\\4bis 
 
 Number 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Trinity College 
 
 Durham, N. C. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/ethicsofhegel01 hege 
 
THE 
 
 ETHICS OF HEGEL 
 
 Translated Selections from his 
 “ Rechtsphilosophie ” 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 J. MACBRIDE STERRETT, D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D C. 
 AUTHOR OF “STUDIES IN HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION,” ETC. 
 
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 BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
 1893 
 
Copyright, 1893, 
 
 By J. MACBRIDE STERRETT. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 
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EDITOR’S PROSPECTUS. 
 
 The Ethical Series, of which this book on Hegel’s Ethics, 
 by Professor Sterrett, is the second number, will consist of a 
 number of small volumes, each of which will be devoted to 
 the presentation of a leading system in the History of 
 Modern Ethics, in selections or extracts from the original 
 works. These selections will be accompanied by explana- 
 tory and critical notes. They will also be introduced by a 
 bibliography, a brief biographical sketch of the author of 
 the system, a statement of the relation of the system to 
 preceding ethical thought, and a brief explanation of the 
 main features of the system and its influence on subsequent 
 ethical thought. The volumes will be prepared by experi- 
 enced teachers in the department of Ethics and with special 
 reference to undergraduate instruction and study in colleges. 
 
 The series at present will include six volumes as follows : 
 Hobbes, Professor G. M. Duncan, Yale University ; 
 Clarke, President F. L. Patton, Princeton University ; 
 Locke, the Editor of the Series ; 
 
 Hume, Dr. J. H. Hyslop, Columbia College ; 
 
 Kant, Professor John Watson, Queen’s University, Canada. 
 Hegel, Professor J. Macbride Sterrett, Columbian University. 
 
 The increasing interest in the study of Ethics and the 
 consequent enlargement of the courses in college curricula, 
 suggest to every teacher the need of better methods of 
 teaching the subject than those which have quite generally 
 
EDITOR'S PROSPECTUS. 
 
 prevailed in the past. Instruction in the History of Ethics, 
 like instruction in the History of Philosophy, has largely 
 been based on text-books or lectures giving expositions of, 
 and information about, the various systems. Such methods, 
 although serviceable, are not as stimulating and helpful as 
 those which put the student in direct contact with the 
 text of the author, enabling him to study the system 
 itself rather than to study about the system. Undoubtedly 
 the best plan would be to have the student read the entire 
 work of the author, but all teachers will probably concede 
 the impracticability of this in undergraduate work, if a num- 
 ber of systems is to be studied, which is usually desirable. 
 Only inferior, in my judgment, to the best, but impracticable 
 plan, is the plan of the “Ethical Series,” — to study selec- 
 tions or extracts from the original works, embodying the 
 substance of the system. The “ Series ” makes provision 
 for such work in a convenient and comparatively inexpen- 
 sive manner. That the plan of instruction on which the 
 “ Series ” is based is in the interest of better scholarship, 
 I am assured by my own experience, and by that of many 
 other teachers in the leading colleges of the country, with 
 whom I have communicated. It is with the earnest hope of 
 facilitating instruction and study in the History of Ethics 
 that this series is issued. 
 
 E. HERSHEY SNEATH. 
 
 Yale University. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The great revival of interest and work in the department 
 of Ethics during the present quarter of a century has had 
 its chief inspiration and source in the idealistic philosophy 
 of Germany. Of this philosophy Hegel was the culmination 
 and crown. Hence it is not necessary to-day to apologize 
 for “intruding on the public with a work on Hegel,” as 
 Dr. Stirling did in 1865. Apart from the empirical evolu- 
 tionary school, nearly all the prominent writers on Ethics 
 in England have been following quite the spirit and sub- 
 stance of Hegel. 
 
 These “ Selections ” have been made from his Philosophie 
 des Rechts embracing one-half of its contents, supplemented 
 with some extracts from his Phänomenologie des Geistes , 
 Philosophie des Geistes and his Philosophy of History (trans- 
 lation). The portions of the Rechts Philosophie omitted 
 have chiefly reference to the special organization of the state 
 and are of less obvious ethical import. 
 
 The task of translating has been a perplexing one. And 
 the task of mastering his thought in translation may be 
 expected to require at least the arduous effort of thought 
 that it requires in the original, even of German scholars. 
 The difficulties of Hegel, and the impossibility of making 
 any adequate and intelligible translation are too well known 
 to need more than passing mention. I have avoided making 
 a free rendering or paraphrase, though this is much more 
 easy and agreeable for both translator and student. I have 
 learned that one invariably regrets having adopted this 
 easier method, because it invariably deforms and dwarfs 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 viii 
 
 Hegel’s meaning. I have attempted an exact translation, 
 making it as literal as possible with fairly idiomatic English 
 — too literal for intelligibility, unless accompanied with 
 careful study. Hegel’s language is severely scientific and 
 technical, largely the adaptation of ordinary German to 
 extraordinary significations, to which Wörterbücher afford 
 no clue. Common language expresses common thought, 
 but is necessarily inadequate, without great stretching, to 
 philosophic thought or to the scientific expression of it. 
 Hegel’s work is not merely historical or descriptive of 
 ethical phenomena, but a purely scientific theory of the 
 thought or concept ( Begriff ) underlying and animating all 
 forms of morals and manners. 
 
 I have given a vocabulary of his chief technical terms 
 which it will be well for the student to master at the outset. 
 The Introduction has been made sufficiently popular for all 
 persons interested in ethical thought — too popular for real 
 students of Hegel. 
 
 I am indebted for valuable assistance in the way of 
 making out some of the most difficult constructions in the 
 German text of Part First of the “ Selections ” and also 
 for aid in looking over the proof-sheets to my colleague, 
 Professor Hermann Schönfeld, Ph.D. I am also indebted 
 to Mr. P. M. Magnusson, Ph.D., for valuable help in my 
 work of translating most of the “ Selections ” in Part Third. 
 
 J. MACBRIDE STERRETT. 
 
 Columbian University, 
 
 Washington, D.C., July, 1893. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Bibliography xi, xii 
 
 Introduction i 
 
 1. Biographical Sketch i 
 
 2. Relation of Hegel’s Ethics to previous Ethical 
 
 Thought 8 
 
 3. Exposition of Hegel’s Ethics . . . . . 22 
 
 4^ Key-Words . 57 
 
 5. Abstract of Hegel’s Introduction .... 63 
 
 TRANSLATED SELECTIONS. 
 
 FIRST PART. 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 Abstract Will and Personality . 
 
 1. Property 
 
 ( a ) Possession .... 
 
 ( b ) Use or Consumption 
 
 ( c ) Relinquishment of Property 
 
 2. Contract 
 
 Wrong 
 
 \ ( a ) Unintentional Wrong . 
 
 \ ( b ) Fraud .... 
 
 V ( c ) Violence and Crime 
 
 (Punishment 
 
 7i 
 
 76 
 
 82 
 
 84 
 
 87 
 
 89 
 
 91 
 
 92 
 94 
 94 
 98 
 
 SECOND PART. 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 iThe Moral Standpoint . 
 
 1. Purpose and Culpability 
 
 2. Intention and Welfare 
 
 3. The Good and Conscience 
 
 I0 3 
 108 
 1 10 
 1 16 
 
X 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 THIRD PART. 
 
 ETHICALITY ( SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 Concrete Character of Ethicality 
 
 1. The Family 
 
 ( a ) Wedlock 
 
 (£) Family Possessions 
 
 (c) Education of Children and the Dissolution 
 of the Family 
 
 2. The Civic Community 
 
 ( a ) The System of Wants 
 
 Satisfaction of Wants . 
 
 The Nature of Labor 
 
 W EALTH 
 
 Classes of the Civic Community 
 
 C e Administration of Justice 
 Law as a form of Right . 
 
 Essential Characteristic of Law 
 
 Courts of Justice 
 
 Trial by Jury 
 
 lice and Municipal Corporation 
 
 3. The State 
 
 The State Distinguished from the Civic 
 
 Community 
 
 ( a ) Internal Polity 
 
 Patriotism 
 
 The State and Religion . 
 
 ( b ) Monarchy and International Policy . 
 
 (c) Universal History 
 
 The Course of Freedom . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 r 3 S 
 
 148 
 
 149 
 
 1 54 
 
 H 5 
 
 159 
 
 163 
 
 163 
 
 166 
 
 168 
 
 169 
 
 174 
 
 D 5 
 
 178 
 
 181 
 
 185 
 
 187 
 
 I89 
 
 190 
 
 l 93 
 
 200 
 
 203 
 
 206 
 
 207 
 
 212 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Works of Hegel relating to Ethics. 
 
 1. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. 1S33. Herausg. 
 von E. Gans, Hegel’s Werke , Band VIII. 
 
 2. Phänonie 7 iologie des Geistes. Band II. 
 
 3. Philosophie des Geistes. Band VII. 
 
 4. The same. Translated into French by A. Vdra : — Philo- 
 sophie de V Esprit de Hegel. Par A. .Vera. 
 
 5. Philosophie der Geschichte. Band IX. 
 
 6. The same. Translatedby J. Sibree. (Bohn’s Library.) 
 
 7. Rechts -, Pflichten- und Religions-Lehre. Band XVIII. 
 
 8. The same. Translated into English with notes by Dr. 
 William T. Harris. Jour. Spec. Phil., Vol. IV. 
 
 9. The same. Translated with Supplementary Essays by B. C. 
 Burt, 1892. 
 
 10. Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of History. An 
 Exposition, by Professor George S. Morris, in Griggs’s Philo- 
 sophical Classics, 1887. 
 
 '‘Ethical and other Treatises in the Spirit of Hegel. 
 
 1. Die me 7 ischliche Freiheit. Von Wilhelm Vatke, 1841. 
 
 2. Systetn der philosophische 7 i Moral. Von Dr. Karl L. 
 pichelet, 1828. 
 
 3. Die sittliche Weltord 7 i 7 i 7 ig. Von Moritz Carriere. 
 
 4. Syste 7 >i der Rechtsphilosophie. Von Adolph Lasson, 1S82. 
 
 The Natioii. By Elisha Mulford, 1875. 
 
 The Republic of God. By the same, 1882. 
 
 The Philosophy of Education. Translated from the German 
 of J. K. F. Rosenkranz. 
 
 Prolego 7 )ie 7 ia to Ethics. By Thomas Hill Green, 1884. 
 
Xll 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics. By Professor John 
 Dewey, 1890. 
 
 Ethical Studies. By F. H. Bradley, 1876. 
 
 Constructive Ethics. By W. L. Courtney, 1886. 
 
 Ethics of Naturalism. By W. R. Sorley, 1885. 
 
 Introduction to Social Philosophy. By J. S. Mackenzie, 1889. 
 A Manual of Ethics. By the same, 1893. 
 
 Moral Order and Progress. By S. Alexander, 1891. 
 
 The Elements of Ethics. By J. H. Muirhead, 1892. 
 
 Darwin and Hegel. A pamphlet. By D. G. Ritchie. 
 Darwinism and Politics. By the same. 
 
 Essays in Philosophical Criticism. Edited by Andrew Seth 
 and R. H. Haldane, 1883. 
 
 The Secret of Hegel. By Dr. J. Hutchison Stirling, 1865. 
 Lectures on the Philosophy of Law. By J. Hutchison Stirling, 
 in Vols. VI. and VII. of Jour, of Spec. Phil. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 Leben Hegel's. Von Karl Rosenkranz. Hegel’s Werke (sup- 
 plement), Band XIX. 
 
 Apologie Hegel's gegen Dr. Haym. Von K. Rosenkranz, 1858. 
 Hegel als de 7 itscher Nationalphilosoph. By the same, 1871. 
 Hegel Mid seine Zeit. Von R. Haym, 1857. 
 
 Hegel. By Professor Edward Caird, 1883. 
 
 The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. By Professor Josiah 
 Royce, 1892. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 i. 
 
 Biographical Sketch. 
 
 The Philosophy of Hegel is much less personal than 
 most systems, especially in contrast with that of Fichte. 
 His head rather than his heart is what appears through- 
 out both his life and his writings. While this gives his 
 biography less interest, it gives his writings much more 
 scientific form. 
 
 In speaking of Philosophy, as showing us “ a succession 
 of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought,” Hegel him- 
 self has remarked : 
 
 “The events and actions of this history are, therefore, 
 such that personality and individuality of character do not 
 enter to any large degree into its content and matter. 
 In this respect, the history of Philosophy contrasts with 
 political history, in which the individual, according to the 
 peculiarity of his disposition, talents, affections, the strength 
 or weakness of his character, and in general, according to 
 that through which he is this individual, is the subject of 
 actions and events. In Philosophy, the less deserts and 
 merits are accorded to the particular individual, the better 
 is the history.” 1 
 
 It is, therefore, more pertinent for us to ask, What is 
 Hegel l instead of asking, Who was Hegel? In fact, this 
 is the way we ordinarily think of Hegel, as the living sys- 
 tem of thought which he wrought out. The true h istory o f 
 a philosopher is the history of his thought a nd its genesi s. 
 
 1 Hegel’s History of Philosophy, translated by E. S. Haldane, 1S92. 
 Vol. I. p. 1. 
 
BIO GR A PH IC A L SHE TCII. 
 
 Hegel’s external biography is even more uneventful than 
 that of most men of thought — the Alexanders and Caesars 
 of the intellectual world. The mere subjective private 
 characteristics, opinions and prejudices of the man need 
 concern us but little in comparison with the universal ele- 
 ment of thought, which was the real heart of the man. The 
 personal character of Hegel is not very interesting: yet it 
 was not unworthy of the philosopher as a man, and upon 
 the whole it may be said that it needs no apology. The 
 two points in which he has been most criticised relate to his 
 treatment of Schelling and his so-called subserviency to the 
 Prussian government. In neither of these respects is the 
 reproach thoroughly justifiable. 
 
 His life was devoid of romance, being rather that of a 
 prosaic, common-sense man of the intellectual world. Still, 
 as compared with that of Kant, ein alles Zermalmender , the 
 life of Hegel, ein alles Umfassender, was much more that of 
 a citizen of the world. His acquaintance with the great 
 literary and political men and movements of his time was 
 intimate and profound. If he was not a patriot of Fichte’s 
 type, he was not without great interest and influence in 
 politics. 
 
 We give a brief summary of the events of his outward 
 life . 1 
 
 1 The limits of space preclude anything more than a brief biograph- 
 ical sketch of Hegel’s life. One forgoes with regret the task of pre- 
 senting the fuller biography, with temperate estimate of it as a genuine, 
 human, scholarly life of the modern Aristotle. Rosenkranz’s Hegel's 
 Leben and Hegel als deutscher Nationalphilosoph afford ample materials 
 for such work. This, however, has already been used most skilfully by 
 Professor Edward Caird, who gives us a most, admirable exposition 
 and estimate of the whole Hegel in his volume in Blackwood’s Philo- 
 sophical Classics. There is no better introduction to Hegel’s personality 
 and work needed. Professor Josiah Royce (The Spirit of Modern 
 Philosophy ) also gives a brief, but with a smack of sharpness, pen-sketch 
 of Hegel’s personal characteristics, using the material of the hostile 
 critic Haym rather than that of the eulogistic disciple Rosenkranz. 
 Since writing the following sketch I have, for the first time, looked 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 3 
 
 Georg W ilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stut tgart. 
 the '~capital of Wiirtemberg. on the 27th of August, 1 770, 
 and retained throughout life the Suabian characteristics of 
 bluntness, shrewdness, and of deep interest in religion and 
 in political affairs. His family belonged to the quiet con- 
 servative middie-class. His father was an officer in the fis- 
 cal service and a decided aristocrat. His mother seems to 
 have been a woman of more than ordinary intelligence, and 
 devoted to the instruction of her eldest son. She died when 
 Hegel was thirteen years old. How grateful a remembrance 
 he cherished of her is shown in a letter to his sister when 
 he was fifty-five years old. “To-day is the anniversary of 
 mother’s death, which I always keep in memory of her.” 
 His biographer, Rosenkranz, says that his early youth was 
 passed quietly and cheerfully, without any remarkable ex- 
 periences. The official position of his father brought his 
 family into connection with the higher class of citizens. In 
 his fifth year he was sent to the Latin school, and in his 
 seventh he entered the city Gymnasium. He was always 
 an exemplary scholar, and won the prizes in every class. 
 In the diary which he kept from his fifteenth to his seven- 
 teenth year there are traces of deep ethical sentiments, 
 though none of moral conflicts. Thus early, too, the Auf- 
 klärung possessed him. He inveighs against intolerance 
 and superstition, and asserts the necessity of thinking for 
 one’s self. From this diary we learn, too, that though 
 pedantic as a student, he did not fail to cultivate the social 
 side of life. He frequented concerts, and enjoyed the so- 
 ciety of the pretty maidens he thus met. Rosenkranz notes 
 two peculiarities of Hegel at this time which he preserved 
 through life : he was addicted to taking snuff and devoted 
 to playing cards, especially to whist. 
 
 through Dr. J. Hutchinson Stirling’s great work on “ The Secret of 
 Hegel," and find scattered throughout his most appreciative and valuable 
 expository work the most scathing and harsh terms used in characteriz- 
 ing Hegel. 
 
4 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 In his sixteenth year he began the habit of keeping a 
 Common-Place Book and of writing out analyses, with copious 
 quotations, of every book of importance that he read. He 
 was ready to thus fill his empty self with the best of the 
 best authors — to lose himself in them that he might find 
 himself enlarged and invigorated. For the purpose of 
 putting one’s self at the point of view of great authors, so 
 as to lose one’s petty self in them, he held that there was no 
 better way than this writing out copious extracts from their 
 works. This is the first experience with the principle of edu- 
 cation most resolutely maintained by Hegel throughout life 
 in regard to culture in general, i.e. the principle of self-aliena- 
 tion (Selbst-Entfremdung) in order to true humanization. But 
 even at this time of saturating himself with the thoughts of 
 others, he showed that he was not merely passive, as he ex- 
 presses the greatest admiration of the Greek world of culture, 
 in which he soon found himself no mere pilgrim or alien. 
 He was thus early penetrated by the nobility and serenity of 
 the Grecian spirit, and as early showed his dislike of the 
 prevalent morbid sentimentalism. At this time, too, we find 
 traces of that conservative spirit in regard to the observance 
 of the customary in social life and current affairs which char- 
 acterized him throughout life as a conservative in religion 
 and politics. He thought it to be but vain conceit to be 
 continually protesting against established customs and creeds 
 and to be obtruding one’s own whimsical tastes upon the 
 public. “Virtue,” he said a little later, “is not a troubling 
 one’s self about a peculiar and isolated morality of one’s 
 own. The striving for any such morality is futile and im- 
 possible of attainment.” 
 
 The first trace of interest in philosophy is found in one 
 of his note-books, when he was fifteen years of age. He 
 defines philosophy to be “the pressing through into the very 
 ground and inner constitution of human conceptions and 
 knowledge of the profoundest truths.” 
 
BIO GR A PH IC A L SKE TCH. 
 
 5 
 
 He also then formed an intimate friendship with the 
 young poet Hölderlin, with whom he studied Plato and the 
 Greek drama. 
 
 Having been “consecrated to theology” by his parents, he 
 entered the University at Tübingen when he was eighteen 
 years of age. The first three years of the course were devoted 
 to philosophical studies, and the last two to theological. He 
 submitted to the dull routine of the work there in a becom- 
 ing manner, meantime pursuing his own private studies, 
 especially of the classics. It was there he formed that inti- 
 mate and fruitful union with the brilliant, precocious Schel- 
 ling (ein praecox ingeniinn, as his father designated him), five 
 years his junior, that forms such an important chapter in 
 his life. 
 
 For a time, at least, he was stirred by the revolutionary 
 sentiments that were so mightily working then. Together 
 with Schelling and other students he formed a political club 
 for the discussion of the burning questions of the day, 
 and for the championing of the idea of liberty, equality and 
 fraternity. He was a jovial companion, and entered with 
 zest into the various experiences that characterize the Ger- 
 man student-life. Yet he had that dignified sobriety of 
 manner which won for him the nickname of “old man.” 
 “ God be with the old man ” was found written by a fellow- 
 student in one of his books. Among other tasks, as theo- 
 logical student, he also performed that of preaching sermons. 
 Dry formalism characterized these productions. 
 
 He studied Kant’s philosophy, and w T as especially inter- 
 ested in his ethical works. But thus early he had got beyond 
 Kant’s dualism, and declared against the possibility of pure 
 moral activity, or of the “ Practical Reason ” apart from the 
 desires of the sensuous nature. Already he looked upon 
 man’s nature as a unitary process of self-realization. 
 
 He left the University in 1793 with a certificate for good 
 parts and character, and for fair acquaintance with theology 
 
6 
 
 BIO GR A PH IC A L SHE TCH. 
 
 and philology, but with no knowledge whatever of phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 Like many others, his road to a place among the recog- 
 nized world-thinkers lay through the conditions which hamper 
 one in the situation of a private tutor in a rich family. Six 
 uneventful years were thus spent by Hegel. But they v/ere 
 years of great intellectual activity, years of increase of knowl- 
 edge, but above all of self-activity, in working over in the 
 alembic of his own thought these gathered treasures. His 
 education had given him a bias towards theological studies, 
 and to the end of his life the study of religion fascinated 
 his mind. We find him now busied with exegetical studies. 
 In 1795 he finished writing a Life of Christ. Here, too, 
 we find him noting the essential elements of Judaism as 
 contrasted with the Greek view of religion, and even dis- 
 paraging Christianity in comparison with the former, though 
 a few years later he had worked through to the estimate 
 of Christianity as the absolute religion, or the principle of 
 self-realization through self-sacrifice alike in man and in 
 God, in his relation to man. It is in this period, too, that 
 we find the idea of love as the most significant one to Hegel. 
 In his appreciation of it we find implicit the whole of his 
 later intellectual system. In the movement of love he saw 
 the dialectic leading out of self into its other, in order to 
 its own self-realization. Here, too, we find him making that 
 laborious study of history, which later gave him the basis 
 for his Philosophy of History. 
 
 His interest in politics also led him to a fresh study of 
 Kant’s ethical treatises, that of the Philosophy of Right , 
 appearing in 1797, and that of The Metaphysic of Ethics, in 
 1798. Heg el strove to unite the two concept ions of positive 
 law and subjective morality into a higher one, which h e first 
 named “Life,” and later “Social Moralit y (i.e. Sittlichkeit ). 
 He protested against Kant’s utter subjugation of nature 
 and his dismemberment of humanity ( Zerstücklung des Men- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 7 
 
 scheu ) into a casuistry arising from the absoluteness of the 
 conception of duty. 
 
 It was at this time that the Wiirtemberg Diet was held 
 to promulgate a new constitution based upon the principle 
 of the freedom of person and property of all citizens. The 
 king favored this constitution, but the aristocratic classes, 
 with their vested privileges, protested against it in the name 
 of “good old German rights.” Here Hegel took his stand 
 with the king against the prerogative of feudalism, the privi- 
 lege of the guild and the purchased monopoly of the rich, 
 for the king was, in this instance, the representative of 
 rational freedom, of the true idea of the State. 
 
 Through -all these theological, historical and practical 
 studies there was the nascent life of the Idea Ithrobbing, 
 which was to systematize all into the concrete unity of his 
 later philosophy. It grew and took shape and form through 
 them. He did not at first set himself the task of finding 
 such a concrete principle. He did not “make his studies 
 in public,” as he said of Schelling, but he felt that he was 
 making advances which would eventually come to light in 
 a full orbed system. Beginning with particular questions 
 pressing on him for solution, he was, as he says, “driven 
 onward to philosophy, and, through reflection, to transform 
 the ideal of his youth into a system.” This “system” he 
 put in writing in the year 1798. The above quotation is 
 from a letter to Schelling, appealing to him as the one most 
 likely to aid him in entering upon a public career as phil- 
 osopher. In January, 1801, he went to Jena, where he 
 championed Schelling’s Identity-Philosophy against that of 
 Fichte. In 1802 he united with Schelling in publishing a 
 “ Critical Journal of Philosophy,” in which the common- 
 sense dualism of mind and matter was the stock object 
 of attack, as well as the philosophy of subjectivity. The 
 Identity- Philo sophy , however differently held by Schelling 
 and Hegel, furnished “the conception of a unity above all 
 
8 
 
 RELATION TO 
 
 differences, which manifests itself in all differences, and 
 to which all differences must refer for their explanation.” 
 From Privat-docent he became Professor in the University 
 in 1805. 
 
 In 1807 he published his first important book, the Phae- 
 nomenologie des Geistes , which he finished amid the thunders 
 of the battle of Jena. He seemed to have been as absorbed 
 in this work as Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse. In 
 “ this voyage of discovery ” Hegel touched and illuminated 
 and criticised all the various standpoints of ethical and 
 speculative philosophy. From 1808 to 1816 he was Pro- 
 fessor in the Gymnasium at Nürnberg, publishing his Logik 
 in 1816. For a year he was Professor at Heidelberg, where 
 he published his Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissen- 
 schaften, in which he gave his whole system in detail and 
 in scientific form. In 1818 he was called to the most im- 
 portant chair of philosophy in Germany — that recently 
 filled by Fichte in the University of Berlin. From this time 
 till his death in 1831 he was recognized as the greatest 
 teacher of philosophy in Germany. To fill out this out- 
 line of dates and places, so as to give a biography of such 
 a thinker, would require an exposition of the whole of his 
 intellectual deed. To portray him as he was, would be to 
 reproduce him as he thought. In order to determine the 
 place of ethics in his whole system, it is at least necessary 
 to give a brief outline of his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical 
 Sciences. Before doing this, however, we may glance at the 
 ethical thought of his times. 
 
 II. 
 
 Relation to Previous Systems. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to speak of the relation of Hegel’s 
 ethics to previous ethical systems, without giving the relation 
 of his philosophy as a whole to previous systems of phi- 
 
PREVIOUS SYSTEMS. 
 
 9 
 
 losophy. To properly orientate the English student ten years 
 ago by such a statement, would have been the task of a 
 whole volume. But so much has been done within the past 
 decade or two as to render this superfluous here, beyond the 
 general references given in the Bibliography. 
 
 The Devdop7ne?it from Kant to Hegel 1 is already a well- 
 worn topic even in English, as it has long been in German. 
 Hegel is by common consent the continuator and completor 
 of the idealistic movement begun by Kant. The develop- 
 ment of this movement is an excellent historical illustration 
 of Hegel’s own method, from the abstract universal through 
 difference and particularity to the concrete synthetic uni- 
 versal. Hegel is said to have burned his bridges behind 
 him. Stirling will have it that he was always “ a crafty 
 borrower,” using and then abusing his predecessors. But 
 the bridges of thought are incombustible, and it is not diffi- 
 cult to trace the continuity of Hegel’s thought with that of 
 Kant through the diversity of Fichte and Schelling. Hegel, 
 for the most part, leaves out names and dates, abstracting 
 the essence of systems and integrating them into his own 
 system. His intimate relation to Kant, however, is best 
 shown by the polemic which he constantly wages against all 
 parts of Kant’s system, especially his ethical theory. In 
 relation to Kant, Stirling shuts up Hegel in the single 
 sentence: “Hegel simply conceives the ego to develop into 
 its own categories and, these being complete, externalization 
 to result from the same law.” This was however no simple 
 matter, but rather the prodigious labor of the concept itself. 
 So too, to shut up Hegel in a sentence in relation to Kant’s 
 ethical theory we might say, — he simply (rather, complexly) 
 gave an exposition of the course that the abstract universal 
 law or “Categorical Imperative” of Kant must take and has 
 taken in becoming definite, concrete, realized, incarnate in 
 the ethical life of humanity. 
 
 1 The title of Professor Andrew Seth’s volume. 
 
IO 
 
 RELATION TO 
 
 The starting point of both Kant and Hegel was man as 
 thinking will. But Kant considers the will of subjective man 
 in unattainable identity with the universal will of the tran- 
 scendent intelligible world, while Hegel gives us the vital 
 synthesis of these two in his conception of the ethical world 
 in which each one has his station and definite duties. The 
 categorical imperative upon both was Tvwdt aeavrov on its 
 practical side, the will. They differed chiefly in their con- 
 ception of the aeavrov. whose exegesis they attempted . 1 
 With Kant it was the abstract, subjective self ; with Hegel 
 it was the concrete, objective, the completely ethicized or 
 socialized self. Kant lived and labored under the concep- 
 tions of the eighteenth century rationalism, which held that 
 reason was innate in every man as a sum total of clear, fixed 
 notions, while Hegel considered reaso n as an immanent 
 impulse of r ationality that was c ontinually realizing itself in 
 li hinan experience . They both had a metaphysic of ethics. 
 But with Kant this was forever unutterable, with Hegel it 
 had been continually uttering itself in the institutions of 
 man. With one it was formless, with the other it was the 
 continuously self-realizing Word that from the beginning 
 was formative of the moral organism of humanity. The one 
 looked solely within, the other looked outward for the self 
 to be studied. Again with Kant the true res interna was 
 absolutely supersensible. With Hegel it was expressed in 
 definite and increasingly adequate forms in the res publica 
 of the external world of man’s activity. H ence he make s 
 his “ Philosophy of History” an illustrative exposition of his 
 science of ethics. The State, in the most concrete sense of 
 this termpif the aeavrov manifesting itself in temporal con- 
 ditions. The history of the world is the tribunal through 
 which man utters the forms of the categorical imperative 
 heard in the supersensible world. Let us say in brief, then, 
 
 1 I quote here and elsewhere in this Introduction from my article on 
 Hegel's Ethics in “The International Journal of Ethics,” January, 1892. 
 
PREVIOUS SYSTEMS. 
 
 1 1 
 
 that the difference between Kant and Hegel may be formu- 
 lated as the difference between an abstract and a concrete 
 atavTov. 
 
 Hegel never ceased to inveigh against the vice of abstract- 
 ness. His whole work consists in starting from, criticising, 
 and passing beyond various abstract conceptions to a real 
 concrete in which alone they find their place as organic 
 phases or members. That which is true relatively to its 
 correlate is false when abstracted from its correlate. And 
 both correlates are true only when they pass through this 
 category of reciprocity to the organism which they both 
 imply and demonstrate. The empirical and the noumenal 
 self; the pure reason and the practical reason; subjective 
 freedom and conditioning environment; duty and the good, 
 — these are some of the elements of ethical man that Kant 
 abstracted from their organic process, wherewith to build 
 his airy castle of morality. Abstractions, every one of them, 
 says Hegel, who endeavors to lead through them to the 
 more concrete view. We may, however, select two terms 
 which will illustrate the difference between Kant and Hegel 
 in ethics, — i.e., Moralität and Sittlichkeit , both of which are 
 used by the Germans for what we call morality. The first 
 denotes the morality of the heart or of the conscience. The 
 latter denotes conventional morality, or the objective cus- 
 toms that are recognized as moral mores , Sitten ). 
 
 The first is the individual conscience, the second is the 
 social conscience. Hegel would say that there would be no 
 Moralität without Sittlichkeit , while Kant, with his categor- 
 ical imperative, would make each individual an Athanasius 
 contra mundum. Hegel would say that there could be no 
 duty without some objective good as content for the formal 
 good-will. [That is, there can be no abstract self-realiza- 
 tion by the conscientious man, no good-will without good 
 manners. To realize himself the individual must do it in 
 the forms of social man, must go beyond himself to be him- 
 
12 
 
 RELATION TO 
 
 self. He must erect himself above himself and expand him- 
 self beyond himself in his actualizing of his good-will. Only 
 in the objective forms of his station can he find his duties. 
 Otherwise his morality is sure to be peevish, cranky, and" 
 tyrannical, though, as a Simon Stylites, he may write the 
 title of saint before his name. Hegel makes most trenchant 
 criticisms 1 of Kant’s formal law, showing that as an abstract 
 universal it can neither suggest any particular duties nor 
 test the rightness of rules otherwise suggested. It can only 
 be a voice thundering in the inner Sinai, “thou shalt,” with- 
 out power to proceed to decalogic or monologic specification 
 of what to do. Only an objective standard of right can 
 afford the ground of private judgment and render it other 
 than mere wilfulness or mis-judgment. Pythagoras had this 
 in view when he said that the best education one could desire 
 for his son would be to have him become a citizen of a 
 nation with good institutions. On the other hand, such good 
 institutions are impossible without the element of Moralität. 
 Society does not exist apart from the individual. It is rather 
 an organism of organisms, whose Sittlichkeit expresses the 
 immanent Moralität of its people. It exists in and through 
 the life of its members. Hegel’s conception combatted 
 both an abstract individualism and an abstract societarian- 
 ism. His ethics are the result of the organically related ele- 
 ments of abstract personal, or external, rights and Moralität. 
 Plis Sittlichkeit is the very life of the most concrete form of 
 the self or man, — i. e., the State. It is the science of this 
 body politic in its movement of self-realization, in which also 
 the individual realizes himself, because its realization is what 
 he must enter into in order to be what he ought to be. 
 
 We should note that nothing could be more false to Hegel 
 than to translate his Sittlichkeit by mere conventionality or 
 his Sitten by mere customs. This would be to take out the 
 
 1 Hegel’s Werke , i. 313, referred to by Professor Caird, “The Phi- 
 losophy of Kant,” ii. 186. 
 
PREVIOUS SYSTEMS. 
 
 *3 
 
 vital heart which formed, received and obeys loyally its own 
 customs. The child thoroughly permeated by the family 
 spirit yields glad obedience to family customs. The patriot, 
 in peace as in war, observes his national customs and laws 
 as expressions of his own true will. There is no mere blind 
 conservatism in all this, but rather the same vital spirit 
 which goes on to reform old customs, adapting them to the 
 new and higher forms of life. The morality of the individual 
 is possible only in this realm of the ethical ( sittlich ) world. 
 He must have suckled at the breast of his environing ei9os 
 and have converted it into flesh of his flesh and bone of his 
 bone. There is to be found the material and the standard 
 of his own morality. “ The ethical life of the individual is 
 but a pulse-beat of the whole system and itself the whole 
 system.” All education is the art of making men ethical 
 (sittlic/i), of transforming the old Adam into the new Adam. 
 “The child is the mere possibility of a moral being.” 1 
 
 Obedience is the beginning of practical morality. His dis- 
 cipline is the entering fulness, through which he becofnes 
 a son, brother, husband, father, citizen and a cultured man. 
 Hegel throughout holds in organic relation both elements 
 of solidarity and independence. Nothing could be fur- 
 ther than his theory from the mechanical, conservative 
 conventionality of Chinese morality. He says that “the 
 distinguishing feature of the Chinese is that everything 
 belonging to the spirit — unconstrained morality, heart, in- 
 ward religion - — is alien to it.” Again, he says : “Custom, 
 activity without opposition, for which there is only a formal 
 duration, in which the fulness and zest that originally 
 characterized the aim of life, is out of the question. This 
 is death to individuals and nations, or mere nullity and 
 tedium. Only the adoption of some new purpose can 
 awaken, can revivify such people.” 2 
 
 1 Cf. Hegel’s Werke , Band I., 396 and 399. 
 
 2 Hegel’s Philosophy of History, pp. 144 and 78. 
 
14 
 
 RELATION TO 
 
 The difference between the ethics of Kant and Hegel 
 may also be expressed in these two formulas: “Duty for 
 duty’s sake” and “ My station and its duties.” With Kant 
 Duty is the abstract transcendent law of the intelligible 
 world which no man can ever realize, and which Duty yet 
 commands man to realize for its own sake. The absolute- 
 ness of Duty was sometimes insisted upon by both Kant 
 and Fichte in a thoroughly inhuman way, as utterly divorced 
 from all joys of the heart and secular happiness. It was 
 against this moral rigorism of formal duty, slighting all 
 regard to the phase of subjective needs and to the diversi- 
 ties of individualities and situations that Jacobi made his 
 now classical protest: “Nay, I am that atheist, that profane 
 person, who in despite of the will that wills nothing (i. e., in 
 despite of the abstract formal precepts of morality) will lie, 
 like the dying Desdemona; prevaricate and deceive, like 
 Pylades representing himself to be Orestes; will murder, 
 like Timoleon; break law and oath, like Epaminondas and 
 Johann de Witt; resolve on suicide, like Otho; commit sac- 
 rilege, like David; nay, pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, 
 only because I am hungry and the law was made for man 
 and not man for the law,” claiming the right for such deeds 
 against the absolute irrational letter of the law. Though 
 Hegel (in 1802) criticised 1 Jacobi very severely and pointed 
 out the danger of “Jacobi’s principle of the beauty of indi- 
 viduality ” leading to the exalting of sentiment and instinct 
 to be the judge of the ethical, he afterwards (in 1817) recog- 
 nized the element of truth in Jacobi’s fierce protest against 
 moral rigorism. Kant’s emphasis on this element of morality 
 was a needed corrective of hedonism, but it could afford no 
 table of definite duties to be performed: He was himself 
 
 no Moses to bring it down from the mount on tables of 
 stone. Indeed to define or particularize the law would be 
 to destroy its universality and thus its imperativeness. The 
 
 1 Hegel’s Werke, Band I., 105-111. 
 
PREVIOUS SYSTEMS. 
 
 15 
 
 good will could not be found on earth, because the law could 
 give no laws. “Obey duty” could therefore mean, do no 
 particular deed, because no particular is equal to the uni- 
 versal. It could only be done by the absolute annihilation 
 of the individual, for you cannot universalize any particular 
 maxim, nor can you particularize the formal universal law 
 without marring it. 
 
 Hegel was the Moses to bring the law down from the 
 mount. The tables of stone were the deposit of reason, 
 realized more or less consciously, in the practical ways of 
 a people, in the substantial constitutive spirit of men 
 as expressed in traditional and current codes. Against 
 Kant’s dictum “ The good ought to be ” Hegel opposed the 
 assertion “The good is." The law was found throbbing 
 through the social organism of humanity, its vital and syn- 
 thetic principle. In living the concrete life of one’s station 
 and people, the individual was fulfilling duty. The life of 
 the social community (family, society, nation) exemplifies the 
 concrete, objective, inclusive law. It is the moral organism 
 in which the individual must be a vital organic member. At 
 every stage of every community there is present a world so 
 far moralized. The ethical man is the wise man who knows 
 and identifies himself with his community. The immoral 
 man is the one who is out of harmony with this good will, 
 the will for the good of the community. We should know 
 better than to think that we know better than this larger, 
 communal self. 
 
 Duty thus becomes definite and concrete. I belong to 
 certain circles of fellow-men. I live in certain social tissues. 
 This is my station in life. To know this is to know my 
 duties. I must realize myself by fulfilling all the rela- 
 tions about my station. I must fill my place, perform a 
 definite function in a definite organism, be a vital mem- 
 ber of it. Organs and organism mutually live and work for 
 each other. “The individual’s morality is a pulse-beat 
 
i6 
 
 RELATION TO 
 
 of the whole system and itself the whole system.” Thus 
 the abstract formal universal law of Kant is exchanged for 
 a reflection in the individual of the concrete, objective ethical 
 world of his community. It becomes an immanent intelli- 
 gible universal, definite and concrete. 
 
 In Kant we find the emphasis put on the individual. 
 Hegel emphasizes rather the function of the obj ective social 
 organism, which he calls the State , to rear the individual 
 i nto that condition where respect for th e right is combin ed 
 with ethical bea.ii.t v. “This lofty intuition,” says Rosen- 
 kranz, “is the Hellenic trait in Hegel, which, however, did 
 not lead him to abate a tittle of the sharpness and energy of 
 the Germanic principle of individuality.” Hegel himself 
 declared that the study of the master-pieces of classical 
 literature should be “the spiritual bath, the profane baptism 
 which imparts to the soul the first and inamissible tone and 
 tincture of good taste and science.” 1 Certainly the anarchic 
 conception of “ Man versus the State ” was as foreign to 
 Hegel’s thought as it would have been to a citizen of Athens. 
 He would rather say, you cannot be a man without the State, 
 you cannot be a whole unless you are a vital member of a 
 whole. 
 
 This, perhaps, is as far as Hegel brings us in the present 
 treatise. But, as we shall show, this is only a part of a larger 
 whole into which Hegel carries up the self-realizing process 
 of the will into the absolute realm, carries up humanity on 
 the mount of transfiguration, — into the realm of Absolute 
 Spirit, which is the real presupposition, cause and end of 
 objective spirit , or of man in secular relations. 
 
 We might thus go per saltum , as Hegel himself did, from 
 Kant to Hegel. But we should at least notice the media- 
 tion of the ethical philosophy of Fichte, whose personality 
 and ethical enthusiasm really eclipses his philosophy in 
 worth and interest. Like Jacobi, he had a heart of fire, 
 
 ] Karl Schmidt’s Geschichte der Pädagogik, TV., 678. Edition of 1862. 
 
PREVIOUS SYSTEMS. 
 
 J 7 
 
 but unlike him, he followed his head, endeavoring to com- 
 plete the work of Kant. Kant refused to own this work, 
 being unable to recognize the skeleton which he had formed 
 when clothed in flesh and blood by Fichte. Fichte claimed 
 to harmonize Kant’s two Critiques , reducing his dualism to 
 the monism of subjective idealism in morals as weil as in 
 philosophy. Fie made the ego to be the author of both 
 the moral law and of the endeavor to realize it. The prin- 
 ciple of unity thus attained is the ego itself. This alone, 
 he claimed, could be the true significance of Kant’s autonomy 
 of the will. Beyond the ego there is naught, not even the 
 ghostly Ding an sich , nor the suprasensible intelligible world. 
 This is subjective idealism, where the ego both forms (macht) 
 and creates ( schafft ) its own world, in definite contradiction 
 to Kant’s dictum, macht zwar der Verstand die Natur , aber 
 er schafft sie nicht. It was owing to this character of sub- 
 jective idealism that Flegel relegates it to the rank of an 
 historical and superceded system. He says that Fichte 
 denied all external reality, making the ego to produce its 
 own non-ego for conduct as well as for thought. Still Fichte 
 held that in morality the identity — ego=non-ego — was never 
 fully realized, the identity thus remaining a subjective one, 
 and a struggle with self the essence of morality. Thus, the 
 highest point of the system is only a must ( sollen ) and a 
 striving (streben). In showing this impossible demand, never 
 able to attain objectivity, Hegel leaves the system as nothing 
 more than subjective idealism of the empirical ego . 1 That 
 Hegel failed to do Fichte justice is evident to any reader 
 of Fichte, though we feel this to be a slight done to his 
 personality and moral enthusiasm rather than any injustice 
 to his theory of ethics .' 2 
 
 1 For Hegel’s criticism of Fichte cf. Hegel’s Werke, Band I. 
 
 2 “ It is difficult to speak calmly of Fichte. His life stirs one like a 
 trumpet. Fie combines the penetration of a philosopher with the fire 
 of a prophet and the thunder of an orator ; and over all his life lies the 
 beauty of a stainless purity.” — Chamber's Encyclopedia. 
 
iS 
 
 RELATION TO 
 
 Accepting this criticism as true, taking Fichte at his word 
 as a subjective idealist, we may say that he utterly outdid 
 Kant’s boasted Copernican feat, not only making the stars to 
 revolve around the ego as the central sun, but making the 
 ego to be the creator of the whole moral firmament itself. 
 Thus in morals with Fichte the appeal must always be to the 
 individual’s conviction of duty. Ffe must act according to 
 his conscience. I am not aware that Hegel or any other 
 one has directly charged Fichte with the evils that naturally 
 flow from the principle of the right of private judgment, the 
 evils of individualism, moral atomism, moral mis-judgment, 
 though these are consequences of all subjective idealism. 
 The private conscience can have no judgment, for a judg- 
 ment is essentially a universal as Kant taught. It can only 
 have whims, caprices, likings and opinions of a private and 
 therefore of a particular and partial character. Unsaturated 
 with the communal universal life, ceasing to be a pulse-beat 
 in the system, his judgment loses the character of a judg- 
 ment or law. 
 
 Following Kant, Fichte at first separates even more 
 sharply between the spheres of Right (legality) and Ethics 
 (morality), making the former to be utterly independent 
 of the latter, and excluding it entirely from the realm of 
 morality. Right (legal) is merely mechanical, external force 
 holding individuals in the bonds of civil society. In morality 
 the individual is purely autonomous. The State is merely a 
 social compact, proceeding from the want of confidence and 
 sociality. In his later philosophy, however, he puts more 
 emphasis upon the State as the condition of morality, making 
 it to rest, not on the compact of individuals, but upon the 
 aim of the species. To it belongs the imposition of all 
 forms of culture and activity. Its final aim is to make ethi- 
 cality ( Sittlichkeit ) possible. Its power is both obligatory 
 and enfranchising, in the education of the race . 1 Thus he 
 
 1 Cf. Adolph Lasson’s Rechtsphilosophie, 6 and 100-102. 
 
PREVIOUS SYS TEA/S. 
 
 1 9 
 
 approaches more nearly the position of Hegel’s Philosophy 
 of the State , though in no scientific form. Like Schelling, 
 in his latter day he ran into mystical pantheism and abso- 
 lutism. 
 
 We need say but little of the relation of Hegel to Schel- 
 ling, of their early pact, of Hegel’s apparent discipleship, of 
 the lasting unpleasantness between them after the publica- 
 tion of the Vorwort to Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes. 
 Beginning as an ardent Fichtean, Schelling soon developed 
 in his Identity-Philosophy an abstract pantheism. The 
 Program of the Critical Journal of Philosophy , which Schel- 
 ling and Hegel edited jointly, asserted that “the great imme- 
 diate interest of philosophy is to put God again absolutely 
 at the head of the system, as the one ground of all, the 
 principium essendi et cognoscendiP Hegel took this in earnest, 
 and ever remained faithful to it, applying it to the solution 
 of ethical antinomies and to the explanation of the ethical 
 life of mankind. His course onward was towards a more 
 concrete conception of the Absolute as Subject, as Spirit, 
 while Schelling’s course was the reverse, making the Abso- 
 lute to be the mere indifference point or the identity of in- 
 determinate substance. It is with this blank, unspiritual 
 principle that Hegel definitely breaks in his Preface to his 
 first independent work, Die Phäno7netiologie des Geistes. “ In 
 such philosophy,” he says, “the Absolute is, as it were, shot 
 out of a pistol.” “ It is the night in which all cows are black.” 
 That is, in it all different things — right and wrong, good 
 and bad — are the same. This blank Absolute Substance 
 of Schelling furnished no foundation for ethics, while the 
 eternally self-realized and self-realizing Subject of Hegel 
 does. God is the beginning and the -goal, the orderer of the 
 moral order of the world and the creator of the moral ideal. 
 It is this divine principle which constitutes the intellectual 
 and ethical cosmos into which man is born for self-realiza- 
 tion. For the individual, self-realization is to come through 
 
20 
 
 RELATION TO 
 
 renunciation of the empty self in favor of the larger and 
 truer self mirrored for him in the various circles of the social 
 organism, and ultimately in the institutions of Absolute 
 Spirit — Art, Religion and Philosophy. As to Hegel’s 
 crafty indebtedness to Fichte and Schelling, it is to be con- 
 sidered that we may make and read a patchwork of the two 
 that seems like Hegel, but that we read it in the light of the 
 full, organic, scientific work of Hegel himself. At best, his 
 predecessors’ works were but the quarry whence his genius 
 builded a great structure. 
 
