) The external objectivity, following the distinction which has arisen in the subjective will (§ 503), constitutes a peculiar world of its own,—another extreme which stands in no rapport with the internal will-determination. It is thus a matter of chance, whether it harmonises with the subjective aims, whether the good is realised, and the wicked, an aim essentially and actually null, nullified in it: it is no less matter of chance whether the agent finds in it his well-being, and more precisely whether in the world the good agent is happy and the wicked unhappy. But at the same time the world _ought_ to allow the good action, the essential thing, to be carried out in it; it _ought_ to grant the good agent the satisfaction of his particular interest, and refuse it to the wicked; just as it _ought_ also to make the wicked itself null and void.

§ 511. The all-round contradiction, expressed by this repeated _ought_, with its absoluteness which yet at the same time is _not_—contains the most abstract ’analysis’ of the mind in itself, its deepest descent into itself. The only relation the self-contradictory principles have to one another is in the abstract certainty of self; and for this infinitude of subjectivity the universal will, good, right, and duty, no more exist than not. The subjectivity alone is aware of itself as choosing and deciding. This pure self-certitude, rising to its pitch, appears in the two directly inter-changing forms—of _Conscience_ and _Wickedness_. The former is the will of goodness; but a goodness which to this pure subjectivity is the _non-objective_, non-universal, the unutterable; and over which the agent is conscious that _he_ in his _individuality_ has the decision. Wickedness is the same awareness that the single self possesses the decision, so far as the single self does not merely remain in this abstraction, but takes up the content of a subjective interest contrary to the good.

§ 512. This supreme pitch of the “_phenomenon_” of will,—sublimating itself to this absolute vanity—to a goodness, which has no objectivity, but is only sure of itself, and a self-assurance which involves the nullification of the universal—collapses by its own force. Wickedness, as the most intimate reflection of subjectivity itself, in opposition to the objective and universal, (which it treats as mere sham,) is the same as the good sentiment of abstract goodness, which reserves to the subjectivity the determination thereof:—the utterly abstract semblance, the bare perversion and annihilation of itself. The result, the truth of this semblance, is, on its negative side, the absolute nullity of this volition which would fain hold its own against the good, and of the good, which would only be abstract. On the affirmative side, in the notion, this semblance thus collapsing is the same simple universality of the will, which is the good. The subjectivity, in this its _identity_ with the good, is only the infinite form, which actualises and developes it. In this way the standpoint of bare reciprocity between two independent sides,—the standpoint of the _ought_, is abandoned, and we have passed into the field of ethical life.

Sub-Section C. The Moral Life, Or Social Ethics(161).

§ 513. The moral life is the perfection of spirit objective—the truth of the subjective and objective spirit itself. The failure of the latter consists—partly in having its freedom _immediately_ in reality, in something external therefore, in a thing,—partly in the abstract universality of its goodness. The failure of spirit subjective similarly consists in this, that it is, as against the universal, abstractly self-determinant in its inward individuality. When these two imperfections are suppressed, subjective _freedom_ exists as the covertly and overtly _universal_ rational will, which is sensible of itself and actively disposed in the consciousness of the individual subject, whilst its practical operation and immediate universal _actuality_ at the same time exist as moral usage, manner and custom,—where self-conscious _liberty_ has become _nature_.

§ 514. The consciously free substance, in which the absolute “ought” is no less an “is,” has actuality as the spirit of a nation. The abstract disruption of this spirit singles it out into _persons_, whose independence it however controls and entirely dominates from within. But the person, as an intelligent being, feels that underlying essence to be his own very being—ceases when so minded to be a mere accident of it—looks upon it as his absolute final aim. In its actuality he sees not less an achieved present, than somewhat he brings it about by his action,—yet somewhat which without all question _is_. Thus, without any selective reflection, the person performs its duty as _his own_ and as something which _is_; and in this necessity _he_ has himself and his actual freedom.

§ 515. Because the substance is the absolute unity of individuality and universality of freedom, it follows that the actuality and action of each individual to keep and to take care of his own being, while it is on one hand conditioned by the pre-supposed total in whose complex alone he exists, is on the other a transition into a universal product.—The social disposition of the individuals is their sense of the substance, and of the identity of all their interests with the total; and that the other individuals mutually know each other and are actual only in this identity, is confidence (trust)—the genuine ethical temper.