 Hegel’s ethical view was also in marked contrast with and 
 opposition to the ethics of the general eighteenth century 
 view known as the Aufklärung , edairdsscment and free 
 thought or rationalism. 
 
 The Aufklärung was essentially a protest against all tra- 
 ditional dogmas, cults, creeds and institutions . 1 The trans- 
 cendent worth of the illuminated and enfranchised individual 
 of that time was a very delirium of self-conceited private 
 judgment, setting up private reason as the valid tribunal 
 before which to summon all manner of hitherto valid laws 
 and customs. It was a conceited enlightment ( edairdsse - 
 ment) or a clearing up {Auf klärung) that, as Schelling said, 
 had turned into a clearing out (H^jklärung) of all the wisdom 
 and practical experience of the race. This produced that 
 ethical atomism in which each atom was independent of 
 every other one and of all forms of association in which they 
 had been enslaved by priestcraft and statecraft. Rousseau 
 asserted this freedom and validity of the merely “ natural 
 man,” decivilized as far as possible. But the natural man 
 was not large enough to measure all things, to appreciate 
 and estimate rightly the universal human reason already 
 done into ethical forms of life. Hence it virtually dropped 
 all judgment, all application of universal principles, and 
 
 1 For Hegel’s exposition and criticism of this movement consult 
 Phän. des Geistes, 356-437 ; and Philosophy of History , 456-474. 
 
PR E VI O US S YS TEAIS. 
 
 2 X 
 
 stuck to its own private pint-cup measure. Kant, in refut- 
 ing Hume by demonstrating the existence of a priori princi- 
 ples of judgment, of categories absolutely independent of 
 experience, did not himself attain to real objectivity and 
 validity. While proclaiming universal and objective princi- 
 ples he still made them subjective , and hence his philosophy 
 could not stem the current which insisted upon privatizing 
 these universals instead of insisting upon the private con- 
 science universalizing itself in the communal traditional 
 conscience. Hegel asserts 1 that tiu s-fce cd o m ar wl- mdt^wd- 
 ence and validity of private judgment belongs to th e Kantian 
 ]^Tt te50^ hyi In Germany, however, he thinks it remained 
 rather a “tranquil theory,” while in France it was tried in 
 practical life, where it culminated in the Reign of Terror. 
 
 Now, Hegel polemicized persistently and strenuousl y 
 against the moral as well as against the intellectual views of 
 th is rationalism of the u nderstanding. He had been early 
 attracted by the glamour of its enthusiasm for the abstract 
 rights of man, as against all enslaving customs of existing 
 ethical institutions. He also early saw its utter negativeness, 
 “ignoring the holy and tender web of human affections.” 
 He insisted that Reason was not so late born as the eig h- 
 teenth century, but that it had always been regnant in the 
 p ractical world ; that it had always been operative in th e 
 formation of all social custo ms and institutions which bo und 
 men together; that it was the realsubstance of the concrete 
 life ot civilized man. Thi s enabled him to m p^r a 11 t 1 ^ 
 negati ve criticism of existing institutions ( family, soc iety, 
 state a nd church) and to vindicate their validity and rati on- 
 ality as institutions of the spiritJfoj.- the. -educatio n of man 
 into fr eedom — into humani ty. Such, indeed, we shall find 
 to be the whole argument of his Ethics as contained in the 
 following “ Selections.” Against the whole rationalistic 
 movement of free thought (better designated anti-rationalism) 
 
 Philosophy of History , p. 462. 
 
22 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 Hegel dared to maintain that “ The Real is the Rational .” 
 Even the most superficial acquaintance with his philosophy, 
 especially with his dialectic, suffices to guard this expression 
 from being considered the equivalent of a pet phrase of the 
 very movement he was combatting, i. e., that “ Whatever is, 
 is right.” The “ Real,” he explains ( Logic , § 6), is not the 
 accidental actuality of any and every sham, but the vital 
 substance of the Divine Reason in past and present institu- 
 tions — the throb of real rationality which alone enables 
 them to arise and thrive, and to nurture man into humanity. 
 Whatever is, is because of its seed or web of rationality. 
 The 11 is” is always a phase of the ought. The real is 
 not and never has been “ so feeble as merely to have a right 
 or an ought to exist without actually existing ” (Logic, § 6). 
 To be a man, one must at least wear the clothes of a man. 
 The disrobed “ natural man ” of the Aufklärung needs to be 
 assured that clothes are rational, and Hegel’s task in his 
 Ethics is to reclothe the perishing nude infant of vulgar 
 rationalism. His Philosophie des Rechts is a philosophical 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 III. 
 
 Exposition. 
 
 We have said that it would be necessary to give an 
 outline of Hegel’s Encyclopädie in order to see the place 
 that ethics holds in his whole system. It is also necessary 
 to give this for another reason. It has sometimes been 
 maintained that Hegel never gave any thorough exposition 
 of ethics. Any adequate knowledge of Hegel, however, 
 easily disposes of this objection. Hegel’s doctrine of ethics 
 is found chiefly in the Philosophie des Rechts , which is an 
 enlarged exposition of Part Second of his Philosophie des 
 Geistes. With this goes, as an interpreting and fulfilling 
 sequel, his Philosophy of History. We have made but 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 2 3 
 
 slight reference to his Phänomenologie des Geistes, which 
 contains not only his ethics, but nearly all other parts of his 
 Philosophy, in brilliant and somewhat imaginative form. 
 Apart from this earlier and graphic work (1807) Hegel only 
 published the following works. 
 
 1. The Science of Logic — called his Larger Logic, 1811- 
 1816. 
 
 2. The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 1817 and 
 1827. 
 
 3. The Philosophy of Right, 1821. 
 
 All the other volumes of his Works were edited from his 
 manuscripts by his friends after his death. 
 
 The Encyclopedia contains the whole system in the scien- 
 tific form given by himself. It is his attempt to exhibit his 
 system in its entirety. As we now have it, it is Hegel’s 
 own revised and enlarged edition, together with additions 
 made from his manuscripts used in the Lecture-room. 
 
 This Encyclopedia is not a mere compend of heterogeneous 
 parts, but a systematic exposition of all parts of philosophy 
 in their organic relations; that is, an exposition of all the 
 connected phases of reality that come under the cognizance 
 of the philosopher. It is concerned with Absolute Reality 
 in the phases of unity, difference and totality. Hegel’s term 
 for this Absolute Reality is the Ldea (/dee) or God. He 
 makes three divisions of the Ldea as 
 
 1. Reason ( Vernunft). 
 
 2. Nature. 
 
 3. Spirit (Geist). 
 
 Otherwise, as he denominates them : 
 
 1. Logic, or the Science of the pure Ldea. 
 
 2. The Philosophy of Nature. 
 
 3. The Philosophy of Spirit. 
 
 1. The first might better be termed Metaphysics or 
 Ontology. It makes abstraction from the reality of nature 
 and finite spirit and considers only thought in the abstract. 
 
24 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 It takes up all the various predicates or categories by which 
 human reason has sought to define and comprehend the 
 Universal, the Absolute, beginning with the most abstract 
 and empty of them all (mere being) and showing how each 
 lower one criticises and elevates itself into the next higher 
 one, until restless thought rests in the most concrete and 
 absolute category possible — the Idea , God. It exhibits 
 the interconnectedness of all categories by means of the 
 vital dialectic of difference. It is a criticism of the Cate- 
 gories of thought by itself, in its march to thorough compre- 
 hension of Reality, through partial conceptions, ending with 
 Absolute Personality as that which all the others imply and 
 as that which includes and explains them all . 1 
 
 How have men named this reality? Hegel takes up the 
 various answers, only in scientific rather than in historical 
 forms, and shows their mutual limitations and filiations, 
 arranging them in the order of their comparative capacity 
 to express truth in the totality of its relations. To stop 
 here would be to stop with the metaphysics of Reality. But 
 »zrAzphysics implies physics, presupposes a realm which it 
 enswathes and sustains. 
 
 2. This realm Hegel takes up in his Philosophy of Nature. 
 
 The transition which he makes from the Logic to Nature 
 is confessedly obscure. It is, however, none other than the 
 difficulty of the question of creation by God, the transition 
 from God, into the act and processes of self-alienation or 
 creation. Hegel, at all events, makes this a free act of 
 God. He says, in the last paragraph of his Logic: “ The 
 
 1 It was in regard to this work of the Logic in giving a critical 
 exposition of the categories of thought that Hegel made the following 
 striking remark : — “If it is held a valuable achievement to have dis- 
 covered some sixty odd species of the parrot, a hundred and thirty-seven 
 of Veronica, and so forth, it should surely be held a far more valuable 
 achievement to discover the forms of reason : Is not a figure of the 
 syllogism something infinitely higher than a species of parrot or of 
 Veronica?” Hegel’s Werke, Band V., 139. 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 2 5 
 
 Idea is absolutely free; and its freedom means that it does 
 not merely pass over into life, or, as finite cognition, allow 
 life to show in it, but in its own absolute truth resolves to 
 let the element of its particularity or of the first determina- 
 tion and other-being, the unmediated Idea, as its reflection, 
 go forth freely itself from itself as Nature.” That is, we 
 have the Idea in its most abstract form passing over into 
 the phase of time and space existence, progressively, how- 
 ever, realizing or objectifying reality through various forms 
 up to finite spirit, and then, through the various stages and 
 grades of finite spirit, ultimately up to God again. 
 
 His philosophy is no me re naturalism or materia lism. 
 Nature is not the first with Hegel. Nor is it the essentially 
 evil, as with the Gnostics. But it is essentially rational 
 as the creation of the Divine Reason, progressively ascend- 
 ing to more adequate rational forms, collecting and elevating 
 itself till it reaches the form of organic life and passes into 
 soul as the first form of finite spirit. Nature is the matrix 
 and the cradle of finite spirit, not because its potency brings 
 forth man in and of itself, but because it is so used by the 
 immanent Divine Reason. He says: “The end of nature 
 is to destroy itself, to break through its immediate sensible 
 covering, and, like the Phoenix from its flames, to arise from 
 this externality new-born as spirit .” 1 Sjfirit is really the 
 g round of the possibility of nature, rather than a natural 
 product of natu re. Nature is simply the Idea displaying its 
 own element of particularity in the form of otherness, and 
 the gradual reduction of this form to its own absolute form. 
 In the last paragraph of this work he says: “The aim of 
 this treatise is to give a picture of nature in order to conquer 
 this Proteus; to find in all its externality only the mirror 
 of ourselves; to see in nature the free reflexion of the spirit; 
 to recognize God in this His immediate form of determinate 
 being.” 2 
 
 1 Hegel’s A T atur-philosophic, 696. 
 
 2 Ibid., 698. 
 
26 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 3. The Philosophy of Spirit. 
 
 Hegel’s transition from Nature to Spirit is thus readily 
 seen to be clear, explicit and satisfactory. Nature culmi- 
 nates in man, the interpretation as well as the interpreter of 
 nature. His Philosophy of Spirit includes Subjective Spirit 
 (Anthropology and Psychology), Objective Spirit (Rights, 
 Morality and Social Ethics), and Absolute Spirit (Art, Re- 
 ligion and Philosophy). It is with the second division, that 
 of Objective Spirit, that we are here concerned, though we 
 must note in the sequel how Hegel carries the whole 
 process of finite Spirit up into the sphere of Absolute Spirit. 
 All three parts form an exposition of the actualization of 
 spirit, of its progressive self-realization from the lowest 
 form of consciousness to its highest, its return through im- 
 mense labor to its own true, rational and divine self. Thus 
 no one part can be taken as complete in itself. It is only 
 the taking of the whole as one high argument that preserves 
 any part from the unjust criticism so often offered. In fact, 
 the whole of the Philosophy of Spirit is an ethical treatise, 
 if we use the term ethics in the broad sense of the self-real- 
 ization of the human spirit. The “ Selections ” in this 
 volume are, however, confined to his treatment of Objective 
 Spirit , as fully elaborated in a separate treatise, the Philoso- 
 phie des Rechts," which exhibits the free spirit as it actually 
 stands or lives as thinking will in the world. It is an exhi- 
 bition of spirit as objectified in the institutions of law, 
 the family, and the state, set between subjective spirit and 
 Absolute Spirit. Thus his Ethics start from the natural con- 
 dition of man, and lead on to man in his highest relations, 
 exhibiting the perfection of his spiritual character in the 
 realms of art, religion and philosophy, ■ — the three media 
 of perfect self-realization or of comprehension of his rela- 
 tions with the Absolute Spirit of whom and through whom 
 and to whom are all things. We shall note, in our criticism, 
 Hegel’s apparent failure to carry ethics up into this sphere 
 of the Absolute Spirit. 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 2 7 
 
 Hegel’s method is always that of beginning with the most 
 abstract phase of his topic and following through the imma- 
 nent self-criticism of one abstract phase to another until the 
 organic concept (. Begriff ) is reached, which is then seen to be 
 the real presupposition throughout, instead of being an in- 
 ductive result. His true first principle, his most concrete 
 statement, is scarcely perceptible in his first advances, but 
 it comes more and more clearly to light, as the immanent 
 and organic principle that lives in, through, and above all 
 the abstractions that strut dogmatically, aping the real. 
 Objections will be continually raised against the dogmatic 
 utterances of Hegel as to the earlier phases of right and 
 freedom, these being taken to represent his own full opinion 
 on the topic in hand. But he is only stating the various 
 dogmatic standpoints that have been, or may be, held on the 
 subject — the crude and imperfect opinions upon which he 
 is to let loose the dialectic fire to purge them of their dross. 
 “The will is absolutely free.” “The will wills the will and 
 always wills itself.” “The ‘Person’ (abstract) has the right 
 to put his will into everything and thereby make it his own.” 
 These and other examples will readily be noted by the 
 student. 
 
 Again he often speaks of the immature as the fully ripened, 
 of the acorn as an oak, the materials and plan as the ca- 
 thedral. But the one who reads him closely can generally 
 find how he guards against misunderstanding by means 
 of one of those many troublesome phrases noted in the 
 Vocabulary. The true way to read Hegel, in one sense, is 
 to read him backward — his end is his real beginning. 
 This, however, he always announces at the first in its poten- 
 tial form and then follows through its stages of realization. 
 His order, moreover, is always the logical one from the ab- 
 stract universal through the particular to the universalized 
 individual. In other words it does not follow the empirical 
 or historical order of the development of an institution. He 
 
28 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 starts with the concept of the will. A concept is relatively 
 a causa sui, a logically self-determining force, potentially 
 containing all the contradictory phases taken on in the 
 course of its self-revelation. Just how or when any of these 
 phases occur empirically is a matter of no consequence so 
 far as the science is concerned. It is a matter of greatest 
 consequence that they should thus occur and be the revela- 
 tion of the concept. But the chronological order of the 
 various empirical phases does not necessarily coincide with 
 the logical order of the concept. The speculative method is 
 to exhibit all these phases as inherently interrelated and as 
 the self-characterizations of the concept itself. The external 
 manifestation or history of a concept is generally a scene of 
 contingency. The speculative method takes and arranges 
 all these partial and miscellaneous forms in accordance with 
 the concept, stripping them of contingency and organizing 
 them into system ; thus exhibiting the rationality (the self- 
 developing concept) of their history. Thus we have the 
 real history of any institution, as Wallace says, “written, as 
 if it had been, in evanescent inks — dates are wanting — 
 individualities and their biographies yield up their place to 
 universal and timeless principles .” 1 
 
 This exposition of any concept is made by means of its own 
 dialectic. That is, the scientific method of Hegel is the 
 dialectical^ope. The dialectic is neither mere subjective 
 nor exTernal criticism. It is the immanent life of the con- 
 cept, criticising itself from lower to higher forms. Starting 
 from a dogmatic assertion of the undeveloped universal, we 
 see the dialectic gradually specifying, particularizing it and 
 successively transmuting each dogmatic particular form into 
 a higher form, until the abstract universal becomes fully 
 particularized, defined, realized — the concrete universal — 
 the individual or the concept itself. First we have the abstract 
 thesis, then the special antithesis and finally the full syn- 
 
 1 The Logic of Hegel, p. LXIII. 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 29 
 
 thesis, all of which is the self-realization of the concept. 
 The growth of the tree from the seed represents this inner 
 dialectic of the concept of a tree. 
 
 The process is not deductive or a priori , proceeding from 
 a first principle which remains valid and normative through- 
 out. It starts rather from an undeveloped first principle and 
 shows how inadequate it is, presupposing always a more con- 
 crete principle as its logical condition. This concrete prin- 
 ciple is at once the logical and the chronological presupposi- 
 tion. “In the beginning God (created).” /Th e dialectical 
 procedure is a retrograde movement from the abstract to the 
 concrete, from error to truth, from the dependent to the 
 infinite, the self-determining. That is, the procedure is always 
 towards the first principle which is ultimately seen to be the 
 true, the first and the final cause of the whole process. Each 
 higher stage is reached, not by a mechanical evolution from 
 the lower one, but by means of the imperfections and impli- 
 cations exhibited by the lower one. All nature, all life, all 
 thought, except Absolute Thought exhibits this immanent 
 dialectic.^ So much has already been written about this 
 dialectic method of Hegel that we need do no more here 
 than give one illustration from the text. 
 
 The first form of the ethical concept is the family — an 
 inclusive universal or unit. But soon the diversities or 
 distinctions of parents and children appear. A married 
 couple do not constitute a family. Children break in upon 
 this simple unity, and remain always children to their par- 
 ents. But they do not always remain children. They grow 
 to maturity, leave their parents’ roof and establish new 
 families. Family property is divided, the family broken up, 
 resolved into mutually independent individuals with various 
 interests, thus merging into the realm of civil society. Here 
 the particular interests of individuals jog and jostle each 
 other through civil relations till the ethical realm of an 
 organic nation is reached in which both family and civil 
 society are integrated, preserved and fulfilled. 
 
3 ° 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 Hegel’s Philosophie des Rechts may be called the doc- 
 trine of the will. The will is the man, and ethical man is 
 will realized in his social institutions. To reach this con- 
 ception, however, he starts with the most abstract conception 
 of will, which he takes as ready to hand. He divides the 
 whole work, as usual, into triadic form : 1 
 
 I. The will as immediate, undeveloped potentiality, which 
 gives the sphere of abstract or formal right. 
 
 II. The will self-reflected, or subjective individuality, op- 
 posed to objective will. This gives the sphere of Moralität , 
 or of conscience contra mundum. 
 
 III. The will as the unity and truth of these two abstract 
 phases, the realm of formal freedom and objective right 
 realized in the world. This gives the realm of Sittlichkeit , 
 or the ethical world, as the concrete realization of man as 
 will. This includes the sphere of (a) the family, ($) civil 
 society, ( c ) the State in the most concrete sense of the term, 
 such as Dr. Mulford construes “the Nation.” Under this 
 last he embraces (a) internal polity, (ß) external polity, 
 (y) international polity, merging into Universal History, as 
 the realization of man in the most cosmopolitan sense of 
 the term. 
 
 We give a translation of the larger half of this volume, 
 and here offer a brief and free exposition of its contents, 
 referring the student to the fuller and admirable exposition 
 given by Prof. Geo. S. Morris in his volume on “ Hegel’s 
 Philosophy of the State and of History.” We recommend 
 this volume as a companion book to this translation . 2 
 
 1 § 33 - Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Berlin, 1848. All 
 the references in this volume are to this later edition of the work. 
 
 2 It seems fitting that we should pay a brief tribute to the memory of 
 one of the chief philosophical teachers of America, the late Prof. Geo. 
 S. Morris, of whom the English quarterly, Mind, says : “ He had gained 
 a most enviable name and influence among philosophical students 
 and writers and teachers. There is every reason to regret deeply his 
 untimely death at the age of forty-eight.” He was the centre of a 
 deep religious and ethical influence extending far beyond the limits 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 3 1 
 
 The subject-matter of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right , or of 
 the State, is the human will, and thus it is essentially a 
 treatise on Ethics. But the will, as Hegel tells us (§ 4), 
 is a particular form of thought , — thought translating itself 
 into determinate being, thought as impulse to self-actual- 
 ization. The will, too, is essentially free. At first it is 
 only formally, potentially free. It is only through a long 
 series of mediations, — through many advances, retreats, 
 and ultimate conquests of itself in diverse and apparently 
 foreign forms, — that this, its essential nature, is realized. 
 Put in another way, the subject-matter is the human will, 
 as respects the relation of particular (private) to universal 
 (public, social) will of man, and ultimately of this universal 
 human will in relation to the absolutely universal Divine 
 will, though this latter belongs to the subsequent and 
 concluding portion of his Encyclopedia. 
 
 Cognition completed passes into practical activity. To 
 think or know an object is to create, determine and possess 
 an object ; but intelligence, which determines objects, is 
 will. It is spirit willing, or realizing itself. But will is 
 taken at first in its potential, undeveloped form, — will, as 
 it were, in the state of nature rather than in state of civili- 
 zation. It is rather the instinct of the needs and greeds 
 directed to the satisfaction of the individual ; it is poten- 
 
 of the University of Michigan. I quote the following from a private 
 letter of Prof. Williston S. Hough, of the University of Minnesota, a 
 former student of Dr. Morris, and, at the time of his death, his assist- 
 ant in Philosophy : — • 
 
 “At times he spoke almost as one inspired with the melodious rythm 
 of a poet and the illumination of rare philosophic insight. Yet the 
 chief source of his power was unquestionably his own character. He 
 will live in our thought as a remarkable exemplification of sweetness 
 and light. His loss to Philosophy in this country is great and twofold : 
 ist, as a teacher who would have inspired a genuine interest in Phi- 
 losophy in every student who came under him, and who would have 
 educated many special and useful scholars in this field ; and, 2d, as a 
 writer who doubtless had his greatest work still before him.” 
 
 A brief personal acquaintance more than confirmed the high estimate 
 formed of him from his books. 
 
32 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 tially universal, and yet has no content. Its aim is to have 
 only its fully realized self as content, and thus be free. To 
 reach this, however, it must descend into the realm of par- 
 ticularities, — into particular will, willing something. The 
 movement is from within outward ; but the movement, even 
 through the satisfaction of instinctive needs and greeds, is 
 from the pure self-reference of the individual as universal. 
 It is still abstract, formal, internal. Such a single will 
 Hegel denominates a person in the most abstract, formal 
 sense of the term. It is the first stage of the realization 
 of such formal personality that Hegel treats in his Part 
 First. 
 
 Abstract Right. 
 
 To be a person is, in one sense, the highest within human 
 , capacity. But, as used here, the term refers to a mere indi-. 
 vidual will maintaining its single right as universal. It is 
 the rude, uncultured man, stubbornly sticking for his will- 
 | fulness, while the true person has an eye for all sides and 
 ■relations of a complex social life. Such a will demands full 
 j sway for itself without having as yet conscientious aims or 
 I convictions. It is the right of such a person to cast his will 
 over every external thing, making it his own. Confronted 
 with other such wills, however, the formula of abstract rights 
 is “be a person and respect others as persons.” Hegel 
 warns us against putting into this formula all that it would 
 imply in an ethical, social state. Nothing like humaneness 
 is yet present. In such respect for others the person only 
 cares for himself. Such a “ person ” is nowhere to be found. 
 But the conception necessarily results from, and is the first 
 phase of, the abstract concept of will. Such a potential, 
 universal will, however, cannot remain utterly abstract. It 
 finds itself confronted by a world of external nature. The 
 alternative comes to succumb to this, or to rise and conquer 
 it and so to be free. Alles ist Ich. The world is by right 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 33 
 
 its oyster. It actualizes itself only by making the world: 
 to be really its oyster. Abstract will asserts itself against 
 its environment, lays its hand upon its rights. It thus 
 achieves objective existence and takes the first step towards 
 actualization. Things are soul-less, will-less, and the “ per- 
 son ” has the right to subject them all to his will, to put 
 his will into them, and thus achieve their true destiny. 
 
 Here appears the distinction between persons and things. \ 
 Things are rightfully a part or property of the person, and 
 become such through his act. Will is thus objectified in 
 property, and things cease to be mere things, and become 
 properties of the will through seizure, use and alienation. 
 Property is thus something rational, necessary and sacred. 
 First, the body of the person is thus made a possession 
 or property. Both body and soul (life) are taken possession 
 of, the will making them its instruments. 
 
 Hence, too, the sacredness of “person” or of one’s body 
 and life. The will being thus placed in them secures them 
 from slavery. Slavery can come only where one will not 
 maintain the rights of person and property to the death. 
 It depends upon each person’s will, whether he will be a 
 slave or not. If he prefers mere continuance of existence 
 to independence, he becomes the slave of the first person 
 who can make him his property. Slavery, in primitive 
 times, is rather a wrong suffered or chosen than a wrong- 
 done. I put my will in a thing, and make it an attribute 
 or property of myself. This involves the further rights of 
 using, consuming and alienating possessions. Will changes 
 things into properties. Thus the relation between things 
 becomes the relation between wills. Persons are related to 
 each other through their properties. They can hold property 
 only as they also respect each other’s property. 
 
 This is the sphere of contract. Property here comes to 
 be held through the will of others as well as through one’s 
 own will. Instead of one abstract will, we have several 
 
34 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 partially realized wills. The consent of other wills strength- 
 ens my property-rights. In .t his mammon will of contract the 
 abstract will of the mere individual or “ pers on ” att ains its 
 fir st stage of co n.cr.ele_Limversality. It is mediated by the 
 i w ill of some- Qtkers. 
 
 f But such a common will is still far from being that o f the 
 ■universa l will of s ociety. Its elements are accidental and 
 particular, and can give no guarantee of fulfilment. Frau d. 
 j vi olenc e and crim e are inevi table. In “crime” will violates 
 * itself: that is, violates itself as explicitly common will and as 
 implicitly universal will. The formal common will of con- 
 tract, considered as yet abstracted from the concrete uni- 
 versal will of ethical society, is sure to be violated. Penalty 
 follows this negation as the next step forward toward true 
 rights and the objectification of the universal will. Con- 
 j tract is a step forward, crim e a st ep backward, and pena lty 
 another advance in the relation of the particular will to 
 univers al wi ll, or in the self-realization of will as the science 
 jof-ethics. Penalty is the negation of the negation (crime), 
 j or a reaffirmation of the universal. The criminal really 
 commits the crime against himself as potentially universal 
 will. 
 
 Punishment springs from the conception of true will and 
 of justice. In the very will of the criminal lies the universal 
 which is to complete his crime in the penalty. This is an 
 act of justice to the criminal himself as well as to the com- 
 mon will. Punishment really honors the criminal — treats 
 him as a person, according to his universal element rather 
 than as a will-less thing. Theories of punishment on the 
 ground of the reformation or terrorization of the criminal, or 
 of the protection of society, do not duly respect the manhood 
 of the criminal. Punishment is only justice to the criminal 
 himself. The universal in him cries out, Give me my due, 
 let justice be done by having penalty complete my crime. 
 Penalty is but the reaction upon the criminal of his own 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 35 
 
 negative act. It is equally the act of his own will; it is his 
 own right. But in this as yet unorganized nnrl nnethi ralj 
 condition, where there is no valid universal will of society 
 to mediate between crime and penalty, we find punishmen t 
 in the form of revenge, mob-law and Judge Lynch. The I 
 common will of the abstract contract stage becomes again a 
 state of nature, an aggregate of at best only semi-civilized 
 Ishmaelites. Here retaliation becomes endless. Family- 
 feuds to the death in the sphere of organized society is but 
 a relapse to such barbarism. 
 
 True punishment is impossible without the mediation of 
 a true universal or ethical will of society. This demand 
 brings the judge, who is to be the disinterested repre- 
 sentative of the true will of man. As legal judge he is 
 to have no private views or feelings. He is simply to 
 wrong the wronger till he renders right. But as dispenser 
 of retributive justice, the judge appeals beyond the letter of 
 the law to an inward forum, to the universal will, and renders 
 decisions that must commend themselves to the conscience 
 of both criminal and society. 
 
 Property, contract and punishment are alike seen to 
 be impossible without the presence and mediation of a 
 relatively universalized or ethical will. Death or sjavery 
 can be the only logical issue to abstract will seeking its 
 abstract rig hts. With no other elements at work, such a 
 state of nature could never give rise to the institution 
 of the State. Some judge more just and universal must 
 be found. The demand is for a particular will which 
 can at the same time will the universal or the “infinite 
 subjectivity of freedom.” Such a will must reflect upon 
 itself, retire from mere objectivity to the internal forum. 
 This forum is that of Conscience. Here all externalities 
 are reflected and transformed into ideal principles of right 
 and wrong as regards all human actions. This phase Hegel 
 calls that of 
 
3 6 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 Morality (. Moralität ) or Abstract Duty. 
 
 In this sphere we have to do with man as a subjective 
 being rather than a merely formal “person.” Here person- 
 ality becomes inwardly reflected, exists for itself, and thus 
 of infinite worth. Here “person” becomes more personal 
 — becomes a “subject,” who is absolutely beyond any power, 
 which may commit violence against his objectified will 
 and person. Here, within, the will is absolutely its own 
 lord and master. The stand-point now is the right of the 
 subjective will. At first, however, this merely subjective 
 will is abstract, formal and limited. Hegel shows the pro- 
 cess from the most abstract form of this subjectivity 
 through the phases of (a) purpose and responsibility , ( b ) 
 intention and welfa>-e to (r) the good and conscience ,• where 
 abstract right is-translated into duty and virtue or good-will. 
 
 First, it is held that responsibility is only commensurate 
 with knowledge. Next, the quality of the will depends upon 
 the “intention” and its objective results, which are never 
 restricted to particular selfish ends. They must (thirdly) be 
 judged according to their universal worth. Hence “the 
 good” as the reconciliation of the particular subjective will 
 with the universal will, or with the rational. 
 
 The ideal here, in this third phase, is that of duty for 
 duty’s sake. The duty, however, is yet abstract. No con- 
 tent can be furnished by itself. The universal element is 
 merely formal, unspecified as to content, giving no answer 
 as to what one’s duty is in any situation, except the grand- 
 iloquent one of “do right though the heavens fall.” An 
 objective system of principles and duties, and the union of 
 the subjective knowledge with them, is plainly impossible 
 on this standpoint. 
 
 Hegel, here and elsewhere, makes, as we have said, 
 trenchant criticism of Kant’s doctrine of duty. This 
 formal law divorces duty from all interest or desire — a 
 psychological impossibility. It takes no cognizance of 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 37 
 
 the concrete situation and can suggest no present duty. 
 It cannot discriminate between particular actions sö as 
 to call one of them a duty. Finally, it must equally uni- 
 versalize all particular actions, and thus bring about con- 
 fusion and collisions. Only in view of the institution 
 of property in the State can it say, “Thou shalt not 
 steal.” In the abstract form of Kant it must equally say, 
 “Thou shalt steal.” That is, if we abstract all social rela- 
 tions, which ex hypothesi Kant does, we can universalize any 
 particular rule without contradiction. In the realm of the 
 concrete morality of social life, however, we cannot do this. 
 
 What will be the result of such an abstract subjective con- 
 ception of duty ? Plainly the individual must become the 
 law-giver and the judge of what is absolute good. He must 
 trust to his own private judgment without the mediation of 
 existing codes of society. He must give a purely subjective 
 individual determination of the content of the lofty but 
 formal universal. The individual becomes the measure of 
 the moral quality of objective actions. There is no public 
 source and standard for the guidance of private judgment. 
 
 Hegel does not neglect the important function of the duty 
 of private judgment, but is here only showing its capricious- 
 ness when taken out of the concrete relations of an ethical 
 world. Antinomianism is a logical and historical outcome 
 of such abstract private judgment, which runs riot and plays 
 the tyrant for lack of an objective concrete social system of 
 duties. It is the making of self a statesman to represent a 
 concrete state that ex hypothesi does not yet exist. The 
 eccentric is made the normal, the crooked the straight. 
 This elevation of the capricious individual subjective judg- 
 ment to be the measure and definition of the universal finally 
 results in the evil. “ The highest summit of subjectivity 
 asserting itself as the absolute is the bad ” (das Bösel) 
 It is at this abstract standpoint of the natural (unethicized) 
 will that he finds the origin of moral evil. 
 
38 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 While thus criticising this standpoint, Hegel does not 
 fail to render homage to Kant for having brought out 
 the significance of duty. But he shows how this standing 
 upon one’s own subjective insight and will eventuates 
 in the morally evil — in that which, being private and 
 particular, asserts itself as the universal — the sin of the 
 creature Satan usurping the throne of God. Here enters 
 antinomianism in all its forms. One’s own likings are 
 liable to become the norm of conduct. A clergyman 
 urging a man to do a certain duty was met with the reply, 
 “My conscience forbids me to do it.” In reply as to 
 how his conscience told him this he said, that he felt some- 
 thing thumping in his breast saying “/ won't , I won't." 
 Such a merely subjective norm dissolves all fixed and de- 
 finite laws of order and right. 
 
 Hegel says that he is not here treating of the religious 
 conscience, and also allows that in certain rotten stages 
 of society, as in the times of Socrates and the Stoics, this 
 concept of private judgment has its place and worth in the 
 work of reformation. But the subjective conscience which 
 dissolves all external forms of duty and retires within to 
 its own little Sinai is likely to make it a Mount Moriah, 
 for the sacrifice of the tenderest of human ties. 
 
 If subjective conviction, unenlightened by traditional and 
 current codes and institutions, insists upon its private views 
 as absolute, we have the destruction of all morality. The 
 highest summit of evil is extreme subjectivity asserting itself 
 as the absolute, the good — God, changing good into evil 
 and calling it good. Here delusion has equal right with 
 sound sense, and reason no longer has any right. 
 
 Hence we see that conscience at this stage cannot be true 
 or good conscience. This abstraction in turn demands as 
 its correlate that which it was called out to correct, — i. <?., 
 abstract personal right. In fact, these two abstractions must 
 be integrated into the concrete ethical substance from which 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 39 
 
 they have really been abstracted. We are only advancing, 
 prodigal-like, to the real home of morality, from which we 
 have violently torn ourselves away. We thus reach the 
 ethical ( sittliche ) world. 
 
 III. In this world of ethical ( sittliche ) relations of the 
 family, civil society, the state, and humanity, the idea of 
 freedom is realized as a “ living good that is powerful enough 
 to actualize itself” (§ 142). Here abstract rights b ecome 
 ethical and authorized rights, and abstract du ty bec omes 
 specific and full of content. Rrivaie—j^idgmeftt — becomes 
 
 rel atively universalize d, and the lofty, cold, and colorless 
 imperative becomes relatively incarnated in the hearts of a 
 brotherhood of men. 
 
 In his Phänomenologie des Geistes Hegel traces with a larger 
 and freer hand the dialectic of previous stages, under the 
 rubrics of “self-consciousness” and “reason,” and uses 
 that of “ spirit ” to designate what he, in the Philosophie des 
 Geistes, calls realized morality ( Sittlichkeit ). He there uses 
 
 the term “spirit” as equivalent to the corporate, social 
 “self-consciousness” and “reason,” which has had the 
 power to create the ethical world, into various grades of 
 which each individual is born, and through which he takes 
 form and content in the work of self-realization, or of 
 becoming a “person” in the truer sense of the term. 
 The laws of this world are his own laws. He must 
 fulfil them to realize himself. He finds them existing 
 for him, as the reason and law of his own specific nature as 
 man. 
 
 In fact, man is by nature a social animal. He is only 
 real __ as he is social. To be himself he must he mo re 
 tha n h is own abstract self ; to live his own life he must livej 
 the life of the bo dy corpo rate. On one hand, these laws of 
 soTTety~appear with even more authority than the laws of 
 nature. On the other hand, they are not foreign to him, 
 but yield to him the testimony of the spirit that they are 
 
40 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 his own} In accepting them he is not doing despite 
 to his own individuality, but is accepting the essential 
 conditions of its preservation and development. The 
 individuality of a man who, from infancy, should sever all 
 relations to his fellow-men and grow up “naturally” would 
 be an idiot, — even lower than the animals with which he 
 might consort. 
 
 Society is really creative of individuality. The en- 
 lightenment and regulation of the subjective conscience 
 by the laws and duties of one’s station clothes its 
 nakedness with the garments of truth and beauty. The 
 largest altruism demanded by them is, essentially, the 
 largest possible egoism. Through it the individual elevates 
 himself from capricious lawlessness into substantial freedom 
 and personality. Living for others is the highest form of 
 1 living for self. 
 
 Hegel also uses the term substance to characterize the 
 ethical tissue into which man is born. The moral dis- 
 position of the individual consists in his recognition of this 
 substance as his own} 
 
 Virtue he defines as ethical personality ( sittliche Persön- 
 li dike it), or the life of the individual permeated and trans- 
 formed by the ethical substance. Here duties and rights 
 first exist, and that only through reciprocal relation. Here 
 the natural man is gradually converted into the ethical man. 
 This ethical substance is an immanent and determining 
 principle of action which permeates and transforms the 
 natural man, ■ — acts as a moulding power through the 
 family, and the social, civil, religious, educational, and 
 political organizations. These various institutions of society 
 are the realized objective form of the ethical substance, in 
 the fruition of its own being. 8 
 
 1 Philosophie des Rechts, §§ 146, 147. 
 
 2 Philosophie des Geistes, 4 } 5 1 2 5 - 
 
 8 Professor F. H. Bradley has, I believe, given a thoroughly unique 
 exposition of Hegel’s dialectic through these phases of morality, in his 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 4i 
 
 Hegel notes three phases of this ethica l worl d. — 
 
 ( 1 ) Th e, family as the p rimitive form-of -this ethic al spirit . 
 
 (2) Civil socie ty, which results fro m the separa tion of t he 
 members of familiesTmcTtheir being reunited again in more 
 external form for the security of person and property, in a 
 realm of merely formal universality. 
 
 (3) T he State, or th e inv isible spirit of the nation , developed 
 to an organic, reality in the hearts and customs and genius 
 of -its people. 
 
 1. The individual first comes to tiitnself in the family, 
 whose active prfricijHeHsTove, which transcends and includes 
 its members in its unit y. The family is the first or instinc- 
 tive realization of the ethical spirit. It exists not by con- 
 tract but b y the grace o£ God. The union of love and trust 
 in this circle forms its organizing and controlling principle, 
 so that in it the individual members find a measurable fulfil- 
 ment of their own capacities. The family, too, is a process 
 involving, — 
 
 (a) Marriage ; 
 
 (b) Family property ; 
 
 (c) The education of children to maturity, and the separa- 
 tion of its members. 
 
 (a) Marriage is a transformed physical union of male and 
 female. The animal phase is transfigured by love into a 
 spiritual one. Marriage implies the free consent of the two 
 persons to constitute henceforth one person, to submit to 
 limitations in order to gain fuller self-realization. The hus- 
 band is more of a man than the bachelor. Hence it is an 
 ethical duty of mankind to enter into and m aintain the mar- 
 riage relation. The marriage bond is essentially a spiritual 
 relation, in which individuals subjugate their private aims 
 
 Ethical Studies , which, however, is unfortunately of avail only to the 
 few who happen to possess a copy of this “out of print” book. Many 
 would gladly buy, borrow, or even steal this desirable volume. I never 
 succeeded in more than stealing a hasty reading of it. It ought to be 
 reprinted. 
 
42 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 and wishes to the law of, at least, a dual life, love, and good. 
 Hence marriage, too, is more than a contract. For contract 
 implies that the parties still retain their external independ- 
 ence. Hegel says that Kant’s subsumption of marriage 
 under contract “is scandalous.” Marriage is rather the 
 contract of a man and woman to pass, as husband and wife, 
 out of and above the sphere of contract. In marriage the 
 twain are to become one flesh, one heart, one mind, one 
 person. Hence the marriage ceremony should be one of 
 social and religious celebration. The cold formalism of 
 mere civil contract before a justice of the peace is utterly 
 inadequate to manifest and declare such a spiritual relation. 
 Marriage is of both ethical and intellectual influence upon 
 the parties. They have larger views of life and a common 
 good as their aim. Marriage, too, is essentially monogamic. 
 This is one of the absolute principles on which the ethical 
 character of a social state rests. Marriage between blood- 
 relations is also unethical. The family, as a single person- 
 ality, has its external reality in its family property. 
 
 (/;) It is of the essence of. Tamily. property that it b e com- 
 mon property. This gives pr operty an ethical value wh ich 
 we could not find for it under the category of “ abstract 
 right.” The thought of a common good animates all in 
 the acquisition and maintenance of family possessions, thus 
 relatively overcoming the “miserable aims that end with self.” 
 
 (r) The education of children to maturity. 
 
 Children comp le te the family__circle. In and through 
 them the unity of married love comes to external manifesta- 
 tion. In loving the offspring of their love, the parents love 
 each other anew. The rights and duties of parents and 
 children spring out of the common good of the family. Con- 
 fidence and obedience are educed in the children, that they 
 may grow up in love in the family ethos. The slave-like 
 relation of children to parents among the Romans was of 
 the most disastrous influence. The modern world recognizes 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 43 
 
 that children are, potentially, free spiritual beings, whom thq 1 
 family is to train for citizenship in a larger ethical sphere.- 
 Families multiply, parents die, and children grow up, and 
 we have a multitude of separate persons again, though of 
 more concrete and ethical content than under the category 
 of “abstract right.” Here the elements of individualism 
 and independence appear again, in higher form, with differ- 
 ing and conflicting interests. The first phase of a return to 
 a higher ethical unity is in the form of 
 
 2. Civil society, or the realm of armed peace among now 
 semi-tutored Ishmaelites, bound together, through their 
 wants, by contract, for defence against each other. Hegel 
 declines to name this other than “ the state on its external 
 side,” or government. In this realm of “ particularity,” or, 
 as he elsewhere calls it, “ system of atomism of self-interest,” 1 
 each private atomistic person makes himself an end and 
 uses everything else as a means. Law, the abstract univer- 
 sal element, is here only a mechanical means to prevent 
 internecine warfare. It is a task-master to be eluded by 
 every means, and yet serves the pedagogic purpose of dis- 
 ciplining caprice into formal unity. Absolute individualism 
 would be civil anarchy. The individual must contract to 
 limit himself by some outward form of universality, in order 
 to exist. Through this he learns that his own good can 
 only come through the good of all, and comes to recognize 
 that the concrete state is the good and true for him on 
 earth, without the immanent life of which in civil society 
 government could not exist. But to reach_ t his recognition 
 of a common corporate good as each one’s own good, civil 
 society passes through three phases. 
 
 fa) The sj^stem of w ants, including labor, wealth, and 
 classes of society. 
 
 ' The administration of justice, including legal rights, 
 public laws, and courts of justice. 
 
 1 Philosophie des Geistes, § 523. 
 
44 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 *(/) - The sp here of policc regulation , in its broadest sense, 
 and that of incorporated companies under legal sanction. 
 
 Hegel gives an elaborate treatment of these phases, con- 
 tinuously demonstrating that each one presupposes and 
 actually rests upon the larger ethical organization of man 
 in the Nation, or the spiritual State. Through the mainte- 
 nance of the sanctity of marriage, and of honor in corpora- 
 tions, civil society passes over into the Nation, in which 
 all the previous abstract phases are taken up as organic 
 elements. 
 
 3. The Nation or the invisible State. 
 
 Hegel’s lofty and profound conception of the State, as 
 the highest realization of the will in its substantial freedom, 
 is, happily, too well known to need lengthy exposition. Dr. 
 Mulford thoroughly assimilated, appreciated, and American- 
 ized this conception of “The Nation” as “a moral organ- 
 ism” and “a moral personality,” rooted in human nature, 
 which is rooted in the Divine nature, and of Divine origin 
 and sanction; the sphere for the “institution ” and the “real- 
 ization of rights and of freedom”; “sovereign” and repre- 
 sentative of the individual, the family, society, civil rights, 
 and the commonwealth; immanent in and vitalizing all these 
 spheres; “a temple whose building is of living stones,” a 
 body, in and through which alone individuals can get the 
 form and content of personality; “the work of God in his- 
 tory, realizing the moral order of the world”; “fulfilling 
 humanity in God ” ; “ the beginning and the goal of history ” ; 
 “having an immortal life,” and “its consummation in the 
 perfected kingdom of the Christ.” 
 
 With Hegel, the State is the ethical concept, actualized in 
 progressively more adequate form, the moral life of humanity 
 throbbing through and integrating all the activity of its 
 individuals. 
 
 “The State is the self-conscious ethical ( sittliche ) sub- 
 stance, the union of the principle of the family and of civil 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 45 
 
 society. In the family this principle exists as the feeling 
 of love. This immediate , but essential principle, however, 
 receives the form of self-conscious universality through the 
 second principle, which contains the elements of knowledge 
 and will, or thinking will. Thus the State appears, having ! 
 for its content and absolute aim intelligent subjectivity, 
 developed into rationality.” 1 The State is the actuality of 
 the substantial will, the vital union of the particular interest 
 of its members with the relatively universal aims of man 
 as man. 
 
 Neither the family nor civil society is commensurate with\ 
 such realization of individuals, though in both of these 
 spheres a beginning is made from single to universal aims. 
 This larger — the largest earthly — sphere takes up and ful- 
 fils all narrower ones. The State is universal or public^ 
 reason, existing unreflectingly in the genius or spirit of its 
 people, and objectively in its customs and institutions. 
 
 Membership in this m oral organism is the highest duty. 
 