§ 516. The relations between individuals in the several situations to which the substance is particularised form their _ethical duties_. The ethical personality, i.e. the subjectivity which is permeated by the substantial life, is _virtue_. In relation to the bare facts of external being, to _destiny_, virtue does not treat them as a mere negation, and is thus a quiet repose in itself: in relation to substantial objectivity, to the total of ethical actuality, it exists as confidence, as deliberate work for the community, and the capacity of sacrificing self thereto; whilst in relation to the incidental relations of social circumstance, it is in the first instance justice and then benevolence. In the latter sphere, and in its attitude to its own visible being and corporeity, the individuality expresses its special character, temperament, &c. as personal _virtues_.

§ 517. The ethical substance is

AA. as “immediate” or _natural_ mind,—the _Family_.

BB. The “relative” totality of the “relative” relations of the individuals as independent persons to one another in a formal universality—_Civil Society_.

CC. The self-conscious substance, as the mind developed to an organic actuality—the _Political Constitution_.

AA. The Family.

§ 518. The ethical spirit, in its _immediacy_, contains the _natural_ factor that the individual has its substantial existence in its natural universal, i.e. in its kind. This is the sexual tie, elevated however to a spiritual significance,—the unanimity of love and the temper of trust. In the shape of the family, mind appears as feeling.

§ 519. (1) The physical difference of sex thus appears at the same time as a difference of intellectual and moral type. With their exclusive individualities these personalities combine to form a _single person_: the subjective union of hearts, becoming a “substantial” unity, makes this union an ethical tie—_Marriage_. The ’substantial’ union of hearts makes marriage an indivisible personal bond—monogamic marriage: the bodily conjunction is a sequel to the moral attachment. A further sequel is community of personal and private interests.

§ 520. (2) By the community in which the various members constituting the family stand in reference to property, that property of the one person (representing the family) acquires an ethical interest, as do also its industry, labour, and care for the future.

§ 521. The ethical principle which is conjoined with the natural generation of the children, and which was assumed to have primary importance in first forming the marriage union, is actually realised in the second or spiritual birth of the children,—in educating them to independent personality.

§ 522. (3) The children, thus invested with independence, leave the concrete life and action of the family to which they primarily belong, acquire an existence of their own, destined however to found anew such an actual family. Marriage is of course broken up by the _natural_ element contained in it, the death of husband and wife: but even their union of hearts, as it is a mere “substantiality” of feeling, contains the germ of liability to chance and decay. In virtue of such fortuitousness, the members of the family take up to each other the status of persons; and it is thus that the family finds introduced into it for the first time the element, originally foreign to it, of _legal_ regulation.

BB. Civil Society(162).

§ 523. As the substance, being an intelligent substance, particularises itself abstractly into many persons (the family is only a single person), into families or individuals, who exist independent and free, as private persons, it loses its ethical character: for these persons as such have in their consciousness and as their aim not the absolute unity, but their own petty selves and particular interests. Thus arises the system of _atomistic_: by which the substance is reduced to a general system of adjustments to connect self-subsisting extremes and their particular interests. The developed totality of this connective system is the state as civil society, or _state external_.

a. The System of Wants(163).

§ 524. (α) The particularity of the persons includes in the first instance their wants. The possibility of satisfying these wants is here laid on the social fabric, the general stock from which all derive their satisfaction. In the condition of things in which this method of satisfaction by indirect adjustment is realised, immediate seizure (§ 488) of external objects as means thereto exists barely or not at all: the objects are already property. To acquire them is only possible by the intervention, on one hand, of the possessors’ will, which as particular has in view the satisfaction of their variously defined interests; while on the other hand it is conditioned by the ever continued production of fresh means of exchange by the exchangers’ _own labour_. This instrument, by which the labour of all facilitates satisfaction of wants, constitutes the general stock.

§ 525. (β) The glimmer of universal principle in this particularity of wants is found in the way intellect creates differences in them, and thus causes an indefinite multiplication both of wants and of means for their different phases. Both are thus rendered more and more abstract. This “morcellement” of their content by abstraction gives rise to the _division of labour_. The habit of this abstraction in enjoyment, information, feeling and demeanour, constitutes training in this sphere, or nominal culture in general.

§ 526. The labour which thus becomes more abstract tends on one hand by its uniformity to make labour easier and to increase production,—on another to limit each person to a single kind of technical skill, and thus produce more unconditional dependence on the social system. The skill itself becomes in this way mechanical, and gets the capability of letting the machine take the place of human labour.

§ 527. (γ) But the concrete division of the general stock—which is also a general business (of the whole society)—into particular masses determined by the factors of the notion,—masses each of which possesses its own basis of subsistence, and a corresponding mode of labour, of needs, and of means for satisfying them, besides of aims and interests, as well as of mental culture and habit—constitutes the difference of Estates (orders or ranks). Individuals apportion themselves to these according to natural talent, skill, option and accident. As belonging to such a definite and stable sphere, they have their actual existence, which as existence is essentially a particular; and in it they have their social morality, which is _honesty_, their recognition and their _honour_.