 It is the ethical substance in which alone one can be him- 
 self. All that he says about the State can be questioned 
 only by confounding it, as many modern theorists do, with 
 “civil society” as the mechanical expedient for the security 
 of private rights and liberty. Herbert Spencer’s conception 
 is, essentially, only a more developed form of that of The 
 Leviathan of Hobbes. Rousseau’s volonte generale also 
 lacked corporate sovereignty, because it represented only 
 an abstraction and contract of particular wills, as a means. 
 
 The corporate will, however, is the primal essential 
 element in Hegel’s conception of the State. It is the true 
 end of man on earth, an end that realizes itself in and 
 through its self-conscious members. The concept of the 
 State is itself a process, having (a) immediate actuality in 
 the particular state, — an independent organism, with its 
 own constitution or internal polity ( Staatsrecht ) ; passing 
 
 1 Philosophie des Geistes , § 535 . 
 
46 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 {b') into the relation of one State to other States, — external 
 polity ; and finally (e) appearing as the universal or generic 
 concept, as lord over particular States. It is thus the fullest 
 earthly manifestation of man as spirit, actualizing itself in 
 the process of universal history. 
 
 (a) Internal polity. 
 
 The State, as actualized concrete freedom, not only per- 
 mits, but creates and contains, as vital members, individual 
 personalities. “ The prodigious strength and depth of 
 modern States springs from their giving the principle of 
 subjectivity, or private personality, the most extreme and 
 independent development, while at the same time reducing 
 this element into substantial unity with, and making it a 
 means for, the realization of their own generic end.” 
 
 The principle of the worth of the individual, he says, 
 “ marks the turning-point in the distinction of modern and 
 ancient times. Christianity first emphasized this principle 
 and made it the vital principle of a new form of the world.” 
 Hence he must never be understood as slighting this element 
 in his larger doctrine of the State, though this appears to 
 approach very nearly the ancient doctrine, which swamped 
 the individual in the State. It is only- the inane perversion 
 of this Christian principle of subjectivity that he criticises. 
 
 / Though the State may appear as an external power, it is 
 /really but the rational expression of the corporate will of 
 individuals. In the State, rights and duties are in reciprocal 
 relation. “This union of duty and right is one of the most 
 important notes of the State and the inner ground of its 
 strength. The individual in accomplishing his duty finds 
 self-satisfaction. From his relation to the State there springs 
 a right, so that the public affair becomes his own affair.” 
 Through the disposition and eöos of its people, mere govern- 
 ment is changed to ethical and substantial self-government, 
 and is thus the actualization of concrete freedom. The 
 universal element in the laws and institution of the State 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 47 
 
 are simply the reflexive expression of the ethical spirit of 
 its people. “ They are the reason of the Nation, developed 
 and actualized in particular forms, and thus the steadfast 
 basis of the State and of the genial confidence of its citizens.” 
 
 “ The guarantee of a constitution — i. e. the necessity that 
 the laws be reasonable and their realization secured — lies 
 in the spirit of the people as a whole,- — that is, in their 
 definite self-consciousness of its reason (religion being this 
 consciousness in its absolute substantiality), and also in the 
 real organization, conformable to it as a development of that 
 principle. The constitution presupposes this consciousness 
 of the national spirit, as this spirit presupposes the constitu- 
 tion. For the actual spirit has the definite consciousness of 
 its principles only so far as they are present to it as exist- 
 ing ” ( Philosophie des Geistes, § 540). The people make their 
 own constitution. 
 
 But religion forms a most important factor in the spirit of 
 a people. Hegel says frankly that religion is the foundation 
 of the State, which “ is the Divine will unfolding itself in the 
 actual organization of a people.” Religion has the absolute 
 truth for its content, creating the most powerful and lofty 
 temper of a people, and thus affording the highest approba- 
 tion and sovereignty to the laws of the State. But when 
 religion degenerates into fanaticism, and tries to make the 
 State a church-state, it needs to be curbed. Thus church 
 organizations, like other societies, are subordinate to the 
 State. Still, the religious sentiment of a people is so con- 
 trolling, that it is only “a folly of modern times to alter a 
 system of corrupt morality and laws without a change in 
 religion, to attempt a political revolution without a religious 
 reformation." 
 
 The religious faith should be left free, because the 
 sphere of religion is higher than that of politics. Its 
 peculiar task is the fostering of lofty ideals and the 
 cultivation of the conscience. But when religion takes the 
 
4 8 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 form of separate organizations within the State, dissenting 
 from its social and ethical regulations, it must be subordi- 
 nated to the ethical supervision of the State. These cannot 
 be permitted to foster opinions absolutely alien, or opposed 
 to, the constitution, as expressing the corporate genius of its 
 people, or to treat the State as a soulless, Godless mechanism, 
 instead of an ethical expression of the freedom of God’s 
 children. 
 
 Modern States base their constitutions on the principle 
 of freedom. Want of freedom in religion, or an unethical 
 conception of God, will be found hostile to such constitu- 
 tions. Hence Hegel gave the political preference to 
 Protestantism, because it inculcates that freedom of thought 
 and of conscience which harmonizes with the principle of 
 free political life. 
 
 Hegel was accused of deifying the State, because he saw 
 in it more than a police mechanism, a military bureaucracy, 
 tyrannizing its citizens. He saw in it the life of the spirit 
 of its people, realizing its destiny with vital freedom. He 
 did not make it absolute, as he recognized no finality in any 
 secular institutions, and proclaimed the spheres of art, 
 religion, and science (in its broadest sense) as higher than 
 that of politics, for the free cultivation of which the State 
 should be most solicitous. 
 
 He held that the possession of a religious disposition 
 by its people was most essential to the welfare of a State, 
 springing from and exalting them, as it does, into direct 
 relation with God. The real substance of morality and 
 the State is religion. They rest upon the religious dis- 
 position of its people. It is fatal to both religion and 
 the State to foster two kinds of conscience. The State 
 must see to it that religion is fostered. The Divine 
 Spirit must immanently permeate the whole sphere of 
 the secular, “Principles of lawful freedom can only be 
 abstract and superficial, and the State institutions derived 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 49 
 
 from them must of themselves be untenable if the wisdom 
 which gave birth to those principles understands religion so 
 poorly as not to recognize that they have their final and 
 highest guarantee in the religious consciousness.” 
 
 Hegel thus would have the customary, the current habits, 
 laws and institutions of a State, vitalized and conserved by 
 the moral and religious disposition of its people. To recur 
 again 1 to the significance of his term ethical ( sittlich ), we 
 may reaffirm that it means far more than the mere observ- 
 ance of conventional customs. It is rather the vital union 
 of £0os and 7 rd#os. The pathos, as active emotion, has 
 externalized itself in customs and institutions, but does not 
 therefore cease to act. It continues to be the active element 
 in the observance of its own customs. This ethical world 
 includes the national manners, customs, laws, and institu- 
 tions in which the freedom and rationality of the communal 
 spirit has embodied itself. Family, state, school, church, 
 social, scientific, and literary circles are all manifestations 
 of this free spirit of man in its struggle for self-realization. 
 They are the forms of substantial freedom which exist, in 
 some degree, in the lowest form of society. They are con- 
 ventionally recognized forms of “the good,” which alone 
 enable one to specify the categorical imperative. They are 
 more : they are the self-specifications of the communal 
 spirit seeking to be good, — the outcome of the Moralität 
 of the social soul, — the good or moral manners springing 
 from its relative rationality and freedom. Conscience has 
 had some might, and has, to some extent, formed and ruled 
 the ethical world. It has had might enough to form deca- 
 logues in all the circles of social activity. The community 
 has an insight or conviction, and organizes it into a law or 
 an institution, and thus makes its free spirit substantial. 
 The ethical will of any people is thus relatively self-realized. 
 It thus enacts itself and specifies what its “common good” 
 
 1 Cf pp. n-13. 
 
5 ° 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 consists in. The individual, asking what good he must do, 
 finds here his first definite answer. He is not put to the 
 impossible task of framing a morality for himself, but is born 
 into the obligation of entering into, sustaining, and further- 
 ing the moral world into which he is born as a member. His 
 private judgment must thus be based upon a public -source 
 and standard. Hence Hegel says, “The striving for a mo- 
 rality of one’s own is futile, and by its very nature impossible 
 of attainment ; in regard to morality, the saying of the wisest 
 man of antiquity is the only true one, ■ — to be moral is to live 
 in accordance with the moral traditions of one’s country.” 1 
 The Indian of any tribe is a more moral man for being a 
 loyal tribal man than he would be if he ignored all tribal 
 and domestic relations. No absolutely bad ( sittenlos ) man 
 can exist. Such isolation would be instantaneous suicide. 
 Homer thus ridiculed the idea of such a being or thing : 
 
 “No tribe, nor state, nor home hath he.” 
 
 Even the babe in his cradle and Simon on his pillar and 
 Crusoe on his island have their substantial worth through 
 past or present relation to a social tissue. No one, any 
 more than Hamlet, creates his own duties. Every one is 
 born into an objective, ethical world. His only task is to 
 realize himself by fulfilling these objective duties of his 
 station. But does this not land us in a Chinese state of 
 immobile conservatism? Does this not imply that the cus- 
 tomary is the ultimate, that the existing status of our ethical 
 circle is identical with the ideal, or the “is” with the 
 “ought to be”? Certainly this is not the doctrine of 
 Hegel as to the progressive consciousness and realization 
 of freedom. Loyalty to conventional morality is only a 
 prerequisite to reflective conscientiousness, which asks and 
 strives after better forms of social self-realization. Hegel 
 recognizes no finality in temporal institutions. He sets or 
 
 1 Hegel’s Werke , vol. i. p. ^oo. 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 Si 
 
 sees the negative dialectic always and everywhere at work 
 criticising, overturning, and reforming the ethical world in 
 its progress into the absolute spirit, — the realm of art, 
 religion, and philosophy, in which alone complete self-reali- 
 zation is possible to the human spirit. Here Hegel’s doc- 
 trine of the development of “the moral Ideal” is in place. 
 This has been thoroughly worked out for the individual in 
 Green’s Prolegoinena to Ethics , and for the race in Hegel’s 
 Philosophy of History. For the individual, in the lowest 
 stage of his social (and actual) life, there is a common good 
 already realized, into whose inheritance he enters. Loyalty 
 to this fosters conscientiousness which leads to reform. 
 Progress, while an advance upon the customary morality, 
 is not a product of mere private conscience, but is the out- 
 growth of the ideal embodied in the conventional forms, 
 which come to be more and more fulfilled in higher forms 
 and richer content. 
 
 Finality means sterility in morals as well as in all other 
 spheres. Hegel gives ample recognition of this element 
 of conscientiousness, or the principle of subjective free- 
 dom, announced first by Socrates and given its infinite 
 worth by Christ, so as to be really creative of the modern 
 ethical world in distinction from that of the ancient, which 
 mechanically subjugated the individual to the tyranny of 
 his social environment. His ethical world absorbs and 
 demands the constant activity of this element of consci- 
 entiousness, as the necessary dynamic in the progress of 
 social man into the consciousness and realization of free- 
 dom. In the course of its activity it passes through many 
 phases, rational and irrational. He shows the course of its 
 own dialectic in his Phänomenologie des Geistes , of which Dr. 
 Harris has given an excellent expository resume in his 
 Hegel’s Logic. 
 
 Any single State, however, like an isolated man, is imper- 
 fect and incomplete. Its realization demands neighborly, 
 
5 2 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 social relations with and recognition by other States. In- 
 ternational comity is a high ethical form, but is always 
 limited by the national spirit of the various States. The 
 will of man is not fully realized in any one State or federa- 
 tion of States. Hence we must turn to Universal History, 
 to see the fullest and most specialized forms of its develop- 
 ment. The world-spirit, as the most concrete expression of 
 universal human will, comes to view through the dialectic 
 of the various national spirits in Universal History. This 
 world-spirit appears in the world-history as the judgment of 
 the world — the verdict of this spirit upon the validity of 
 what is contributed by each nation. 
 
 In his Philosophy of History, he shows how the successive 
 ethical institutions and ideals are developed for man uni- 
 versal through nations as individuals. In the progress of 
 man into the consciousness and realization of substantial 
 freedom, the drama of self-education under divine teaching 
 proceeds by fixed steps. The Oriental nations knew that 
 one — the despot — was free. In Greece and Rome indi- 
 vidualities are developed, and some become conscious of 
 their freedom. Finally, with the Germanic world, under the 
 inspiration of a reformed Christianity, maturity is reached, 
 and it is known that all men (man as man) are free. Through- 
 out this drama of history there is, however, the guiding 
 hand of Providence. Nations may fret and toil and advance, 
 ri^e, ripen, and rot, but the drama continues its teleological 
 progress towards the attainment of the spiritual freedom of 
 man in conscious God-sonship, because of the immanent 
 Providence who always rules and transcends all the acts of 
 the drama. Hegel sees one increasing purpose run through 
 the ages because he sees God in history. Man proposes 
 and God disposes, making even the wrath of man to praise 
 him. His guidance is not arbitrary or artificial, but remains 
 the unchanging condition of all human endeavor at self- 
 realization. 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 53 
 
 The visible result, the progressive realization of freedom 
 by man, affords the “ true theodicy, the justification of God 
 in history.” Such is the triumphant conclusion of his 
 Philosophy of History. 
 
 And this affords us an answer to a question that forces 
 itself upon us in studying Hegel’s ethics. Does he carry 
 ethics up into the sphere of absolute spirit as he does art, 
 religion, and philosophy ; or does he leave them below in 
 the objective world? Are they merely “secular ethics,” 
 or does he give a metaphysic of ethics which enswathes, 
 permeates, and elevates them to the sphere of absolute 
 spirit ? We answer no and yes. 
 
 No ! He did not formally treat of the science of absolute 
 ethics ( Sittlichkeit ). He did not formally develop the science 
 of the metaphysic of ethics. He did not formally carry it 
 over into the realm of absolute spirit along with art, religion, 
 and philosophy. But neither did he ever proclaim any form of 
 ethical life as ultimate. No State ever exhausted the ethical 
 capacity of man. Universal history, too, is seen to be an 
 ever-tending and never-ending process towards the perfection 
 of man. To know and to be himself, is the constant endea- 
 vor of man that Hegel traces in his Philosophy of History. 
 But note that it is never man apart from God, that makes 
 any progress. The all-animating cause of progress is the 
 immanent divine spirit, and every step forward is really pos- 
 sible only through this Divine metaphysic of the all knowing 
 and doing. 
 
 Yes ! Hegel throughout all his works is laboring to bring 
 this Divine metaphysics to men’s conscious recognition, 
 in which alone, he maintains, can men and States find their 
 proper realization. 
 
 In speaking of the Idealität (the state of being reduced 
 from independence to a factor or member) of ethics he says : 1 
 u Idealität, as such, must receive a pure absolute form, which 
 
 1 Hegel’s Werke, Band I., 400. 
 
54 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 is to be intuited and reverenced as the God of the Nation. 
 This, too, can only have its joyous activity in a cult or form 
 of worship.” Again, in speaking of the limits of ethicality , 
 he says : 1 “It cannot flee for its fulfilment to the formless- 
 ness of cosmopolitanism, nor to the emptiness of the rights 
 of humanity or of a republic of nations. The richest and 
 most free individuality is only possible in relation to the 
 Absolute Idea." 
 
 In his Philosophie des Geistes , 2 in speaking of this ele- 
 vation of the moralized consciousness to the knowledge 
 of God, he says that Kant’s starting-point at least is most 
 correct in so far as he considers faith in God as proceeding 
 from the Practical Reason, as the true nature of God is 
 active, working reason, i. e., the self-determining and realizing 
 concept itself — Freedom. . . . True religion and true re- 
 ligiosity proceed from ethicality. Through this alone is the 
 Idea of God known as Free Spirit. It is vain to seek for 
 true religion outside of ethicality.” 
 
 It is needless to multiply quotations, for the latter part 
 of Hegel’s Encyclopedia treats of this relation to the Absolute 
 Spirit under the rubrics of the Beautiful , the Good and the 
 True , each of which he afterwards elaborated in separate 
 treatises. God is the alpha and the omega of all human 
 knowledge and experience. Ethics is the course of the 
 realization of the potentially universal will of man. Real- 
 ized to the fullest extent in secular relations, it still strives 
 after its infinite ideal. No community or State affords its 
 adequate realization. It runs up into the ideal humanity 
 in God. The State as “ the terrestrial God ” and the World- 
 Spirit are not yet the Spirit of the Universe, not yet God. 
 The perpetual struggle of morality merges into the religion 
 of at-one-ment with God. Here the process of self-realiza- 
 tion is perfect through faith. Religion is essentially ethical 
 — a self-realization of the infinite self. Reference may here 
 
 1 Hegel’s Werke, Hand I., 422. 
 
 8 55 2 - 
 
EXPOSITION. 
 
 55 
 
 be made to Principal Caird’s chapter on “ The Religious 
 Life ,” 1 where he elaborates in a most beautiful way Hegel’s 
 profound conception as to the relation of morality and 
 religion. 
 
 In his Phänomenologie , Hegel makes the transition from 
 ethics to religion through the act of the forgiveness of the 
 wicked. This negation of a negation is the mind’s majestic 
 act in ascending from the sphere of the finite and relative 
 to its native home with Absolute Spirit. This is the sphere 
 of religion, where all the discords and failures of the 
 ethical sphere are transcended and transmuted by the spirit’s 
 union with God. Thus the ethical consciousness rests upon 
 and is possible only through its relation of dependence upon 
 religion as its own higher form. 
 
 Ethical man, in his most comprehensive and ripest earthly 
 relations, is not a little god by himself. Self-realization is 
 impossible even in the widest ethical ( sittliche ) institutions. 
 Personality can only approximate realization in conscious 
 relation with the Absolute Personality. Thus ethics, as the 
 science of man, reaches its highest form in Christian ethics, 
 ■ — that is, in that form and spirit of life congruous with the 
 Christian conception of man. “ The measure of the stature 
 of the fulness of Christ” is the norm of man’s self-realiza- 
 tion. The Christian “secularization of morals” means the 
 realization of the kingdom of God on earth. Any lower 
 view really dehumanizes man in abstracting him from all 
 that is most essential and substantial. The new birth into 
 Christ and his kingdom is the absolutely essential condi- 
 tion of a normal ethical life on earth. To live aright one 
 must love aright, for what one loves he lives. Hence 
 Christian love is the all-comprehensive activity, which 
 is the condition of ethical life in the individual and 
 society. 
 
 1 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, by John Caird, 
 D.D., chap. IX. 
 
5 6 
 
 EXPOSITION. 
 
 In nil ethical ( sittliche ) spheres man is relatively realizing 
 himself under the “disposing” of God, however he himself 
 may “propose.” Thus we see Hegel finding a relative self- 
 realization of man in the family, which is organic to a larger 
 life in society. In the State the same process goes on, and 
 transition is made to the larger life of self-realization in 
 “universal history.” 
 
 But universal history again is seen to manifest the inade- 
 quateness of attainment, and becomes organic to the perfect 
 consummation of man in the discovery and adoption of the 
 revealed will of God as the absolute standard of an ethical 
 life, so that man becomes consciously a child of God and 
 a co-worker with him. This insight attained, the process 
 begins of living anew and aright in all the established ethical 
 institutions, of imbuing the secular with the divine, of secu- 
 larizing the divine, of the maintenance of the kingdom of 
 God on earth through domestic, social, civil, political, and 
 religious institutions. 
 
 The Christian banner is the final banner of free spirit, 
 recognizing its own work in the so-called secular institutions 
 which it creates and animates. All these Hegel declares 
 to be “ nothing else than religion manifesting itself in the 
 relations of the actual world.” “The Gospel in the Secular 
 life ” expresses, in brief, Hegel's ultimate conception of 
 ethics. “The spirit finds the goal of its struggle, and its 
 harmonization in that very sphere which it (as mediaeval 
 ecclesiasticism) made the object of its resistance ; it finds 
 that secular pursuits are a spiritual occupation ( Philosophy 
 of History , p. 369). 
 
 That which vitalizes and moralizes each one of these 
 secular spheres, that which is their constant presupposition 
 and life — their metaphysic — is the life of God in the mind 
 and heart of social man, guiding, luring, and impelling him on 
 to self-realization in the sustaining environment of spiritual, 
 substantial freedom, — the republic of God. Thus Hegel 
 
KE V- WORDS. 
 
 57 
 
 finds ethics to be not an abstract decalogue falling straight 
 from heaven, but rather a slowly-worked-out process of the 
 heavenly in the earthly sphere, ft is the kingdom of God 
 coming, and His universal will being done on earth as it is 
 in heaven. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Key-words. 
 
 German Wörterbücher are of very little service in translating 
 Hegel. He uses even ordinary terms in an extraordinary 
 or technical sense ; but he does this consistently. His 
 terms are not only pregnant, but they also have thoroughly 
 definite significance, and thus enable him to put his philos- 
 ophy in dry scientific form. Hence it demands the sort of 
 reading that one would give to Newton’s Prmcipia or 
 Spinoza’s Ethica. 
 
 The mastery of these key-words in English will greatly 
 facilitate, indeed, is indispensable to the understanding of 
 his thought. We therefore give the following list of them 
 with the translations which we have quite uniformly followed 
 in this volume : 
 
 Abstrakt — Concxet. These two terms represent the be- 
 ginning and the end of every concept , institution, or thing 
 that Hegel treats of ; that is, he first treats it as abstracted 
 from all connexion with environing context. But as viewed, 
 it gradually demands and attains all its proper relations. 
 It becomes a self-developed and self-developing process, 
 assimilating all that it comes into relation with, and thus is 
 concrete. 
 
 An sich , für sich, and an und für sich are, however, much 
 more frequently used by Hegel to express somewhat the 
 same states or phases of an object, concept, person, or in- 
 stitution. Any one of these is an sich when it is still in the 
 germ, merely implicit or potential, latent or undeveloped ; 
 
KEY-WORDS. 
 
 58 
 
 not only in germ, but also closed up in itself against all 
 vital interconnexion with its context, and thus abstract. It 
 becomes für sich when its germ is developed, when it be- 
 comes explicit and actual. But further it becomes an und 
 für sich when its individuality has become completely uni- 
 versalized, or when its latent universality has been com- 
 pletely specified, and its relations to all its context realized 
 through its own self-activity. It is thus the concrete, the 
 absolute, the independent, through having absorbed all 
 limits into self-characterizing properties. 
 
 Besonderheit (particularity) is an intermediate between 
 Allgemeinheit (universality) and Einzelheit (individuality). 
 The abstract, potential universal is more and more particu- 
 larized, till self-specification is completed in the concrete 
 individual. 
 
 Aufheben— setzen. — These two terms express the activity 
 in this process from the abstract through the particular 
 to the concrete. Setzen is to posit, particularize, specify, 
 explicitly state the ideal elements' in the an sich stage and 
 thus to raise it to the für sich stage. But each one of the 
 various specifications is in turn posited as absolute and 
 final. Hence there could never be more than one made 
 (gesetzt), posited, without the concomitant, or, rather, the 
 following of the activity expressed by the term auf heben. 
 This term, as Hegel tells us (Logic, § 96), has the double 
 signification of “(1) to destroy or annul; (2) to retain or 
 preserve.” Thus the Gospel abrogates, annuls the Law and 
 yet fulfils it, retains it in transmuted form as an element 
 (moment) of itself. 
 
 Moment. — Phase, element, factor of a whole. What has 
 been specified as a Besonderheit, as für sich is aufgehoben to 
 a moment or organic element of a larger unity. Its inde- 
 pendence (für sich) is destroyed, and yet it is preserved as 
 an integral element. Its isolated reality is annulled (aufge- 
 hoben) through its being preserved as a dynamic factor in a 
 
KE V- WORDS. 
 
 59 
 
 more concrete unity. The acid and base are aufgehoben in 
 the salt. Hegel also uses the term Idealität as opposed to 
 Realität to express the same relation. Realität is the 
 explicit, specified form — the für sich of Particularität. 
 This is reduced to its Idealität or to being an ideal ( ideell ) 
 moment, or dynamic factor. 
 
 Begriff. — I have used the term concept in place of idea, 
 or of the barbarous term notion, as the best translation of 
 Begriff — a gripping together, comprehension, concept ( con - 
 cipio). This is the key-word to Hegel. He uses it to 
 express the concrete reality, the living process of passing 
 from the an sich through the für sich to the an und für sich, 
 through the successive negations of successively posited 
 specifications. It embraces all the processes hitherto 
 named. It is at once these processes and the result of 
 them. “ It is the power of substance in the fruition of its 
 own being, and therefore that which is free. It forms a 
 systematic whole, in which each of its elementary functions 
 is the very total which the concept is, and posited as indis- 
 solubly one with it.” 1 It is the fully developed unity of all 
 previous abstract and partial forms. It is the truth of the 
 thing in its utmost active self-realization. Idee (Idea) is 
 Hegel’s term for the Concept of Concepts, the ultimate, 
 infinite, absolute self-activity, God, the process which pro- 
 duces Himself eternally. This, however, strictly falls with- 
 out the subject matter of the present treatise, except in 
 so far as all moral and ethical phases of man have their 
 real ground in the Idea. This treatise is concerned with 
 the development of the concept of the universal human will 
 in secular relations. 
 
 Bestimmung. — There is no other word which, with its 
 cognates, occurs so frequently in this treatise. I generally 
 translate this word by determination, specification, or char- 
 acterization. It is from bestimmen — to be-voice, to vocalize, 
 
 1 Logic, § 1 6o. 
 
6o 
 
 KEY-WORDS. 
 
 to audibly specify, to point out and thus determine or char- 
 acterize its object. Bestimmtheit is the resulting definite- 
 ness or character. Unbestimmtheit is the state of lacking all 
 definite, specific characterization. 
 
 Dasein I have generally translated as determinate being , 
 sometimes by definite or positive existence. 
 
 Wirklichkeit , actuality. Hegel says (§ 82) “ actuality is 
 that which acts, works (wirkt) and preserves itself in its 
 work or other , being realized rather than lost through such 
 work.” 
 
 Unmittelbar , that which is immediate or unmediated, 
 referring to the way a thing presents itself to us directly, 
 as “a shot out of a pistol.” It corresponds to the an sich 
 phase of the concept. The immediate is the undeveloped 
 in its relation to us. 
 
 Vermittelt , that which is mediated ; that which is known 
 by means of relations and environment. 
 
 Moralität-Sittlichkeit. — As we have elsewhere given full 
 exposition of these terms, we may here give their simple 
 translation as morality (subjective) and ethicality (objective). 
 
 Unendlich. — That is infinite which has only itself for its 
 object, that which is reflected back from externalities within 
 itself, as a closed and self-sufficient process, — the infinite 
 of the circle rather than of the line, the qualitative instead 
 of the quantitative infinite. 
 
 The object of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie is the exposition 
 of the concept (Begriff) of the will , as thought in the process 
 of translating itself into actuality or determinate being, 
 its most specified and concrete form. He begins with 
 the will as implicit (an sich), immediate ( unmittelbar ), and 
 abstract (abstrakt), following it through all its posited 
 (gesetzte) phases ( Momenta ) of particularity (BesoJiderheit) 
 from undeveloped universality to its complete, concrete, 
 and thoroughly mediated (vermittelt) form of the concept 
 (Begriff), by successive determinations (Bestimmungen) and 
 
KEY-WORDS. 
 
 61 
 
 forms of determinate being (. Dasein ), which are as succes- 
 sively abrogated and integrated {aufgehoben). These stages 
 represent the various imperfect relations of particular will 
 to universal will, the aim being to thoroughly particularize 
 abstractly universal will, and thus exhibit it in its truth, i. e., 
 in its freedom. 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
 OF 
 
 HEGEL’S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In his Preface Hegel says that the object of a Philosophy 
 of Right cannot be the discovery of rights and morals, as 
 these are already age-old and well known, but only to win 
 for them such rational form or system as may justify them 
 to the free rational spirit. Philosophy’s task is not to create 
 but to understand existing reality. He sets aside the preten- 
 tions of the so-called rationalistic philosophy for the severer 
 labor of showing how 
 
 “ The rational is the real, 
 
 And the real the rational.” 
 
 The real is the Reason or the Divine mind, the creator of the 
 world as its own progressive revelation. Hence the world 
 throughout must be fundamentally rational. The Philosophy 
 of Right is a comprehension and an exposition of this reality 
 at the foundation of, and throbbing through, all forms of 
 social and political institutions. Its task is not to go beyond 
 these forms and construe an ideal morality and society, but 
 to note the phases of rationality in existing forms and thus 
 to reconcile us with reality. The rationalism which refuses 
 to accept anything which it cannot reduce to the form of 
 conceptions of the understanding has well been said to lead 
 away from God. But genuine philosophy leads up through 
 the immanent God to the transcendent God, whether it traces 
 the Divine ( The Idea) working in the forms of nature, of 
 human thought, or in those of human institutions. 
 
64 ABSTRACT OF HEGEL'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In his Introduction he says that such a science has to deal 
 with the Idea of Rights, as well as with the Concept of Rights 
 and its actualization into objective existence — in other words 
 with the soul and body of ethical institutions as animated 
 by the Divine Spirit. The soul is to be discovered in its 
 own development of the body, being its first entelechy or its 
 truth. Montesquieu rightly apprehended the various his- 
 torical elements and positive forms of right as organic mem- 
 bers of a totality or system (concept). 
 
 I The real ground of all rights is the spiritual. The start- 
 ing-point is the will that is free. Freedom is the very sub- 
 stance and character of will, bringing forth the spiritual 
 world on earth. It is the fundamental characteristic of the 
 twill, just as weight is of matter. 
 
 The will is not a faculty diverse from thought. The will 
 is rather a particular form of thought. It is thought trans- 
 lating itself into determinate being. The will is free. 
 Without freedom it is an empty word. In its first or 
 unmediated phase, the will is only formally free. Abstrac- 
 tion is made of the v/ill from all definite form or content 
 in order to reach this phase of pure indeterminateness of 
 the will, where it can will one thing just as well as another, 
 e. g., to destroy as well as to create social and ethical insti- 
 tutions. The direct actualization of such formless freedom 
 would be the furies of destruction. Another phase is that 
 : of the indeterminate will passing out into determinations. 
 I This is the limiting, negating phase of the abstractly infinite 
 j will of the first phase. But the genuine will is really the 
 unity of both these phases. It is self-realized, self-filled. 
 This will is thoroughly identical with its content. The will 
 j wills what it is. It is always and everywhere at home with 
 itself — always its own object, everywhere fully developed 
 and active. 
 
 The natural man, however, is such will only potentially, as 
 the acorn is the oak. It is imbedded in all sorts of desires, 
 
ABSTRACT OB HEGEL'S INTRODUCTION. 65 
 
 inclinations and wants. It appears as caprice and hence as 
 irrational. One deems himself free when he can do as he 
 likes, satisfy this or that desire or whim at will. But such 
 caprice is seen to be suicidal to the whole mass of desires. 
 There must be a system of them in which each one shall find 
 its appropriate place. This occurs through reflexion, which 
 brings forward the idea of happiness , as the primary form of 
 the universal for the will. Still this is but a particular form, 
 inadequate to the concept of the will. It is purified through 
 the more universal, though the abstract conception of duty , 
 and then returns to the concrete world to find itself in all its 
 activity with both of these elements of happiness and duty. « 
 t Here we reach the most concrete form of the will that is 
 free. It is self-characterizing in all its activity. It is think- 
 ing intelligence actualizing itself, recognizing as virtually its 
 own deed the deeds of corporate humanity and so being self- 
 determined even in its strictest obedience to current customs 
 and authorities. In all his content the thinking man finds 
 only his own substance. Such a rational, free will Hegel 
 declares to be infinite and absolute , because it is always its 
 ow?i object, which is thus never an external limit. Chains 
 of his prison house are his own chains. The self is con- 
 scious of itself as a whole system. Its consciousness of 
 jtself is a closed circle. It is everywhere reflected back 
 upon itself instead of going further and further into the un- 
 known. The will is thus truly infinite, as any circle may be 
 Said to be infinite, which cannot be said of any straight line, 
 however far it be produced. Such a will willing only itself 
 is thus infinite. 
 
 But even this true form of the will is primarily abstract 
 and passes through various stadia. These various forms of 
 self-determination in this activity of the will are what we 
 term rights. Rights are something holy because they are the 
 self-determinations of rational freedom. Every stage of the j 
 development of the free will has its corresponding rights, j 
 
66 
 
 ABSTRACT OF HEGEL'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 f Collisions can come only when these rights are all placed 
 upon an equality, no allowance being made for progressive 
 | development, and thus for a system of rights in which one is 
 I higher than another, because belonging to a higher phase of 
 the will’s activity. Subjective conscience and objective codes 
 are each a special form of rights, because each of them is a 
 definite form of active, free will. They can come into col- 
 lision only because they are both rights. The collision can , 
 only be solved in the whole system of actualized will. This is | 
 found in no one person. It is only the world-spirit that is | 
 universal and whose rights are ultimate, subordinating all 
 other forms of right. We shall elsewhere note that even this ] 
 unlimited will, this absolute, “ terrestrial god ” is not abso- 
 lutely ultimate. It is only a relative absolute, the highest 
 phase of the actualization of objective spirit, which points 
 to and leads into the realm of the absolutely Absolute Spirit, 
 into the higher forms of the spirit in the spheres of art, re- 
 ligion and philosophy, for its fruition. The Philosophy of 
 Right seeks to trace the immanent dialectic of free will as it 
 moves through the various forms, from the most abstract to 
 the most concrete and ripest form. This dialectic is the 
 very life of the spirit and thus something quite different from 
 the negative form used by the Sophists and sometimes even 
 by Plato. It is not the dialectic of mere subjective thought, 
 but the spirit’s own activity, organizing itself in definite forms. 
 The progress of the dialectic is always from the abstract to 
 the more concrete, from the seed, through trunk, branches 
 and flower to the fruit-bearing tree. While the historical 
 phases of man’s progress into freedom afford abundant illus- 
 trations, its chronological order does not run pari passu with 
 the logical order , which the dialectic or speculative method 
 follows. This method alone can give scientific form to con- 
 tingent historical phases, because it exhibits each phase as 
 the expression of a particular form of the concept of freedom, 
 and all as members of the organic Idea of absolute free will. 
 
ABSTRACT OF HEGEL'S INTRODUCTION. 67 
 
 Starting with the most abstract form of the will, which he 
 takes as ready to hand, he divides the whole work, as usual, 
 into triadic form : 
 
 I. The unmediated form of the will asserting itself as per- 
 son in external things — the sphere of abstract or formal 
 rights. 
 
 II. The will reflected back from mere external things into 
 itself as a closed infinite circle, or subjective individuality 
 opposed to will objective in mere things. This gives the 
 sphere of Moralität, or of conscience contra mundum. 
 
 III. The will as the unity of these two abstract phases, 
 realizing itself at once in both objective and subjective right. 
 This is the realm of Sittlichkeit , or the ethical world, as the 
 concrete realization of man as will. This includes the sphere ~l/ 
 of ( a ) the family, ( b ) the civic community, ( c ) the State 
 
 in the most concrete sense of the term — the organic 
 unity of the individual wills of a whole nation. Ultimately, 
 however, it is the federation of nations, or the universal his- 
 tory of humanity that gives us the realization of man as will 
 in the most cosmopolitan sense of the term. Thus hu- 
 manity’s rights are the highest kind of rights. 
 
 This division proceeds upon the principle of the Logic , 
 that the first form of anything is the un mediated, hence the 
 most abstract and poorest form. It also seeks abundant 
 historical illustrations, though a philosophical division of a 
 subject follows the immanent dialectic of the Idea rather 
 than that of external material. 
 
 “ Subjective morality ( Moralität ) and ethical or objective 
 morality ( Sittlichkeit ) which are ordinarily used as synonyms, 
 are here used in essentially different senses. Kantian writers 
 use by preference the term morality ( Moralität ) and the 
 practical principle of this philosophy is entirely limited 
 to this subjective side, rendering impossible and really 
 negating the standpoint of ethics ( Sittlichkeit ) or objective 
 morality. That these two terms have etymologically the 
 
68 
 
 ABSTRACT OF HEGEL'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 same significance does not prevent our using them for 
 . different conceptions.” 
 
 The term “right” throughout this treatise is used in its 
 widest sense, embracing subjective and objective morality 
 as well as civil and humanitarian rights. 
 
 The first form of right is that of abstract objectivity, i. e., 
 property as belonging to a person. The negation of this 
 standpoint is that of subjective morality, or the assertion of 
 the worth of the subjective self. But this subjective con- 
 science demands that it have objective might, as it has 
 subjective right. It seeks to have its will done upon earth. 
 But both these phases are abstract and find their truth in 
 the standpoint of objective morality ( Sittlichkeit ). Its first 
 form, however, that of the Family, is a natural state in which 
 the individual has yielded up his rude personality and finds 
 his true self in the larger self of the family. The next 
 sphere, that of civil society , however, shows a loss of this 
 immediate unity of affection. It is wrong to call this 
 sphere the State, as its only bond of unity is that of re- 
 ciprocal wants, of independent individuals. In the State 
 proper we have the concretest form of objective morality, 
 uniting independence and individuality with the universal 
 substance. Right in the State is higher than in the family 
 or in civil society. It is freedom in its most concrete form 
 “ as realized in the universal history of humanity. 
 
SELECTIONS 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM 
 
 Hegel’s Philosophie des Rechts . 
 
TRANSLATION. 
 
 FIRST PART. 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 § 34 . 
 
 The absolutely free will, if we consider it according to its 
 abstract concept {Begriff) is in its most undeveloped and 
 unreal form — that of mere immediacy. Considered in this 
 most imperfect form it is only abstract actuality (i. e., mere 
 potentiality) relating merely to itself and negative in regard 
 to all reality. It exists thus in itself as particular will of a 
 subject. According to the phase of particularity the will has 
 a further content of definite aims. But, as excluding individ- 
 uality, it has this content at the same time as an external 
 and immediately present world that happens to be before it. 
 
 Supplementary. — When it is said that the absolutely free f 
 will, as it exists in its merely abstract concept , is in the form i 
 of immediacy it must be understood in the following way. \ 
 The fully perfected Idea {Idee) of the will would be the con- 
 dition in which the concept would have fully realized itself, 
 and in which its determinate being {Dasein) would be 
 nothing other than its own development. At first, however, 
 the concept is abstract, containing all sorts of definite con- 
 tents. But these contents are as yet merely potential and 
 undeveloped. If I say “ I am free ” the “I ” which is free, 
 is simply this oppositionless potential being, whereas in 
 morality there is actual opposition. On the one hand I am 
 *an individual will, and on the other is the good or the 
 
7 2 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 universal even though it be in myself. Thus in morality the 
 will already contains the distinctions of individuality and 
 universality and is thus rendered definite. But primarily no 
 such a distinction is present. For in the first abstract unity 
 there is neither progress nor mediation. The will is thus 
 simply in the form of immediacy, or of mere being (Sein). 
 The essential insight to be reached here is that this lack of 
 determinateness or characterization is itself a sort of deter- 
 mination of the will. For it consists in the lack, as yet, of 
 any difference between the will and its content. But this, 
 being opposed to characterization brings itself to the char- 
 acter of being a determined thing. This characterization is 
 here simply that of abstract identity. The will becomes 
 thereby individual will — the person. 
 
 § 35 . 
 
 The universality of this for itself free will is merely 
 formal relation to its own self. This is indeed a self-conscious 
 though contentless relation. The subject is thus far person. 
 The conception of personality implies that I as person, 
 perfect in every way (in subjective willfulness, instinct, 
 desire as well as in respect to my merely external existence) 
 am determined and finite, and yet that I am absolute 
 relation to myself. Thus I know myself, in finite condi- 
 tions, as infinite, universal and free. 
 
 Personality first begins here, in so far as the subject has not 
 merely self-consciousness in the sense of conscious relation 
 to external things but where he has consciousness of himself 
 as perfect though abstract ego, which negates all concrete 
 limitations and validity. Thus there is in personality the 
 knowledge of self as object, but as a purely self-identical 
 object raised through thought into simple infinitude. Indi- 
 viduals and peoples alike lack personality in so far as they 
 have not yet attained to this pure thought and knowledge 
 of self. . . . 
 
ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 73 
 
 Supplementary. — It is the merely abstractly independent 
 will that we call person. In one sense it is rightly held that 
 the highest destiny of man is that of being person. In spite 
 of this, however, we sometimes use this term person in a 
 despicable sense. Person, however, is essentially different 
 from subject ; for the term subject expresses only the 
 potentiality of personality. In this way, we might speak of 
 every kind of living beings as subjects. Person , 1 however, 
 is the subject, for whom subjectivity is consciously a 
 possession ; for, as person, I am absolutely for myself. 
 Person is the individuality of freedom in pure self-acquired 
 being. As such a person, I know myself as free in myself, 
 and can abstract myself from every condition and circum- 
 stance, as there is naught but pure personality before me ; 
 and yet I am, as such, an entirely determined form of being. 
 I am so old, so large, in this place, etc. Personality is thus 
 at once lofty and lowly. It contains the unity of the finite 
 and the infinite, of the boundless and the definitely bounded. 
 It is the very loftiness of personality that it can sustain this 
 contradiction, which could neither contain nor endure any- 
 thing purely natural. 
 
 § 36 . 
 
 (i) Personality, in general, contains the capacity of rights, 
 and constitutes the concept and the abstract foundation of 
 merely formal right. Hence, the precept of merely abstract 
 right is this : Be a pers on, and respect others as persons. 
 
 § 37 . 
 
 (2) Particularity of will is indeed a phase of total con- 
 sciousness of will ; but it is not yet explicitly present in 
 abstract personality as such. It is present only as different 
 from personality, the characteristic of freedom ; it is present 
 
 1 Compare with this Hegel’s use of the term “ Subject” in the higher 
 sense, in § 105. 
 
74 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 only as desire, need, instinct, accidental liking, etc. Thus, 
 in formal rights, there is no question concerning particular 
 interests, — one’s own gains or welfare, nor concerning the 
 particular ground or motive of one’s will, nor concerning 
 insight and intention. 
 
 Supplement. — The element of particularity not yet being f 
 present in the person in the form of freedom, we have, at 
 this stage, no concern with anything relating to it. Where / 
 the person has no other interests than his formal rights, he ■' 
 is likely to make these a matter of caprice, especially if he b 
 be of narrow mind and heart, ft is chiefly the rough, uncul-/ 
 tivated man who stands for his rights, while the magnanimous! 
 man considers the many different interests involved along 
 with his own. Thus, abstract right is at first merely potential,! 
 and thus quite formal in regard to the whole circle of inter-v 
 ests involved. Therefore, the legal right affords a warrant, 
 which, however, it is not necessary for a cultured man to 
 pursue, because it represents only one side of the whole 
 context ; for potentiality is the sort of being which has also 
 the significance of not being. 
 
 § 38 . 
 
 In relation to the concrete activity of moral and ethical 
 ( sittlich ) relations, we may say that abstract right is onlj^ 
 a potentiality, and legal right thus only a permission or\ 
 warrant. The necessity of this sort of right limits itself, 
 by reason of its abstractness, to the negative form of pre- 
 serving personality and all its results from injury. Hence, 
 there are only legal prohiljLtions. Even the positive form 
 of legal injunctions~has only prohibition at its basis. 
 
 § 39 . 
 
 (3) The specific and immediate individuality of the 
 person is related to a world of nature, over against which 
 the personality of the will stands as something subjective. 
 
ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 75 
 
 But the limitation of subjectivity to this personality as 
 something universal and infinite, is something quite con- 
 tradictory and futile. Personality is itself the activity which 
 abrogates this contradiction and gives itself reality, or what 
 is the same, posits that world of nature as being its own. 
 
 § 40 . 
 
 Rights are primarily, the immediate form of determinate 
 being which freedom proposes to itself : — | 
 
 (a) Possession or Property. Freedom is here that of 
 abstract will as such, or of a single individual as a self- 
 relating personality. 
 
 (, b ) The person distinguishing himself from himself, 
 relates himself to another person, both having definite 
 existence for each other only so far as they both are owners 
 of property. There is here an implicit identity which gains 
 definite form through the transference of the property of 
 one to the other. This involves a common will and the 
 maintenance of rights. This is the sphere of Contract. 
 
 (c) The will in relation to itself, rather than as distin- 
 guished from another one, contains the relation of particular 
 will as opposed to itself as absolute or universal will. This 
 is the sphere of Wro?ig and Cri?ne. 
 
 . . . Here it is evident that the right to things belongs 
 only to personality as such. The so-called rights of person 
 among the Romans implied a man’s having the status of 
 being a legal person. Personality was thus only a status as 
 opposed to slavery. . . . Hence, such rights were not the 
 rights of a person as such. We shall see later on that the 
 family relation involves, as its essential condition, rather 
 the giving up of personality, or of the strict legal rights 
 of person. Hence, it is not the place to treat of the rights ' 
 of definite concrete personality before treating of those 
 of abstract personality. . . . 
 
7 6 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 FIRST SECTION. 
 
 Property. 
 
 § 41. 
 
 In order that a person be a fully developed and independ- 
 ent organism, it is necessary that he find or make some 
 external sphere for his freedom. Because the person as 
 absolutely existing, infinite will is, as yet, in this entirely 
 abstract form, we find that this external sphere which is 
 essential to constitute his freedom, is designated as being 
 equally something distinct and separable from himself. 
 
 Supplement. — The rationality of property does not lie in 
 its satisfaction of wants, but in its abrogation of the mere 
 subjectivity of personality. It is in property that person 
 primarily exists as reason. Although the primitive reality 
 of my freedom in an external thing be a bad form of 
 reality, still abstract personality in its immediate form 
 can have no other sort of real existence. 
 
 § 42. 
 
 That which is thus immediately distinct from the free 
 spirit, is for this free spirit, as well as in its own nature, 
 something external, unfree, impersonal and right-less. . . . 
 
 Supplement. — As this thing lacks subjectivity, it is some- 
 thing external not only to the subject but also to itself. 
 Thus space and time are external and I, as a sensuous 
 being, am myself external, spatial and temporal. The 
 sensuous perceptions I may have are of something which 
 is external even to itself. The animal may have sensuous 
 perceptions, but its soul does not have its soul, its own 
 very self, for object, but some external thing. 
 
PROPERTY. 
 
 77 
 
 § 43 . 
 
 As immediate concept and thus as a single individual, 
 person has a natural form of existence. 
 