Where civil society, and with it the State, exists, there arise the several estates in their difference: for the universal substance, as vital, _exists_ only so far as it organically _particularises_ itself. The history of constitutions is the history of the growth of these estates, of the legal relationships of individuals to them, and of these estates to one another and to their centre.

§ 528. To the “substantial,” natural estate the fruitful soil and ground supply a natural and stable capital; its action gets direction and content through natural features, and its moral life is founded on faith and trust. The second, the “reflected” estate has as its allotment the social capital, the medium created by the action of middlemen, of mere agents, and an ensemble of contingencies, where the individual has to depend on his subjective skill, talent, intelligence and industry. The third, “thinking” estate has for its business the general interests; like the second it has a subsistence procured by means of its own skill, and like the first a certain subsistence, certain however because guaranteed through the whole society.

b. Administration of Justice(164).

§ 529. When matured through the operation of natural need and free option into a system of universal relationships and a regular course of external necessity, the principle of casual particularity gets that stable articulation which liberty requires in the shape of _formal right_. (1) The actualisation which right gets in this sphere of mere practical intelligence is that it be brought to consciousness as the stable universal, that it be known and stated in its specificality with the voice of authority—the _Law_(165).

The _positive_ element in laws concerns only their form of _publicity_ and _authority_—which makes it possible for them to be known by all in a customary and external way. Their content _per se_ may be reasonable—or it may be unreasonable and so wrong. But when right, in the course of definite manifestation, is developed in detail, and its content analyses itself to gain definiteness, this analysis, because of the finitude of its materials, falls into the falsely infinite progress: the _final_ definiteness, which is absolutely essential and causes a break in this progress of unreality, can in this sphere of finitude be attained only in a way that savours of contingency and arbitrariness. Thus whether three years, ten thalers, or only 2-1/2, 2-3/4, 2-4/5 years, and so on _ad infinitum_, be the right and just thing, can by no means be decided on intelligible principles,—and yet it should be decided. Hence, though of course only at the final points of deciding, on the side of external existence, the “positive” principle naturally enters law as contingency and arbitrariness. This happens and has from of old happened in all legislations: the only thing wanted is clearly to be aware of it, and not be misled by the talk and the pretence as if the ideal of law were, or could be, to be, at _every_ point, determined through reason or legal intelligence, on purely reasonable and intelligent grounds. It is a futile perfectionism to have such expectations and to make such requirements in the sphere of the finite.

There are some who look upon laws as an evil and a profanity, and who regard governing and being governed from natural love, hereditary, divinity or nobility, by faith and trust, as the genuine order of life, while the reign of law is held an order of corruption and injustice. These people forget that the stars—and the cattle too—are governed and well governed too by laws;—laws however which are only internally in these objects, not _for them_, not as laws _set to_ them:—whereas it is man’s privilege to _know_ his law. They forget therefore that he can truly obey only such known law,—even as his law can only be a just law, as it is a _known_ law;—though in other respects it must be in its essential content contingency and caprice, or at least be mixed and polluted with such elements.

The same empty requirement of perfection is employed for an opposite thesis—viz. to support the opinion that a code is impossible or impracticable. In this case there comes in the additional absurdity of putting essential and universal provisions in one class with the particular detail. The finite material is definable on and on to the false infinite: but this advance is not, as in the mental images of space, a generation of new spatial characteristics of the same quality as those preceding them, but an advance into greater and ever greater speciality by the acumen of the analytic intellect, which discovers new distinctions, which again make new decisions necessary. To provisions of this sort one may give the name of _new_ decisions or _new_ laws; but in proportion to the gradual advance in specialisation the interest and value of these provisions declines. They fall within the already subsisting “substantial,” general laws, like improvements on a floor or a door, within the house—which though something _new_, are not a new _house_. But there is a contrary case. If the legislation of a rude age began with single provisos, which go on by their very nature always increasing their number, there arises, with the advance in multitude, the need of a simpler code,—the need i.e. of embracing that lot of singulars in their general features. To find and be able to express these principles well beseems an intelligent and civilised nation. Such a gathering up of single rules into general forms, first really deserving the name of laws, has lately been begun in some directions by the English Minister Peel, who has by so doing gained the gratitude, even the admiration, of his countrymen.

§ 530. (2) The positive form of Laws—to be _promulgated and made known_ as laws—is a condition of the _external obligation_ to obey them; inasmuch as, being laws of strict right, they touch only the abstract will,—itself at bottom external—not the moral or ethical will. The subjectivity to which the will has in this direction a right is here only publicity. This subjective existence is as existence of the essential and developed truth in this sphere of Right at the same time an externally objective existence, as universal authority and necessity.

The legality of property and of private transactions concerned therewith—in consideration of the principle that all law must be promulgated, recognised, and thus become authoritative—gets its universal guarantee through _formalities_.

§ 531. (3) Legal forms get the necessity, to which objective existence determines itself, in the _judicial __ system_. Abstract right has to exhibit itself to the _court_—to the individualised right—as _proven_:—a process in which there may be a difference between what is abstractly right and what is provably right. The court takes cognisance and action in the interest of right as such, deprives the existence of right of its contingency, and in particular transforms this existence,—as this exists as revenge—into _punishment_ (§ 500).

The comparison of the two species, or rather two elements in the judicial conviction, bearing on the actual state of the case in relation to the accused,—(1) according as that conviction is based on mere circumstances and other people’s witness alone,—or (2) in addition requires the confession of the accused, constitutes the main point in the question of the so-called jury-courts. It is an essential point that the two ingredients of a judicial cognisance, the judgment as to the state of the fact, and the judgment as application of the law to it, should, as at bottom different sides, be exercised as _different functions_. By the said institution they are allotted even to bodies differently qualified,—from the one of which individuals belonging to the official judiciary are expressly excluded. To carry this separation of functions up to this separation in the courts rests rather on extra-essential considerations: the main point remains only the separate performance of these essentially different functions.—It is a more important point whether the confession of the accused is or is not to be made a condition of penal judgment. The institution of the jury-court loses sight of this condition. The point is that on this ground certainty is completely inseparable from truth: but the confession is to be regarded as the very acmé of certainty-giving which in its nature is subjective. The final decision therefore lies with the confession. To this therefore the accused has an absolute right, if the proof is to be made final and the judges to be convinced. No doubt this factor is incomplete, because it is only one factor; but still more incomplete is the other when no less abstractly taken,—viz. mere circumstantial evidence. The jurors are essentially judges and pronounce a judgment. In so far, then, as all they have to go on are such objective proofs, whilst at the same time their defect of certainty (incomplete in so far as it is only _in them_) is admitted, the jury-court shows traces of its barbaric origin in a confusion and admixture between objective proofs and subjective or so-called “moral” conviction.—It is easy to call _extraordinary_ punishments an absurdity; but the fault lies rather with the shallowness which takes offence at a mere name. Materially the principle involves the difference of objective probation according as it goes with or without the factor of absolute certification which lies in confession.

§ 532. The function of judicial administration is only to actualise to necessity the abstract side of personal liberty in civil society. But this actualisation rests at first on the particular subjectivity of the judge, since here as yet there is not found the necessary unity of it with right in the abstract. Conversely, the blind necessity of the system of wants is not lifted up into the consciousness of the universal, and worked from that period of view.

c. Police and Corporation(166).

§ 533. Judicial administration naturally has no concern with such part of actions and interests as belongs only to particularity, and leaves to chance not only the occurrence of crimes but also the care for public weal. In civil society the sole end is to satisfy want—and that, because it is man’s want, in a uniform general way, so as to _secure_ this satisfaction. But the machinery of social necessity leaves in many ways a casualness about this satisfaction. This is due to the variability of the wants themselves, in which opinion and subjective good-pleasure play a great part. It results also from circumstances of locality, from the connexions between nation and nation, from errors and deceptions which can be foisted upon single members of the social circulation and are capable of creating disorder in it,—as also and especially from the unequal capacity of individuals to take advantage of that general stock. The onward march of this necessity also sacrifices the very particularities by which it is brought about, and does not itself contain the affirmative aim of securing the satisfaction of individuals. So far as concerns them, it _may_ be far from beneficial: yet here the individuals are the morally-justifiable end.

§ 534. To keep in view this general end, to ascertain the way in which the powers composing that social necessity act, and their variable ingredients, and to maintain that end in them and against them, is the work of an institution which assumes on _one_ hand, to the concrete of civil society, the position of an external universality. Such an order acts with the power of an external state, which, in so far as it is rooted in the higher or substantial state, appears as state “police.” On the _other_ hand, in this sphere of particularity the only recognition of the aim of substantial universality and the only carrying of it out is restricted to the business of particular branches and interests. Thus we have the _corporation_, in which the particular citizen in his private capacity finds the securing of his stock, whilst at the same time he in it emerges from his single private interest, and has a conscious activity for a comparatively universal end, just as in his legal and professional duties he has his social morality.