 This physical form of being belongs to a person partly as 
 an independent physical organism and partly through his 
 relation to his body as an external thing. We are here 
 speaking of person in relation to immediate forms of external 
 existence, his body among others, rather than in his relation 
 to them as developed into more definite things through the 
 mediation of the will. . . . 
 
 § 44 . 
 
 As a person, I have the right to put my will into every- 
 thing, which thereby becomes mine. The thing has no 
 substantial end of its own, but only attains this quality by 
 being related to my will. That is, mankind has the right of 
 absolute proprietorship. 
 
 The so-called philosophy which ascribes independent 
 reality to immediate individual impersonal things, as well 
 as that philosophy which assures us that the spirit cannot 
 recognize the truth or know what the thing in itself is, — all 
 such philosophy is immediately refuted by the conduct of 
 free will towards these things. If, perchance, such things 
 have for sensuous perception and representation the appear- 
 ance of independent reality, we find that on the other hand 
 the free will is the idealism, the real truth of such apparent 
 reality. 
 
 Supplement. — All things are capable of being made the 
 property of man, because he is free-will and as such in and 
 for himself, while everything else lacks this quality. Every 
 man, therefore, has the right to put his will into things, that 
 is, to annul them and make them his own. For they, as 
 external, have no self-aim ; they are not that infinite refer- 
 ence of self to self, as subject, but are even externalities to 
 
7 8 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 themselves. Every living thing (the animal) is such an 
 externality and thus a thing. Only the will is infinite, abso- 
 lute in reference to all else, which in turn is only relative. 
 To make such things mine is really only to manifest the 
 dignity of my will in comparison with them, and to demon- 
 strate that they are not independent and do not have any 
 self-end. This manifestation is made through my putting 
 in the thing another end than that which it immediately 
 had. I give the living thing, the animal, as my property, 
 another soul. I give it my soul. Thus the free-will is the 
 idealism which preserves things, but not as they are imme- 
 diately, while realism holds them as being in and of them- 
 selves absolute and real, though they are finite. Animals 
 themselves do not have this realistic philosophy as to things. 
 For they eat things up, thereby proving that they are not 
 absolute and independent. 
 
 § 45. 
 
 Possession is constituted by my having anything merely 
 within my own external power. The special interest in 
 possession comes from my having made some element of 
 natural want, desire or caprice my own. The side of this 
 activity of possession, which brings out my free and actual 
 will, is the positive and legal side, or the characteristic of 
 property. 
 
 In respect to want, which appears as the primary phase, 
 property seems to be means. But the true position from 
 the standpoint of freedom is that which regards property 
 in its first definite form, as essentially an end for freedom 
 itself. 
 
 § 46. 
 
 In property my will becomes personal to me, hence objec- 
 tive as the will of the individual. Thus property receives 
 the character of private property and also that of common 
 
PROPERTY. 
 
 79 
 
 property, which according to its nature can be possessed as 
 parcelled out among many individuals. Here we have the 
 characteristic of a potentially dissolvable community or 
 partnership, it being a matter of caprice whether or not I 
 shall let my portion remain in the common property. . . . 
 
 Supplementary. — In saying that the will becomes personal 
 in property, it is to be noted that person is here used in the 
 sense of particular being, so that property becomes personal 
 property. As I give to my will this form of externality, it 
 is essential that property have the definite character of 
 being mine in particular. This is the important doctrine 
 of the necessity of private property. Any restriction made 
 to it must be made solely by the State. Frequently indeed, 
 especially in our times, private property has been restored 
 by the State. Many States have rightly enough abolished 
 cloisters, because ultimately a community has no such right 
 to property as the person. 
 
 § 47 . 
 
 As person I am to possess my own life and body as I do 
 other things just in so far as I put my will into them. . . . 
 The souls of the animals possess their bodies indeed, but 
 they have no right to their life because they do not put their 
 will into it. 
 
 § 48 . 
 
 The body, in so far as it is an uncultivated piece of exter- 
 nal existence, is inadequate to the spirit. The spirit must « 
 first take possession of it in order to make it its animated 
 tool. But in reference to other people I am essentially free 
 even as to my body. ... It is but a vain sophistry which 
 says that the real person, — -the soul, cannot be injured by 
 maltreatment offered to one’s body. . . . Violence done to 
 my body is really done to me. 
 
8o 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 § 49. 
 
 It is the rational thing then for me, in relation to external 
 things, to possess property. But the particular form or 
 amount of property possessed depends upon subjective 
 aims, needs, caprice, talents and external circumstances. 
 Moreover, such possession, in this sphere of abstract per- 
 sonality, is not yet explicitly set forth as identical with 
 freedom. Hence it is a matter of mere legal contingency 
 as to the kind and quantity of property that I possess. 
 
 All persons are equal in this abstract sphere, if indeed we 
 can here speak of many persons. This is but a tautological 
 proposition. For person is yet abstract and unparticular- 
 ized. Equality is identity of the understanding. This is 
 the standpoint first taken by reflective thought and medi- 
 ocrity of spirit, when the relation of unity and difference 
 first occurs to it. Here then we have only the abstract 
 equality of abstract persons. Outside of this, that is, in 
 every particular form of possession, there is really inequality. 
 The demand sometimes made for an equal division of lands 
 or possessions can only be made by a very superficial under- 
 standing. For in the sphere of actual particular possessions 
 there falls not only the contingency of external nature, but 
 also the whole of the spiritual nature with its infinite num- 
 ber of differences and its developed organic form of reason. 
 We cannot speak of an injustice of nature in an unequal 
 partition of possessions and means, for nature is not free 
 and so neither just nor unjust. That all men should have 
 a competency for their needs is a well-meant moral desire, 
 but without any objective reality. Then, too, it is to be 
 noted that what we call a competency is something different 
 from possessions and belongs to the later stage, Civil Society. 
 
 Supplementary. — The equality which one might introduce 
 in regard to the partition of goods would, in any event, be 
 destroyed in a short time, since property depends upon 
 
PROPERTY. 
 
 81 
 
 industry. The impossibility of such an equal distribution 
 should prevent all attempts to secure it. . . . It is wrong 
 to maintain that justice demands that each one should have 
 an equal amount of property. For the demand is only that 
 each should have property. It is then rather true that 
 equality of possessions would be unjust in the sphere of 
 particularity, which is the sphere of inequality. . . . 
 
 § 50 . 
 
 A thing belongs to the accidental first comer who gets it, 
 because a second comer cannot take possession of what is 
 already the property of another. The first comer is not 
 legal owner by virtue of his being the first comer, but 
 because he is free will. He becomes first comer only by 
 the accidental fact that another one comes after him. 
 
 § 51 . 
 
 •H 1 ■¥? ^ 
 
 Supplementary. — The primary concept of property is that' 
 one puts his will into a thing. The fuller concept involves 
 the full realization of the idea of property. It is necessary 
 that the inner act of will by which I say that something is 
 mine, be made cognizable by others. In really making a 
 thing my own, I give it the power of manifesting this in 
 external form. It must not remain mine simply in my inner 
 will. Children sometimes cry out against others taking pos- 
 session of a thing, that they had wished it first. But such j 
 wishing is inadequate for grown-up people. The form of ' 
 subjectivity must be worked out into objectivity. 
 
 § 52 . 
 
 Taking possession of the material of a thing makes it my 
 property, as it does not belong to itself. . . . 
 
82 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 § 53. 
 
 Property has its proximate characteristic determinations 
 in the relation of the will to the thing. This gives us, 
 
 (A) Immediate Possession in so far as the will has its 
 objective reality in the thing as a positive existence, 
 
 (P) Use or Consumption , i. e. in so far as the will has its 
 objective reality in negating the thing possessed, 
 
 (C) Relinquishment of property, as the return of the will 
 into itself out of the thing. These three phases are the 
 positive, the negative, and the infinite judgment of the will 
 in relation to the thing. 
 
 A. Possession. 
 
 § 54. 
 
 Possession arises ( a ) partly from the mere corporeal seizure 
 of a thing ( 'b ) partly from the expenditure of fo?'mative work 
 upon it and (c) partly from mere designation , or putting the 
 sign of ownership upon it. 
 
 § 55. 
 
 ■¥& "X* 
 
 (a) Supplementary. ■ — The hand is the chief organ of cor- 
 poreal possession. This no beast possesses. And what I 
 grasp with the hand becomes in turn the means of grasping 
 more. 
 
 § 56. 
 
 ( b ) Through the expenditure of formative work upon a 
 thing possessed, it comes to have a sort of independent 
 existence and ceases to be limited to actual present cor- 
 poreal seizure as the condition of possession. . . . 
 
PROPERTY. 
 
 83 
 
 § 57. 
 
 Man is, primarily, a natural sort of existence, external to 
 his essential being. It is only through the culture of his 
 body and spirit, especially through the apprehension of his 
 freedom through self-consciousness, that he takes possession 
 of himself and becomes his own owner. This act may also 
 be called that of actualizing his concept or of developing his 
 potentiality, faculties, talents. Through such act the natural 
 man becomes positively his own and truly objective. He 
 is thus distinguished from simple self-consciousness and 
 becomes capable of maintaining the proper form of man- 
 hood. 
 
 [In the remainder of this paragraph Hegel shows at some 
 length, that the only justification that can be offered of 
 slavery and of mere lordship over men comes from con- 
 sidering man as a merely natural form of existehce. On 
 the other hand, the absolute wrong of slavery can only be 
 maintained by considering man as he is ideally, as having 
 all his potentialities developed, that is, as free, independ- 
 ent, cultured and spiritual. This, too, is an abstract and 
 one-sided view, identifying immediately the merely natural 
 man with the spiritual man. The truth is that man by 
 nature (as a mere natural being) is unfree, and that man 
 by nature (as fully developed man) is free. But man has 
 such a spiritual nature, not in the state of nature but in 
 the state of an ethical, civilized community. The blame 
 of slavery really lies upon the will of the enslaved man or 
 people, rather than upon those who enslave them. The 
 enslaved has not said, give me liberty or death, but rather, 
 give me life even at the expense of liberty. 
 
 Historically, slavery occurs in the transition from the state 
 of mere nature to the state of grace, in the concrete social 
 relations of the civilized community. It occurs in that stage 
 of human development where a wrong is still right. At 
 
8 4 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT 
 
 such a stage, the wrong is of real worth and its place can be 
 justified.] 
 
 § 58. 
 
 ***** 
 
 (i :) Supplementary. — Possession by means of designation 
 or sign of ownership is the most' perfect form, for the other 
 kinds of it have more or less the effect of a sign. When I 
 seize or when I form a thing, the ultimate significance is 
 always that of a sign to others that I put my will in the thing 
 so as to exclude their possessing it. The concept of a sign 
 is that a thing does not stand for what it is, but for what it 
 signifies. A cockade, for example, signifies citizenship in a 
 state, though the color has no connection whatever with the 
 nation, and represents not itself but the nation. Man shows 
 his sovereignty over things by being able to give a sign and 
 thus acquire possession. 
 
 B. Use or Consumption. 
 
 § 59. 
 
 . . . Use is the satisfaction of my want through the alter- 
 ation, destruction, or consumption of the thing, the selfless- 
 ness of whose nature is thus made evident, and its real 
 destiny accomplished. . . . 
 
 Supplementary. — The thing is reduced to a means of 
 satisfying my needs. In any struggle for existence between 
 a person and a thing, one of them must lose its own being 
 in order to there being unity ; but, in such a conflict, the I 
 is the vital, willing, the real affirmative, while the thing is 
 merely a thing. It must perish and I preserve myself, such 
 being the rational prerogative of that which is organic. 
 
PROPERTY. 
 
 85 
 
 § 61 . 
 
 ***** 
 
 Supplementary. — The relation of use to property is that of 
 substance to quality, of potential to actual power. The field 
 is only a field in so far as it produces a harvest. He who 
 has the whole use of a field is the real owner, and it is an 
 empty abstraction to recognize any other property in it. 
 
 § 62 . 
 
 Partial, or temporary use, or possession of a thing is, 
 however, to be distinguished from ownership. It is only 
 the complete and permanent use of a thing that constitutes 
 me owner of that whose abstract title may belong to another. 
 Only so far as I permeate the thing throughout with my 
 will, thus making it impermeable by others, is it truly mine. 
 It is thus the essential nature of proprietorship that it be 
 free and complete. . . . 
 
 It is more than fifteen hundred years since, under the 
 influence of Christianity, personal freedom began to flourish, 
 and became, at least for a small part of the human race, 
 recognized as a universal principle. But the freedom of 
 ownership has only since yesterday, we may say, been recog- 
 nized here and there as a principle. This is an example 
 from universal history of the length of time required by 
 Spirit for its advance into self-consciousness; also, an illus- 
 tration against the impatience of mere opinion. 
 
 § 63 . 
 
 ***** 
 
 Supple7nent. — We find, however, that the qualitative form 
 of use passes over into the quantitative. . . . This last 
 takes the form of value. . . . Money is the abstract form 
 
86 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 of value. Gold represents everything except the human 
 wants ; hence, it is itself ruled by the conception of specific 
 value. A man can, in a way, be the owner of a thing 
 without being the possessor of its real worth. A family 
 which has possessions which it can neither sell nor spend, 
 is not owner of its worth. 
 
 § 64. 
 
 Giving form, and putting one’s mark upon a thing, are, 
 however, external circumstances, needing continually the 
 presence of the active subjective will to give them meaning 
 and value. This presence is manifested through Use and 
 Consumption, which must be continuous to avail. Without 
 this active presence of will in them, things are deserted, — 
 become masterless ; hence, property may be lost or acquired 
 by prescription. . . . Prescription is founded upon the very 
 character of property, namely, upon the actual manifestation 
 of the will to possess something. Public monuments are 
 national property, so long as they are of worth through the 
 indwelling soul of national honor and traditions. Deprived 
 of this national spirit, they become masterless, and are thus 
 the fair booty of any individual who chooses to take them, 
 e.g., the Grecian and Egyptian works of art in Turkey. So, 
 too, the extinction of copyright in the family of an author 
 rests upon the same principle. Literary works become 
 masterless (though in just the opposite way), like national 
 monuments ; that is, they become universal property as to 
 their worth, instead of being private property. So, the 
 mere land of unused cemeteries, or that which is otherwise 
 consecrated to eternal non-use, implies merely a non- 
 present, arbitrary will, through the infringement of which 
 no real interest is injured. Sacred respect for all such 
 ünused land cannot be guaranteed. 
 
PROPERTY. 
 
 87 
 
 C. The Relinquishment of Property. 
 
 §65. 
 
 I can relinquish my property, because it is mine only so 
 far as I put my will into it. I can give up ( derelinquere ) my 
 lordship over anything that is mine, or I can deliver it over 
 to another will for possession. But this refers only to such 
 things as are by their very nature external. 
 
 Supplementary. — Such a true alienation is a direct decla- 
 ration of the will, in contrast with alienation by prescription. 
 In fact, when the whole process of property is looked at, we 
 see its relinquishment to be a genuine act of taking pos- 
 session. The first phase of property is the immediate 
 taking possession of a thing. Then further ownership 
 is acquired through use, while taking possession through 
 the voluntary relinquishment of ownership is the last and 
 fullest sort of ownership. 
 
 Resume of § 66-§ 71. 
 
 In these paragraphs Hegel makes the needed restrictions 
 to the above doctrine. There are some sorts of possessions 
 which by their very nature are inalienable. Those which 
 constitute the very essence of my personality, such as my 
 free-will, my ethical life and religious convictions, are thus 
 inalienable. To relinquish them is to give up being a free 
 self-cause, or causa sui, cujus natura non potest concipi , nisi 
 existens. There is, however, a possibility of such suicidal 
 action that is frequently actualized. The bad is itself either 
 a denying and giving up the essentials of personality, or it is 
 the making actual something which does not belong to the 
 very inner essence of personality — a realization by man of 
 the un-manly, the non- human or .sv^-human. Slavery is an 
 example of one sort of such suicide. Superstition affords 
 corresponding examples in the moral, ethical and religious 
 
88 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 spheres. Intelligent rationality as to duties and dogmas is 
 here sacrificed to the arbitrary authority of others. Rights 
 as such are inalienable. Hence any one who has in any way 
 lost his rights has the inalienable right and duty to resume 
 them at the first possible opportunity. The slave, whether 
 civil or religious, has always the right to violate the wrong 
 right of his tyrant. 
 
 I may part with the productions of my hand or head, with 
 my daily labor of brawn or brain, without doing violence to 
 my personality, for such labor does not consume the whole 
 of my self-activity. Herein lies the difference between the 
 slave and the day-laborer, even though the toil of the latter 
 be greater and his bodily comfort less than those of the 
 former. 
 
 Again, one’s life cannot be considered as external to per- 
 sonality and, hence, cannot be relinquished. I, as an individ- 
 ual, in the sphere of mere abstract right, have no right to 
 lay down my life. It is only when a person is a member of 
 an ethical community that he has the right to offer up his life 
 at its command and in its service. Suicide may perhaps be 
 looked upon as bravery, but it is only the poor sort of brav- 
 ery of tailors and girls. 
 
 Property as an external thing is in connection with other ' 
 externalities or properties. But as the principle of property 
 is will, this relation of property to property is that of will to 
 will. As proprietor my will enters a circle of common will. 
 Thus property becomes mediated by this relation to othei 
 wills. It is no longer merely a matter of my own subjective 
 will in relation to an external thing. This is the sphere of 
 Contract. In property the relation is that of a single will, in 
 contract it is that of several wills, of a common , though not of 
 the universal, will of an ethical community. 
 
CONTRACT. 
 
 89 
 
 SECOND SECTION. 
 
 Contract. 
 
 r 
 
 § 72 . 
 
 Property, even as an external form of existence, is merely 
 a thing. As property, the thing has been permeated by hu- 
 man will. In contract, we have the process which represents 
 and resolves the contradiction that I am and remain inde- 
 pendent exclusive proprietor, so far as I, in a will identical 
 with the other will, cease to be proprietor. 
 
 § 73 . 
 
 I can alienate property not only as an external thing, but 
 it also belongs to its very concept that I dispose of it as 
 property, in order that my will stand over against me as 
 some definite objective affair. But my will, as thus parted 
 with, is another will. This process, accordingly, wherein that 
 necessity of the concept is real, is the unity of different wills, 
 in which their differences and peculiarities are annulled. 
 But in this identity of will there is, at this stage, implied 
 that each will, as not identical with the other, is and remains 
 explicitly particular will. 
 
 § 75 . 
 
 As both of the contracting parties are related to each 
 other as independent persons, we have 
 
 (a) Contract proceeding from the arbitrary choice of the 
 parties. 
 
 ( ß ) The common will expressed in the contract is only 
 common and not a genuine universal. 
 
 (y) The subject matter of contract is only a particular 
 external thing, as only such can be relinquished at the 
 arbitrary choice of the individual. 
 
go 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 [Hegel stops here to declaim against the subsumption of 
 marriage under the concept of contract. He says that such 
 a reference of marriage as was made by Kant should be 
 stigmatized as scandalous. Just as little can the nature of 
 the State be treated as that of a contract of all citizens with 
 each other or with their rulers. It is rather the natural and 
 universal heritage into which men are born. It is far more 
 truly a universal will than the common will that appears in 
 contract. Like the family, it exists not by contract but by 
 the grace of God, springing from the ideal nature of man as 
 seen by the Divine Idea. Into both of these ethical spheres 
 we all are born without making any contract in regard to 
 them. We can neither enter nor leave the State at will. It 
 is the universal will in which we exist. It is the rational 
 destiny of man to live in the State. 
 
 Hegel further maintains the contract sphere to be a 
 more concrete phase of right than that of property, when 
 considered as based simply upon the relation of one’s own 
 individual will to things. Property held by contract, by 
 common consent, is much more real and secure. It is not 
 till what I have put my will into is recognized and allowed 
 by other wills to be mine, that it can be held as property. 
 In real contract as distinguished from formal contract, each 
 one, through a common will, gives up, and at the same time 
 retains and obtains possessions. Thus after contract, each 
 one of the contracting parties, after having severally given 
 up pieces of property, emerges with possession yet of the 
 value of what they parted with. Hence, he maintains, a 
 laesio enormis cancels the obligation of a contract. 
 
 Contract is given definite form through stipulation. For- 
 malities are necessary for the conversion of subjectivity into 
 objectivity. Though the tendency may be for them to grow 
 simpler, we shall always need some kind of formalities, as 
 the speech for uttering or making outward and visible the 
 thoughts and intents of men in mutual relations. Stipula- 
 
WRONG. 
 
 9 1 
 
 tion applies only to what is of substantial value. A contract 
 is more than a promise. A promise is guaranteed only by 
 a capricious subjective will which promises and may then 
 refuse to fulfil its promise. But the stipulation in a contract: 
 is a guard against such capricious willing. On the other 
 hand contract is an affair of legal rather than of moral right. 
 The secret intentions, the moral disposition in the contract- 
 ing parties are not taken into consideration at this stage. 
 Contract has to do with legal rather than with moral rights. 
 
 The common will of the several particular persons in 
 contract, is still far from being the universal will as Idea. 
 It is still limited and contingent. Hence it is more than 
 liable to conflict with true, universal will. Such collision 
 constitutes Wrong ( das Unrecht ).] 
 
 THIRD SECTION. 
 
 Wrong. 
 
 § 82. 
 
 Potential right comes, through contract , to have posi- 
 tive form. Its inner universality thus takes the form 
 of something held in common by caprice and by par- 
 ticular will. This may be termed the phenomenal appear- 
 ance of right. Here the right and its essential determinate 
 being (the particular will) accidentally agree. This phe- 
 nomenal appearance of rights is continued, as a semidance , in 
 Wrong. In wrong we have the opposition between implicit 
 rights and the particular will through which they come to be 
 any particular sort of rights. The truth of this semblance, 
 however, is that such manifestation of will is naught and 
 that the right reconstructs itself through the negation of 
 this negation of itself. Through this negation of the wrong, 
 the right returns to itself and characterizes itself as some- 
 
9 2 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 thing real and valid, whereas it was primarily only some- 
 thing potential and immediate. 
 
 Supplementary. — Universal will, when essentially deter- 
 mined by particular will, is in a relation with an unessential, 
 a relation of essence to its appearance, which can never 
 adequately represent it. In wrong we have the semblance 
 of the right. Semblance is inadequate character of exist- 
 ence, inadequate to the essence, and, though it asserts its 
 independent validity, it vanishes through the energizing of 
 the essence against it. The right, in thus manifesting the 
 unreality of the semblance, receives the definite character of 
 that which is firm and valid. Right thus becomes actual. 
 For Actuality is that which energizes and maintains itself 
 even in and through its opponent. 
 
 § 83 . 
 
 Right (which, as a particular and consequently a vary- 
 ing thing, in relation to its own implicit universality and 
 simplicity, receives the form of a semblance), is such a 
 semblance partly in and of itself ; partly it becomes a 
 semblance through the subject or doer as a semblance, 
 and partly it is posited as absolutely naught, i. e., Uninten- 
 tional or Civil Wrong, Fraud and Crime. 
 
 Supplementary. — . . . The difference between fraud 
 and crime is that the former still respects the form of right 
 while the latter does not. 
 
 A. Unintentmial Wrong. 
 
 § 84 . 
 
 Occupancy and contract in all their special forms, being 
 primarily different manifestations and consequences of my 
 will as such, are, in respect to the recognition of others, 
 legal claims, because the will is implicitly universal. It is 
 
WRONG. 
 
 93 
 
 only as concerns their variety and their external manifesta- 
 tion towards each other, that the one and same thing can 
 belong only to different persons, each of whom considers 
 the thing to belong to him, from some particular legal 
 reason. Thus collisions of legal rights arise. 
 
 § 85 . 
 
 Such a collision, in which the thing is claimed for a par- 
 ticular legal reason, and which constitutes the sphere of 
 civil lawsuits, contains the acknowledgment of right as uni- 
 versal and decisive. Thus all parties hold that the thing 
 should belong to the one who has the legal right to it. 
 The contest is only in regard to the subsumption of the 
 thing under the property of the one or of the other. This 
 is a merely negative judgment, in which only the particular 
 as to what is mine or thine is negated. . 
 
 §“ 86 . 
 
 •TV“ “TV* 'A' "TV- 
 
 Supplementary. — What is implicitly right has a definite 
 ground, and my wrong which I deem to be right I also 
 defend on some definite ground. It is the nature of the 
 finite and particular to give room to contingencies. Conse- 
 quently collisions must take place here, for we are here on 
 the stage of the finite. The first form of wrong (the 
 unintentional) negates only the particular will, while the 
 general right is respected. Hence, it is the slightest form 
 of wrong. When I say that a rose is not red, I still 
 acknowledge that it has color. I do not deny the species, 
 but only deny the particular color, red. Just so is right 
 here recognized. Each one wants the right, and desires 
 only what is right. The wrong consists only in each person 
 holding for right what he wishes. 
 
94 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 B. Fraud. 
 
 § 87 . 
 
 ^ -AT, 
 
 Tv TV" Tv Tv '7V' 
 
 Supplementary. — In fraud, the second stage of wrong, 
 the particular will is respected, but not the universal right. 
 In fraud, the particular will is not injured, because the 
 person deceived is made to believe that he is being fairly 
 treated. That which constitutes fraud is the demanding 
 as one’s right that which is only a subjective and simulated 
 right. 
 
 § 88 . 
 
 In contract, I acquire property for the sake of some 
 particular quality of the thing, and at the same time in 
 accordance with its inner universality, partly according to 
 its value, partly as* out of the property of another person. 
 Through the arbitrariness of the vendor a false semblance 
 can be produced in my mind so that the contract is formally 
 right, while it really lacks the implicit universality of the 
 right. 
 
 § 89 . 
 
 Supplementary. — There is no punishment prescribed for 
 unintentional or civil wrong, for in this there is no evil 
 intentions against the right as such. 
 
 Punishment, however, comes with fraud, for here it is 
 that right, as such, is injured. 
 
 C. Violence and Crime. 
 
 § 90 . 
 
 My will being projected into an external thing is thereby 
 just so far seized and placed under necessity. My will can 
 
WRONG. 
 
 95 
 
 thus partly suffer violence in general, partly violence can be 
 done to it by my being forced to do something or to make 
 sacrifice as the condition of keeping my property or life. 
 That is, my will can be coerced. 
 
 Supplementary. — Wrong proper is crime where neither 
 the right, as such, nor as it appears to me is respected, where 
 consequently both the subjective and objective sides are 
 violated. 
 
 § 91. 
 
 As a living creature man can, indeed, be coerced, that is, 
 his physical and otherwise external side can be brought 
 under the power of others, but the free-will as such cannot 
 be coerced except in so far as it fail to withdraw itself out 
 of the externality to which it has bonded itself in property. 
 Only he can be coerced who allows himself to be coerced. 
 
 § 93. 
 
 Violence must be annulled by violence. This is involved 
 in the concept of violence, as being self-destructive. It is 
 therefore not only conditionally legal, but morally necessary 
 — a second coercion which is the abrogation of the first 
 coercion. 
 
 Violation of a contract by the failure to comply with the 
 stipulation, or with the legal duties towards family or state, 
 is a first coercion, or at least violence, so far as I take away 
 a property which belongs to another, or fail to give him his 
 just dues. Pedagogical coercion and coercion used against 
 savagery and barbarianism do not at first seem to be the 
 negation of a prior violence'. But the merely natural will is 
 itself implicit violence against the inherent Idea of freedom, 
 which is to be protected and enforced against such wild 
 will. Either there is already an existing ethical condition 
 in family or state, against which all such barbarian natural- 
 ness is violence or there is a mere state of nature, a state of 
 
9 6 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 violence in general. In this way the Idea , in opposition 
 to this condition, brings about despotism. 
 
 Supplementary. — There can no longer be heroes in the 
 State. These appear only in rude and primitive conditions. 
 The purpose of such is a legal, necessary and political one, 
 and this purpose they accomplish as their own private 
 affair. The heroes who founded states, introduced marriage 
 and agriculture, have, indeed, not done so as a recognized 
 right, and these institutions still appear as matters of their 
 own capricious choice. Still, in reference to the higher 
 right of • the Idea against barbarianism, this coercion by 
 heroes is a legal one, for but little can be accomplished 
 against savage violence by mere kindness. 
 
 § 94. 
 
 Abstract right is a right of compulsion, because the wrong 
 against it is a force against the determinate being of my 
 freedom in an external thing. . . . 
 
 Supplementary. — Here we may note the difference of the 
 moral from the legal. In the moral, in the reflexion into 
 self, there are two elements, — first, the good is my aim, and 
 I must determine myself in accordance with this Idea. My 
 resolution embraces the determinate being of the good, and 
 I actualize it in myself. But this is entirely internal. Hence 
 there can be no compulsion against this form of right. The 
 laws of a State, consequently, cannot wish to extend over the 
 disposition of its people. For in the moral, the person is 
 for himself, and compulsion would here be without sense. 
 
 § 95. 
 
 The first compulsion exercised by the free person, as vio- 
 lence, which violates the very character of freedom in its 
 concrete sense, — that is, violates right as right — this is 
 crime . . . which negates the very capacity of right. . . 
 
WRONG. 
 
 97 
 
 Perjury, high treason, counterfeiting, forging notes are the 
 subject-matter of Penal Law. . . . 
 
 § 96 . 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Supplementary. — We cannot decide in just what way each 
 and every crime is to be punished merely by abstract reason, 
 but this must be left to positive laws. The estimation of 
 crime grows milder with the progress of culture. To-day 
 crime is much less severely punished than a hundred years 
 ago. It is, however, the relation between crime and punish- 
 ment that has changed. 
 
 § 97 . 
 
 Violation of right as such is, indeed, a positive external 
 affair, though naught in itself. The making its nullity mani- 
 fest is the same as the nullification of that violation in its 
 own external form. This brings out the actuality of right, — - 
 its form of necessity as mediated by the destruction of its 
 violation. 
 
 Supplementary. — A crime changes the form of existence of 
 that which it violates. This changed form is the opposite of 
 itself and hence null. Its nullity consists in its abrogation 
 of the right as right. The right as absolute is indestructible. 
 Therefore this external manifestation of the crime is itself 
 null, and this nullity is the very nature of the effect of the 
 crime. But what is null must manifest itself as violable. 
 The criminal act is not a prior, definite affair to which pun- 
 ishment is a secondary and negative thing. But the crime 
 itself is the negative, so that the punishment is only the ne- 
 gation of this negation. The actual right is now the abroga- 
 tion of this violation. It thus manifests its validity and pre- 
 serves itself as a definite form of mediated and necessary 
 existence. 
 
9 8 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 § 98 . 
 
 Violence committed only against external possessions is 
 an evil ( Uebcl ), and consists in damage done to any sort 
 of property. The abrogation of the violation through 
 counter-violence is the form of civil satisfaction or repara- 
 tion, so far as this is possible. . . . 
 
 § 99 . 
 
 . . . Crime has definite existence only in the particular 
 will of the criminal. Offering violence to this will is the an- 
 nulling of the crime (which otherwise would maintain its own 
 validity) and the restoration of the right. 
 
 [Hegel here makes some strictures upon various theories of 
 punishment. Punishment being an evil, some maintain that 
 it is folly to commit one evil because of a previous evil (the 
 crime). It is this superficial view of crime as a mere evil, 
 that is at the basis of those theories which admit punishment 
 only so far as it tends to protect society by intimidating or 
 reforming criminals. But crime is not a mere evil. It vio- 
 lates justice itself, and these theories deal rather with extrin- 
 sic considerations of psychological and sentimental charac- 
 ter, and miss the essence of the matter, that punishment 
 is intrinsically just — both to society and to the criminal 
 himself. Here the essential point is that crime, not merely 
 as an evil, but as a violation of right as such, is to be ne- 
 gated. We must see the real nature that belongs to crime. 
 The chief question is as to the essence of crime ; this is the 
 thing to be negated by punishment. Confusion in views of 
 punishment cannot be avoided as long as the essence of 
 crime is undetermined. 
 
 The true view of punishment treats the criminal as a 
 man. The theory of mere intimidation does not. It rather 
 treats him like a dog, whom we may deter from biting again 
 by flourishing a stick at him. It sets aside both the con- 
 
WRONG. 
 
 99 
 
 sideration of the criminal’s free-will and the nature of 
 justice, whereas the true theory honors the man in the 
 criminal in manifesting and vindicating the absoluteness of 
 justice.] 
 
 § 100 . 
 
 The injury done the criminal is not only just, per se, but 
 also as being the implicit will of the criminal — a definite 
 form of his own freedom. In other words his punishment is 
 his right. Punishment is really a right to the criminal him- 
 self. That is, it is really contained as an element in his 
 definitely acting will. For his action, being that of a 
 rational being, implies that it is something universal and 
 thus legislative. Thus he implicitly recognizes his rational 
 action as giving the law in accordance with which his own 
 right can be determined. 
 
 Beccaria denies to the State the right of the death penalty 
 on the ground that it cannot be presupposed that the Social 
 Compact contained the consent of individuals to their own 
 death. But really the criminal does give his consent to it by 
 his very deed. The nature of the crime, as well as the 
 crimipal’s own will, demands that the violation should be 
 abrogated. But Beccaria’s theory did some good in mini- 
 mizing the death-penalty, limiting it to crimes inherently 
 worthy of it. . . . 
 
 § 102 . 
 
 The abrogation of crime in this sphere of abstract right, 
 (that is of right not yet mediated by ethical relations) takes 
 primarily the form of revenge, which is justified as to its 
 substance in so far as it is retaliation. But as to the form 
 of such punishment, revenge is the deed of a mere subjective 
 arbitrary will. Such a will, we have seen, has the power to 
 place its own infinite law upon every sort of accomplished 
 violation. Hence its justice is capricious. As regards 
 other persons, it never passes beyond the scope of the 
 
100 
 
 ABSTRACT RIGHT. 
 
 arbitrary will of the individual avenger. Thus revenge is 
 only a new violation. Thus revenge provokes revenge ad 
 infinitum , and family feuds are transmitted from generation 
 to generation. 
 
 Supplementary. — In a state of society where there are 
 neither judges nor law, punishment always takes the form 
 of revenge, and this remains defective in so far as it is the 
 deed of a subjective will and, consequently, not in accordance 
 with the real substance of the case. Judges are also per- 
 sons, but they represent the universal will of the law, and it 
 is not their intention to put anything into the punishment 
 which is not in accordance with the nature of the case. . . . 
 Among uncivilized peoples revenge is everlasting, as among 
 the Arabians, where it can only be suppressed by a higher 
 power or by the impossibility of indulging in it. Indeed we, 
 to-day, still have a remnant of revenge, inasmuch as it is left 
 to the discretion of individuals to bring violations before the 
 tribunal or not. 
 
 § 103 . 
 
 The demand for the solution of this contradiction, which 
 exists here as to the kind and manner of the abrogation of 
 wrong, is the demand for a justice free from subj'ective 
 interests and form, as well as from the capriciousness of 
 mere power, — that is, for a justice which is not merely an 
 avenging but a punishing justice. This implies primarily 
 the demand for a particular subjective will, which, however, 
 wills the universal as such. But this is the very concept of 
 morality (Moralität'). It is not only something demanded, 
 but something that has emanated from this very process. 
 
 Transition from Right into Morality. 
 
 § 104 . 
 
 Crime and avenging justice represent the development of 
 the will into consciousness of the opposition within it of 
 
WRONG. 
 
 IOI 
 
 the implicitly universal with the actually partial and special 
 elements. They also lead to the stage in which the will, 
 annulling this opposition, turns back into itself, being there- 
 by developed and actualized. The right is thus preserved 
 and its universal nature maintained, as against particular 
 external forms. In negating its own particular, and there- 
 fore negative form, it realizes itself more fully. It becomes 
 independent, its negative activity being but a form of its 
 own self-characterization. 
 
 In the sphere of abstract right will has been defined as 
 abstract personality, as opposed to things and to other 
 persons. It has now its own personality as its only object. 
 This indefinite explicit subjectivity constitutes the prin- 
 ciple of the moral ( moralischen ) standpoint. 
 
 In property we find the specific character of the will to re- 
 side in the abstract meum , that is, in an external thing. In 
 contract the property of the single will is mediated by the 
 common will of several persons. In wrong we see the con- 
 tingency of this common will being made manifest, while in 
 the moral standpoint all contingency is potentially overcome. 
 This is the sphere of reflective thought, the internal forum of 
 conscience. All contingency is reflected back into the implicit 
 identity of the will with itself, which constitutes its true 
 subjectivity. 
 
 Truth demands the veritable existence of the concept and 
 the correspondence of its content with this its true form. In 
 rights, the will has its existence in an external thing. The 
 next demand of the concept of the will is that it have it 
 internally, within itself. It must be self-reflected and have 
 itself as its object. This affirmative relation to itself can 
 only be attained through the annulment of its immediacy. 
 This is accomplished in the punishment of crime, leading 
 through its own negation of its own negation to affirmation 
 — to Morality ( Moralität ). 
 

SECOND PART. 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 § 105 . 
 
 The moral standpoint is that of the will in so far as it is 
 infinite, not merely in an abstract and potential form, but 
 as actually thus infinite for itself. This reflexion of the 
 will into itself and its independent identity, as opposed to 
 merely implicit being, and the immediacy and the self- 
 developing determinations in this latter, constitutes the 
 person a subject} 
 
 § 106 . 
 
 Since subjectivity now constitutes the characteristic of 
 the concept , and is different from the concept in the form of 
 implicitly existent will, and, indeed, as subjectivity is at 
 the same time the will of the subject as an independent 
 individual which still contains the element of immediacy, 
 it constitutes the determinate being of the concept. Thus 
 subjectivity gives a higher basis for freedom. In reference 
 to the Idea , the subjectivity of the will forms the side of 
 existence, its phase of reality. Freedom, or the potential 
 will, can actually exist only in subjective will. 
 
 This second sphere, that of morality, represents, therefore, 
 on the whole .the real side of the concept of freedom ; and 
 the process in this sphere is that of annulling the will which 
 is at first existing only for self, and which is immediately 
 only implicitly identical with the potentially existing univer- 
 sal will, according to that difference in which it becomes 
 profoundly self-involved. The process also includes that 
 of positing the will existing for itself, as identical with the 
 
 1 Cf. p. 73, foot-note. 
 
104 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 potentially existing will. This process is accordingly the 
 elaboration of this present basis of freedom (of that sub- 
 jectivity which is at first abstract, that is to say, distin- 
 guished from the concept), to equality with the concept , which 
 thereby becomes capable of receiving for the Idea its true 
 realization. In this process the subjective will determines 
 itself thereby as truly objective and concrete. 
 
 Supplementary. — In treating of strict formal right, we 
 were not concerned with the question as to one’s principle 
 or intention. This question concerning the self-determina- 
 tion and motive ( Triebfeder ) of the will, as well as concern- 
 ing design, enters only here with the moral. 
 
 A man desires to be judged according to his own self- 
 determination ; he is, in this respect, free, whatever the 
 external conditions may be. One cannot encroach upon 
 this conviction of men ; no violence can be done to it, and 
 the moral will is therefore inaccessible. Man’s worth is 
 estimated according to his inner action, and hence, the 
 moral standpoint is that of independent freedom. 
 
 § 107. 
 
 The self-determination of the will is at the same time a 
 phase of its concept, and subjectivity is not only the side of 
 its determinate being, but it is its own determination. The 
 independent free-will, defined as subjective, at first as 
 concept, has, itself, determined being in order to exist as 
 Idea. The moral standpoint is therefore, as to its form, the 
 right of the subjective will. According to this right, the 
 will recognizes, and is, something only in so far as the right 
 is its own. The will is in this as a subjective thing to 
 itself. . . . 
 
 Supplementary. — The whole determination of the will is 
 again a totality which as subjectivity must also have objec- 
 tivity. Freedom can realize itself only in the subject, foru 
 the subject is the true material for this realization. But this j 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 io 5 
 
 determinate being of the will, which we called subjectivity, 1 
 is different from the absolutely independent will. The will, 
 in order to become such independent will, must free itself 
 from this other, from the one-sidedness of mere subjectivity. 
 In morality it is the distinct interest of men which comes in 
 question, and this is just the high value of the same, that 
 man knows himself as absolute and that he determines him- 
 self. The uncultured man allows himself to be imposed 
 upon by mere brute force and natural laws. Children like- 
 wise have no moral will, but permit themselves to be directed 
 by their parents. But the cultured self-developing man de- 
 sires that he himself be in everything which he does. 
 
 § 108 . 
 
 The subjective will, as immediately for itself and dis- 
 tinguished from the potential will, is hence abstract, limited 
 and formal. But subjectivity is not only formal, but, as the 
 infinite self-determination of the will, it constitutes the for- 
 mality of the same. As this, in its first appearance as indi- 
 vidual will, is not yet posited as identical with the concept of 
 the will, we find that the moral standpoint is that of relation, 
 of obligation or requirement. And inasmuch as the element 
 of difference in subjectivity contains just as well determina- 
 tion opposed to objectivity in the form of determinate being, 
 so the standpoint of consciousness is here also attained — or 
 in general, the standpoint of difference, finiteness and phe- 
 nomenality ( Erscheinung ) of will. 
 
 The moral is primarily not yet determined as the opposite 
 of the immoral, as right is not immediately the opposite 
 of wrong ; but it is the universal standpoint of the moral as 
 well as of the immoral which is based upon the subjectivity 
 of the will. 
 
 I Supplementary.- — Self-determination in morality is to be 
 conceived of as the pure restless activity which has not yet 
 attained any definite existence. It is first in the ethical 
 
io6 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 d Sittlichen ) that the will is identical with the concept of the 
 will and has only this latter as its content. In the moral, the 
 will is still related to that which is potential. It is therefore 
 the standpoint of difference, and the process of this stand- 
 point is the identification of the subjective will with the 
 concept of the latter. The ought , which is the distinguishing 
 element of morality, does not however attain to actual ex- 
 istence, except in concrete social relations of men. This 
 ought to which the subjective will is related is a double 
 thing. It is one time the substantial being of the concept , , 
 and again the externally existing. Even if the good were 
 posited in the subjective will, it would not yet be thereby 
 executed. 
 
 Resume of § 109 -§ 113. 
 
 The formal character of the moral standpoint passes from 
 the opposition between the subjective and the objective into 
 the simple identity of the will with itself in this opposition. 
 Here we have the content of the will, present in both ele- 
 ments and indifferent as to form as regards these differences. 
 This is what we know as the Ai?n {der Zweck). 
 
 But on the moral standpoint, this identity of content has 
 further characteristics — 
 
 (a) The content is so determined as mine that it contains 
 explicitly my very subjectivity, both as my inner aim and as 
 the external objectivity which it may have received. 
 
 {!>) Let the content have some particular form from any 
 source, it still must be conformable to the implicit will. But 
 as this will is still formal, this conformity is only a demand 
 and contains the possibility of being non-conformity. 
 
 (y) Inasmuch as I attain my subjectivity in the accomplish- 
 ment of my aim, I thus annul my immediate undeveloped 
 subjectivity. But this external subjectivity is the will of 
 others (§ 73 ). Hence the accomplishment of my aim im- 
 plies the identity of my will with that of others. The utter- 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 107 
 
 ance of the subjective or moral will is found in action. Such 
 action implies that I know it as mine, in essential relation to 
 the concept (as obligatory) and to the will of others. Thus 
 a moral action is distinguished from a legal one. 
 
 § 114 . 
 
 The right of moral will has three sides: 
 
 (A) The abstract or formal right of action, in such a way 
 that the content of the action, carried out into immediate 
 determinate existence, be mine and represent the purpose of 
 my subjective will. 
 
 (i?) The special character of the action is its inner con- 
 tent (a) as it is for me, v^hose universal character is deter- 
 mined by the worth of the action and what it avails for me 
 — that is inner intention — (/?) its content as the special aim 
 of my particular subjective being, that is, individual well-being. 
 
 (C) This inner content in its universality, as elevated 
 into absolute, existing objectivity, is the absolute aim of 
 will as will — that is the Good. This is in the sphere of 
 the reflexion with the antithesis of subjective universality, 
 partly of evil, and partly of conscience. 
 
 Supplementary. — In order to be moral, every action must 
 primarily harmonize with my purpose , for the right of the 
 moral will consists in recognizing in any action only that 
 which was internally designed. Purpose thus makes the 
 formal demand that the objective will be also the internal thing 
 willed by me. In the second phase, that of inner intention , 
 the question is concerning the relative worth of the action 
 in reference to myself. The third phase concerns not only 
 the relative but the absolute worth of the action, that is, the 
 Good. The first breach of the action is between something 
 proposed, and some definite accomplished affair. Then 
 follows the breach between that which is external as uni- 
 versal will and the inner particular character which I give 
 it. Thirdly we have the demand that the intention have 
 
io8 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 universal validity. The Good is intention elevated to the 
 concept of the will. 
 
 FIRST SECTION. 
 
 Purpose and Culpability. 
 
 § 115 . 
 
 The limitation of the subjective will in external action 
 arises from the fact that in all such action there is the pre- 
 supposition of an external object and its manifold environ- 
 ment. A deed implies the working of a change in this 
 external realm, and the will is culpable in so far as the 
 change thus wrought can be called mine, as being that pro- 
 posed by me. . . . 
 
 Supplementary. — What was in my purpose can be imputed 
 to me. It is with this proposed deed that we are chiefly 
 concerned when dealing with crime. But in culpability 
 (Schuld) there is the merely external judgment as to whether 
 I have done a certain thing or not. Culpability does not 
 primarily imply the quality of imputability. 
 
 § 117 . 
 
 In proposing to work a change in the given external 
 realm, the self-acting will has a general idea of the circum- 
 stances. But as these circumstances limit it, the objective 
 phenomenon is accidental and may contain something quite 
 other than one’s general idea of it. The subjective will 
 claims as its right, that, in any of its deeds, it recognize as 
 its own and be held responsible for only what it proposed 
 to do. The deed can only be imputed to the will, and for 
 this the will demands the right of knowledge. 
 
PURPOSE AND CULPABILITY. 
 
 109 
 
 § 118 . 
 
 The action, passing from the internal will into an external 
 realm where external necessity binds all together, is followed 
 by many consequences not calculated upon. In one way, 
 the consequences properly belong to the action, as being 
 what was aimed at. But at the same time the deed passes 
 over into the dominion of external powers which add to it 
 many foreign consequences. It cannot reckon all the con- 
 sequences as its own, as being aimed at by itself and so it 
 disclaims responsibility for all consequences not contained 
 in its original design. 
 
 It is difficult, however, to distinguish between the accidental 
 and the necessary or proper consequences of one’s own ac- 
 tion, for the inner purpose or plan is nothing, for others at 
 least, till it enters the objective realm, and, once there, inex- 
 tricable complication bids defiance to perfectly clear de- 
 markation between the two sorts of consequences. The 
 principle is sometimes announced that in acting we may de- 
 spise consequences. On the other hand it is proclaimed 
 that actions are to be judged solely by their consequences. 
 Both of these principles are abstract and untrue. . . . 
 
 Supplementary. — This disclaiming responsibility for all 
 consequences not proposed soon leads to the next phase — 
 that of Intention. But there are consequences beyond the 
 known and proposed external effects. Although my deed is 
 some one particular thing, it yet contains necessary and uni- 
 versal qualities. I cannot forsee all external effects of a 
 proposed action, but I must know the universal element im- 
 plicit in every deed. The transition from Purpose to Intention 
 consists in the recognition that I ought to know the universal 
 element in every action so as to will it, to intend it. 
 
I IO 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 SECOND SECTION. 
 
 Intention and Well-being. 
 
 § 119 . 
 
 The external form of an act is a manifold context of 
 countless particularities. The act may be considered in such 
 a way that at first cognizance is taken of only one of these 
 many particularities. But the truth of the individual is the 
 universal, — the real character of the act as such is not 
 merely an isolated external thing, but it is rather a uni- 
 versal embracing the whole of a manifold context. Purpose, 
 proceeding from a thinking being, contains not only the indi- 
 vidual, but also essentially the universal side. Such purpose 
 we call Intention. 
 
 Intention is really an abstraction. The attempt at justifi- 
 cation through one’s intention is really the isolating of a 
 single aspect of the deed, which is maintained as the sub- 
 jective essence of the deed. But the universal quality of 
 the deed is also manifested in its accomplishment. Incendi- 
 arism is the actual result of the intention to set fire to only 
 a little pile of kindling wood. Murder is the result of 
 cutting out a pound of flesh from a living body. That is, 
 one cannot really intend an isolated single side of an action. 
 . . . In acting a man has to do with external consequences. 
 An old proverb says : “A stone flung from the hand is the 
 very devil.” A man has to face the bad as well as good 
 consequences of all his deeds. These are really definite 
 qualities of his own will. 
 
 § 120 . 
 
 The right of Intention is that the universal quality of the 
 act be not only implicit, but be fully known to the one 
 doing the act, as having been the real purpose of his will. 
 
INTENTION AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 Ill 
 
 On the other hand the right, as regards the external form of 
 the act, is the right of its being considered as something 
 known and willed by a rational being. 
 
 This right to such insight implies the slight or total lack 
 of responsibility of children, the feeble-minded and insane 
 for their actions. But as all such actions have numerous 
 contingent effects, we can say that their subjective quality 
 has that lack of character, as regards the power and 
 strength of self-consciousness and thoughtfulness. Only 
 such particular conditions annul the character of thought 
 and freedom of will, and lead us to consider these actions 
 not according to the worth which they would have as pro- 
 ceeding from a rational will. 
 
 § 121 . 
 
 The universal quality of an act is its manifold content in 
 general, reduced to the simple form of universality. But 
 the subjective individual, as contrasted with the objective 
 particularity of his deed, has in his aim his own peculiar 
 intent, which is the determining soul of the act. The fact 
 that this subjective phase is contained and accomplished in 
 the act, constitutes the concrete character of subjective 
 freedom, the right of the subject to find his satisfaction in 
 the act. 
 
 [In a supplementary note Hegel illustrates this right of 
 intention. Murder may have been committed. We ask 
 whether it was the intent of the doer rather, than an unin- 
 tentional consequence of some action. It is the motive 
 that constitutes primarily what is called the moral element. 
 This moral element has the sense of the universal in 
 purpose and the particular of the intention. In modern 
 times, the chief question concerns the motive of an act, 
 while formerly it was merely asked : Is this man honest, 
 does he do his duty ? To-day we look at the heart and 
 
I I 2 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 presuppose a breach between the external action and the 
 inner subjective motive. The higher moral standpoint, 
 however, is that of a harmony between the two sides, so 
 that the external side corresponds to and satisfies the 
 subjective purpose. The merely objective method of esti- 
 mating the worth of deeds has its epochs both in the history 
 of the world and of individuals.] 
 
 § 122. 
 
 Through the motive, the action has personal subjective 
 worth and interest. In reference to this subjective aim, 
 the wider effects of the act are reduced to means. But, in 
 so far as such an aim is a finite thing, it can in turn be 
 reduced to a means to a further design, etc., ad infinitum. 
 
 § 123 . 
 
 As regards the content of such aims, we have here 
 (a) merely the formal activity — that the person’s activity 
 be limited to what he considers his aim. One wishes to 
 work only for his own interests, or for what should be his 
 interests, (ß) Such abstract formal freedom has, however, 
 further definite content only in the natural phases of its 
 subjective determinate being — needs, inclinations, passions, 
 opinions, fancies, etc. The satisfaction of such a content is 
 Well-being , in particular and in general. This is the sphere 
 of finite aims. 
 
 [In a supplementary note Hegel asks whether a man has 
 the right to choose such un-free finite aims, and gives an 
 affirmative answer. It is not a mere accident, but according 
 to reason, that man is a living being, and, so far, he has a 
 right to make his wants his aim. There is nothing degrad- 
 ing in being such a living creature, and there is also no 
 higher form in which he can manifest his spirituality.] 
 
INTENTION AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 "3 
 
 § 124 . 
 
 . . . The series of man’s deeds constitutes the very 
 man. If this series of actions be worthless, so also is the 
 subjectivity of his will worthless. If on the contrary the 
 series of deeds be substantial, so also is the inner will of 
 the individual substantial. 
 
 This right of subjective freedom constitutes the turning 
 point between antiquity and modern times. This right in 
 all its infinitude is pronounced, and raised into being a 
 universal principle, by Christianity. Subordinate elements 
 of this principle are love, Romanticism, the eternal bliss of 
 the individual ; further, morality and conscience ; further, 
 the principles of civil order, and the forms in the history of 
 art, science and philosophy. But abstract reflexion may so 
 emphasize this element in opposition to the universal, as to 
 lead to a view of morality that makes it to consist in a 
 perpetual hostile conflict with one’s own satisfaction — the 
 demand “ to do with aversion what duty commands.” 
 
 Such an abstract view gives rise to the “psychological 
 view” of history, which seeks to belittle all great deeds and 
 heroes by reducing the primary intentions which found their 
 satisfaction in substantial activity, to mere morbid cravings 
 for glory and renown, as the real motives of the actions. . . 
 This is the view of “ psychological valets to whom no men 
 are heroes because they themselves are only valets.” 
 
 § 125 . 
 
 The subjective, in connection with the particular content 
 of well-being, stands (as being inwardly reflected, as some- 
 thing infinite) at the same time in relation to the universal, 
 i.e., to the potentially existing will. This phase, primarily 
 posited in the form of particularity, is the well-being of others 
 also — yes even, in a perfect yet empty definition, the welfare 
 of all. Thus the essential aim and right of subjectivity is 
 
ii4 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 really the welfare of many other persons. But inasmuch as 
 such absolute universality, as distinguished from such par- 
 ticular content, has not yet been defined further than as 
 being the right, these particular aims distinguished from uni- 
 versal aims may or may not be consonant with them. 
 
 § 126. 
 
 My own right, as well as that of others, is a right only in 
 so far as 1 am a free being. Hence it cannot maintain itself 
 in opposition to this, its substantial foundation. Further, 
 any plan for the welfare of myself or of others (which we 
 call moral design) cannot justify a wrong deed. 
 
 Supplementary. — Even life is not a necessity when in con- 
 flict with the higher freedom. The famous answer given to 
 a libeller who excused himself by saying, il faut done que je 
 vive, was je n'en vois pas la necessity. When St. Crispen stole 
 leather to make, shoes for the poor, his action may be called 
 moral , and yet it was unlawful and therefore unsound. 
 
 § 127. 
 
 We may embrace under the term life, as personal exist- 
 ence, the whole of the interests of the natural will. Life, 
 in cases of extreme danger or in collision with the legal 
 property of others, has a claim to the right of necessity (not 
 in equity but as a right). It has such claim inasmuch as on 
 the one hand we have the absolute violation of the total 
 personality and, consequently, the total lack of right as 
 concerns the individual, while on the other hand we have 
 only the violation of a limited form of freedom. At the 
 same time, however, the right as such is acknowledged as 
 well as the claim to right of the one injured in this special 
 property. 
 
 Out of this right of necessity arises the beneficiuiti com- 
 petentiae ; that to a debtor must be left his tools, farming im- 
 
INTENTION AND WELL-BEING. 115 
 
 plements, clothing — in a word, as much of his property as 
 is absolutely necessary for his maintenance according to his 
 condition of life. 
 
 Supplementary. — Life has its claims as against any merely 
 abstract right. Hence stealing a loaf of bread to preserve 
 one’s life is of course an unlawful act, but cannot be treated 
 as common theft. If one, in immediate danger of losing 
 his life, should not be permitted to preserve his life at all 
 hazards, he would be void of all rights. The loss of life 
 implies the negation of the totality of his freedom. 
 
 § 128 . 
 
 This right of necessity reveals to us the finitude and con- 
 sequently the contingency of right under the form of well- 
 being. This form we see to be that of the abstract determi- 
 nation of freedom, without its being the existence of the 
 particular person. It is that of the particular will without 
 the universality of the right. Its onesidedness and ideality 
 (/. e., its being reduced from independence to the form of 
 being a constituent element in a larger whole) is accordingly 
 posited, as it has in itself been already determined in the 
 concept. Right has formerly characterized its determinate 
 being as the particular will ; and subjectivity in its inclusive 
 particularity is itself the determinate being of freedom, as 
 it is potentially that of infinite relation of the will to itself, 
 the universality of freedom. Both phases in them thus 
 unified to their truth, to their identity (though at first only 
 in relative relation to each other) constitute the Good as the 
 perfected, the independently characterized universal, and 
 Conscience as (in itself knowing and in itself determining of 
 content) infinite subjectivity. ' 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 1 16 
 
 THIRD SECTION. 
 
 The Good and Conscience. 
 
 § 129. 
 
 The Good is the Idea , as the unity of the concept of the 
 will and of the particular will. It is realized freedom, the 
 absolute final purpose of the world. In this unity, abstract 
 right, as well as well-being , and the subjectivity of knowledge 
 and the contingency of external determinite being are an- 
 nulled as independent in themselves, but at the same time 
 are contained and preserved in it as to their essence. 
 
 Supplementary. — Each phase is properly the Idea. But 
 the earlier phases contain the Idea only in abstract form. 
 Thus, for example, the Ego as personality is already the 
 Idea , but in its most abstract form. Hence the Good is the 
 more fully determined Idea , the unity of the concept of the 
 will and of the particular will. It is not an abstract legal 
 thing, but it is full of content. And it is this content which 
 constitutes right as well as well-being. 
 
 § 130. 
 
 In this Idea , well-being has no actual validity, as the deter- 
 minate being of a particular individual will, but only as 
 universal well-being and, essentially, as universal in itself, i. e., 
 according to the concept of freedom. Well-being is not good 
 when devoid of right, nor is the right good when devoid of 
 well-being. ( Fiat justitia must not have as its consequence 
 pereat miindus.) Consequently, the Good (as the necessity 
 of actuality through the particular will and at the same time 
 as its substance) has absolute right against the abstract 
 right of property and any particular ends of well-being. 
 Each of these phases, so far as distinguished from the 
 good, has validity only in so far as it is in accordance with 
 the Good and subordinate to it. 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE. 
 
 
 § 131 . 
 
 Thus the Good is the absolutely essential for the subjective 
 will, which has worth and dignity only in so far as, in its 
 insight and intent, it corresponds with the good. So far as 
 the good is, at this stage, still the abstract Idea of the good, 
 the subjective will has not yet been taken up into it and 
 made conformable to it. Hence subjective will is in a 
 relation to the good, inasmuch as the good is its substantial 
 content. It is obligated to make the good its purpose and 
 accomplish it. On the other hand the good is only actual- 
 ized through the mediation of the subjective will. 
 
 Supplementary. — The will is not absolutely good, but can 
 only become the good that it is potentially, through its own 
 labor. So, too, the good without the subjective element is 
 only an abstraction. The development of the Good con- 
 tains three stages: (i) The good for me the willing one, is 
 particular will and I know it as such. (2) We define the 
 Good and develop its particular characteristics. (3) We 
 have the act of pointing out definitely what is the good as 
 such, the particularity of the good as infinite self-dependent 
 subjectivity. This internal act of specifying just what is 
 good is the Conscience. 
 
 § 132 . 
 
 It is the right of the subjective will that whatever it is to 
 recognize as binding be apprehended by it as good. This 
 right involves, further, that a person be held responsible for 
 any external action, only so far as he knows its external 
 value, whether it be right or wrong, good or bad, lawful or 
 unlawful. 
 
 [Hegel further maintains, that as the good is only the truth 
 of the will, it is only possible in thought and through 
 thought. Hence all agnosticism is fatal to morality. It is 
 indeed the highest right of the subject to recognize nothing 
 
MORALITY 
 
 1 18 
 
 as obligatory which he, as a rational being, does not see to 
 be such. But this subjective standpoint neglects the right 
 of objective rationality. The insight of subjective reason is 
 liable to be a mere fancy or an error. It is a proper part of 
 one’s subjective culture, that he attain to this right of insight. 
 1 must have the conviction of a duty on good grounds, and 
 must recognize it to be essentially my duty. . . . This 
 right of insight into the very nature of good differs from the 
 right of zwAsight, of knowledge as to the external conse- 
 quence of an act. The first has to do only with the inward 
 peace of a quiet conscience. The latter concerns the con- 
 formity of intention with external consequences. Hence it 
 is that in the state, legal culpability cannot be restricted to 
 the dictates of private conscience as to what is right or 
 wrong. Here the citizen can only claim the right to have 
 the laws so explicitly promulgated that he may know what 
 is legal and illegal. Private conscience may be allowed to 
 have its own convictions so long as these do not go forth 
 in opposition to the existing ethical conditions of society. 
 The law indeed judges children and the feeble-minded quite 
 leniently. But it is the nature of man as man to be rational 
 — to will the universal, and he must be held responsible for 
 doing so. The incendiary is not only guilty of lighting a 
 bundle of straw, but of burning down the house. He is 
 responsible not only for the proposed external consequences 
 of his deed, but also for his inner purpose to commit the 
 deed, for his bad will. It is on this standpoint of con- 
 science that responsibility for its dictates is demanded. . . . 
 
 § 133 . 
 
 The good stands in its relation to the subject as his own 
 essential will, and hence as his bounden duty. However, 
 there is still a distinction between the good and any par- 
 ticular choice of the subjective will. At this stage the good 
 has only the character of abstract universality. That is, it 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE. 
 
 119 
 
 has the form of Duty. Hence the maxim, “ Duty must be 
 done for duty’s sake.” 
 
 Supplementary. — ... It is the merit of the lofty stand- 
 point of Kant’s philosophy to have emphasized the signifi- 
 cance of duty. 
 
 § 134 . 
 
 Every action demands some definite content and aim. 
 But abstract duty does not contain such. Consequently the 
 question arises, what is duty ? The only reply that can be 
 given from this standpoint of duty is, to do right and to care 
 for the welfare of one’s self and of all his fellows. 
 
 § 135 . 
 
 [In this paragraph Hegel maintains that Duty is an abso- 
 lutely abstract, contentless universal, and hence stigmatizes 
 Kant’s theory of duty as being an empty formalism, and 
 his moral science, as mere talk about duty for duty’s sake. 
 This standpoint affords no immanent doctrine of particular 
 duties. One can only arrive at particular duties by import- 
 ing something into this empty principle from without. It 
 contains no criterion as to whether any particular act is 
 a duty or not. In truth, one may say that any and every 
 illegal and immoral act might be justified on Kant’s maxim. 
 It is only so far as the right of property and life are pre- 
 supposed, that theft and murder contradict the maxim. 
 Abstractly considered, however, the maxim does not con- 
 tain this, but must borrow it from concrete ethical condi- 
 tions already attained. 1 ] 
 
 § 136 . 
 
 The nature of the good being thus abstract and formal, 
 causes the other element of the Idea (that of particularity) 
 
 1 Hegel refers to his fuller criticisms of Kant’s principle made in his 
 Phänomenologie des Geistes, which are reproduced by Prof. Edward 
 Caird in his Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, pp. 186-1S8. 
 
120 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 to fall within the sphere of subjectivity. This subjectivity 
 is (in its universality turned back into itself) its own abso- 
 lute certitude of itself ; it is the specifying, the determining, 
 the deciding element — in a word it is the Conscience. 
 
 Supplementary . — We may speak in very lofty terms of 
 duty. To do so elevates man and enlarges his heart. But 
 such talk becomes tedious when it fails to point out and 
 lead to the accomplishment of any single duty. The spirit 
 requires some specific form as that to which he is obligated. 
 But duty, as used by Kant, is that inner abysmal solitude, 
 which excludes all specification. A man on the standpoint 
 of mere Conscience is, indeed, freed from all shackles of 
 special commands. In one way this is a higher standpoint. 
 It is the modern world that first attained to such conscious- 
 ness. Previous ages have been more sensuous. They 
 have had some external positive forms to guide them, either 
 of a religious or legal sort. But Conscience knows and 
 identifies itself with every thought. What is my own sub- 
 jective thought, that alone is binding upon me. 
 
 § 137 . 
 
 The genuine conscience is that frame of mind ( Gesin- 
 nung ) which wishes for that only which is absolutely good. 
 Hence it has well-established principles — the current explicit 
 virtues and duties. As distinguished from this concrete 
 content, the truth, it is only the formal side of the activity 
 of the will which, as such, has no particular content. But 
 the ol^ective system of these principles and duties, and 
 the union of the subjective knowledge with them, is first 
 attained on the succeeding standpoint — that of Ethicality 
 ( Sittlichkeit ). On the formal standpoint of morality, con- 
 science lacks all such objective content. It is merely the 
 infinite formal certitude of itself — -of the subjective indi- 
 vidual. 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE. 
 
 12 i 
 
 Conscience expresses the absolute right of the subjective 
 self-consciousness, to know perfectly just what the right 
 and the obligatory are. It can acknowledge nothing but 
 that which it knows as absolutely good. Further, it must 
 maintain as truly right and obligatory, whatever it thus 
 knows and wills. Conscience is the unity of subjective 
 knowledge and of the absolute truth. It is a holy of holies, 
 to meddle with which would be sacrilegious. But it is only 
 the definite content of what is esteemed to be good, which 
 can decide whether the conscience of any particular indi- 
 vidual corresponds to this Idea of the Conscience. Right 
 and duty, as the absolutely rational characteristics of the 
 will, are neither the particular quality of an individual’s 
 will, nor a mere sentimental form, but they are universal 
 laws and principles. Through these alone it is to be deter- 
 mined whether one’s conscience is true or not. Any appeal 
 to only its own arbitrary views, is directly opposed to what 
 it professes to be, that is, to the rational and absolutely 
 valid modes of conduct. 
 
 Hence the state cannot acknowledge the validity of any 
 merely private conscience, any more than science can accept 
 merely subjective views. Still the private conscience can 
 separate itself from this true content and degrade it to a 
 mere form and semblance, by standing upon its own views. 
 Hence ambiguity in regard to conscience lies in the pre- 
 supposed identity of subjective conscience with objective 
 good, which renders it sacred. Private conscience, however, 
 may claim the validity which belongs only to this absolutely 
 rational content. We are now treating of the moral stand- 
 point as distinguished from the ethical ( sittlichen ) standpoint. 
 We have spoken of the true conscience here only to avoid any 
 misunderstanding. Our criticisms of the formal conscience 
 do not apply to the true conscience, which belongs to the 
 ethical frame of mind treated of in Part Third. We note, 
 too, that the religious conscience is not to be treated of here. 
 
122 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 § 138 - 
 
 This form of private conscience really dissolves all definite 
 forms of right and duty. It is the judge which determines 
 its content from within. At the same time it is the power 
 which actualizes any conjectured and obligatory good. 
 
 [Hegel says that in epochs when the current forms of right 
 and good could not satisfy the better will, philosophers like 
 Socrates and the Stoics sought to find within themselves and 
 to determine out of their own minds, truer forms of right 
 and good. . . . 
 
 Supplementary. — We may grant that no current form of 
 morality is absolutely true and final. When any current 
 form has become insufficient or obsolete, it is the preroga- 
 tive of subjectivity to evolve another one. In truth every 
 existing form of ethicality (concrete social morality) has 
 been produced through this subjective activity of the social 
 spirit. We may grant this without retracting our criticisms 
 upon the formal and formless character of mere subject- 
 ivity, before it has produced new forms. It is only in times 
 when the current codes are empty and spiritless and exist 
 as a mere dead letter, that it is right for the individual to 
 withdraw to his own inner sanctuary. This was the case of 
 Socrates. The same is also more or less true in some 
 present conditions of society.] 
 
 § 139 . 
 
 The subjective will may thus refuse to acknowledge the 
 validity of definite current forms of duty and insist upon 
 maintaining its own inner convictions. In so far as it does 
 so, it is really the possibility of elevating its own arbitrary 
 caprice to supremacy over the true universal, and of actual- 
 izing this usurpation in actual deed. That is, it is the 
 possibility of being morally Evil {böse). 
 
 Mere private conscience is thus actually upon the very 
 threshold of changing into the bad. Both morality and that 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE. 
 
 123 
 
 which is morally bad, have their common root in that certitude 
 of itself which insists upon existing, knowing and choosing 
 in an arbitrarily independent way. 
 
 The origin of evil lies in tire region of the mysterious, i. e., 
 in the speculative nature of freedom. Freedom must neces- 
 sarily advance beyond the mere natural will, and must put 
 itself in internal relation to it. This naturalness of the will 
 comes into existence as the contradiction of its very self, 
 and as incompatible with itself in this opposition. Thus it 
 is this particularity of the will itself that characterizes itself 
 as the evil. There is here an opposition of the merely 
 natural will to the subjectivity of the will. In this oppo- 
 sition, the subjective will is only relatively and formally 
 independent being, as it can draw its content only from the 
 properties of the natural will, — from its cravings, instincts, 
 inclinations, etc. These latter may be either good or bad. 
 But the will having such contingent content, is opposed to 
 the universal, to the good. Hence its internality is really 
 evil. Thus man is bad potentially or by nature, as well as 
 through his intellectual advance, though neither mere nature 
 nor thought, as such, are in themselves bad. But this side 
 of the necessity of evil, absolutely implies that this evil be 
 characterized as necessarily that which ought not to be, i. e., 
 that it ought to be negated, not that it should not have 
 appeared. This constitutes the distinction between the 
 irrational beast and man. It must needs be that the offense 
 come, but not that man should hold to it, to his own destruc- 
 tion. . . . The individual subject as such, is therefore abso- 
 lutely responsible for the guilt of his own evil. 
 
 Supplementary. — Man has the possibility of the good, 
 that is of willing the universal. But he has also the possi- 
 bility of evil, that is of identifying some particular form with 
 the universal. He is thus good only inasmuch as he has 
 the possibility of being bad. Moral good and evil are 
 inseparable, through the concept becoming objective, and 
 
124 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 as such having the property of difference. The bad will 
 chooses something different from the universal will, while 
 the good will chooses what is conformable to its genuine 
 concept. . . . But the question of the origin of evil relates 
 more strictly to the transition of the positive into the nega- 
 tive. If God is held as being Himself the absolute Positive 
 (i Gesetzte ) in the creation of the world, there is no possible 
 entrance for the negative. It would be an unsatisfactory 
 and empty relation to suppose the admission of the negative 
 by God. In mythology the origin of evil is not really com- 
 prehended. The good and bad are not recognized as having 
 any connection other than an external one. But this will not 
 satisfy thought, which demands to see how the negative is 
 rooted in the positive. This solution is contained in the very 
 concept, or in its self-developed form of the Idea. The Idea , 
 as active, is essentially self-distinguishing, posits its other or 
 its opposite out of itself. Thus the bad has its root in the 
 self-activity of the will. The will, in concept, is good as 
 well as bad. The natural will is potentially this contra- 
 diction ■ — it must distinguish itself from itself in order to be 
 developed and internal. The merely natural will is opposed 
 to the contents of concrete freedom. The child and the 
 savage are thus held to a less degree of responsibility than 
 the fully developed and civilized man. 
 
 The merely natural will, in its naive state, is neither good 
 nor bad. It is only when it is brought into conscious relation 
 to the will as freedom, that it gets the property of being 
 that which ought not to be and thus becomes the morally 
 bad. The natural will, when still remaining in the educated, 
 civilized man, is no longer merely natural will, but is an 
 element positively opposed to the good. It is false to say 
 that man is without guilt when he once sees that the morally 
 evil is a necessary element in the concept of will, for man’s 
 own choice of his deed is the act of his freedom and he is 
 responsible for it. It was in man’s getting the knowledge 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE 
 
 I2 5 
 
 of good and evil that he was said to have become like God. 
 But this knowledge of good and evil is no merely natural 
 necessity. It is rather the freely chosen solution of the 
 immanent opposition of good and evil. Both are present, 
 and I have the choice between them. It is thus the nature 
 of moral evil that it is the choice of man, but not that he 
 be compelled by any natural necessity to choose it. 
 
 § 140 . 
 
 Self consciousness has the wisdom and power to give its 
 aims external form. Every such aim must have this posi- 
 tive side, because purpose implies concrete external action. 
 Thus it is nominally for the sake of a duty and a good 
 purpose, that self-consciousness is able to maintain an 
 action as a good one, both as regards one’s self and others, 
 though the action be merely the identification of an arbi- 
 trary subjective aim with the true universal. If one insists 
 upon carrying out, under the guise of duty, such a sub- 
 jective aim so as to affect other people, we have Hypocrisy. 
 If it affects only the man himself, we have the very 
 acme of mere subjectivity usurping the throne of the 
 Absolute. 
 
 We call this last and most abstruse form of moral evil the 
 highest summit of subjectivity on the moral standpoint. 
 Here we find the bad changing into the good and the good 
 into the bad, through consciousness knowing and insisting 
 upon its own power as absolute. This is the form in which 
 we meet with moral evil in our day. Shallow thought, in 
 the name of philosophy, has thus distorted a profound 
 concept and arrogated the title of the good for the morally 
 bad. 
 
 [Hegel here treats at some length of the current forms of 
 this false subjectivity : 
 
 (a) There are three phases in the development of 
 hypocrisy : — 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 126 
 
 (a) The knowledge of the true universal, either in the 
 form of the feeling of right and duty, or in the form of 
 thorough knowledge of them. 
 
 (ß) The choosing of something particular in opposition to 
 this known universal. 
 
 (y) The conscious choice of evil as such. 
 
 These phases represent the acting with a bad conscience, 
 rather than hypocrisy as such. It is a weighty question 
 whether an action is bad only in so far as it is done with a 
 bad conscience. This is very well expressed by Pascal, 
 who says : ( Les Provinc. p lettre'). I/s seront tons damnes ces 
 demi-pecheurs , qui ont quelque amour pour la vertu. Mais 
 pour ces francs-pecheurs, pecheurs endurcis , pecheurs sans 
 melange , . pi eins et acheves , Venfer ne les tient pas: ils ont 
 tromp'e le diable ä force de s’y abandonner } 
 
 The subjective right of knowing the moral character of 
 one’s deed, must not be thought to be in collision with 
 absolute objective right, in such a way as to regard them as 
 distinct and mutually indifferent to each other. The bad is 
 formally the very core of the individual wrong-doer, inas- 
 much as it is the assertion of absolute egoism. Hence, he 
 is guilty of it. Yet man is inherently rational, in his capacity 
 for knowing the absolutely universal. It would not be 
 treating man in accordance with his high capacity, if we 
 should not attribute his evil deed to him as really part of 
 his very self. 
 
 1 Pascal refers to Christ’s prayer on the cross for the forgiveness of 
 his enemies on the ground that “ they know not what they do.” This 
 would have been a superfluous prayer if their ignorance had changed 
 the character of their deed so as to make it not to be evil and thus not 
 to need forgiveness. Pie also adduces Aristotle’s distinction as to an 
 act being owe eiSws or ayvoCiv. The former refers to ignorance of 
 the external conditions. As to the other he says : “ Every bad man is 
 ignorant of what is to be done and what is left undone. And it is just 
 this defect (dp-apria) that makes men unjust and wicked. But such 
 ignorance does not make their actions involuntary (and not imputable), 
 but only makes them bad.” 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE. 
 
 127 
 
 ( 'b ) But badness from a bad conscience is not yet hypo- 
 crisy. Hypocrisy is rather the maintaining before others that 
 one’s bad deed is really good, and the external simulation 
 of being good, pious, etc. — an artifice of fraud to deceive 
 others. The bad man can, moreover, appeal to his general 
 goodness and piety as grounds of self-justification for his 
 bad action, using them as a cloak for perverting the bad 
 into that which is good for himself. 
 
 (y) To this perversion belongs that form known as Proba- 
 bilism. Probabilism maintains the principle that any action 
 is permitted for which any good reason may be found, even 
 if this be only the opinion of a learned Doctor, however it 
 may differ from the opinion of other Doctors. It, however, 
 acknowledges that such an authority gives only probability, 
 though it asserts it to be sufficient for quieting the con- 
 science. It concedes that there may be other reasons just 
 as good. It also acknowledges the necessity of some ob- 
 jective ground for right conduct. The decision as to what 
 is good (or bad) is placed upon the many good reasons 
 including those authorities. But these are numerous and 
 contradictory. Hence it is the arbitrary choice of the indi- 
 vidual which must ultimately decide the case. This under- 
 mines all ethicality and religious life. But, because Proba- 
 bilism does not acknowledge this choice of the individual 
 as the ground of decision, it is a form of hypocrisy. 
 
 ( d ) The next phase is that which maintains that the good 
 will consists in merely willing the good; that all which is 
 needed to make an action good is that one wills the good 
 in general. But the action has a content only as far as it 
 is a specific choice. The good, on the other hand, is not 
 specific, and thus it is reserved to private choice to give it 
 a content. In Probabilism some reverend Father is an 
 authority. Here every one has the dignity of being an 
 authority, specifying just what is good. But what one calls 
 good may be only one side of the concrete case, and thus 
 
128 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 it may be really bad, all things being considered. This is 
 the phase of Intention previously considered (§ 119). Here 
 we have a conflict of qualities of a deed, it being good ac- 
 cording to the one, and bad according to the other. Hence 
 the question arises whether the intention is really good. But 
 the individual always intends the good. The particular deed 
 intended is still good (it is held), in spite of some of its 
 sides being criminal and bad,- — because it was intended. If 
 the individual had intended some one of these bad sides 
 instead of the one he did, it would still have been good, — 
 because intended. 
 
 Theft and murder are really, as deeds, the satisfaction 
 of such a will as wills them. Thus they have a positive 
 side in the will, and in order to make the deed good it is 
 only necessary to intend the gratification of such a will. 
 Theft and flight from battle for the sake of one’s life or 
 that of his family, murderous revenge for one’s gratification 
 of his feeling of his own rights, killing a man because he 
 is bad, — all such maybe stamped as good deeds because 
 of the good intention with which they are done. Thus it 
 has even been said that there is no really bad man, as no 
 one ever wills the bad for the sake of the bad, but always 
 wills something positive, something which satisfies his will, — 
 something good. Thus we find that all difference between 
 good and evil, and all real duties, have disappeared in this 
 abstract good. Therefore, to merely will the good, or to 
 merely do a deed with good intention, is rather evil. 
 
 Here we may consider the maxim: the end sanctifies the 
 means. It might be replied: certainly a holy aim does, but 
 an unholy aim does not sanctify the means. If the end is 
 holy, the means are also holy. This would be a tautological 
 expression, if “means” were used in its strict sense, that 
 is, if it be strictly a means. But the real meaning of this 
 expression is that even a bad “ means,” yes, even a crime, 
 is permissible or obligatory if it leads to a good end. Thou 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE. 
 
 129 
 
 shalt not kill, and yet courts of justice and soldiers have 
 not only the right but the duty to kill men. But in these 
 cases it is strictly defined as to what kind of men and under 
 what circumstance this is a right and a duty. Thou shalt 
 preserve thy own life and that of thy family. But even 
 this duty is subordinated to a higher end, and thus reduced 
 to a means. But what is designated as a crime is not an 
 indefinite thing still open to discussion, but has its clearly- 
 defined character. The sacred aim which is opposed to the 
 criminal means, is nothing more than a private opinion as 
 to what is good or better. Finally, we have mere private 
 opinion expressly proclaimed as the rule of right and duty. 
 
 ( e ) That is we have private conviction as to what is right 
 made the judge of the ethical (sittliche) nature of an act. 
 The good, which a man wills, has no specific content as yet, 
 and the principle of private conviction demands that the 
 individual subsume an act under the character of that which 
 is good for himself. Here even the appearance of any 
 ethical objectivity has disappeared. Such a doctrine is 
 directly connected with the so-called philosophy which denies 
 the knowableness of truth and consequently that of ethical 
 laws. As such a philosophy esteems the knowableness of 
 truth to be an empty conceit, it must make the merely outward 
 appearance of an action the measure of its truth, and con- 
 sequently place the ethical in the peculiar world-conception 
 and private conviction of the individual. Such a degraded 
 form of philosophy may seem to be the idle talk of scholas- 
 tics, but the evil of it is that it gradually makes its way into 
 ethical thought and then shows its real baseness. When 
 such views as those we have mentioned obtain currency, 
 there is no longer either vice or hypocrisy. Everything is 
 justified by the intention and by the outward appearance . 1 
 
 1 I do not doubt but that one may be thoroughly convinced. But 
 how many men undertake the worst crimes out of just such felt convic- 
 tions. If this ground were allowed there could be no longer any 
 
130 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 But the possibility of error must sometimes force itself 
 upon those holding this principle of private conviction, and 
 thus give rise to the demand for an absolute and universal 
 law. But law does not act. It is only the real man who acts. 
 In measuring the worth of a man the only question is con- 
 cerning how far he has received the law into his heart and 
 mind, — how far his conviction has been affected by it. But 
 if man’s actions are not to be judged according to that law 
 it is hard to see what purpose that law serves. Such a law 
 is degraded to a mere outer letter, for it is only through my 
 conviction that it becomes a law binding me to the obli- 
 gatory. Such a law may have the authority of God, of the 
 State, of millenniums in which it was the bond uniting men 
 in all their manifold relations ; and yet against all these 
 authorities I oppose the authority of my subjective con- 
 viction. Such self-conceit appears at first as tremendous, 
 and yet this principle of private judgment which we are here 
 considering justifies this conceit. Shallow philosophy and 
 bad sophistry may lead to such higher inconsequence. And 
 if they then admit the possibility of error, and consequently 
 of crime, they still seek to reduce it to its minimum. For, 
 say they, to err is human. Who has not daily erred concern- 
 ing more or less important things. And yet even the dis- 
 tinction between important and unimportant things vanishes, 
 when private conviction is considered to be ultimate. The 
 admission of the possibility of an error is changed into the 
 assertion that a wrong conviction is only an error. This is 
 but a step removed from dishonesty. For at one time all 
 ethicality and human worth are placed in private conviction, 
 thus elevating it to the highest and holiest position. At 
 another time private conviction is regarded as merely an 
 
 rational judgment as to good and bad, right and wrong or the noble and 
 ignoble. Delusion would have equal right with sound sense. Reason 
 would have no right, or validity — only the one who doubted would be in 
 the truth. I shudder before the consequence of such tolerance, which 
 would be exclusively to the advantage of un-reason. — Fr. A. Jacobi. 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE. 13 1 
 
 error. In fact my conviction is extremely insignificant. If 
 I cannot know anything true, then it is a matter of indiffer- 
 ence how or what I think, and there remains for my thought 
 only that empty good of the abstract understanding. 
 
 Moreover, there results the consequence that others, who 
 act according to their convictions, may regard my actions 
 (from conviction) as crimes, and that they are quite right in 
 doing so. Thus I am cast down from the pinnacle of free- 
 dom and honor into the condition of slavery and dishonor. 
 Thus the principle of private conviction (of others) meets 
 me as an avenging judge. 
 
 (/) The highest form of the expression of this subjectivity 
 (a term borrowed from Plato, though used in a different 
 way) is that of Irony. This is the conviction not only of 
 the unreality and vanity of all rights, laws, duties and vir- 
 tues, but it is the recognition of its own vanity, and, at the 
 same time, of itself, as absolute. The ego is all. It has 
 become conscious of its own utter emptiness, and yet main- 
 tains itself as the ultimate and fundamental reality in an 
 empty world. The ego which creates, names and destroys 
 its own good and evil has become conscious of its own utter 
 invalidity and vanity. Such Irony is only possible in a 
 period of great culture, when all earnest belief has vanished 
 and the vanity of vanities appears as the only reality. Here 
 there is no real good acknowledged, either objective or sub- 
 jective. One’s own desires, aims, and good, are recognized 
 as equally invalid with current codes of morality, and yet 
 they are deliberately maintained as having absolute validity.] 
 
 Transition from Morality to Ethicality ( Sittlichkeit ). 
 
 § 141 . 
 
 The good is as yet abstract. But, as the concrete sub- 
 stance of freedom, it demands determinations or qualities in 
 general, as well as the principle of freedom, as identical with 
 the goad. Conscience , which is yet only an abstract principle 
 
J 3 1 2 
 
 MORALITY. 
 
 of determination, likewise demands that its determinations 
 be given universality and objectivity. We have seen how 
 both good and duty, when either of them is raised to inde- 
 pendent universality, lack that specific definite character 
 which they ought to have. But the integration of both the 
 good and Conscience, as relatively independent, is potentially 
 accomplished in their organic unity. For we have seen sub- 
 jectivity vanishing into its own emptiness, already posited 
 (in the form of pure self-certitude or conscience), as identical 
 with the abstract universality of the good. This integration 
 of the good and Conscience is the real truth of them both. It 
 is their concrete organic unity. This unity is the sphere of 
 Ethicality , or the concrete ethical world of social life. 
 
 This transition is more scientifically developed in the 
 Logic. We are here concerned with its finite abstract side, 
 i.e., with good demanding actualization and with conscience 
 demanding the good for its content. But both of these, as 
 yet partial phases, are not yet explicitly developed into that 
 which they are potentially. This development of both the 
 good and of conscience, so that neither lacks the other; this 
 integration of both into an organic unity, in which each is 
 retained as a member rather than as an independent thing, 
 is the realized Idea of the will. In this each one attains its 
 true reality. . . . 
 
 We found the first definite characteristic of the determi- 
 nate being ( Dasein ) of freedom to be that of Abstract Right. 
 This, however, passed through the reflexion of self-conscious- 
 ness into the form of the good. Here now we have the truth 
 of abstract right as well as of. both the good and conscience. 
 The Ethical (, Sittliche ) is subjective disposition of mind, but 
 only in reference to implicit 1 (an sich ) rights. That this 
 
 1 It seems that Hegel’s thought requires some other term than im- 
 plicit (an sich) here. The ethical in general has to do with the explicit. 
 
 Hegel’s reference to it here as subjective disposition in reference to 
 implicit rights is only made in passing and without further elucidation, 
 and is inexplicable. 
 
THE GOOD AND CONSCIENCE. 
 
 r 33 
 
 Idea is the truth of the concept of freedom, cannot be merely 
 an accepted presupposition, but must be demonstrated by 
 philosophy. This demonstration is simply that of showing 
 how both abstract right and conscience lead back into this 
 organic unity as their truth. 
 
 Supplemeivmry . — Both the standpoints previously con- 
 sidered lack their opposites. Abstract good vanishes into 
 perfect powerlessness, and conscience shrivels into objective 
 insignificance. Hence there may arise a longing for objec- 
 tivity. A man would sometimes gladly humble himself to 
 slavish dependency in order to escape the torture and empti- 
 ness of mere negativity. This accounts for the many recent 
 perversions to the Catholic Church. Such persons have 
 found no definite codes and dogmas within their own 
 spirit and have reached out after something stable, after 
 an authority, even if what they obtained was devoid of the 
 substantiality of thought. Ethicality ( Sittlichkeit ), or the 
 ethical world of social life, is the absolute unity of sub- 
 jective and objective good. In this sphere is found the 
 solution of the antinomy in strict accordance with the con- 
 cept of freedom. Ethicality is not merely the subjective 
 form and the self-determination of the will, but it has real 
 freedom for its content. Both right and morality need the 
 ethical for their foundation, as without it neither has any 
 actuality. Only the Idea , the true infinite is actual. Rights 
 exist only as the branch, or as a plant clinging round a 
 firm tree. 
 
THIRD PART. 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 § 142 . 
 
 Ethicality, or the ethical world of concrete social life, is 
 the Idea of freedom, as the vital and virile good. It is in 
 self-consciousness that this good attains to its knowledge 
 and volition, and through their activity to its own actualiza- 
 tion. On the other hand it is in this ethical substance that 
 self-consciousness has its absolute ground and efficient end. 
 Ethicality is the concept of freedom, developed into the present 
 existing world and into the nature of self-consciousness. 
 
 § 143 . 
 
 Since this unity of the concept of the will and its determi- 
 'nate being (Dasein), which is the particular will, is know- 
 ing, the consciousness of the difference between these 
 moments of the Idea is present, but in such a manner that 
 now each moment by itself is the totality of the Idea , and 
 has the Idea as ground and contents. 
 
 § 144 . 
 
 (a) The objective ethical ( objektive Sittliche), which takes 
 the place of abstract good, is substance, concrete through its 
 subjectivity as infinite form. This substance posits thence 
 differences in itself, which thereby are determined by the 
 concept, and through which the ethical concept gains a 
 fixed content, which is explicitly necessary and elevated 
 above subjective opinion and inclination. This content 
 consists of the in and for themselves existing laws and 
 institutions. 
 
J 3 6 
 
 E THICA LITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 Supplementary. — In all ethicality ( Sittlichkeit ) both the 
 objective and the subjective moments are present ; but both 
 are its forms only. The good is here substance, that means 
 the filling up of the objective with subjectivity. When 
 ethicality is viewed from the objective standpoint, it may be 
 said that the ethical man is unconscious of himself. In this 
 sense, Antigone declared that no one knew whence the laws 
 had come ; that they were eternal : that is to say, they are 
 the absolutely independent realities, the determinations 
 proceeding from the nature of the case. But none the less 
 this substantial has also a consciousness, although this con- 
 sciousness has always, on this standpoint, only the position 
 of a phase. 
 
 § 145. 
 
 In the fact that the ethical is the system of these determi- 
 nations of the Idea , consists its rationality. In this manner 
 it becomes freedom, or the in and for itself existing will as 
 the objective, the sphere of necessity, whose moments are 
 the ethical powers that rule the lives of individuals and 
 are actualized and revealed in them as their attributes 
 ( Accidenzen ) and conceptions. 
 
 Supplementary. — Since the concept of freedom consists in 
 the ethical determinations, these are the substantiality or 
 the universal essence of the individuals, who, consequently, 
 are related to this universal factor as something accidental. 
 Whether the individual exists or not is indifferent to 
 objective ethicality, which alone is the enduring and the 
 power through which the lives of individuals are ruled. 
 Hence, ethicality, or concrete morality, has been represented 
 to mankind as eternal justice, as gods existing in and for 
 themselves, against whom the vain striving of the individuals 
 becomes only a fluctuating play. 
 
E THICA LIT Y (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 (ß) The substance is, in this its actual self-consciousness , 
 cognizant of itself, and hence object of knowledge. On 
 the one hand, by virtue of the fact that they exist in the 
 highest sense of independence, the ethical substance, its 
 laws, and domination, have for the subject an absolute 
 authority and force, infinitely more stable than the mere 
 being [das Seif of nature. 
 
 The sun, moon, mountains, rivers, objects of nature in 
 general, exist; they have for consciousness the authority 
 not only of mere existence in general, but also of having 
 a particular nature. Consciousness respects this- particular 
 nature, and is guided by it when employed with objects of 
 nature. But the authority of ethical laws is infinitely higher, 
 since the things in nature present rationality only in a wholly 
 external ( äusserliche ) and particular manner, and conceal this 
 rationality under the form of the contingent. 
 
 § 147. 
 
 On the other hand, the ethical substance, its laws and 
 authority, are nothing foreign to the subject, but they afford 
 the subject the testbnony of the spirit , as being of its own 
 essence , as that in which it feels itself to exist (, Selbstgefühl ), 
 and in which it lives as in its proper element, undifferen- 
 tiated from itself, — a condition that is unmediated and as 
 yet identical, even as faith and trust are. 
 
 Faith and trust belong to incipient reflection, and pre- 
 suppose a conception and differentiation; as, for example, 
 believing in a heathen religion is different from being a 
 heathen. This relation, or rather relationless identity, in 
 which the ethical is the actual vitality of self-consciousness, 
 can under all circumstances resolve itself into a relation of 
 faith and conviction, and into something mediated by further 
 reflection, into insight founded on reasons. This insight 
 
138 E TH 1 CALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 may also begin from any particular aims, interests or con- 
 siderations, from fear or hope, or from historical antecedents. 
 But its adequate recognition belongs to the thinking con- 
 cept. 
 
 § 148. 
 
 For the individual, who distinguishes himself from these 
 substantial determinations as the subjective and in himself 
 indeterminate, or as the particularly determined, and to 
 whom they hence stand in the relation of substance, these 
 substantial determinations become duties which, in relation 
 to his will, are obligatory. 
 
 The ethical doctrine of duties (that is, as it is objectively , 
 and not as conceived according to the empty principle of 
 moral subjectivity, according to which, indeed, nothing 
 determines it [§134]) is, consequently, the systematic devel- 
 opment of the sphere of ethical necessity. This forms the 
 content of this Part Third of this treatise. The difference 
 of this presentation from the form of a doctrine of duties con- 
 sists in this alone, that, in what follows, the ethical deter- 
 minations present themselves as necessary relations, without 
 any further consequence being added to each of them. 
 Hence this determination is a duty for man. A doctrine of 
 duties, when not a philosophical science, takes its subject- 
 matter from conditions and relations contingently presented, 
 and shows their connection with individual conceptions, 
 with those principles and thoughts, aims, motives, feelings, 
 and the like, which are generally entertained, and can add 
 as reasons the further consequence of each duty in reference 
 to other ethical relations, as well as in reference to common 
 welfare and opinion. But an immanent and consistent 
 doctrine of duties can be nothing else than the evolution of 
 those relations which become necessary through the Idea of 
 freedom, and hence actual throughout their whole extent, 
 in the State. 
 