CC. The State.

§ 535. The State is the _self-conscious_ ethical substance, the unification of the family principle with that of civil society. The same unity, which is in the family as a feeling of love, is its essence, receiving however at the same time through the second principle of conscious and spontaneously active volition the _form_ of conscious universality. This universal principle, with all its evolution in detail, is the absolute aim and content of the knowing subject, which thus identifies itself in its volition with the system of reasonableness.

§ 536. The state is (α) its inward structure as a self-relating development—constitutional (inner-state) law: (β) a particular individual, and therefore in connexion with other particular individuals,—international (outer-state) law; (γ) but these particular minds are only stages in the general development of mind in its actuality: universal history.

α. Constitutional Law(167).

§ 537. The essence of the state is the universal, self-originated and self-developed,—the reasonable spirit of will; but, as self-knowing and self-actualising, sheer subjectivity, and—as an actuality—one individual. Its _work_ generally—in relation to the extreme of individuality as the multitude of individuals—consists in a double function. First it maintains them as persons, thus making right a necessary actuality, then it promotes their welfare, which each originally takes care of for himself, but which has a thoroughly general side; it protects the family and guides civil society. Secondly, it carries back both, and the whole disposition and action of the individual—whose tendency is to become a centre of his own—into the life of the universal substance; and, in this direction, as a free power it interferes with those subordinate spheres and retains them in substantial immanence.

§ 538. The laws express the special provisions for objective freedom. First, to the immediate agent, his independent self-will and particular interest, they are restrictions. But, secondly, they are an absolute final end and the universal work: hence they are a product of the “functions” of the various orders which parcel themselves more and more out of the general particularising, and are a fruit of all the acts and private concerns of individuals. Thirdly, they are the substance of the volition of individuals—which volition is thereby free—and of their disposition: being as such exhibited as current usage.

§ 539. As a living mind, the state only is as an organised whole, differentiated into particular agencies, which, proceeding from the one notion (though not known as notion) of the reasonable will, continually produce it as their result. The _constitution_ is this articulation or organisation of state-power. It provides for the reasonable will,—in so far as it is in the individuals only _implicitly_ the universal will,—coming to a consciousness and an understanding of itself and being _found_; also for that will being put in actuality, through the action of the government and its several branches, and not left to perish, but protected both against _their_ casual subjectivity and against that of the individuals. The constitution is existent _justice_,—the actuality of liberty in the development all its reasonable provisions.

Liberty and Equality are the simple rubrics into which is frequently concentrated what should form the fundamental principle, the final aim and result of the constitution. However true this is, the defect of these terms is their utter abstractness: if stuck to in this abstract form, they are principles which either prevent the rise of the concreteness of the state, i.e. its articulation into a constitution and a government in general, or destroy them. With the state there arises inequality, the difference of governing powers and of governed, magistracies, authorities, directories, &c. The principle of equality, logically carried out, rejects all differences, and thus allows no sort of political condition to exist. Liberty and equality are indeed the foundation of the state, but as the most abstract also the most superficial, and for that very reason naturally the most familiar. It is important therefore to study them closer.

As regards, first, Equality, the familiar proposition, All men are by nature equal, blunders by confusing the “natural” with the “notion.” It ought rather to read: _By nature_ men are only unequal. But the notion of liberty, as it exists as such, without further specification and development, is abstract subjectivity, as a person capable of property (§ 488). This single abstract feature of personality constitutes the actual _equality_ of human beings. But that this freedom should exist, that it should be _man_ (and not as in Greece, Rome, &c. _some_ men) that is recognised and legally regarded as a person, is so little _by nature_, that it is rather only a result and product of the consciousness of the deepest principle of mind, and of the universality and expansion of this consciousness. That the citizens are equal before the law contains a great truth, but which so expressed is a tautology: it only states that the legal status in general exists, that the laws rule. But, as regards the concrete, the citizens—besides their personality—are equal before the law only in these points when they are otherwise equal _outside the law_. Only that equality which (in whatever way it be) they, as it happens, otherwise have in property, age, physical strength, talent, skill, &c.—or even in crime, can and ought to make them deserve equal treatment before the law:—only it can make them—as regards taxation, military service, eligibility to office, &c.—punishment, &c.—equal in the concrete. The laws themselves, except in so far as they concern that narrow circle of personality, presuppose unequal conditions, and provide for the unequal legal duties and appurtenances resulting therefrom.