E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 r 39 
 
 § 149. 
 
 Obligatory duty can appear as a limitation , only to 
 undetermined subjectivity or abstract freedom, and to the 
 desires of the natural will, or to that moral will which deter- 
 mines its indeterminate good through its own caprice. But 
 the individual has in duty rather his liberation , on the one 
 hand, from the dependence imposed on him when under 
 the influence of natural desires alone, as well as from the 
 oppression which he suffers as subjective particularity in 
 the moral reflexion as to what ought and what may be 
 done ; and, on the other hand, from the undetermined sub- 
 jectivity which does not express itself and thus attain the 
 objective characteristics of action, but remains in itself as a 
 non-actuality. In duty the individual shakes off subjective 
 fetters and attains substantial freedom. 
 
 Supplementary .- — Duty limits only the caprice of subjec- 
 tivity, and comes in conflict only with the abstract good to 
 which subjectivity clings. When men say, “We wish to be 
 free,” this means at first only, “We wish to be free in an 
 abstract sense,” i. e., free from objective laws. Hence 
 every determination and organic differentiation in the State 
 is held to be a limitation of this freedom. Duty is not a 
 limitation, or restriction of freedom but of the abstraction 
 of freedom, that is to say, of the opposite to freedom : duty 
 is the arrival of freedom at determinate being, the gaining 
 of affirmative freedom. 
 
 § 150. 
 
 The ethical, in so far as it reflects itself in the individual 
 character, as such is determined by nature, is virtue. 
 
 Inasmuch as this shows itself as nothing but the simple 
 conformity of the individual to the duties of the situation in 
 which he finds himself, virtue is rectitude. 
 
140 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 What man should do, what duties he must fulfil in order 
 to be virtuous, is easily determined in an ethical community. 
 There is nothing else for him to do than that which is pre- 
 scribed, proclaimed and made known to him in his ethical 
 relations. Rectitude is the universal, that which can be 
 promoted in him partly as the ethical and partly as the 
 legally right. But for the moral standpoint, rectitude easily 
 appears as something subordinate, over and above which 
 one must demand something still more in one’s self and 
 others. The desire to be something particular is not satisfied 
 with conformity to the universal and objective forms of duty 
 as existing in the current conventional morals. Such a 
 desire finds only in an exception the consciousness of the 
 desired peculiarity. The different sides of rectitude may just 
 as properly be called virtues, since they are just as much the 
 property (though in the comparison with others, not the 
 particular property) of the individual. 
 
 But discourse about virtue borders easily on empty decla- 
 mation, since it treats only of an abstract and indefinite 
 matter. Such discourse with its reasons and manner of 
 presentation also appeals to the individual, as to a being of 
 caprice and subjective inclination. In an ethical condition 
 of society, whose relations are fully developed and actual- 
 ized, such peculiar forms of virtue have a place and actuality 
 only in extraordinary circumstances and collisions of these 
 relations — that is, in actual collisions , for moral reflection 
 can, indeed find collisions under any circumstances, and 
 obtain for itself the consciousness of having made sacri- 
 fices and of being something particular and peculiar. For 
 this reason this form of virtue as such occurs oftener in 
 undeveloped states of society and of the community. In 
 such earlier stages the ethical and its actualization is more 
 of an individual choice and a genial nature peculiar to 
 the individual. The ancients, we know, predicated virtue 
 especially of Hercules. In the ancient state however, 
 
ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 141 
 
 ethicality had not grown to this free system of an independ- 
 ent development and objectivity — thus the deficiency had 
 to be supplied by the geniality of the individual. 
 
 The doctrine of virtues, when not simply a doctrine of 
 particular duties, includes the character which is founded in 
 natural determinations. Thus it embraces a spiritual history 
 of the natural man. 
 
 Since the virtues are the ethical in reference to the par- 
 ticular, and from this subjective side something undetermined, 
 the quantitative “more” or “less” appears as their deter- 
 mination ; and their contemplation brings up the opposite 
 defects as vice. Thus Aristotle determined the correct 
 signification of the particular virtues as the mean between 
 a too-much and a too-little. The same content which takes 
 the form of duties and then that of virtues, has also the 
 form of impulses. These, also, have the same fundamental 
 content. But since this content of the impulses belongs still 
 to the immediate will and the natural sensibilities, and has 
 not been developed to the determination of ethicality, the 
 impulses have only the abstract object in common with 
 the content of duties and virtues. But this abstract object, 
 being without determination in itself, does not contain the 
 limits of good and evil in itself. In other words, the im- 
 pulses are good according to the abstraction of the positive, 
 and conversely bad, according to the abstraction of the 
 negative (§ 18). 
 
 Supplementary. — Where a person does this or that ethic- 
 ally good act, he is not straightway virtuous, but this he 
 is when ethical behavior is a stable element in his character. 
 Virtue is rather ethical virtuosoship. The reason that we 
 do not speak so much of virtue now as formerly, is that 
 ethicality is no longer so much some peculiar quality of a 
 particular individual as formerly. The French are, in the 
 main, the people who speak most of virtue, because among 
 them the individual is considered rather as something pecu- 
 
142 
 
 E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 liar, and as having a natural (i. e., not yet ethical) manner 
 of action. The Germans, on the contrary, are more thought- 
 ful, and among them the same content gains the form of 
 universality. 
 
 § 151 . 
 
 But in the simple identity with the actuality of individuals, 
 the ethical appears as their common manner of acting, as 
 custom. This habitual manner of acting becomes a second 
 nature , which takes the place of that which at first is simply 
 natural will. It becomes the penetrating soul, meaning, 
 and actuality of its existence, the living and present spirit 
 as a world, whose substance first then exists as spirit. 
 
 Supplementary. — As nature has her laws, as the animal, 
 the trees, the sun, fulfil their law, so also is custom the law 
 belonging to the spirit of freedom. That which legal right 
 and morality have not yet attained, that custom is, namely, 
 spirit. For in legal right the particularity is not yet that of 
 the concept, but only that of the natural will. Likewise, 
 at the stage of morality, self-consciousness is not yet spiritual 
 consciousness. The question is, then, only concerning the 
 worth of the subject in himself ; that is to say, the subject 
 which determines himself in accordance with the good 
 against the evil, has still the form of arbitrariness. On the 
 other hand, at the ethical stage, the will is the will of the 
 spirit and has a substantial content adequate unto itself. 
 Pedagogy is the art of making men ethical : it considers 
 man as a merely natural being — it shows the way to a new 
 birth, how to convert his first nature into a second spiritual 
 1 nature, so that this spiritual becomes a habit in him. In 
 this habit the opposition of the natural and subjective will 
 disappears and the struggle of the subject is broken. Thus 
 habit belongs to ethicality to the same extent as to philo- 
 sophic thought, for the latter demands that the spirit shall be 
 cultured so as to be opposed to arbitrary notions, and that 
 
E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 J 4 3 
 
 these shall be crushed and conquered, in order that rational 
 thought have free course. 
 
 But man also dies of habit, that is, he is dead when he 
 has fully habituated himself to life, when he has become 
 spiritually and physically obtuse, and when the opposition 
 belonging to subjective consciousness and spiritual activity 
 has disappeared. For man is active only as long as there is 
 is something he has not attained, in reference to which he 
 wishes to be productive and effective. When this is accom- 
 plished, virile activity and vitality ( Lebendigkeit ), disappear, 
 and the absence of interest that then ensues is spiritual 
 or even physical death. 
 
 § 152 . 
 
 In this manner, ethical substantiality comes to its right 
 and this right gains its realization. For the self-will and 
 independent conscience of the individual, which existed 
 as for itself only and produced an opposition against the 
 concrete ethical life, disappear, when the ethical character 
 recognizes as its motive and end ( bewegende Zweck ) the un- 
 moved universal that has been reduced by its determina- 
 tions to actual rationality ; and when this ethical character 
 recognizes its value, as well as the persistence ( Bestehen ) of 
 particular ends, as being grounded and having its actuality 
 in this determined universal. Subjectivity is the absolute 
 for?n itself and the existing actuality of substance. The 
 distinction of the subject from substance, viewed as the 
 objects, ends, and power of the subject, is nothing but the 
 likewise immediately ( unmittelbar , i. e., not mediately) van- 
 ished distinction of form. 
 
 Subjectivity, which is the ground of existence for the con- 
 cept of freedom (§ 106) and which, on the moral standpoint, 
 is still differentiated from said concept, becomes, in the 
 ethical sphere, the adequate existence of the concept of 
 freedom. 
 
144 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 § 153 . 
 
 The right of individuals to their subjective determination of 
 freedom has its realization in the fact that they belong to 
 ethical reality, inasmuch as the certitude of their freedom 
 has its truth in such objectivity, and they (the individuals) 
 actually possses in the ethical sphere their essential being 
 ( Wesen) and their inner universality (§ 147). 
 
 To a father who asked how he might best bring up his 
 son, a Pythagorean (it is also attributed to others) answered: 
 “By making him the citizen of a state with good laws.” 
 
 Supplementary. — The pedagogical attempt to keep pupils 
 away from the common (i. e., communal) life of the present, 
 and to bring them up in the country (Rousseau in “ Emile ”) 
 has been a vain experiment, for to estrange men from the 
 laws of the world cannot prove a success. Even if youth 
 is educated in solitude, it is certainly unwarranted to think 
 that no fragrant breeze from the spirit-world should ever 
 invade this solitude, and that the power of the world-spirit 
 is too weak to take possession of this little separated terri- 
 tory. When he is the citizen of a good state , the individual 
 first gains his just rights. 
 
 “ The realm of morality ( Sittlichkeit ) is nothing but the 
 absolute spiritual unity of the essence of individuals, which 
 exists in their independent reality. . . . This moral sub- 
 stance, looked at abstractly from the mere side of its uni- 
 versality, is the law as the expression of such thought. But 
 from another point of view it is also immediate actual self- 
 consciousness as custom. On the other hand, the individual 
 consciousness exists as a unitary member of the universal 
 consciousness. Its action and existence are the universal 
 custom ( Sitte or Wo%), in which it lives and moves and has 
 its being. . . . 
 
 “Any merely particular action or business of the individual 
 relates to the needs of himself as a natural being. But 
 
ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ) 
 
 !4S 
 
 these, his commonest functions, are saved from nothingness 
 and given reality solely by the universal maintaining medium, 
 that is, through the power of the whole people of which 
 he is a member. It is this power, too, which gives content 
 as well as form to his actions. What he does is the uni- 
 versal skill and custom of all. Just so far as this content 
 completely individualizes itself, is its reality inwoven with 
 the activity of all. The labor of the individual for his own 
 wants is at the same time a satisfying of the needs of others, 
 and reciprocally the satisfaction of his own needs is attained 
 only through the labor of others. Thus the individual un- 
 consciously does an universal work in doing his own indi- 
 vidual work. But he also does this consciously. The whole, 
 as his object, is that for which he sacrifices himself, and 
 through which sacrifice he fulfils himself. Here there is 
 nothing but what is reciprocal; nothing even in the appar- 
 ently negative activity of the independent individual, but such 
 as enables him to attain the positive significance of independ- 
 ent being. This unity, which throbs through both the nega- 
 tion and the affirmation of the individual, speaks its universal 
 language in the common custom and laws of his people. 
 Yet this unchanging essence, — the spirit of his people, — 
 is itself simply the expression of the single individuality 
 which seems to be opposed to it. The laws proclaim what 
 each one is and does. The individual recognizes this essence 
 as not only his universal outward existence, but also as that 
 which is particularized in his own individuality and in that 
 of fellow-citizens. Hence each one has in this universal 
 spirit nothing else than assurance of himself, and finds in 
 existing reality nothing but himself. In it I behold only 
 independent beings like myself. In them I see the free 
 unity of self with others, which exists through others as it 
 does through me. I see them as myself and myself as them 
 in this free unity or universal substance. Thus reason is 
 realized in truth in the life of a free people. It is present, 
 
146 
 
 £7HJCAL1TY {SITTLICHKEIT). 
 
 '.’ .•ini: spirit, in which the individual not only finds his char- 
 acter. . .. universal and particular essence, proclaimed and 
 prepared ready to hand, but also hnds that he himself is this 
 essence, and has attained his definite character. Hence 
 the wisest men of antiquity have proclaimed the maxim: 
 that wisdom and virtue consist in living in harmonv with 
 the Ires morals of one's own people ." 1 
 
 § 154. 
 
 The right of individuals to special characteristics, is con- 
 tained in ethical substantiality, since particularity is the 
 manner of the external appearance in which the ethical 
 exists. 
 
 § 155. 
 
 In this identity of the universal and particular will. ,:h/v 
 and -vglr consequently coincide, and man has in the ethical 
 sphere duties to the same extent as rights, and rights to the 
 same extent as duties. In abstract legal right, the op has 
 the right and another has the dun - : in the moral sphere, 
 only the right of my own knowledge and will, together with 
 my welfare united with duty, are demanded. 
 
 — The slave can have no duties, for duties 
 belong to the free man alone. If all rights were on one side 
 and all duties on the other, the whole 'das G would 
 dissolve, for identity alone is the foundation which we here 
 must hold fast. 
 
 § 156. 
 
 The ethical substance, as containing the independent self- 
 consciousness that coincides with its concept, is the actual 
 spirit of a family and a people. 
 
 1 Hegel's £r.i: vrV S.s (hvav. pp. r; 6 -S. cf. Bradley's Etc::£ 
 
 Studies, pp. 167 -S. 
 
ETHICALITY (SITTLICHKEIT). 
 
 !47 
 
 Supplementary. — - The ethical is not abstract like the good , , 
 but is, in an intensive sense, actual. The spirit has actuality, 
 and individuals are the accidents of this actuality. Conse- 
 quently, in the ethical sphere, there are only two points 
 of view possible : either to start from substantiality, or to 
 proceed in an atomistic manner and rise from individuality 
 as foundation. But the latter point of view is spiritless, 
 since it leads only to a conglomeration ; for the spirit is 
 nothing individual, but it is the unity of the individual and 
 universal. 
 
 § 157 . 
 
 The concept of this Idea is only spirit, self-knowledge, and 
 actuality, when it is the objectification of itself, the move- 
 ment through the form of its moments. It is, therefore : 
 
 (a) The immediated, or natural ethical spirit ; — the 
 family. 
 
 This substantiality changes at the loss of its unity into 
 that of separation (of the members of the family) and to the 
 standpoint of the relative, thus becoming, 
 
 (b) The civic community , a union of the members as 
 independent individuals (i. e., as private persons) in a formal 
 universality, through their needs, and through the legal con- 
 stitution as a means for the safety of persons and property, 
 and through an external order for their individual and com- 
 mon interests. This external state centers itself together 
 
 (c) In the end and actuality of the substantial universal, 
 and of the public life devoted to the common weal — in the 
 constitution of the State. 
 
148 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 FIRST SECTION. 
 
 The Family. 
 
 § 158 . 
 
 The family, as the unmediated substantiality of the spirit 
 has its emotional sense of unity, love , for its characteristic ; 
 so that the disposition is to have the self-consciousness 
 of one’s individuality in this unity as in an independent 
 essentiality, in order to be united to the family not as a 
 person for himself, but as a member. 
 
 Supplementary. — Love means in general the conscious- 
 ness of my unity with another ; so that I do not remain 
 isolated for myself, but gain my self-consciousness only as 
 the renunciation of my exclusive independence (Fursich- 
 seins), and thereby know myself as the unity of myself with 
 the other and of the other with me. But love is feeling, 
 that is, it is ethicality in the primitive natural form. In the 
 State we do not find love. ; there one is conscious of the 
 unity as the unity of laza, there the content must be rational 
 and I must know it. The first phase of love is that I wish 
 not to be an independent person for myself, and that, if I 
 am, I feel myself defective and incomplete. The second 
 phase is that I win myself in another person, that I am 
 recognized in him as he is in me. Love is, hence, a most 
 monstrous contradiction to the understanding, which it can 
 not solve, since nothing harder is found than this punctili- 
 ousness of self-consciousness which is denied, and which I 
 am still said to have affirmed. But love is at once the 
 source and the solution of the contradiction ; as solution 
 it is ethical concord. 
 
 § 159 . 
 
 The right which belongs to the individual on the ground 
 of family-unity, and which at first is his life in this unity 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 149 
 
 itself, appears only in the form of (legal) rights as of the 
 abstract phase of the determined individuality , when once 
 dissolution of the family takes place. Here, those who 
 have been its members, become independent persons in 
 their disposition and actuality, and receive separately (and 
 consequently in an external way, as wealth, support, cost of 
 education, and the like) that which they obtained in the 
 family as their natural heritage. 
 
 Supplementary. — The right of the family consists properly 
 in this : that its substantiality shall have determinate exist- 
 ence ( Dasein ). Consequently, it is a right against any 
 
 external impediments, and against secession from this unity. 
 But on the contrary, again, love is a feeling, a subjective 
 affair, against which the unity ( Einigkeit ) cannot make itself 
 effective. Hence, when unity is to be promoted it can be 
 done only by the agency of such things which, according to 
 their nature, are external and not dependent on feeling. 
 
 § 160. 
 
 The family consummates itself on three sides : 
 
 ( a ) In the form of its immediate concept, as wedlock. 
 
 {IP) In external existence ( Dasein ), in the property and 
 goods of the family, and in the care of the same. 
 
 (r) In the bringing up of the children and the dissolution 
 of the family. 
 
 A. Wedlock. 
 
 § 161. 
 
 Wedlock contains, as the inwicdiate ethical relation, first the 
 moment of natural vitality (Lebendigkeit), and, indeed, as 
 substantial relation, life in its totality, viz., as actuality of 
 the species and its process. But, secondly in self-conscious- 
 ness the implicitly existing unity of the natural sexes, which 
 for that reason is only an external unity, is transformed into 
 a spiritual one, into self-conscious love. 
 
JS 0 
 
 E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 Supplementary. — Wedlock is essentially an ethical relation. 
 Formerly, especially in most treatises on natural rights, it 
 has been considered only from the physical side, from what 
 it is on its merely natural side. Hence it has been con- 
 sidered as a sexual relation only, and has remained closed in 
 every way to the other characteristics of wedlock. But it is 
 just as crude to conceive wedlock as nothing but a civil con- 
 tract, a conception that occurs even with Kant, for then the 
 mutual arbitrary choice makes a compact for the individuals, 
 and wedlock is degraded to an ordinary mutual contract. 
 A third conception, just as reprehensible, is to hold that 
 wedlock is founded on love alone. For love, being a feeling, 
 is always open to chance — a form which the ethical must 
 not have. Hence wedlock is more closely determined as 
 legally ethical love. With this determination, the transient, 
 capricious and subjective in the concept of wedlock 
 disappear. 
 
 § 162 . 
 
 As the subjective point of inception for wedlock, either 
 the particular inclination of the two persons entering the 
 relation, or the plans and arrangements of the parents, etc., 
 appear the more prominent. The objective point of incep- 
 tion is the free consent of the persons in question, a consent, 
 indeed, to be henceforth one person, to resign their natural 
 and individual personality for this unity. This is a self- 
 limitation in this respect, but also, since in it they gain their 
 substantial self-consciousness, it is their liberation. It is 
 therefore the objective destiny and ethical duty of man to 
 enter the state of wedlock. As to the matter of the external 
 point of inception of wedlock, it is, according to its nature, 
 accidental, and depends especially on the culture of reflection. 
 The two extremes are : either the arrangements of well- 
 meaning parents is the first step, and, as a result of the 
 prearranged acquaintance, an inclination arises in the persons 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 I S I 
 
 who are being selected for each other for the union of love ; 
 or the inclination appears first in the persons in question, as 
 diversely constituted as they may be. The former extreme, 
 or in general, the way in which the resolve to marry takes its 
 beginning, and has the inclination as a result so that at the 
 actual marriage both are united, may be considered the more 
 ethical way. In the other extreme, the infinitely particular 
 individuality gets its pretensions recognized and is connected 
 with the subjective principle of the modern world. (See 
 above § 124.) But in modern dramas and other produc- 
 tions of art, where sexual love is the fundamental interest, 
 there is an element of penetrating chilliness. In the heart 
 of the passion presented, through the thorough arbitrariness 
 connected with the same, this chilliness is brought about by 
 presenting the whole interest as depending on these (persons) 
 alone, when, indeed, it may be of infinite importance for 
 them but is not of such interest when in its merely natural 
 form. 
 
 Supplementary. — In nations where the feminine sex is 
 less respected, the parents arrange marriage as they please, 
 without consulting the individuals in question, and these are 
 content with this arrangement, since any special definite 
 direction of sentiment has as yet no pretensions. The 
 maiden desires a husband, and he a wife in general (/. e., 
 without caring for more particular characteristics of the 
 desired consort). In other states of society, considerations 
 of fortune, connections, and political ends may be the de- 
 termining factors. Here great hardships are possible, since 
 wedlock is made a means for other ends. In modern times, 
 on the other hand, the subjective point of inception (falling 
 in love) has come to be considered the only one of import- 
 ance. The moderns imagine that each must wait till his 
 hour has struck, and that each can give his love only to one 
 certain individual. 
 
I S 2 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 § 163. 
 
 The ethical, in wedlock, consists in the consciousness of 
 this unity as a substantial end in love, in trust, and in the 
 community of the whole individual existence. 
 
 In this disposition and actuality, the natural sexual im- 
 pulse is reduced to a mere phase of nature, which perishes 
 in the instant of its gratification. Meanwhile the spiritual 
 bond, in its right as the substantial essence of wedlock, 
 elevated above the caprice of passion and of temporal and 
 particular liking, becomes potentially indissoluble. 
 
 That wedlock is not a contract-relation as to its essential 
 foundation, has already been noted (§ 75), for, from the 
 standpoint of contract, which starts from the abstract per- 
 sonality of independent individuals, wedlock is a contract 
 to pass out of and above the sphere of contract. The 
 identification of the personalities, through which the family 
 is one person , and its members properties, is the ethical 
 spirit. 
 
 It is this ethical (social) spirit which, stripped of the 
 manifold externality which belongs to spirit in the form 
 of a definite individual and in special temporal and well- 
 defined secular interests, that is sometimes elevated into a 
 pictorial conception and honored as the penatcs and the like, 
 and, in general, gives to wedlock and the family its piety (in 
 the Roman sense of the word) and its religious character. 
 It is a further abstraction when the divine, the substantial 
 in this phase of sentiment is separated from its proper sexual 
 side, and from the feeling and the consciousness of spiritual 
 unity, and falsely given a separate existence as Platonic love. 
 This separation is connected with the monkish view, accord- 
 ing to which the phase of natural life is determined as some- 
 thing absolutely negative, ahd just through this is falsely 
 given an infinite importance for itself. 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 *53 
 
 § 164. 
 
 As the stipulation of contract already contains for itself 
 the true transference of property (§ 79), so the solemn 
 ( feierliche ) declaration of agreement to accept the ethical 
 bonds of wedlock and the corresponding recognition and 
 sanction of the same by the family and community (that the 
 church also enters as a further party to the union is not to 
 be fully considered here), are the formal conclusion and actual- 
 izing of wedlock. Hence this alliance is ethically constituted 
 only when preceded by this ceremony, as the performance of 
 its substantial essence, through sign and language, as the 
 outward and visible form of the spiritual (§ 78). Thereby 
 the sensuous sexual element belonging to natural life, re- 
 ceives, in its ethical relation, the position of a consequence 
 (Folge) and accidentality, which belongs to the external form 
 of the ethical alliance. But the meaning of this alliance 
 itself can be exhausted only in that of mutual love and 
 support. . . . 
 
 [Hegel further insists, in this paragraph, upon the neces- 
 sity of the sacred solemnization of marriage, rather than 
 degrading the ceremony to the mechanical work of a civil 
 or ecclesiastical clerk, who performs it without any sense 
 of its ethical significance. This is only rightly appreciated 
 and honored by the sentiment and ceremonies of religious 
 people. Wedlock has both great intellectual and ethical 
 import and results for both sexes. It elevates both to 
 higher labors and aims. A new and broader unity is 
 therein accomplished in the sphere of domestic life. It 
 becomes a veritable school for ethical culture. He also 
 opposes marriage between blood-relations, saying that inti- 
 macy and similarity of tastes and aims of the couple rather 
 succeed than precede wedlock. These should be the ethical 
 results of this school of virtue.] 
 
J 54 
 
 E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 § 167 . 
 
 Wedlock is essentially monogamy , since it is the person- 
 ality, the immediate, exclusive individuality that devotes 
 and surrenders itself to this relation. The truth and the in- 
 ternality {the subjective form of substantiality) of this relation 
 results, therefore, only from the mutual undivided devotion 
 of this personality. This realizes its right to be conscious 
 of itself in another, only when the other enters this identity 
 as a person, that is, as an atomic individuality. 
 
 Wedlock, and especially monogamy, is one of the abso- 
 lute principles on which ethicality (/. e ., concrete morality) 
 of a communal life depends. Hence the institution of wed- 
 lock is referred as a phase of the divine or heroic founding 
 of states. 
 
 § 169 . 
 
 The family has, as person, its external reality in its prop- 
 erty, in which it has the specific character of its substantial 
 personality only when this property has the form of means 
 or possession. 
 
 B. The Possessions of the Family. 
 
 § 170 . 
 
 The family has not only property, but with its being a 
 universal and enduring person, there comes the need and the 
 characteristic of having an enduring and certain estate or 
 fortune. The arbitrary phase of abstract property, belong- 
 ing to the particular needs of the single individual and to 
 the self-seeking of the desires, transforms itself here into 
 the care and acquisition for a common weal, into an ethical 
 activity. 
 
 The introduction of fixed property appears in the tradi- 
 tional accounts of the foundation of the State in connection 
 with the introduction of marriage, or at least with the 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 !55 
 
 beginning of a social and orderly life. — Wherein further, 
 these possessions consist, and how they may gain true 
 stability, is a problem that belongs to the sphere of the 
 civic community. 
 
 The Educatmi of Children and the Dissolution of the Fa?nily. 
 
 § 173. 
 
 «u. 
 
 TV TT TT '7V' 
 
 Supplementary. — ■ Between man and wife the relation of 
 love is not yet objective; for, although feeling is the sub- 
 stantial unity, this has no objectivity. Such an objectivity 
 the parents first gain in their children. In these they have 
 the totality of their union before themselves. The mother 
 loves her husband, and the husband his wife, in their child. 
 Both have in the child their love incarnate before them- 
 selves. While in the family possessions the unity is only in 
 an external thing, in the child this unity is in a spiritual 
 being, by whom the parents are loved and whom they love. 
 
 § 174. 
 
 The children have a right to be educated and supported 
 from the common family possessions. The right of the 
 parents to the service of the children, as service, is estab- 
 lished and limited by the common interest in the cares of 
 the family. The right of the parent to limit the freedom of 
 their children exists for the purpose of discipline and educa- 
 tion. The end of punishment is not justice as such, but is 
 of a subjective, moral nature ; its purpose is to deter the 
 freedom that is only of uncultured nature [is naturalistic 
 only], and to aid and elevate the universal in the child’s 
 consciousness and will. 
 
 Supplementary. — [Hegel further maintains that the child’s 
 right of education rests upon the necessity of aid in his 
 
156 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 self-development of potential manhood. The parent should 
 only require such service from him as promotes this educa- 
 tion. On the other hand, children should not be permitted 
 to do just as they please, though the breaking the will of 
 children should not be merely arbitrary. Obedience is to 
 be demanded on the ground of the parents’ larger knowl- 
 edge of what is best for them. Parents should remember 
 that their children are potentially free spiritual beings, and 
 so never treat them as slaves or mere soulless things. They 
 should make it the primary end to educate them so that 
 their ethical substance, and their hearts and wills should 
 first come to flower and fruitage in the form of love, confi- 
 dence and obedience. They should further seek to develop 
 in them the sense of independence and free personality, that 
 they may in due time be prepared to go out from the natural 
 unity of the family and take their places as free and equal 
 personalities with their parents in the civil community, form- 
 ing for themselves new domestic circles. This leads to the 
 topic of the Dissolution of the Family-relation .] 
 
 § 176. 
 
 As wedlock, primarily, is only the immediate ethical Idea , 
 and hence has its objective actuality in the intimate inter- 
 nality of the subjective disposition and feeling, we find in 
 this the first contingent element of its existence. Just as 
 little as compulsion to enter the state of wedlock is possible, 
 just so little can a merely legal, positive bond keep the 
 subjects (of wedlock) together, when averse and hostile 
 sentiment and actions gain the ascendancy. Hence a 
 third ethical authority is necessary that shall secure the 
 legal right of wedlock, of ethical substantiality, against the 
 bare opinion of such sentimental disposition and against 
 the accidence of only temporary moods and the like — an 
 authority that shall distinguish these temporary moods from 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 1 S 7 
 
 total estrangement, and decide where the latter occurs, in 
 order to be able in such cases to dissolve the marital bonds. 
 
 Supplementary . — When wedlock depends on merely sub- 
 jective and accidental feeling alone, it can be dissolved. 
 The State, on the contrary, is not subject to division and 
 dissolution, since it is founded on law. Wedlock ought , 
 certainly, to be indissoluble ; but here it comes no farther 
 than to the ought. But since wedlock is something ethical 
 (belonging to an ethical community), it cannot be dissolved 
 arbitrarily, but only through an ethical authority, whether 
 this be the church or a court of justice. When the parties 
 are totally estranged from each other, as in a case of adultery, 
 even the religious authority must allow divorce. 
 
 § 178 -§ 180 . 
 
 [The dissolution of the family thus occurs (i) through the 
 death of the parents and the consequent distribution of the 
 common property among the natural heirs, (2) through the 
 total alienation of the married couple and their consequent 
 separation, and (3) in the normal way, through the growth 
 and development of the children into maturity.] 
 
 The Transition of the Family into the Civic Community. 
 
 § 181 . 
 
 The family transforms itself in a natural way, and espe- 
 cially through the principle of personality, into a plurality of 
 families outside of one another. These families are related 
 to one another, in general, as independent concrete persons, 
 and consequently in an external manner. Or, the inter- 
 locked moments (which are as yet undeveloped in their 
 concept ) in the unity of the family, as the ethical Idea , must 
 be allowed independent reality in the concept. This is the 
 stage of differentiation. First, abstractly expressed, this gives 
 the determination of particularity. This particular refers 
 
! 5 8 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 itself, indeed, to universality, but in such a manner that the 
 universal becomes as yet only the internal ground which 
 consequently exists in a formal and only apparent manner 1 
 ( scheinende Weise ) in the particular. 
 
 The expansion of the family in its transition into another 
 principle, happens, in actual history, partly as the quiet 
 expansion of a family into a people, a nation , which hence 
 has a common natural origin, and partly as the association 
 of dispersed family communities, either through military 
 force or through voluntary alliance, furthered by common 
 needs and by the reciprocal activity necessary for their 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Supplementary. — Universality has here as its point of 
 inception, the independence of the particular, and, hence 
 ethicality appears lost at this stage, since, for consciousness, 
 the identity of the family is that which is regarded as the 
 first, the divine, the source of duty. But now a condition 
 begins in which the particular demands the first place for 
 itself, and consequently the primary form of ethical determi- 
 nation (the domestic life) is abolished. But, in reality, I 
 only err in making this demand, for when I believe that I 
 hold fast to the particular, the universal and the necessity 
 of the interdependence of the universe still remain the first 
 and the essential : I am consequently on the stage of 
 appearance , and while my particularity continues to deter- 
 mine me (that is to say, continues to be my purpose), I 
 thereby serve the universal, which, in reality, retains the 
 final power over me. 
 
 1 In Hegel scheinend , “apparent,” does not. have the connotation 
 false , deceptive, as in English; for with Hegel, ground and appearance are 
 categories of equal importance to essence ( Wesen.) Hence the reader 
 must understand appearance and apparent as referring to the expression, 
 the phenomenalization of the ground, or internal nature, of Wesen. 
 This reflexive relation presents at first the loss of ethicality; but, since, as 
 essence, it is necessarily phenomenal (must reveal itself as phenomenon), 
 it produces the phenomenal world of ethicality (of the ethical Idea), the 
 civic community. 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 159 
 
 SECOND SECTION. 
 
 The Civic Community. 
 
 § 182. 
 
 The concrete person who realizes himself as particular 
 end (literally : is himself as particular end), as a total of 
 wants with a mixture of natural necessity and arbitrary 
 choice, is the special principle of the civic community. But 
 here is meant the particular person that has his essence in 
 his relation ( Beziehung ) to other particular persons, so that 
 each satisfies and realizes himself as mediated through the 
 others, and (hence) at the same time absolutely through the 
 form of universality only. This universal or common ele- 
 ment forms the second principle of civil society. 
 
 Supplementary.- — The civic community is the difference 
 (intermediate stage) that stands between the family and 
 the State, even though its evolution follows later than the 
 evolution of the State ; since as the intermediate, the civil 
 society presupposes the State, as it must have something 
 independent to rely on, in order to endure. The creation of 
 the civic community belongs, moreover, to the modern world, 
 as here first all the determinations of the Idea have received 
 their just recognition. When the State is conceived as a 
 unity of different persons, but as a unity that is only a 
 community ( e . g., of interest), there is reference only to the 
 determinations of the civic community. Many of the later 
 writers on politics and law have not been able to advance 
 to any other view of the State. In the civic community 
 I each one is his own end, all others are nothing to him. 
 But, without reference to others, no individual is able to 
 pealize his end to its full extent ; these others, hence, 
 become the means to the end of the particular. But the 
 particular aim takes on a form of universality through its 
 
i6o E TH1CALITY ( SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 reference to others, and satisfies itself by simultaneously 
 satisfying the weal of others. Because particularity is 
 bound up along with the conditions of universality, the 
 whole is the ground of mediation in which all individuali- 
 ties, all talents, all accidence of birth and fortune liberate 
 themselves. In this too the currents of all passions empty 
 themselves, passions that are ruled only by permeating 
 reason. Particularity limited by universality is alone the 
 measure through which every particular individual furthers 
 his own welfare. Thus the Civic Community is what we 
 understand by “ the state on its external side ” or as 
 Government, arising from needs as presented to the under- 
 standing. 
 
 § 184 . 
 
 The Idea , at this its stage of differentiation, contains the 
 phase of existence peculiar to the individual ( eigenthiimliches 
 V Dasei/i), of pandicula-rity — the right to develop and extend 
 one’s self in all directions, and also the phase of universality 
 ■ — • its right to prove itself the ground and necessary form of 
 particularity, as well as the power over it, and its ultimate 
 end. It is the system of an ethicality lost in its extremes 
 that makes up the abstract phase of the reality of the Idea 
 which here exists as the relative totality and inner necessity 
 to this external appearance. 
 
 Supplementary. — The ethical concept has here been lost 
 in its extremes, and the unmediated unity of the family has 
 been disorganized into a collected multitude. The reality 
 is, at this stage of externality, the dissolution of the concept , 
 the independence of the liberated and existent phases. Yet 
 even here men are conditioned by their reciprocal needs and 
 welfare. In seeking one’s own aim and well-being, a person 
 necessarily seeks more universal ones, and, in turn, the 
 more universal ones are only attained through this self- 
 seeking of each one. . . . 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 161 
 
 Abstract of § 185. 
 
 This development of the individual personality of all 
 citizens sometimes seems to create an arena in which 
 rampant individualism begets great excesses, misery and 
 moral corruption. In ancient states it led to the destruc- 
 tion of ethical relations and thus to the downfall of nations. 
 These ancient states were founded on such an undeveloped 
 form of the universal element that they could find no place 
 for individualism. It is only through the Christian religion 
 that this principle of subjective freedom, and of the inde- 
 pendent and infinite worth of the individual has come to its 
 just recognition. The task of modern states is to welcome 
 this principle and to incorporate it in harmonious unity 
 with the larger ethical element. 
 
 On the other hand, it is the task of individualism to learn 
 that its real and substantial freedom can oniy be found in 
 the sphere of a common weal and life, where helping others 
 is the best form of helping one’s own self. 
 
 § 187. 
 
 The individuals are, as citizens of this civic community, 
 private persons , who have their own interests as their end. 
 Since this end is mediated through the universal, which, 
 consequently, appears to the individuals in question as means, 
 this end can be attained by them only in so far as they 
 themselves determine their will, desires, and acts in a 
 universal manner, and make themselves links in the chain 
 of this connected whole. As the civic community does not 
 exist as such in the consciousness of its members, the 
 interest of the Idea lies here in the process of elevating the 
 individual and natural elements of the Idea , through the 
 necessity of nature as well as through the arbitrariness of 
 wants, to formal freedom and formal universality of knowledge 
 and will. In other words, this is the process of developing 
 
IÖ2 
 
 ETHIC ALI TY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 subjectivity in its phase of particularity. . . . Hence educa- 
 tion , in its real essence, is liberation , and that the work of 
 the higher liberation. It is the point of transition to that 
 infinite subjective substantiality of ethicality, which is no 
 longer unmediated and natural, but spiritual, being elevated 
 to the form of universality. In the subject this liberation 
 is hard toil as compared with the bare subjectivity of mere 
 conduct, and with the immediacy of the desires and sub- 
 jective vanity of feeling and the arbitrariness of inclination. 
 That this liberation is hard work causes a good deal of the 
 ill favor to which it is subject. But it is through this hard 
 work of education, that the subjective will itself gains that 
 objectivity in which alone, on its part, it becomes worthy 
 and capable of being the actuality of the Idea. 
 
 This form of universality to which particularity has 
 developed and elevated itself, and that has effected that 
 particularity, becomes true independent existence of indi- 
 viduality ; and as it gives to universality its adequate content 
 and its infinite self-determination, this particularity remains, 
 even in ethicality, as infinite, independent, free subjectivity. 
 This is the stage which exhibits education as an immanent 
 phase of the absolute, and proves its infinite value. We 
 may define the man of culture to be a person who can do 
 everything that others do, without losing his individuality. 
 Culture is the rubbing off of angular peculiarities, and 
 enables one to appreciate univeral interests. 
 
 The civic community contains three phases : 
 
 (A) The mediation of the desire and satisfaction of the 
 individual through his work and through the work and the 
 satisfaction of the wants of all the other individuals, — the 
 system of wants. 
 
 (B) The actuality of the immanent universal freedom, the 
 protection of property through the administration of justice. 
 
 (C) The precaution exercised against the remnant of 
 chance in this system, and the management of the particular 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY 163 
 
 interests as of something possessed in common , through 
 police and the corporations. 
 
 A. The System of Wants 
 
 § 189. 
 
 In its first aspect ( zunächst ) particularity, being the 
 determined, in general, as over against the universal element 
 of the will, is subjective want. These wants gain their objec- 
 tivity, i. e., satisfaction , through the means (a) of external 
 things, which include the property and products of the wants 
 and wills of others, and ( 'b ) through the means of activity 
 and labor as the mediation of the two sides (the particular 
 and universal element). Since the aim of activity is the 
 satisfaction of particular subjective wants, and since, in 
 relation to these same wants and to the free choice of others, 
 the universal realizes itself, we have the appearance of 
 rationality in this sphere of the finite in the form of the 
 understanding. This is the phase on which the discussion 
 here turns, and which constitutes, in this sphere, the recon- 
 ciling element itself . . . This mutual interaction between 
 individuals and society, in a realm of apparently unbridled 
 individualism, is quite remarkable. It is like the apparently 
 unregulated movement of the heavenly bodies whose law, 
 however, can be discovered and understood. 
 
 (a) The Nature of Wants and their Satisfaction. 
 
 § 190. 
 
 The animal has a limited range of ways and means of 
 satisfying its likewise limited needs. But man shows even 
 in this condition of dependency at once his transcendence 
 over dependency, and his universality, first in the multipli- 
 cation of wants and means, and then through the distinction 
 and separation of the concrete want into different parts and 
 
164 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 phases. Thus differentiated and particularized , they become 
 abstract watits. 
 
 In the sphere of legal right, it is the person; in that of 
 morality, the subject ; in the family, the fmnily-number ; in 
 the civic community in general, the citizen , the burgher (as 
 bourgeois ), and here, at the stage of wants (comp. § 123, 
 note), it is the general conception ( Vorstellung ) that is called 
 man. It is consequently here, and strictly here only, that 
 we speak of man , in this sense. 
 
 Supplementary. — The animal is something particular, 
 having its instinct and its limited means for satisfaction, 
 which are not to be transcended. There are insects that are 
 limited to a certain species of plants alone, and though there 
 are other animals that have a wider sphere, and can live in 
 different climates, they are still limited in comparison with 
 the sphere of man. 
 
 § 191. 
 
 Likewise the means for the particularized needs, and, in 
 general, the ways of satisfying them, differentiate and multi- 
 ply themselves, and thus become relative ends and abstract 
 needs. Hence we have here an infinite progression of 
 multiplication which, in the same measure, consists in dis- 
 tinguishing these determinations and in judging of the 
 suitability of means to their ends ; in other words, it is 
 refinement. 
 
 The condition which Englishmen call “ comfortable ” is 
 something inexhaustible, ever leading on to a more com- 
 fortable one. 
 
 § 192. 
 
 Wants, and the means of satisfying them, become in their 
 extraneous forms, at the same time, a set of relations to other 
 people , through whose wants and work satisfaction is 
 mutually conditioned. The abstraction (see preceding §), 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 165 
 
 which becomes a quality of wants and means, becomes also 
 a determination of the mutual relation of individuals to one 
 another. When recognized, this universal element is the 
 phase which gives these individual and abstract needs, 
 means, and forms of satisfaction a concrete and social char- 
 acter. 
 
 § 194 . 
 
 Since in social want, as the connection of immediate or 
 natural and of spiritual wants of the general conception , the 
 latter, as the universal, is the more important, the phase of 
 liberation lies in this social phase in this manner : the stern 
 necessity of nature belonging to the wants is lessened, and 
 man comes in relation to his own, indeed, to a universal 
 significance and to an only self-made necessity. Instead of 
 coming in relation only to an external world, he has to do 
 with an internal world of contingency and free choice. 
 
 The opinion that when man lived in the so-called state of 
 nature, in which he had only so-called simple, natural wants, 
 and used only such means for their satisfaction as nature 
 chanced to offer, he then, in reference to his needs, lived in 
 freedom, is, without reference to the liberation that lies in 
 work (of which later), a false view. Natural wants as such 
 and their immediate satisfaction represent only a spirituality 
 which is submerged in nature, and which is, therefore, rude- 
 ness and thralldom under nature. Real freedom, however, 
 consists only in the reflection of the spiritual upon itself, in 
 its differentiation from the natural and in its reflex-spiritual 
 determination of nature. 
 
 § 195 . 
 
 This liberation is formal , since the particularity of the 
 ends remains the fundamental content. The tendency of 
 the social state towards unlimited multiplication and special- 
 ization of wants, means, and enjoyment, which, like the 
 
i66 
 
 E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 differentiation between natural and uncultured wants, has 
 no limits, — in other words, luxury , is likewise an endless 
 augmentation of dependence and distress. These must, in 
 order to reduce it to the property of the free will, do battle 
 with a matter that presents an endless opposition, that is, do 
 battle with external means of different kinds, consequently 
 they have to do with absolute hardship. 
 
 Supplementary. — Diogenes with all his cynicism is strictly 
 nothing but the product of the social life of Athens, and 
 what determined him was the view against which the sages 
 of Athens in general agitated. This view is hence not 
 independent, but arose from the social conditions them- 
 selves, and is, indeed, an unhealthy product of luxury itself. 
 Wherever luxury is at its height, there also distress and 
 profligacy are just as great, and cynicism results as the 
 opposition to refinement. 
 
 ( 'b ) The Nature of Labor. 
 
 § 196 . 
 
 The mediation that is to prepare and procure for the 
 particularized wants the adequate and equally particularized 
 means, is labor. Its purpose is to specialize the material 
 immediately given by nature through the most manifold 
 processes for this multitude of ends. It is this formative 
 activity that gives to the means their value and appropriate- 
 ness, so that, in consumption , man is related chiefly to human 
 productions. It is human exertions that he consumes. 
 
 Supplementary. — The immediate material which does not 
 need to be prepared for use by human labor, is insignificant. 
 One must earn the very air he breathes, since he must temper 
 it to his comfort and safety. Water alone, perhaps, can be 
 used in its natural state. The sweat of the human brow 
 and the work of the human hand procures for man the 
 means for satisfying his wants. 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY 
 
 167 
 
 § 197. 
 
 In the multiplicity of interesting characteristics and 
 objects, theoretic culture develops for itself not only a mul- 
 tiplicity of conceptions and intellectual acquirements, but 
 also a mobility and rapidity of the mind in conceiving and 
 in passing from one conception to another, and a power of 
 grasping involved and universal relations. This is the 
 culture of the understanding, along with which goes the 
 development of speech. Practical education through labor 
 consists in the want that causes it and the habit of being 
 occupied with some employment, and, secondly, in the 
 limitation of one' s activity so as to correspond partly to the 
 nature of the material, but more especially to the will of 
 others ; lastly, practical culture consists in that habit of 
 external activity, and universally valid skill which is gained 
 by this training. 
 
 Supplementary. — The barbarian is indolent, and distin- 
 guishes himself from educated man in brooding in an atmos- 
 phere of stupidity. For practical education consists just in 
 the habit, desire and need of productive employment. The 
 unskilled workman produces always something else than he 
 intended, because he is not master of his own activity. He 
 is a skilled workman who brings forth his product as it 
 should be, and who finds no discrepancy between his sub- 
 jective activity and the end attained. 
 
 § 198. 
 
 The universal and objective element in labor is contained, 
 however, in the abstraction which causes the differentiation 
 of means and of wants, and thereby also differentiates pro- 
 duction and gives rise to the division of labor. The work of 
 the individual becomes simpler by this division and con- 
 sequently his skill in his abstract work, as well as the amount 
 of his production, greater. Hence this abstraction neces- 
 
1 68 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 sarily brings to perfection at once the skill and the means 
 of dependence and the mutual relation of men in the satis- 
 faction of other wants. The abstraction of production makes 
 the work ever more mechanical , thereby finally leading to its 
 transference from man to the machine. 
 
 (c) Wealth. 
 
 § 199 . 
 
 Because of this dependent and mutual character of work 
 and of the satisfaction of wants, the subjective self-seeking 
 transforms itself into a contribution to the satisfaction of every- 
 body' s wants , that is, into the mediation of the particular 
 through the universal as dialectic movement, so that while 
 each one earns, produces and enjoys for himself, he thereby 
 also produces and earns for the enjoyment of the rest. 
 This necessity, which consists in the perfect interconnection, 
 in dependence of all with all, has the form of what is called 
 general permanent wealth (see § 170), which contains for 
 each one the possibility of partaking in the common prop- 
 erty, through his education and skill, in order to be assured 
 of subsistence. On the other hand the individual’s earnings, 
 mediated by his labor, sustains and increases the common 
 possessions. 
 
 § 200 . 
 
 The possibility of individuals partaking in the common 
 possessions depends, partly on an immediate foundation 
 (capital), and partly on the skill of the individuals. This 
 skill, in its turn, depends again on capital, and then on the 
 chance circumstances of the case. Owing to these diverse 
 circumstances the natural unequal bodily and spiritual ten- 
 dencies and talents are unequally developed. This diversity 
 presents itself in this sphere of particularity in all directions 
 and at all stages, and has, with other elements of chance 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 169 
 
 and arbitrariness, the unequal distribution of property and the 
 difference between individuals in skill and attainments as a 
 necessary consequence. 
 
 The spirit’s objective right to particularity , which is con- 
 tained in the Idea, not only does not abolish, in the civic 
 community, the natural dissimilarity between men, but 
 produces it in a spiritual form, and elevates it to a dissimi- 
 larity of skill, of possessions, and even of intellectual and 
 moral development. To oppose to this the demand of 
 equality , is characteristic of the empty understanding, that 
 mistakes this, its ought, and its abstract conception for the 
 real and the rational. This sphere of the particular which 
 the universal has adopted attains only relative identity with 
 the universal. There still remains in it much of the natural 
 and arbitrary particularity, the state of nature. Further, it 
 is Reason as immanent in the system of human wants and 
 activities that articulates this system into an organic whole 
 of different members. 
 
 § 201. 
 
 The infinitely manifold means and their just as infinite 
 self-limitation, in the activity of the mutual production and 
 exchange, are unified through the permeating universal 
 element, and again differentiated into masses with conmion 
 characteristics ; the connected total evolves itself to particular 
 systems of wants, of their means and trades, of the kind 
 and manners of satisfaction for wants and of the theoretical 
 and practical education (systems into which individuals 
 naturally enter) ; in short, this organized totality is differ- 
 entiated into classes of civil society. If the family be 
 recognized as the primary basis of states, classes must 
 be recognized as the second one. Through them, the 
 individual seeks at least relatively broader aims than mere 
 private interests. 
 
170 
 
 ETHICALITY {SITTLICHKEIT). 
 
 § 202 . 
 
 Classes thus formed are distinguished as the substantial 
 class (agriculturists), the reflective or formative class (arti- 
 sans), and lastly, the universal class (the learned and 
 office-holding class). 
 
 § 203. 
 
 The substantial class has its possessions in the natural 
 products of the soil which it cultivates. It must have land 
 suitable to be exclusive private property, and demands not 
 only chance-gathering of usufruct (as the gathering of wild 
 berries, breadfruit, etc.), but objectively formative labor. 
 Against the connection of labor and its result with special 
 fixed seasons, and the dependence of the crop on the 
 variable natural processes, the aim of satisfying wants 
 becomes provident care for the future. On account of these 
 conditions, the manner of subsistence in this class is but 
 little mediated by reflection and individual will. It retains, 
 in general, the substantial disposition of an unmediated 
 ethicality, depending on confidence (in nature) and on family 
 relations. [Hegel continues here to show why the begin- 
 ning of agriculture should be placed side by side with wed- 
 lock as the first foundation of the state and its civilization. 
 Both agriculture and wedlock are in the nature of li??iitation 
 of the arbitrariness of the individual. Both tend to make 
 the mode of life more stable,- more dependent on the uni- 
 versal laws of the spirit than on the particularity and caprice 
 of the individual. Hence, the mythologies of the ancients 
 represent the introduction of agriculture as a divine deed, 
 worthy of being commemorated in religious festivities and 
 worship. 
 
 To be sure, the factory methods of cultivating the soil, 
 which, even in Hegel’s time began to be prominent, tend to 
 obliterate the distinction between the agriculturist and the 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 171 
 
 artisan ; but still, Hegel thinks, the patriarchal mode of life 
 of the agriculturist is rather gaining than losing vitality. 
 Here man lives in unmediated communion with nature. 
 The yield of his acres comes to him as a direct gift, for 
 which he gives thanks to God. He lives in the confident 
 trust that this goodness of God will continue. What he gets • 
 is enough for him ; he uses it freely, for more is coming. 
 This is the old nobility disposition and view of life of this 
 class.] 
 
 In the production of this class, nature is the chief factor 
 and man the secondary. In the second class (the forma- 
 tive), the human intellect is the essential element and 
 nature’s product only the material. 
 
 § 204. 
 
 (b) The industrial class has as its business the change of 
 form of the products of nature, and depends, especially, for 
 its subsistence, on its labor and on the use it makes of the 
 reflective powers of the intellect, as well as essentially on 
 the skill with which it can deal with the wants and work of 
 others. For what it possesses and enjoys, it scarce need 
 to thank any one but itself, its own activity. This activity 
 may be divided as follows : work for individual needs in a 
 concrete manner and at the request of individuals, the work 
 of the artisan or manual laborers ; work in the more abstract 
 form for the sum total of individual wants, but hence for a 
 universal need, the work of the manufacturers ; and the 
 work of exchange of the individualized means of want and 
 satisfaction for one another through the common medium 
 of exchange, 7noney, in which the abstract value of all 
 goods exists as an actuality. This is the work of the 
 commercial or trading class. The sense of freedom and of 
 order is especially developed in this class, depending, as it 
 does, so largely upon its own foresight and intelligence. 
 
172 
 
 E TH I CA LIT Y (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 § 205. 
 
 (c) The common , or universal, class has as its business the 
 universal , or common interests of the social state. Hence 
 this class should be relieved from the direct work for the 
 satisfaction of private wants, either by their own private 
 fortune or by being compensated by the state, which 
 demands their activity. Their private interests should be 
 guaranteed to them while they work for the common weal. 
 
 § 206. 
 
 Thus the classes as particularity, having become objective, 
 differentiate themselves, according to the concept, into these 
 fundamental distinctions. On the other hand, however, the 
 question as to which class any particular individual is to 
 belong depends to some degree on his natural gifts, nativity, 
 and other circumstances. Still, the final and essential deter- 
 mination rests with the subjective opinion and particular choice 
 of the individual. In this sphere, subjective opinion and 
 free choice find their right use and honor, so that what here 
 happens because of inner necessity is likewise mediated by 
 free choice , and has hence, for the subjective consciousness, 
 the form of a product of its own will. 
 
 We find here the difference between the practical life of 
 the Orient and the Occident, and between the ancient and 
 modern world. In the former this division into classes 
 arises objectively and necessarily, the principle of subjective 
 individuality being thus deprived of its right. For the 
 assignment of individuals was there left to the rulers (as in 
 the Platonic Republic), or made a mere matter of birth, as 
 in the Hindu castes. Thus, not being recognized in the 
 organization of the state and so harmonized with it, the 
 principle of subjective individuality, which is an essential 
 factor of society, is rendered hostile and destructive of the 
 social order, and either succeeds in destroying it, as in the 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 *73 
 
 Grecian States and the Roman Republic, or else, attaining 
 power or some sort of religious authority, it results in 
 internal corruption and complete degradation, as was the 
 case, to a certain extent, among the Lacedemonians and is 
 now (1820) being thoroughly illustrated among the Hindus. 
 But when this principle is duly recognized in the organization 
 and integrated with it, and thus maintained in its right, it 
 becomes the very animating principle of civil society, of the 
 thinking activity of men and of personal merit and honor. 
 The recognition that what is necessary and rational in civil 
 society is mediated and brought about through the liberty of 
 individual choice, — this is what constitutes the ordinary 
 idea ( Vorstellung) of freedom. 
 
 § 207. 
 
 The individual acquires actuality by entering into some 
 determmate form of existence, the interest and labors of some 
 one of these classes, whereby he limits himself exclusively to 
 one of the particular spheres of wants. Hence the ethical 
 disposition in this sphere is that of rectitude and class honor. 
 The object is to make and maintain one’s self freely, as a 
 member of one phase of the civil community, by one’s own 
 industry and skill, and to provide for one’s self only through 
 this mediation with the universal, as well as to be recognized 
 herein by one’s self and others, as a vital member of society. 
 Morality has its proper position in this sphere, where reflec- 
 tion on one’s actions, the end of the particular want and 
 welfare is the ruling conception, and where the accidental 
 nature of their satisfaction elevates into a duty even a single 
 and accidental act of assistance. 
 
 Supplementary. — By the principle that man must be some- 
 thing in particular we understand that he should belong to 
 a definite class. It is this which makes this being something 
 mean that he then is something substantial. A human 
 being that does not belong to one of the classes is only a 
 
*74 
 
 E THICALIT Y (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 private person and does not partake in the universal element. ' 
 To be sure, the individual may esteem his private personality 
 as the highest form of life, and believe that if he should 
 enter a class (i. e., take up a trade or profession) he would 
 thereby lower himself. This is founded on the false concep- 
 tion that where anyone gains thiough his own exertion any 
 definite class mode of existence he thereby limits and 
 degrades himself. 
 
 § 208 . 
 
 The principle of this system of wants is a special form of 
 knowing and willing independent universality or of freedom. 
 But as this is still in its abstract form it is that of the right 
 of property in itself. But this right exists here no longer 
 only potentially as in “abstract right ”, but as a valid actual- 
 ity, as the protection of property through the administration of 
 justice. 
 
 B. The Administration of Justice. 
 
 § 209 - 
 
 The relative element of the mutual dependence of wants 
 and of work for these wants has, primarily, its refledion-into- 
 itself in the infinite personality (abstract) justice [legal right]. 
 But it is this sphere of the relative itself which, as education , 
 gives to legal justice its existence and character of being 
 universally acknowledged , known and willed, , and, when medi- 
 ated through this knowing and willing, of having validity 
 and objective actuality. 
 
 It belongs to culture (to thought as the consciousness of 
 the individual in the form of universality) that the ego be 
 conceived as universal Person, in which all are identical. 
 Man has so high a worth because he is man, not because he is 
 Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German or Italian. This con- 
 sciousness, to which thought gives validity, is of infinite 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 *75 
 
 importance, and is faulty only when it settles, as cosmopoli- 
 tanism, into opposition to the concrete life of the state. 
 
 § 210. 
 
 Objective justice implies on the one hand that it be some- 
 thing well known, on the other that it have such reality and 
 power as to make it recognized as universally valid and 
 authoritative. 
 
 ( a ) Right in the Form of Law. 
 
 § 211 . 
 
 Just what is implicitly right is, at this stage, explicitly set 
 forth in objective form, i. e. it is determined through thought 
 for consciousness. As that which is right and valid it is set 
 forth as something known , — it is the law. Right, or justice, 
 becomes through this determination positive (legal) right . 1 
 
 Abstract of Remainder of §. 
 
 [To posit anything as universal is to think it. Thought, 
 in fact, according to Hegel, is always a universalization. 
 Hence the great, yet boundless importance of expressed or 
 written laws. For written and codified law is not merely an 
 expression of what was found formerly in custom and 
 opinion. In the very act of thinking out the life-giving con- 
 cept of the law, the codifier brings out the universal element 
 which before existed only implicitly in custom. Customary 
 law has hence a lower value than written law. Its uni- 
 versality is recognized only in a subjective and accidental 
 
 1 The German words Gesetz , “law,” and gesetzt “posited,” like dtois 
 and TidrujLL in Greek, have of course the same root. Law is something 
 posited (gesetzt), something set down as a universal principle and im- 
 movable rule. Hegel, who is always fond of utilizing the derivation of 
 words, feels therefore that the connection is here self-evident. This 
 must be borne in mind in reading the above paragraph, as the English 
 cannot preserve the etymological argument. — r p. M. M. 
 
176 £ THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 way, that is, as far as the chief, judge, jury or mob are able 
 or willing to give its latent universality practical validity. 
 Hence, the opinion that customary law is more vital than 
 codified law, is a grave misconception. Certainly a law 
 does not cease to be customary by being written down. 
 England’s common law is an excellent example of the con- 
 fused conceptions that rule the present administration of 
 justice. Theoretically, it is an unwritten law, the “ mores 
 majorum ” of the English nation ; but, practically, no law is 
 more written than the common law. In fact there is no end 
 to the writing of it. Every judge and court are supposed 
 and expected to found their decisions on the recorded 
 decisions of former judges and courts. But, according to 
 the theory of the unwritten law, these predecessors did 
 nothing but expressed the unwritten law, and this customary 
 unwritten law exists just as authoritatively in the present 
 court and judge as in any of their predecessors. A similar 
 confusion arose in the later Roman administration of 
 justice. 
 
 To refuse to believe that a nation’s laws may be 
 adequately codified is to offer the greatest possible insult to 
 such a nation and to its legal profession.] 
 
 The sun and planets have laws, to be sure, but they know 
 them not : likewise the barbarian. It is only when civilized 
 man is conscious of his laws, that the arbitrary and accidental 
 elements of feeling and opinion, such as revenge and sym- 
 pathy, are purified from his administration of justice. Con- 
 flicts, “collisions,” and inconsistencies in laws cannot be 
 avoided ; these also serve to make the judge to be some- 
 thing higher than a machine. But to try to avoid conflicts 
 of laws, by allowing a wider field for the arbitrary decisions 
 of the judge, were a retrogressive step towards chance and 
 particularity again. This is, in fact, a great fault of juris- 
 prudence founded on custom. Digests of decisions, though 
 certainly superior to the bare records of the courts, still 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 1 77 
 
 contain so much adventitious and merely historical matter, 
 as the English practice shows, that they are far from being 
 satisfactory from a philosophical point of view. 
 
 § 212 . 
 
 In this identity of implicit (Ansichsein) and explicit 
 ( Gesetzsein ), in civil conduct only that which is law is binding 
 as right, or justice. Since the characteristic of being expli- 
 citly set forth contains also the accidental element of the 
 private choice and other arbitrary elements, it is quite pos- 
 sible that that which is law may be quite different in content 
 from that which is in itself right. In positive law, we have 
 the source of the knowledge of the just in cases of litigation. 
 Positive jurisprudence is largely a historical science resting 
 upon authority. 
 
 § 213. 
 
 Since justice first arrives at definite existence in the form 
 of statute law, it comes into application , as far as its content 
 is concerned, in relation to the 7?iaterial furnished by the 
 civic community, in its endlessly special and complicated 
 relations and forms of property and contract. Further 
 material is furnished by the ethical relations depending on 
 disposition, love, and confidence, though, naturally, only in 
 as far as they contain the element of abstract justice (§ 159 ). 
 The moral element and moral commandments, which have 
 to do with the will in its most intimate subjectivity and 
 particularity, cannot be objects of positive legislation. Still 
 further material is furnished by the rights and duties that 
 come into existence in the administration of justice itself 
 and from the organization of the state and the like. 
 
 Supplementary. — As regards the higher relations of wed- 
 lock, love, religion and the state, legislation can only take 
 cognizance of their merely external sides. In this respect 
 great difference is found in the legislation of various 
 
178 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 peoples. ... In regard to the oath, however, where the 
 matter is left to the conscience of the individual, the courts 
 must insist upon strict honesty and truthfulness. 
 
 § 214 . 
 
 There is always one essential phase of the law and its 
 administration that contains an accidental element. This 
 depends on the necessity of the law’s being a universal 
 decision, that must be applied to particular cases. To 
 declare against this accidental element is to utter an abstrac- 
 tion. The quantitative measure of a punishment, for ex- 
 ample, can never be made adequate to any speculative 
 concept. (Pure reason can never determine the measure of 
 punishment.) Whatever the sentence may be, it is, on this 
 side, always somewhat arbitrary. This contingent element 
 is, however, itself necessary in this sphere and to reason 
 against a code on the ground, that it is not perfect, is to 
 misunderstand this phase in which no perfection is possible, 
 and which hence must be taken as it is. 
 
 (b) The Essential Characteristics {das Dasein) of the Law. 
 
 § 215 . 
 
 The obligation to obey the laws contains, from the side 
 of the right of self-consciousness (§ 132 with note) the 
 (moral) necessity of the laws being made universally known. 
 
 Abstract of Remainder of §. 
 
 [To hang the tables of the laws so high over people’s 
 heads that no citizen can read them, as the tyrant Dionysius 
 did, is an injustice and a crime. But what else does a 
 government do that hides the law in numberless quartos, 
 and in conflicting decisions of courts and opinions of jurists 
 — yes, even in a foreign language ? On the other hand, 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 179 
 
 Justinian and other codifiers, however imperfect in their 
 work, should justly be praised as the greatest benefactors 
 of their nations. 
 
 The legal profession should indeed consider law their 
 speciality, but not, as they often do, their monopoly. They 
 do, however, often object to the layman’s knowing the law 
 in the same spirit as the physicists objected to Goethe’s 
 dissertation on color. He, a poet, invade the territory of 
 the physicist ! But one need not be a shoemaker to know 
 where the shoe pinches, nor a specialist to understand what 
 belongs to the universal interests of mankind. For this 
 is the foundation of liberty, the holiest and noblest in man.] 
 
 Abstract of § 216. 
 
 [Two characteristics are essential to the public code : 
 first, simple universal principles ; and secondly, sufficiently 
 explicit application of these principles to the infinite compli- 
 cations to which human relations are subject. Hence it is 
 not to be reckoned a fault that no code can be complete 
 in the sense of having a ready-made application to every 
 possible case. The only reasonable claim is that all the 
 fundamental principles should be plainly expressed. 
 
 One great source of legal confusion is, no doubt, the 
 injustice upon which many historical institutions are founded. 
 When later ages have tried to read into these institutions a 
 rationality that they originally lacked, this misinterpretation 
 in favor of justice necessarily complicates the system. The 
 change of the Roman law from the narrow national prejudice 
 of the republic to the lex gentium and lex naturae of the 
 later prudentes, is an example. But the chief cause of the 
 necessary incompleteness of a code, lies in the finite nature 
 of the subject-matter to which these universal principles 
 are to be applied. This must of necessity produce infinite 
 progressions in the application. 
 
i8o 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 To argue against a code on this ground, i. e., that it 
 cannot be completed, is to fail to remember that Le plus 
 grand ennemi du bien c'est le mieux. No art, no science, 
 no undertaking would be worth while, according to such 
 reasoning, for nothing can be complete in its application, 
 not even geometry. The noblest, grandest, and most 
 beautiful were then worthless, since there might be some- 
 thing more noble, grand and beautiful not yet discovered. 
 But a great tree may continually put forth more branches 
 and still it is not a new tree ; and it would certainly be 
 foolish never to plant a tree because it might get, after 
 a while, additional branches.] 
 
 § 217. 
 
 As in the civic community implicit justice becomes law, so 
 also my formerly individual unmediated and abstract right is 
 transformed, by being recognized, into an element of the 
 universal will and knowledge. Acquirement of property and 
 all activity relative to it must therefore adopt that form 
 which is characteristic of property, in its universal relations. 
 Property depends solely on contract and on the legal formalities 
 necessary to prove such contract. . . . 
 
 Supplementary. — Hegel notes the necessity of the formal- 
 ities connected with the holding of property in a community. 
 In reply to those who would dispense with them, he says, that 
 they are the essential element, making explicit and positively 
 asserting the existence of property rights. All mere sub- 
 jectivity has here to give place to this objective form or 
 reality, and receive from it security and stability. 
 
 § 218. 
 
 Since property and personality have legal recognition and 
 validity in the civic community, lazu-breaking is not only an 
 offence against some subjective-infinite , but against a universal 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 181 
 
 principle, whose existence has a sure and strong foundation 
 in itself. We arrive here at the point of view that estimates 
 the offence according to the dangerous tendencies it has for 
 the community (society). Such tendencies certainly add 
 to the magnitude of the crime ; but, on the other hand, a 
 community whose government feels secure, overlooks the 
 external bnportance of an offence, and practices greater 
 clemency in its punishment. 
 
 {c) The Court of Justice. 
 
 § 219. 
 
 When justice, in its legal form, gains actual existence it is 
 self-dependent ( für sich ) ; that is, stands independent over 
 against the particular will and opinion of justice, and has to 
 make itself valid as being universal. This recognition and 
 realization of justice in the particular cases, without the 
 subjective feeling of particular interests, belongs to a public 
 power, to the court of jjistice. As to the historical origin of 
 courts of justice and of judges, it matters not whether they 
 arose from patriarchal relations, from force or from free 
 choice. 
 
 § 220. 
 
 The right against crime in the form of revenge (§ 102) is 
 only an wiplicit right and has not the form of justice, i. e., 
 is not just as to its mode of existence. In the place of 
 the offended party (the individual), the offended universal 
 (the community), which has its characteristic actuality in the 
 court, enters, and undertakes the prosecution and punish- 
 ment of crime. Hereby the penalty of crime ceases to be 
 the merely subjective and accidental retaliation of revenge, 
 and is transformed into the true reconciliation of justice 
 with itself in punishment. This punishment is, from the 
 objective side, the reconciliation, through the negation of the 
 
182 
 
 E THI CALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 crime, of the self-restoring law , which thereby gives itself 
 valid actuality. From the subjective side of the offender, it 
 is the reconciliation of his own law, known by him and 
 established for his protection , in whose execution on himself 
 he consequently finds the satisfaction of justice, in fact, 
 nothing but his own deed. 
 
 § 221 . 
 
 The member of the civil community has the right to appeal 
 to the courts , as well as the duty to appear in court, and to 
 accept his disputed right from the court only — (to allow the 
 decision of the courts of justice to be supreme and final 
 over his disputed rights). 
 
 Supplementary. — Every individual must not only have the 
 right to appeal to the courts, but must also know the laws, 
 else this right would be of little use to him. But it is also 
 the duty of the individual to appear in court. In feudal 
 times, the powerful nobles often refused to appear, chal- 
 lenged the court, and acted as if it had been an injustice of 
 the courts to demand their appearance. But this is a 
 condition that contradicts the true conception of a court of 
 justice. In more modern times the prince must recognize 
 the authority of the court over himself in private affairs, and 
 in free states his cases are generally lost. 
 
 § 222 . 
 
 Before courts, justice must have the characteristic of 
 being demonstrable. The legal procedure enables both parties 
 to bring forward effectively their evidence and legal claims, 
 and the judge to get fully acquainted with the case. These 
 steps are themselves rights, and hence their manner of pro- 
 cedure must be legally determined. Therefore procedure is 
 an essential part of the science of law. 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 i8 3 
 
 § 224 . 
 
 Just as the public proclamation of the laws is a right of 
 the subjective consciousness, so also is the publicity of the 
 administration of justice. It follows from the right of know- 
 ing the laws, that the possibility of the actualizatio/i of the 
 laws in particular cases, should be publicly known, both as 
 to the course of external events and as to legal principles, 
 since the history of a case is a universally valid history ; 
 and, though the case, as far as its particular content is 
 concerned, is of interest only to the parties in question, its 
 universal content is concerned with a principle of justice, 
 whose ' ‘ tion touches the interest of all. 
 
 The ons of the members of the court among 
 
 themsf the case before decision, are expressions 
 
 of opinions and views that are still particular, and conse- 
 quently not of public nature. 
 
 Judicial activity, as the application of the law to par- 
 ticular cases, has two sides : first, an ascertaining of the 
 nature of the case in its immediate detail, as, for example, 
 whether there was a contract or not ; whether a certain 
 illegal act has been committed; who has committed it; and, 
 in criminal cases, the ascertaining of the thoughts and 
 volitions that led to the action, according to their substan- 
 tial, culpable character (§ 119, note); secondly, the sub- 
 sumption of the case under the law, whose purpose is to 
 restitute justice. In criminal cases, the determination of 
 the punishment falls under this head. These two classes 
 of decisions, that constitute judicial activity, are two (essen- 
 tially) different functions. 
 
 § 225 . 
 
184 
 
 £ TH IC A LI TV (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 § 227 . 
 
 The first side, the ascertaining the case in its immediate 
 details and qualifications, contains by itself no judicial func- 
 tion. It is a piece of information such as any educated 
 person may have. Since the subjective element of the 
 comprehension and intention of the agent (see Part II) is 
 essential for the qualification (a true estimate) of an act, and 
 since the evidence without this element is not concerned 
 with objects of Reason and the abstract understanding, 
 but only with details, circumstances, and objects of sense- 
 perception and subjective certainty ; and since, hence, such 
 evidence contains no absolutely objective determination, 
 therefore, the ultimate factor in the decision is the subjective 
 convictio?i and conscience (animi sententia), as in regard to 
 the evidence, which depends on what others depose and 
 affirm, the oath is the ultimate, though subjective test. 
 
 Supplementary. — There is no reason to hold that only the 
 judge (juristische Richter) should determine the facts in the 
 case, for this belongs to common intelligence and not merely 
 to legal learning. The decision as to what are the facts in 
 the case depends on empirical circumstances, on witnesses of 
 the act and the like, and then again on facts from which 
 conclusions as to the act in question may be drawn, and that 
 make it probable or improbable. Here certainty is sought, 
 not a truth in the higher sense, for truth is something 
 altogether eternal. This certainty is here the subjective 
 conviction, conscience, and the question is, what form this 
 certainty should take in the administration of justice. To 
 demand confession of the culprit, as is common in German 
 courts of justice, has this truth in it, that by so doing the 
 subjective self-consciousness is satisfied, since the sentence 
 which the judge pronounces should not differ in the 
 consciousness of the convicted person, from the sentence of 
 his own conscience, and since the judgment does not cease 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 
 
 185 
 
 to contain an alien element to the transgressor until he has 
 confessed his offence. Here is the difficulty however, that the 
 transgressor may refuse to confess, and thereby the interests 
 of justice be endangered. But, again, if the subjective 
 conviction of the judge is to be supreme, there is once more 
 a hardship, since man is no longer treated as a free agent. 
 This mediation, however, takes place when it is demanded 
 that the verdict of guilty or not guilty should come, as from 
 the soul of the transgressor, through the verdict of a jury . 1 
 
 The Trial by Jury. 
 
 § 228. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The right of self-consciousness, the moment of subjective 
 freedom, may be considered as the substantial point of view 
 in the question of the necessity of public trial and trial by 
 jury. To this, the essential of what can be said on the 
 score of utility in favor of these institutions, can be reduced. 
 From other considerations and upon other grounds, it is quite 
 possible to dispute and defend one way or another this or 
 that advantage or disadvantage, but, like all reasons of 
 forensic argumentation, these arguments are secondary and 
 hence not decisive, or else they are taken from other, and 
 perhaps higher, spheres of thought. That it were possible to 
 administer justice well, perhaps better, with purely juristic 
 courts (i. e., courts without juries) than with other institutions, 
 does not here concern us ; for if this possibility increased to 
 a probability, yes even to a necessity, the right of self-conscious- 
 ness would ever retain its demands, and not find itself satisfied. 
 
 1 Hegel’s substitute of the verdict of a jury for the confession of the 
 criminal is clear, if we remember that he is giving an exposition of the 
 common consciousness which the criminal implicitly acknowledges. His 
 twelve peers state their opinion of the relation of the criminal’s particular 
 act in regard to the acknowledged common good. — p- m. m. 
 
1 86 ETHIC ALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 When the knowledge of jurisprudence (owing to the 
 character and scope of this science), the transactions of the 
 courts (legal proceedings) and the possibility of legal prose- 
 cution, become the property of an exclusive class (the legal 
 profession); and when the very terminology is in a language 
 that is unknown to those of whose rights it treats ; the 
 members of the civic community being dependent on their 
 onoi activity, their oum knowledge ami will, are held as aliens, 
 and as minors, in relation to their right, a relation that is really 
 a species of serfdom under the legal profession. And this, 
 though their rights form not only the most personal and 
 intimate, but the substantial and rational element of their 
 knowledge and will. 
 
 Even though they have the right to come bodily into court 
 (in judicio stare ), this is a right of small value when they may 
 not be present spiritually with their own intelligence, and the 
 justice that they gain, remains for them an external fate. 
 
 § 229. 
 
 In the administration of justice the civic community 
 brings itself back to the co7icept of the unity of the implicitly 
 universal with subjective particularity, although the latter is 
 found in individual cases and the former in the sense of 
 abstract justice. This is effected by the Idea' s losing itself 
 in the particularity and by its separation into an internal 
 and an external moment. The realization of this unity in 
 the extension of the whole sphere of particularity, at first 
 as relative unification, constitutes the organization for police- 
 protection, and in the more limited but more concrete totality, 
 the 9)iu?iicipal corporate. 
 
 Supplementary. — In the civic community the universal is 
 only the necessary ; in the social relation of wants, right 
 alone, as such, is the fixed. But this right, a limited sphere, 
 has reference only to the protection of what I have : right 
 as such is welfare, something external. But this welfare is, 
 
THE CIVIC COMMUNITY. 187 
 
 however, in the system of wants, an essential characteristic. 
 Consequently the universal, which at first is only the right, 
 must spread itself out over the whole field of particularity. 
 Justice is something great in the civic community : good 
 laws make the state flourish, and free (private) property is a 
 fundamental condition for its splendor ; but since I am 
 totally entwined in particularity, I have a right to demand 
 that in this connected whole (the civic community) my 
 particular welfare also, shall be furthered. My welfare, my 
 particular interests, must be taken into consideration, and 
 this is done by the police-organization and the municipal 
 corporation. 
 
 C. The Police and the Municipal Corporation. 
 
 § 230. 
 
 In the system of wants, the subsistence and welfare of each 
 individual exists as a possibility whose actuality is conditioned 
 by the individual’s choice and natural peculiarities, as well 
 as by the objective system of wants : through the adminis- 
 tration of justice the violation of property (property-right) 
 and of personality is annulled (is guarded against). The 
 right that is actual iti particularity contains, however, also 
 the demand that the accidental infringements of the rights of 
 this or that end shall be abolished , and that undisturbed safety 
 of person and property shall be established in the form of the 
 assurance of the subsistence and welfare of the individual — 
 in other words, justice, or right, as actualized in the par- 
 ticular, demands that the particular welfare (i. e ., the welfare 
 of each individual) shall be treated as a right , and shall be 
 actualized. 
 
 § 256. 
 
 The aim of the municipal corporation, being limited and 
 finite, has its truth in the independent universal aid (the 
 
 < 
 
i88 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 State) and its absolute actuality. The same, too, is true of 
 the police functions. The sphere of the civic community is 
 thereby merged into the State. 
 
 City and country — the former the location of civic industry, 
 that is, of the reflexion that individualizes itself and centres 
 in itself ; the latter the location of the ethicality that rests on 
 nature, the individuals that mediate their self-preservation in 
 relation to other legal persons, and the family, constitute the 
 two still ideal phases out of which, as their true ground , 
 the State develops. This evolution of unmediated ethicality 
 through the differentiations (. Entzweiung ) of the civic com- 
 munity to the State, which proves itself their true ground, 
 and only such an evolution, or derivation, is the scientific 
 demonstration of the concept (. Begriff ) of the State. Because 
 in this evolution the scientific concept of the State appears 
 as the result , while it shows itself as the true ground. Hence 
 that mediation and that appearance abolish and transform 
 themselves into immediacy. In reality, therefore, the State 
 is always rather the first , in which, later, the family develops 
 into the civic community. It is the Idea of the State which 
 separates itself into these two moments. In the develop- 
 ment of the civic community, the ethical substance wins its' 
 infinite form , which contains the following two phases : 
 
 (i) The infinite differentiation down to the self-dependent 
 ( für-sich-seyende ) existence-in-itself of self-consciousness ; and 
 (2) the form of universality which is in education and culture, 
 the form of thought in which the spirit becomes objective 
 and actual unto itself in laws and institutions, that is, in its 
 thought-out will as organic totality. 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 189 
 
 THIRD SECTION. 
 
 The State. 
 
 § 257 . 
 
 The State is the actuality of the ethical Idea; it is the 
 ethical spirit as the manifest { offenbare ) substantial will that 
 is fully self-cognizant ( sich selbst deutliche'), and that thinks 
 and knows itself and realizes {vollführt) what it knows and 
 in as far as it knows. The State has its immediate existence 
 in the ethical life {Sitte) and in the self-consciousness of the 
 individual ; in his knowing and doing (in his knowledge and 
 activity) it has its mediated existence, just as the individual 
 has his substantial freedom in the State as in his own essence, 
 seed and product of activity. 
 
 The penates are the intimate, lower gods, the national 
 spirit {Athene), the divine that k?iows and wills itself ; the 
 devotion to family ties {pietät) is ethicality deporting itself 
 in feeling : and political virtue is the willing of the conceived 
 independent end (of the independent ideal end). 
 
 § 258 . 
 
 The State, as the actuality of the substantial will, (which 
 actuality it has in the particular selfconsciousness raised to 
 its universality) is the independently {an und für sW/i) rational. 
 This substantial unity is absolute, stable end-for-itself 
 {Selbstzweck) in which freedom gains its supreme right, 
 just as conversely this final end {Endzweck) has the supreme 
 right over against the individuals, whose supreme duty it is to 
 be members of the State. 
 
 Abstract of Remainder of §. 
 
 As long as the interest of the individual as such is alone the 
 final end of human federation, we have only the civic com- 
 
ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 190 
 
 munity, not the State. Those who confound these two 
 concepts ascribe to the State no higher purpose than the 
 protection of person and property. But the true State is 
 objective spirit, and the individual is not himself, has not 
 objectivity and truth, and cannot live an ethical life except 
 as a member of the State. To live a universal life, that is, 
 to live in organic communion with his neighbors, is the aim 
 and purpose of the individual. Rationality in general is the 
 union of the universal and particular, and here it is the 
 union of objective and subjective freedom. But objective 
 freedom is the freedom of the universal substantial will, 
 and subjective freedom is that of the individual. Hence 
 rationality, or concrete freedom, has the form of activity 
 determined by ideal and hence universal laws. Here we 
 have nothing to do with the historical origin of the State. 
 Prove, if you please, that this or that State began with 
 patriarchs or social contract, arose from fear or confidence, 
 that the rulers claimed divine right, or ruled by pure force 
 of custom ; and you have only shown the historical manner 
 in which this or that State appeared, and not at all what the 
 State is. Philosophy has to do with the inner thought-out 
 concept of all this. 
 
 Rousseau’s “social contract” theory has the merit of 
 having, both as to form and content, made thought in the 
 form of will , , the principle of the State. But as he knew of 
 no will but the individual will, his universal rational Will 
 became nothing but a sum of individual wills ; and con- 
 sequently his State was founded on nothing better than 
 arbitrary choice, inclination, and express, free agreement. 
 For results, see the French revolution and what came after 
 it. The objective will is the rational State, whether the 
 individual recognizes it or not ; and subjective freedom is 
 only half of the truth. 
 
 But the State may be falsely founded not only on internal 
 particularity, but also on mere external elements, such as 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 191 
 
 the vicissitude of wants, the need of protection, brute force, 
 wealth, and the like. Now these are indeed elements in the 
 . historic development of the State, but certainly not in its 
 substance. To mistake such empirical particularities for the 
 foundation of the State is to be a degree more superficial 
 than Rousseau. Not only is the foundation not universal, 
 but it is not even the particular as thought and will , but only 
 as empirical particularities. So void of reason is this view, 
 which overlooks the infinite and rational elements in the 
 State, that it cannot, in its utter lack of thought, even be 
 said to be inconsistent with itself. 
 
 Supplementary to § 258. 
 
 The State in and for itself, is the ethical totality, the 
 actualization of freedom ; and actual freedom (freedom 
 actually) is the absolute end of Reason. The State is the 
 spirit that dwells in the world and realizes itself in the 
 world through consciousness , while in nature the spirit 
 actualizes itself only as its own other, as dormant spirit. 
 Only when present as consciousness, knowing itself as 
 existing objectivity, is this spirit the State. When reasoning 
 about freedom one must not start from the individual 
 self-consciousness, but only from the essential nature of 
 self-consciousness, for whether one knows it or not, this 
 essence still realizes itself as an independent power in which 
 the single individuals are only moments : it is the course of 
 God through the world that constitutes the State. Its 
 ground is the power of Reason actualizing itself as will. 
 When conceiving the State, one must not think of particular 
 States, not of particular institutions, but one must much 
 rather contemplate the Idea , God as actual on earth ( wirk - 
 lieh), alone. Every State, though it may be declared 
 wretched according to somebody’s principles, though this or 
 that imperfection in it must be admitted — possesses always, 
 if it belongs to the developed States of our times, the essen- 
 
192 
 
 E THICALITY (SITTLICHKEIT) . 
 
 tial elements of its true existence. But since it is easier to 
 discover faults than to understand positive characteristics, 
 it is easy to fall into the error of overlooking the internal 
 organism of the State itself in dwelling upon extrinsic 
 phases of it. The State is no work of art, it exists in the 
 world, and hence in the sphere of choice, accidence, and 
 error. Hence the evil behavior of its members can disfigure 
 it in many ways. But the most deformed ( hässlichste ) human 
 being, the criminal, the invalid, and the cripple are still 
 always living human beings : the affirmative, life, remains in 
 spite of all defects, and here we have to do with this affirm- 
 ative alone. 
 
 § 259 . 
 
 The Idea of the State has (a) immediate actuality, and is 
 the individual state as a self-related ( sich auf sich beziehender) 
 organism, i. e., the constitution , or internal national organiza- 
 tion (inneres Staatsrecht ) ; ( b ) the Idea passes over into 
 
 the relations of the single State to other States : the inter- 
 national rights; and (c ) it is the universal Idea as gejius and 
 absolute power in relation to single states ; it is the spirit, 
 which gives itself its actuality in the process of the world's 
 history. 
 
 Supplementary. — The State, as actual, is essentially an 
 individual state, and, still more, a particular state. Individ- 
 uality must be distinguished from particularity. The former 
 is a moment of the Idea of the State itself, while particularity 
 belongs to history. The States, as such, are independent of 
 one another, and, consequently, the relation between them 
 can be only external. Hence the need of another synthetic 
 power to unite them. This third is the Spirit (of humanity) 
 which gives itself actuality in the world’s history, and which 
 is the absolute judge over single States. Several States 
 may, as a federation, form a supremacy over others, and 
 confederations, like, for example, the Holy Alliance, may 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 1 93 
 
 be formed, but these are always only relative and limited, 
 like “the eternal peace.” The only absolute judge who 
 ever makes himself valid against the particular is the 
 independent spirit who presents himself as the universal 
 and as the active genus in the history of the world. (The 
 spirit of humanity is the spirit of God as actual on earth.) 
 
 A. Internal Polity or National Organization. 
 
 § 260 . 
 
 The State is the actuality of concrete freedom. In con- 
 crete freedom all personal individuality and its particular 
 interests find their complete development and the recogni- 
 tion of their independent rights (as we have seen them in 
 the sphere of the family and of the civil community) in this 
 larger unity. This occurs, partly through these individual 
 interests being transformed into universal interests, and, 
 partly through individuals recognizing in thought and deed 
 this universal as being their own substantial spirit, and 
 energizing for it as for their own final end. 
 
 Thus, neither is the universal valid or realized without 
 the particular interests, intelligence, and will of individuals, 
 nor do individuals live only for the latter as private persons, 
 but have also an independent will for the universal and an 
 activity conscious of this end. The principle of the modern 
 State has this enormous strength and depth, that while it 
 allows the principle of subjectivity to evolve itself into the 
 independent extreme of personal particularity, it, at the same 
 time, brings all this back to substantial unity, and thus gains 
 the subjective extreme in the substantial unity. 
 
 Supplementary. — The Idea of the State in modern times 
 has the peculiarity that it constitutes the realization of 
 freedom not according to subjective inclination, but accord- 
 ing to the concept of the will, that is, according to the 
 universal and divine element of freedom. Those are 
 
i94 
 
 E TII IC A LITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 imperfect States in which the Idea of the State is not yet 
 out of the husks, so to- speak, in which its particular deter- 
 minations have not yet come to free independence. In 
 the States of classical antiquity, the universal element was 
 already present, but the particularity was not yet liberated 
 and brought back to universality, i. e., to the common end 
 of the whole. The essence of the modern State lies in this, 
 that the universal is allied to the full liberty of particularity 
 and to the well-being of the individuals. Consequently, the 
 interests of the family and the civic community combine 
 themselves in the State. But they do so in such a way 
 that the universality of the end cannot advance without the 
 individual’s own knowledge and will, which must retain 
 their right. The universal must consequently manifest itself 
 in action, but subjectivity must also be fully and vitally 
 developed (be developed in all its fulness and life). Only 
 when the two elements are preserved in their full force, can 
 the State be considered fully articulated and truly organized. 
 
 § 261. 
 
 In reference to the spheres of private rights and private 
 welfare, the spheres of the family and the civic commu- 
 nity, the State is, on the one hand, an external necessity. 
 It appears as their own higher power, to whose nature 
 their laws, as well as their interests, are subordinated and 
 dependent. But on the other hand, the State is the 
 
 immart&nt end of these lower spheres and has its strength 
 in the unity of its universal final aim, and the particular 
 interests of the individuals, because they have duties toward 
 the State in just so far as they have rights in reference 
 to it (§ 155). 
 
 Montesquieu, especially, as we have before remarked, 
 has grasped and attempted to develop in detail in his 
 renowned work, The Spirit of the Law , the thought of the 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 J 95 
 
 dependence of laws (especially those relating to private 
 rights) on the definite character of the State. In other 
 words, he holds the philosophical view that considers the 
 part only in its relation to the whole. 
 
 Duty, primarily, is conduct towards something inde- 
 pendent, universal, and substantial for me, and on the 
 other hand, rights are the determinate existence of this 
 substantial element, and hence the side of its particularity 
 and of my particular freedom. Hence duty and right 
 appear, at the formal stage, as divided among different 
 phases and persons. The State, as the ethical sphere, as 
 the interpenetration of the substantial and the particular, 
 contains the principle that my obligation to the substantial 
 is likewise the characteristic form of existence ( Dasein ) of 
 my particular freedom, that is to say, in the State duty 
 and right are united in one and the same rclatio)i. 
 
 But further, in the State the different moments (duty and 
 right) arrive at their characteristic form and reality, and thus 
 the distinction between duty and right reappears. Hence 
 they are (just because they are implicitly, (an sich), i. e., 
 formally, identical) distinct as to their content. In the moral 
 sphere and in that of private right, the actual necessity of 
 the relation is not present, and hence there is only an 
 abstract similarity of content ; that which, in this abstract 
 sphere, is a right to one ought also to be the right to 
 another, and what is one’s duty should also be other’s 
 duty. Such absolute identity of rights and duties exists only 
 as similar identity of content in the determination that this 
 content is itself the wholly universal principle, that is, the 
 One Principle of duty and right, the personal liberty of 
 man. Slaves have, therefore, no duties because they have 
 no rights, and, conversely, no rights because no duties. 
 (We do not here speak of religious duties.) But in the 
 concrete Idea developing itself in itself, these its moments 
 differentiate themselves, and in their full determination they 
 
I9 6 E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 have also a different content. In the family, the son has 
 not rights with the same content as he has duties in relation 
 to the father, nor has the citizen rights with the same content 
 as duties in relation to prince and government. 
 
 This concept of the union of duty and right is one of the 
 most important characteristics of States, and constitutes their 
 inner strength. 
 
 The abstract side of duty comes no further than to ignore 
 and condemn the particular as an unessential and, in itself, 
 unworthy element. But the concrete conception, the Idea , 
 shows that the element of particularity is just as essential, 
 and hence its satisfaction absolutely necessary. The indi- 
 vidual must in one way or another, in his performance of 
 duty, find his own interests and his own satisfaction or 
 recompense ; some right must grow out of his relation to 
 the State, by reason of which the universal interest becomes 
 his particular interest. Particular interests are surely not to 
 be put aside or simply suppressed, but should be harmonized 
 with the universal interest. The individual, being a subject 1 
 in relation to his duties, finds in their performance, as a 
 citizen, protection of his person and property, care for his 
 own particular welfare, and the satisfaction of his substantial 
 essence, the personal consciousness of being a member of 
 this totality. Such fulfilment by citizens of duties, as 
 labors and business for the State, constitutes the preservation 
 and permanence of the State. But according to the abstract 
 view, the universal interest would only be that its work and 
 business should be performed as duties. 
 
 Abstract of Supplementary §■ 
 
 Everything depends on the true union of universality and 
 particularity in the State. In the ancient States the will 
 of the State was absolute, without reference to the subjective 
 interests of individuals. The modern State honors the 
 
 1 Subject in the political sense ( Unterthan not Subjekt). 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 1 97 
 
 individual. Every duty to the State is also a right of the 
 individual. The State is simply the organization of the con- 
 cept of freedom. It is the universal condition necessary for 
 the realization of particular end and individual welfare. 
 
 § 262. 
 
 The actual Idea , the Spirit, divides itself into the two 
 ideal spheres of its concept (the family and the civic com- 
 munity). This is the sphere of its finitude. Here, in order 
 to return from this explicit ideality of phases as infinite 
 actual spirit, it assigns these spheres the material for this 
 its finite actuality. This finite actuality is given to indi- 
 viduals as a multitude , so that this , allotment to particular 
 individuals appears to be mediated through circumstances, 
 chance, and free choice (§ 185 and note). 
 
 Abstract of § 263, § 264 and § 265. 
 
 In place of an abstract of some of these paragraphs, I 
 borrow the following expository paraphrase from Dr. Morris’ 
 volume. 1 
 
 “ The State, we have said, is the actualization of concrete 
 freedom. And this is the same as to say that the State is, 
 in its measure, the actualization of the Idea of Man ; that it 
 is not simply a contingent means of human perfection, but 
 is also this perfection itself ; that, in brief, the State is Man, 
 standing relatively 2 complete in that fulness and wholeness 
 
 1 Hegel’s Philosophy of History, by Geo. S. Morris, Ph.D. pp. 84-S6. 
 Griggs & Co. Chicago, 1887. 
 
 2 “ Relatively,” I say, in order to prevent a possible misconception. 
 Relatively, though with an inferior degree of truth, the same may be 
 said of the Family which, in the text, is asserted of the State. But, as 
 we shall see later, the State itself is organic to a larger life and actuality 
 of the human spirit, or of the “ idea of man,” in universal history; while 
 universal history, again, is organic to the perfect consummation of 
 humanity through the discovery of the true will of man in the will of 
 God, the adoption of the latter as the inviolable norm of human action, 
 and the consequent establishment of man in his spiritual perfection and 
 completeness as a co-worker with and child of God. 
 
E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 198 
 
 of developed being which the idea of man as a rational being 
 implies. And it is this by virtue of a process which, just 
 because it is rather organic than merely mechanical, has the 
 form of a process of self-realization. 
 
 To illustrate : The actual tree is such only by virtue 
 of a process of growth. In this process the tree becomes 
 nothing other than itself, — it realizes itself. It does this, 
 further, by separating itself into its natural parts or 
 members, — roots and branches. To each it allows a 
 separate or distinct existence, and yet holds them all 
 together in the unity of one organic and living whole. We 
 may say that the tree disperses or distributes itself among 
 its members, and this as the very condition, on the ful- 
 filment of which, the manifestation of its universal life 
 and power, and the actualization of its organic unity (or the 
 actualization of the “idea of the tree”) irrevocably depend. 
 Moreover, the tree is not an after-result of the existence 
 of the roots and branches : when they begin to exist, its 
 existence also begins. So it is with the State. The roots 
 of the State are families, and its branches are the institutions 
 of civil society. Its material is individuals. These take 
 their places under the mentioned institutions, directed by 
 circumstances, by caprice, or by personal choice. The 
 element of “subjective freedom” has here its play. But these 
 institutions themselves have obviously a universal or general 
 character ; and the individual in recognizing them, and in 
 maintaining himself in his own chosen place under them, 
 recognizes and devotes himself to the service of a universal 
 with which, by his own deliberate choice, he has identified 
 himself. 
 
 But the universality of these institutions has its ground 
 in, and is the manifestation and reflection of, that ethical 
 “universal” which we term the invisible State or nation, 
 or, more explicitly, the spirit of the nation, — the 
 universal spirit of man, as it takes form and declares itself 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 199 
 
 in the particular life of the nation. Thus regarded, they 
 make up the constitution of the nation ; they are the reason 
 of the nation, developed and actualized in particular forms. 
 They are, therefore, the ‘ steadfast basis of the State ; they 
 immediately determine the temper of the individual citizens 
 toward the State, and especially their confidence in it ; and 
 they are the pillars of the public freedom, since in them 
 particular (individual) freedom is realized in a rational form; 
 and they thus involve an intrinsic union of freedom and 
 necessity,’ or are, as it were, the living and visible body of 
 an interior, organic, and steadfast liberty. 
 
 “ But institutions by themselves are impersonal and uncon- 
 scious. Their existence, as the above comparison of them 
 to the branches of a tree implies, is assimilated in kind to 
 that of a natural organism. The law of freedom, as exempli- 
 fied in than alone , is like a natural law, inflexible, unreflecting, 
 without shadow of turning. In particular, they contain in 
 themselves, as thus viewed and existing, no germ of develop- 
 ment. They are the phenomena and product of a public 
 spirit, which they accordingly implicitly presuppose, and 
 which must distinctly declare and develop itself in the form 
 of clear, self-knowing intelligence and will, in order that the 
 form of necessity under which institutional freedom existed 
 may itself be changed to freedom. This spirit we must 
 consider and speak of as the true substance of the State.” 
 
 Supplementary to § 265. 
 
 It has already been noted that the sacredness of the oath, 
 and the institutions in which the civic community appears 
 as ethical, constitute the stability of the whole (the State). 
 Through these institutions the universal becomes the 
 concern of each and every citizen. It all depends on 
 this, that the law of reason and the particular freedom of 
 individuals penetrate each other, so that my particular end 
 becomes identical with the universal; else the State is a 
 
200 
 
 E TH IC ALI TY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 castle built in the air (else there is absolutely no rational 
 foundation for the State). The feeling of self-possession 
 ( Selbstgefühl ') of the individual constitutes its actuality, and 
 its stability consists in the identity of these two sides of 
 its being (universality and particularity). It has often been 
 said that the end of the State is the happiness of the 
 citizens, and this is, indeed, true. If it goes ill with the 
 citizens, if their subjective ends are not satisfied, if they do 
 not find that the State, as such, is the mediation of this 
 satisfaction, the State stands on a very weak foundation. 
 
 § 266. 
 
 But the spirit is not only actual and objective unto itself as 
 this necessity and as a realm of appearance, but also as the 
 inner essence and ideality of such appearance. Thus this 
 substantial universality is object and end unto itself, and 
 this necessity exists hereby just as much in the form of 
 liberty. 
 
 § 267. 
 
 The necessity in the ideality of these elements is the 
 evolution of the Idea within itself. It is, as subjective sub- 
 stantiality, the political disposition: and as objective , in 
 distinction from the o?-ganism of the State, it is the political 
 State proper and its constitution. 
 
 Supplementary. — The unity of the freedom that knows 
 and wills itself, exists primarily as necessity. The sub- 
 stantial is, at this stage, the subjective existence of the indi- 
 viduals ; the other phase of the necessity is the organism; 
 that is to say, the spirit is a 'process in itself, articulates 
 itself in itself, posits distinctions in itself, through which 
 it circulates. 
 
 § 268. 
 
 This political disposition is termed patriotism in general, 
 as certainty resting in truth (mere subjective certainty 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 201 
 
 does not proceed from truth and is nothing but opinion); 
 and the will that has become custom is simply the result 
 of the institutions existing in the State, as of those in 
 which rationality is actually present. So, too, patriotism is 
 manifested by activity in harmony with these institutions. — 
 This disposition is, in general, confidence in the State, which 
 may attain to more or less cultured insight. It is the 
 consciousness that my substantial and particular interest 
 is preserved and contained in the interest and aim of an 
 other (here the State) in its relation to me as an individual. 
 Hereby the State immediately is no longer an other , a 
 stranger to me ; and the ego is free in this consciousness. 
 
 Abstract of Rest of §. 
 
 We ought not to understand by patriotism only extraor- 
 dinary actions and sacrifices. It is essentially that dispo- 
 sition which is accustomed to recognize the communal life, 
 in the ordinary circumstances and relations of life, as the 
 substantial foundation and final purpose of all activity. 
 But as men find it easier to be magnanimous than just, so 
 they also easily convince themselves that they possess that 
 heroic patriotism, in order to save themselves the trouble of 
 having this everyday patriotism. 
 
 It is very much easier to criticise an institution than to 
 understand the truth and necessity at its bottom. In 
 questions of religion it is easy to say that this or that is 
 superstition, but infinitely harder to understand the truth 
 of it. We forget, for our particular interests, that on which 
 our whole existence depends. Few of us are conscious of 
 the fact when safely passing down a street at night, that 
 this safety is the result of an institution ; and if we are, 
 we are likely to ascribe it to the mere force of the State, 
 when, in reality, the State coheres because of the funda- 
 mental sense of order which the great majority have. 
 
202 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 § 269 . 
 
 -V. .U. .U. -M. 
 
 •7T Tv "vr "7v Tv 
 
 Supplementary. — The State is an organism, that is, it is 
 the evolution of the Idea into all its differentiations or 
 different forms or organs of itself. These differentiated 
 sides are thus the different powers of the State and its 
 affairs and activity, through which the universal continues 
 to bring forth itself and maintain itself in a necessary 
 manner, in conformity with the Idea (of the State). This 
 organism is the political constitution ; 1 it proceeds eternally 
 from the State, as also the State maintains itself through 
 the constitution. If the two fall outside of each other ; if 
 the two sides become free from each other, there is no 
 longer that unity posited which the constitution as an 
 organism produces. Here the fable of the stomach and 
 the other organs finds its application. For it is the nature 
 of an organism that, if its parts do not all merge into 
 unison of activity ; if one posits itself as independent, all 
 go to destruction. In considering the State, one gets 
 nowhere with predicates, principles, and the like, since 
 the State must be comprehended as an organism. To 
 attempt any other course, is just as idle as to try, by the 
 aid of predicates, to comprehend the nature of God, whose 
 life I must, much rather, behold (anschauen) in its very self. 
 
 § 270 . 
 
 That the purpose and end of the State is the universal 
 interest as such, and the satisfaction therein of the particular 
 interests as to their substance, is (i) the State’s abstract 
 actuality , or substantiality ; but this is (2) the State’s 
 necessity when the actuality of the State divides itself in the 
 
 1 By constitution ( Verfassung ), Hegel does not refer only to the 
 constitution on paper, but to the principle on which and by which the 
 State is constituted. 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 203 
 
 conceptual distinctions (concept-distinctions) of its activity. 
 These distinctions become, through this substantiality, 
 really actual and stable determinations, or powers ; (3) but 
 this substantiality itself is the self-conscious and self-willing 
 spirit, as having passed through the forni of culture and educa- 
 tion. Hence the State knows what it wills, and knows it 
 in its universality as something thought. Therefore the 
 State acts according to conscious ends, known principles, 
 and according to laws that exist not only in themselves 
 (implicitly), but also for consciousness ; and, also, in as 
 far as its actions have reference to present circumstances 
 and conditions, they are determined by the exact acquaint- 
 ance with such relations. 
 
 It is not too much to say that Hegel always and every- 
 where shows his deep and vital interest in religion, as one 
 of the absolute forms of truth. He is perpetually recurring 
 to it and giving extended expositions of its character, 
 function and place in the system of absolute truth. We are 
 not surprised, therefore, at finding here a long digression 
 on the relation of the State to Religion. In place of this 
 long translation, however, we deem it of more value to give 
 Dr. Morris’ 1 very free exposition of Hegel’s general view on 
 the subject : 
 
 “ Is religion the foundation of the State ? Undoubtedly 
 it is, and the whole of his Philosophy of the State and of 
 History is a progressive demonstration of this truth, and 
 of the sense in which it must be understood. The State, 
 history, and indeed all natural existence, are the gradual 
 actualization or manifestation of an Absolute Reason, 
 which can and must exist in its eternal fulness only as 
 Absolute Spirit, or God. In the ethical world, in particular, 
 we are in process of seeing how each lower grade presup- 
 poses, as its substantial foundation, proximately the next 
 higher one and then absolutely all higher ones. So the 
 
 1 pp. 88 and 89 of volume previously cited. 
 
204 
 
 E TH I CA LI TV (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 Family presupposes or calls for Civil Society, while the 
 State is similarly presupposed by both. The particular 
 State, again, the nation, with its definite national spirit, is 
 organic to, and hence presupposes, a still larger life of the 
 human spirit, — a life which at once takes up into itself 
 and also transcends the limits of separate national exist- 
 ences, and of which universal history is both the expression 
 and the demonstration. 
 
 But man, conceived and known as the spirit immanent 
 in universal history, as universal humanity, or Weltgeist , 
 is found to be unable to stand alone. He is relative to 
 something else, which he presupposes as his ‘substantial 
 foundation’; he is not absolute. The whole historic life of 
 humanity is organic to, and dependent on, the life and 
 operation of the absolute and eternal Spirit, of whose 
 thought and will it closes the demonstration, begun at the 
 lowest grade of finite existence. 
 
 When the natural and ethical worlds are comprehended 
 as the progressive incarnation of reason in ‘reality,’ God, 
 who is the ‘absolute truth,’ is seen to be the eternal 
 presupposition and the omnipresent and actual condition 
 of all existence whatever, but most conspicuously of the 
 existence of the ‘ethical world.’ If all things whatsoever 
 are, in their degree, the revelation and incarnation of that 
 supreme reason in which absolute and eternal Being — God, 
 Absolute Spirit — consists, and if it is thus true of all things 
 that they are a present and actual revelation of divine will 
 and spiritual being, much more obviously is this true of an 
 ethical organism, an historic power, like the State. So 
 Hegel declares that ‘ the State is divine will, in the form 
 of a present (national) spirit, unfolding itself in the actual 
 shape and organization of an (ethical) world.’ 
 
 The whole normal process of history, to which all the life 
 of man, in Family, Civil Society, and State is organic, consists 
 in the progressive realization of concrete human freedom, — 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 205 
 
 that is, of the essential spiritual nature of man, through 
 the consc'ous recognition of God as the ‘foundation’ of all 
 the true life of the human spirit, and of the divine will as 
 the true substance or content of the human will. In the 
 whole process of history, or of the ‘ethical world,’ humanity 
 is progressively learning, and showing that it is learning, 
 that its true language is, ‘ Lo ! I am come to do thy will, 
 O God ! ’ And so the foundation of the State is indeed, 
 and in the most radical and comprehensive sense, religion, 
 which, says Hegel, has ideally ‘the absolute truth for its 
 content.’ Upon this general truth, both in its generality 
 and in its specific applications, our author finds occasion, 
 as we shall see, to insist at almost every step in the develop- 
 ment of the philosophy of history, — the spiritual story of 
 humanity. 
 
 But when religion is otherwise regarded ; when it is 
 identified with immediate feeling, or with an intuition which 
 claims exemption from the arduous labor of philosophic 
 comprehension ; when, accordingly, it degenerates into 
 fanaticism and narrow dogmatism, restricting the presence 
 of God in history within the limits of a select religious 
 organization, and treating the State as at the best only a 
 soulless and godless mechanism, — then the claim that 
 religion is the foundation of the State must be rejected, 
 or rather corrected. Then, especially, must the spiritual 
 character of the State and its inherent divine right be 
 emphasized.” 
 
 § 272 -§ 341 . 
 
 It is not necessary, for the purpose of the present volume, 
 to give even a rhumb of Hegel’s exposition of the political 
 state, as the organized and publicly-expressed will of its 
 people. Its articulate form follows from the distinction of 
 the universal, the particular, and the individual, and their 
 combination in a concrete and living activity. He declares 
 
2o6 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 that, as to form, that of a constitutional monarchy is the 
 peculiar achievement of the modern world, emphasizing 
 the constitutional and representative elements as well as 
 the monarchical one. We have essentially the same articu- 
 lation of the three elements in our monarchical democracy, 
 and England the same in her democratic monarchy. 
 
 He was specially favorable to the English form, in 
 reference to which he uttered his well-known saying that 
 the king was “ but a dot upon the The King or the 
 President may equally be the mouth-piece of the personality 
 of the State, the crown, — or the necessary dot over the 
 — of the whole moral organism of the State. What he 
 says about laws, as the express forms of the content of 
 substantial freedom ; of the constitution as the express will 
 of the people ; of the function and moral temper of the 
 officers in the whole department of civil (public) service ; 
 of suffrage being restricted to representatives of definite 
 interests organized under the commonwealth; of freedom 
 and equality ; of the double form and worth of public 
 opinion, and of war as an ethical factor, is admirable. 
 
 So, too, what he says as to ( b ) international policy is 
 admirable. He recognized that any one national spirit is 
 a limited one, that no one State can be the “ terrestrial 
 god,” or realize the full nature of man as a political animal. 
 Hence he turns to (c) universal history to find the law of 
 the development of man as man. Here he gives his inter- 
 pretation of the autobiography of humanity, whose indi- 
 viduals are nations, progressively and consciously realizing 
 the idea of freedom, and entering upon their rightful 
 heritage. It is thus throughout an ethical consideration of 
 universal history, an ethical estimation of the course of 
 man’s thoughts and deeds, under Divine guidance, to the 
 largest and most rational form of self-realization. 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 207 
 
 C. Universal History. 
 
 § 341. 
 
 Universal spirit has the element of determinate being in 
 several forms : — in art, that of sensuous form and symbol, 
 in religion, that of sentiment and pictorial conceptions, in 
 philosophy, that of pure, free thought ; while in universal 
 history it is that of the spiritual actuality of humanity in 
 the whole circle of its internal and external activity. The 
 history of the world is the judgment of the world, because 
 it contains, in its self-dependent universality, all special 
 forms — the family, civil society, and nation, reduced to 
 ideality, i. e. to subordinate but organic members of itself. 
 It is the task of the spirit to produce all these special forms. 
 
 § 342. 
 
 Further, universal history is not the mere judgment of its 
 own power, i. e ., it is not the abstract and irrational necessity 
 of blind fate. But inasmuch as it is inherently rational and 
 self-conscious, it is rather the evolution of the phases of 
 reason and, consequently, of its self-consciousness and 
 freedom ; it is the actualization and interpretation of 
 universal spirit. 
 
 § 343. 
 
 The true history of the spirit is its own deed, for spirit is 
 real only so far as it is activity. And the true deed of spirit 
 is to make itself its own object, to comprehend itself in its 
 own self-exposition. Such comprehension is its vital prin- 
 cipal, and the fulfilment of this comprehension is at the 
 same time its own alienation ( Entäusserung ) and transition. 
 And spirit returning back into itself out of this alienation is 
 the spirit of the higher stage in relation to itself as it existed 
 in its first comprehension. 
 
2o8 
 
 £ THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 Here arises the question concerning the education and 
 perfectibility of the human race. Those who maintain the 
 perfectibility of humanity have intuitively anticipated some- 
 thing of the nature of spirit — of its nature to have Tvwdi 
 crsavrov as the law of its being and to thus reach a higher 
 stage than that of mere existence. But, for those who deny 
 this view, spirit has been a mere name, and history a merely 
 superficial play of accidental human passions and struggles. 
 Though they professedly hold to faith in a supreme power 
 and plan of providence, these terms remain dead con- 
 ceptions, for they expressly say that the plan of Providence 
 forever remains inconceivable and unknowable. 
 
 § 344 . 
 
 In this labor of the world-spirit, nations and individuals 
 appear in all their special forms, which have their actuality 
 and exposition in their whole circle of existence. They are 
 conscious of these latter and profoundly interested in them, 
 and yet they are, at the same time, the unconscious tools 
 and organic phases of that inner labor of the world-spirit. 
 They arise and they also vanish in this task of the world- 
 spirit, which thereby prepares and works out its transition 
 into the next higher stage. 
 
 § 345 . 
 
 Justice and virtue, violence and vice, talents and their 
 deeds, small and great passions, guilt and innocence, the 
 glory of individuals and nations, independence, the fortunes 
 and misfortunes of empires and individuals have their 
 definite significance and worth in this sphere of conscious 
 actuality and find therein their judgment and their still 
 imperfect justice. But the history of the world lies beyond 
 all such points of view. In it, that necessary phase of the 
 Idea of the world-spirit, which is at any time existent, 
 receives its absolute right: people, with all their deeds, who 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 209 
 
 live in this phase, receive their completion, their fortune and 
 renown. 
 
 § 346 . 
 
 History is the formation of spirit into deed, into the form 
 of immediate natural actuality. Hence the phases of the 
 development are present as immediate natural principles. 
 And because of their being merely natural, they are various 
 and disconnected. Hence each people has its own peculiar 
 natural principle — its geographical and anthropological 
 character. 
 
 § 347 . 
 
 The world-spirit, in its onward march, hands over to each 
 people the task of working out its own peculiar vocation. 
 Thus in universal history each nation in turn, is for that 
 epoch (and it can make such an epoch only once), dominant. 
 Against this absolute right to be the bearer of the present 
 stage of the development of the world-spirit, the spirits of 
 the other nations are absolutely without right, and they, 
 as well as those whose epochs are passed, count no longer 
 in universal history. The special history of any world- 
 historical nation contains, partly the development of its 
 genius from its infantile state to its bloom, when it attains 
 to free ethical self-consciousness and holds the wheel of the 
 world’s destiny ; partly, it also contains the period of its 
 downfall and destruction. For thus the rise of a higher 
 principle appears as only the abrogation and the fulfilment 
 of its own earlier form. . . . 
 
 § 348 . 
 
 At the head of all great historical events we find 
 individuals who accomplish the essential destiny of a 
 people or an epoch. As tools of the world-spirit, they do 
 the deed without conscious design of its full significance 
 
210 
 
 ETHICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 and consequences. Their contemporaries and even pos- 
 terity may decline to bestow due honor upon them for the 
 deed. But the true view of their mission, gives them their 
 part in immortal renown. 
 
 § 349 . 
 
 A people is not directly a State. The transition of a 
 clan, horde, tribe or multitude into the make-up of a state 
 constitutes the formal realization of the Idea as such in it. 
 A people is potentially ethical substance, but unless it is 
 formed into State it lacks the determinate being which fixed 
 laws can give it, both for itself and others, and, hence, can 
 have no recognition and can assert no sovereignty. 
 
 § 350 . 
 
 It is the absolute right of the Idea to appear in laws 
 and objective institutions, springing from wedlock and 
 agriculture, whether the form of this realization appears as 
 divine legislation and grace, or as violence and wrong. 
 Such right is the right of heroes to found states. 
 
 § 351 . 
 
 Hence it also happens that civilized nations consider and 
 treat such nations as represent a lower stage, as barbarians, 
 esteeming their rights as inferior and their independence 
 as merely nominal. Their wars are of significance in the 
 world-history, only as representing the element of the 
 struggle for recognition. 
 
 § 352 . 
 
 The genii of peoples as concrete Ideas , have their truth 
 and character in the Absolute Idea. They stand around the 
 throne of the world-spirit as the executors of its realization, 
 and as witnesses and ornaments of its glory. As world- 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 2 I I 
 
 spirit it is only its own deed of coming to itself — to 
 conscious knowledge of its own being and mission of 
 freedom. There are four marked principles of the forma- 
 tion of this self-consciousness in the course of its freedom, 
 i. e., the four world-historical empires. 
 
 These are : (i) The Oriental, (2) the Greek, (3) the 
 Roman and (4) the Germanic Empires. 
 
 § 353 . 
 
 In the first of these it (the world-spirit) has the form 
 of substa?itial spirit, in which all individuality remains 
 suppressed and without the right of existence. 
 
 The second principle is the ktiowledge of this substantial 
 spirit. It is the positive content and fulfilment and inde- 
 pendency as the vital form of the world-spirit, which is 
 beautiful ethical individuality. 
 
 The third is the self-involution of this knowledge and 
 independence to abstract universality. It thus renders all 
 objectivity spiritless and comes into infinite opposition to it. 
 
 The principle of the fourth form is that of the change 
 of this opposition of Spirit, so as to receive inwardly its 
 own truth and concrete nature, and to be reconciled with 
 objectivity, and thus to be at home with itself in the sphere 
 of the secular. This change also involves its creating and 
 knowing its truth as thought and as the real definite world. 
 It involves this, because it is spirit which has overcome its 
 opposition to secular objectivity and returned, ladened with 
 all the spoils of victory, to universal Spirit. 
 
 This division gives the skeleton outlines, which Hegel’s 
 Philosophy of History clothes with all the vitality of the 
 spirit of God, as the spirit of humanity. This work is 
 already so well known in translation 1 as to render un- 
 
 1 Lectures on the Philosophy of History, by G. W. F. Hegel, translated 
 by J. Sibree, M.A. Bohn’s Philosophical Library, 1861. 
 
2 12 
 
 ETHIC ALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 necessary more than commendatory reference to it. We, 
 however, select a few paragraphs as the fitting close of 
 this volume on Hegel’s Ethics : — 
 
 “The History of the world is the progress of man in the 
 consciousness of freedom. ... It is the discipline of the 
 uncontrolled natural will, bringing it into obedience to a 
 universal principle and conferring subjective freedom. . . . 
 The Orientals knew that one is free, who was only a despot 
 not a free man. The Greeks and Romans knew that some 
 are free, — not man as such. The Germanic nations, under 
 the influence of Christianity, were the first to attain the 
 consciousness that man, as man, is free — that it is the 
 freedom of spirit which constitutes his essence. . . . But 
 to introduce this principle into the various relations of the 
 actual world, involves, besides its simple implantation, a 
 severe and lengthened process of education .” 1 
 
 “The spirit of God lives in the Church, but it is in the 
 world, as a yet inharmonious material, that spirit is to 
 be realized. The world, or secular business, cannot be 
 repudiated, and ultimately the discovery is made that spirit 
 finds the goal of its struggle and its harmonization in that 
 very sphere which it made the object of its resistance — it 
 finds that secular pursuits are a spiritual occupation.” 2 
 
 “This fourth phase of World-History answers to the 
 old age of man’s life. The old age of nature , however, is 
 weakness ; but the old age of spirit is its perfect maturity 
 and strength, in which it returns to unity with itself, but in 
 its fully developed character as spirit. This fourth phase 
 begins with the Reconciliation presented in Christianity — 
 but only in the germ, without national or political develop- 
 ment.” 3 
 
 After portraying the terrible but wholesome discipline of 
 the middle ages, under the two iron rods of ecclesiastical 
 power and serfdom, he says : — 
 
 1 pp. 19 and 1 10. 
 
 p. 368. 
 
 P- 
 
THE STATE. 
 
 2i 3 
 
 “ Humanity has now attained the consciousness of a real 
 internal harmonization of spirit and a good conscience in 
 regard to actuality — to secular life. The human spirit has 
 come to stand on its own basis. In the self-consciousness 
 to which man has thus advanced, there is no revolt against 
 the Divine, but a manifestation of that better subjectivity 
 which recognizes the Divine in its own being ; which is 
 imbued with the Good and the True, and which directs 
 its activities to the general and liberal objects bearing the 
 stamp of rationality and beauty.” 1 
 
 In speaking of the Reformation, he says : “ This is the 
 essence of the Reformation : man, in his very nature, is 
 destined to be free.” 2 
 
 In showing how the modern spirit has taken up and 
 made its own “the absolute inwardness of soul,” and yet 
 demands the surrendering of one’s mere private subjectivity 
 to substantial truth, required by Christianity, he says : — 
 “In the proclamation of these principles is unfurled the 
 new and final standard round which the nations rally — 
 the banner of Free Spirit , independent, while finding its life 
 in the truth and enjoying its independence only in the 
 truth. This is the banner which we bear and under which 
 we serve. Time has no other work to do than the formal 
 imbuing of the world with this principle, in bringing the 
 Reconciliation implicit in Christianity into objective and 
 explicit realization. . . . This is the sense in which we 
 must understand the State to be based on Religion. States 
 and Laws are nothing else than Religion manifesting itself 
 in the actual relations of the secular world.” 3 
 
 “ Secular life is the positive and definite embodiment of 
 the Spiritual Kingdom — the Kingdom of Will manifesting 
 itself in outward existence. . . . That which is just and 
 moral belongs to the essential, independent and intrinsically 
 universal will ; and, if we would know what is right, we 
 
 i p. 425. 
 
 P- 434- 
 
 P- 434- 
 
214 
 
 E THICALITY (. SITTLICHKEIT ). 
 
 must abstract all subjective inclinations and desires, i. e., we 
 must know what the Will is in itself. The Will is free only 
 when it does not will anything alien to itself (as universal) 
 but wills itself alone- — wills the Will (universal ).” 1 
 
 Then, after making most trenchant criticism of this 
 principle when applied in the abstract way which led to 
 “the Age of Reason,” the French Revolution and the 
 Aufklärung , ruthlessly destroying all the holy web of human 
 institutions, he says : — 
 
 “It is a false principle, that the fetters which bind 
 justice and liberty can be broken without the emancipation 
 of the Conscience — that there can be a Revolution with- 
 out a Reformation. . . . Mere external power can affect 
 nothing in the long run : Napoleon could no more coerce 
 Spain into freedom than Phillip II. could force Holland 
 into slavery .” 2 
 
 “In the Protestant world there is no sacred or religious 
 conscience in a state of separation from or, perhaps, even 
 of hostility to secular right. This is the point attained by 
 the modern Consciousness. . . . Objective freedom — the 
 laws of real freedom — demand the subjugation of the 
 arbitrary, formal, subjective will. Yet while the objective 
 is the rational for man, there is the further demand that 
 insight and conviction correspond with the Reason which 
 the objective embodies. Thus we have the other essential 
 element — subjective freedom — also realized .” 3 
 
 “ That the History of the World, with all the changing 
 scenes which its annals present, is this process of the 
 development and actualization of Spirit — this is the true 
 Theodicy, the justification of God in History. Only this 
 insight can reconcile the human spirit with the course of 
 Universal History — viz., that what has happened and is 
 happening each day is not only not without God, but that 
 it is essentially His work .” 4 
 
 2 P- 47 2 - 
 
 1 p. 461. 
 
 p. 476. 
 
 P- 477- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abstractness, vice of, II, 27. 
 Aufklärung, ethics of the, 20. 
 
 Chinese morality, 13. 
 
 Church and state, 47, 203. 
 
 City and country, 188. 
 
 Classes of civil society, 1 70-1 74. 
 Community, the civic, 159, 187. 
 Conscience, 116-133. 
 
 private, 117. 
 
 ■ the true, 120. 
 
 Contract, 33, 89. 
 
 Corporation, the municipal, 187. 
 Crime, 34, 94. 
 
 Culpability, 108. 
 
 Dialectical method, 28. 
 
 Divorce, 1 56. 
 
 Duty for duty’s sake, 14. 
 
 Education of the race, 208. 
 
 of children, 208. 
 
 End, the, sanctifies the means, 128. 
 Ethicality, n, 39, 67, 135. 
 
 Ethics, absolute, 53, 204. 
 
 Christian, 56. 
 
 Evil, moral, 37, 122. 
 
 origin of, 123. 
 
 Family, the, 41, 148. 
 
 Fichte, 7, 17. 
 
 Finality in morals impossible, 51. 
 Fraud, 94. 
 
 Freedom, steps in progress of, 52. 
 
 Green, T. H., 51. 
 
 Hegel, a Moses, 15. 
 
 biographical sketch of, 1-8. 
 
 method of, 27. 
 
 relation of to previous ethical 
 
 thought, 8, 22. 
 
 History, universal, 207. 
 
 epochs in, 209. 
 
 Hypocrisy, 127. 
 
 Intention, the right of, no. 
 
 Irony, 131. 
 
 Jacobi, 14, 129. 
 
 Jury, trial by, 185. 
 
 Justice, administration of, 174. 
 courts of, 1 8 r . 
 
 Kant, criticism of, 9, 16, 36. 
 
 Key words, 57. 
 
 Know thyself \YvC161. creavriv], 10. 
 
 Labor, nature of, 166. 
 
 division of, 167. 
 
 Logic (Hegel’s) as metaphysics, 23. 
 Love, 148. 
 
 Man, how good and evil by nature, 
 123 - 
 
 Marriage, 42, 90, 150. 
 
 ethical duty of, 150. 
 
 solemnization of, 153. 
 
 Monarchy, 206. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 216 
 
 Montesquieu, 194. 
 
 Morality, 11, 36, 67, 102. 
 
 laws of, 1 42. 
 
 Morris, Prof. Geo. S., 30. 
 
 quoted, 197, 21 1. 
 
 Mulford, Rev. Dr. E. 44. 
 
 Nature, philosophy of, 24. 
 
 Pascal, 126. 
 
 Patriotism, 200. 
 
 Pedagogue, the right of the, 144. 
 Person, the abstract, 32, 72. 
 Personality, 73. 
 
 Philosophy, the task of, 63. 
 
 Police, 187, 
 
 Possessions, 82, 84. 
 
 Probabilism, 127. 
 
 Property, 33, 76, 154. 
 
 equality of, not rational, 80. 
 
 Punishment, 34, 95. 
 
 false theories of, 98. 
 
 Purpose and culpability, 108. 
 
 Rationalism, eighteenth century, 
 20. 
 
 Reformation, the, 213. 
 
 Religion and the state, 47, 203. 
 Revenge, 99. 
 
 Revolution, the French, 214. 
 Right, abstract, 32, 71, 75. 
 
 of necessity, 114. 
 
 Rousseau, 190. 
 
 Royce, Prof. Josiah, VIII., 2. 
 
 Schelling, 7, 19. 
 
 Secular affairs, sacredness of, 212, 
 213 - 
 
 Slavery, 33, 88. 
 
 State, the, 44. 
 
 an organism, 198, 202. 
 
 ancient and modern, 196. 
 
 and individual's, 198. 
 
 and institutions, 198. 
 
 and religion, 203. 
 
 and the church, 47. 
 
 distinguished from civil so- 
 ciety, 189. 
 
 rights and duties in, 195. 
 
 Spirit, the philosophy of, 26. 
 
 the testimony of the, 137. 
 
 Station, my, and its duties, 14. 
 Stirling, Dr. J. H., V., VIII., 3. 
 Suicide, wrong, 87. 
 
 Superstition, 87. 
 
 Theodicy, Hegel’s, 214. 
 
 Virtue, talk about, empty, 140. 
 
 Wants and their satisfaction, 163. 
 Wealth, 168. 
 
 impossibility of equality of, 
 
 169. 
 
 Wedlock 149. 
 
 Will, the, as thought, 64. 
 
 • as infinite and free, 65. 
 
 Wrong, 91. 
 
ADVERTISEMENTS. 
 
PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Empirical Psychology ; 
 
 or, The Human Mind as Given in Consciousness. 
 
 By Laurens P. Hickok, D.D., LL.D. Revised with the co-operation of 
 Julius H. Seelye, D.D., LL.D., Ex-Prest. of Amherst College. 12mo. 
 300 pages. Mailing Price, $1.25; Introduction, $1.12. 
 
 rPHE publishers believe that this book will be found to be re- 
 markably comprehensive, and at the same time compact and 
 clear. It gives a complete outline of the science, concisely pre- 
 sented, and in precise and plain terms. 
 
 It has proved of special value to teachers, as is evidenced by its 
 recent adoption for several Reading Circles. 
 
 John Bascom, formerly Pres. Uni- 
 versity of Wisconsin, Madison : It is 
 an excellent hook. It has done much 
 good service, and, as revised by 
 President. Seelye, is prepared to do 
 much more. 
 
 I. W. Andrews, formerly Prof, of 
 Intellectual Philosophy, Marietta 
 
 College, 0. : This new edition may 
 be confidently recommended as pre- 
 senting a deliueation of the mental 
 faculties so clear and accurate that 
 the careful student will hardly fail 
 to recognize its truth in his own ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Hickok’ s Mora! Science. 
 
 By Laurens P. Hickok, D.D., LL.D. Revised with the co-operation of 
 Julius H. Seelye, D.D., LL.D., Ex-Prest. of Amherst College. 12mo. 
 Cloth. 288 pages. Mailing Price, $1.25; Introduction, $1.12. 
 
 A S revised by Dr. Seelye, it is believed that this work will be 
 found unsurpassed in systematic rigor and scientific precision, 
 and at the same time remarkably clear and simple in style. 
 
 G. P. Fisher, Prof, of Church His- 
 tory, Yale College : The style is so 
 perspicuous, and at the same time so 
 concise, that the work is eminently 
 135 
 
 adapted to serve as a text-hook in 
 colleges and higher schools. In mat- 
 ter and manner it is a capital book, 
 and I wish it God speed. 
 
13(3 
 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Lotze’s Philosophical Outlines. 
 
 Dictated Portions of the Latest Lectures (at Göttingen and Berlin) of 
 Hermann Lotze. Translated and edited by George T. Ladd, Pro- 
 fessor of Philosophy in Yale University. 12mo. Cloth. About 180 
 pages in each volume. Mailing price per volume, $1.00 ; for introduc- 
 tion, 80 cents. 
 
 T“ German from which the translations are made consists of 
 the dictated portions of his latest lectures (at Gottingen, and 
 for a few months at Berlin) as formulated by Lotze himself, 
 recorded in the notes of his hearers, and subjected to the most 
 competent and thorough revision of Professor Heimisch of Got- 
 tingen. The Outlines give, therefore, a mature and trustworthy 
 statement, in language selected by this teacher of philosophy him- 
 self, of what may be considered as his final opinions upon a wide 
 range of subjects. They have met with no little favor in Germany. 
 
 These translations have been undertaken with the kind permis- 
 sion of the German publisher, Herr S. Hirzel, of Leipsic. 
 
 Outlines of Metaphysic. 
 
 This contains the scientific treatment of those assumptions which enter 
 into all our cognition of Reality. It consists of three parts, — Ontology, 
 Cosmology, Phenomenology. The first part contains chapters on the Con- 
 ception of Being, the Content of the Existent, Reality, Change, and Causa- 
 tion ; the second treats of Space, Time, Motion, Matter, and the Coherency 
 of Natural Events; the third, of the Subjectivity and Objectivity of Cog- 
 nition. The Metaphysic of Lotze gives the key to his entire philosophical 
 system. 
 
 Outlines of the Philosophy of Religion. 
 
 Lotze here seeks “ to ascertain how much of the Content of Religion may 
 be discovered, proved, or at least confirmed, agreeably to reason.” He 
 discusses the Proof for the Existence of God, the Attributes and Personality 
 of the Absolute, the Conceptions of the Creation, the Preservation, and the 
 Government, of the World, and of the World-time. The book closes with 
 brief discussions of Religion and Morality, and Dogmas and Confessions. 
 Outlines of Practical Philosophy. 
 
 This contains a discussion of Ethical Principles, Moral Ideals, and the 
 Freedom of the Will, and then an application of the theory to the Indi- 
 vidual, to Marriage, to Society, and to the State. Many interesting 
 remarks on Divorce, Socialism, Representative Government, etc., abound 
 throughout the volume. Its style is more popular than that of the other 
 works of Lotze, and it will doubtless be widely read. 
 
 Outlines of Psychology. 
 
 The Outlines of Psychology treats of Simple Sensations, the Course of 
 Representative Ideas, of Attention and Inference, of Intuitions, of Objects 
 as in Space, of the Apprehension of the External IVorld by the Senses, of 
 Errors of the Senses, of Feelings, and of Bodily Motions. Its second part 
 is “theoretical,” and discusses the nature, position, and changeable states 
 of the Soul, its relations to time, and the reciprocal action of Soul and Body. 
 It closes with a chapter on the “Kingdom of Souls.” Lotze is peculiarly 
 rich and suggestive in the discussion of Psychology. 
 
PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 137 
 
 Outlines of /Esthetics. 
 
 The Outlines of Esthetics treats of the theory of the Beautifm and of 
 Phantasy, and of the Realization and Different Species of the Beautiful. 
 Then follow brief chapters on Music, Architecture, Plastic Art, Painting, 
 and Poetry. This, like the other volumes, has a full index. 
 
 Outlines of Logic. 
 
 This discusses both pure and applied Logic. The Logic is followed by a 
 brief treatise on the Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, in which are set forth 
 the definition and method of Theoretical Philosophy, of Practical Phi- 
 losophy, and of the Philosophy of Religion. This volume is about one-fifth 
 larger than the others, and makes an admirable brief text-book in Logic. 
 
 Mind, London, Eng. : No words 
 are needed to commend such an en- 
 terprise, now that Lotze’s importance 
 
 as a thinker is so well understood. 
 The translation is careful and pains- 
 taking. 
 
 The Philosophical Reuiew , 
 
 A Bi-monthly Journal of General Philosophy, 
 
 Edited by J. G. Schurmax, Dean of the Sage School of Philosophy and 
 President of Cornell University. Subscription price, $3.00. Single 
 copy, 75 cents. Foreign Agents: Great Britain, Edward Arnold, Lon- 
 don; Germany, Mayer & Müller, Berlin; France, E. Leroux, Paris; 
 Italy, E. Loescher, Rome. Volume II. began with January, 1893. 
 
 rpHE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW is intended as an organ for 
 the publication of the results of investigation in every branch 
 of Philosophy. It is made up of original articles, reviews of books, 
 and classified summaries of periodical literature. 
 
 The Review will not enter into competition with those special- 
 ized or technical journals which are already engaged in the minute 
 cultivation of particular branches of Philosophy. Its domain is 
 the still unoccupied field of General Philosophy : that whole which 
 includes, along with the older subjects of Logic, Metaphysics, and 
 Ethics, the newer subjects of Psychology, ^Esthetics, Pedagogy, 
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 be an open forum alike for those who increase the stock of positive 
 data and for those who strive to see new facts in their bearings 
 and relations, and to trace them up to their ultimate speculative 
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 With the generality of its scope, the Review aims to combine 
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 the organ of any institution, or of any sect, or of any interest. It 
 will maintain the same objectivity of attitude as a journal of Math- 
 ematics or Philology. All articles will be signed, and the writers 
 alone will be responsible for their contents. 
 
138 
 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A Brief History of Greek Philosophy. 
 
 By B. C. Burt, M.A., formerly Docent of Philosophy, Clark University. 
 
 12mo. Cloth, xiv + 296 pages. Mailing price, $ 1.25 ; for introd., §1.12. 
 
 FJIHIS work attempts to give a concise but comprehensive account 
 of Greek Philosophy on its native soil and in Rome. It is 
 critical and interpretative, as well as purely historical, its para- 
 graphs of criticism and interpretation, however, being, as a rule, 
 distinct from those devoted to biography and exposition. The 
 wants of the reader or student who desires to comprehend, rather 
 than merely to inform himself, have particularly been in the mind 
 of the author, whose aim has been to let the subject unfold itself 
 as far as possible. The volume contains a full topical table of con- 
 tents, a brief bibliography of the subject it treats, and numerous 
 foot-notes embracing references to original authorities and assist- 
 ing the student towards a real contact with the Greek thinkers 
 themselves. 
 
 G. Stanley Hall, Pres. Clark Uni- 
 versity : His book is the best of its 
 kind upon the subject. 
 
 Geo. S. Morris, late Prof, of Phil- 
 osophy in Michigan University : 
 What Professor Burt has done is to 
 collect in compendious form what 
 is most characteristic and of most 
 essential significance in these results 
 of philosophical investigation, and 
 
 then to re-interpret or re-exhibit 
 them in the light of the more mature 
 fruits of modern inquiry. This is 
 the best and most serviceable kind 
 of originality. 
 
 W. T. Harris, Editor Jour. of Spec- 
 ulative Philosophy : I have found 
 this work in philosophy to possess 
 high merit. His grasp of the history 
 of the subject is rare and trustworthy. 
 
 The Modalist; or. The Laws of Rational Conviction. 
 
 A Text-Book in Formal or General Logic. By Edward John Hamil- 
 ton, D.D., formerly Albert Barnes Professor of Intellectual Philosophy, 
 Hamilton College, N.Y. 8vo. Cloth. 337 pages. Price, by mail, 
 $1.40; for introduction, $1.25. 
 
 TjJHIS book restores modal propositions and modal syllogisms to 
 the place of importance which they occupied in the Logic of 
 Aristotle. The author thinks that universal and particular cate- 
 gorical propositions cannot be understood, as principles of reason- 
 ing, and as employed in “ mediate inference,” unless the one be 
 regarded as expressing a necessary and the other a contingent 
 sequence. Therefore, also, he explains the pure syllogism by the 
 
PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 139 
 
 modal. Moreover, there are modes of reasoning which can be 
 formulated only in modal syllogisms. 
 
 Henry Coppee, Prof, of English 
 Literature in Lehigh University : The 
 Modalist is evidently the work of a 
 writer who has studied logic with 
 great care and pleasure, and will 
 prove a valuable text-book with the 
 Professor’s aid to the student in 
 studying it. 
 
 The Christian Union, New York : 
 In it the author aims to give a clear 
 definition of the science, to determine 
 exactly its scope and sphere, to base 
 
 it properly upon perceptionalism, 
 and to exploit thoroughly the theory 
 of inference and illative judgment. 
 His discussion of the new analytic 
 and of contingency in the twenty- 
 first and two following chapters is 
 extremely interesting, and his criti- 
 cism of Euler’s diagrams and of 
 Hamilton’s notation is acute. While 
 somewhat minute, it is, on the whole, 
 the best text-book in logic we have 
 seen iu the English language. 
 
 Mechanism and Personality. 
 
 By Francis A. Shoup, D.D., Professor of Analytical Physics, Univer- 
 sity of the South. 12mo. Cloth, xvi + 341 pages. Price by mail, $1.30 ; 
 for introduction, $1.20. 
 
 rpHIS book is an outline of Philosophy in the light of the latest 
 scientific research. It deals candidly and simply with the 
 “burning questions” of the day, the object being to help the 
 general reader and students of Philosophy find their way to some- 
 thing like definite standing-ground among the uncertainties of 
 science and metaphysics. It begins with physiological psychology, 
 treats of the development of the several modes of personality, 
 passes on into metaphysic, and ends in ethics, following, in a 
 general way, the thought of Lotze. It is strictly in line with the 
 remark of Professor Huxley, that “the reconciliation of physics 
 and metaphysics lies in the acknowledgment of faults upon both 
 sides; in the confession by physics that all the phenomena of 
 nature are, in their ultimate analysis, known to us only as facts of 
 consciousness ; in the admission by metaphysics that the facts of 
 consciousness are, practically, interpretable only by the methods 
 and the formulae of physics.” 
 
 George Trumbull ladd, Prof, of I 
 Philosophy , Yale University : I find | 
 Dr. Slioup’s “ Mechanism and Per- 
 sonality ” an interesting and stimu- 
 lating little book. Written, as it is, 
 by one whose points of view are 
 somewhat outside of those taken by 
 professional students of philosophy, 
 it is the fresher and more suggestive 
 
 on that account. At the same time, 
 the author has kept himself from 
 straying too far away from the con- 
 clusions legitimate to disciplined 
 students of the subject, by a some- 
 what close adherence to Lotze, and 
 by a considerable breadth of philo- 
 sophical reading. 
 
140 
 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ETHICAL SERIES. 
 
 UNDER THE EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF 
 
 Professor E. IIershey Sneath of Yale University. 
 
 rpHE primary object of the series is to facilitate the study of the 
 History of Ethics in colleges. This History will be in the 
 form of a series of small volumes, each devoted to the presentation 
 of a representative system of Modern Ethics in selections from the 
 original works. The selections will be accompanied by notes, and 
 prefaced by a brief biographical sketch of the author, a statement 
 of the relation of his system to preceding and subsequent ethical 
 thought a brief exposition of the system, and a bibliography. 
 
 All teachers will doubtless concede the advisability of placing 
 original works in the hands of students instead of mere expo- 
 sitions — such as are contained in the various Histories of Ethics. 
 In a number of instances, however, the original editions are 
 exhausted, and only a few copies are available ; and, in other 
 instances, the books are too elaborate and expensive, if a number 
 of systems are to be studied. The series will make provision for 
 these difficulties by presenting each system in carefully edited 
 extracts, and in a form which will entail comparatively little 
 expense upon the student. 
 
 See also the Announcements. 
 
 The Ethics of Hume. 
 
 By Dr. J. H. Hyslop, of Columbia College. 12mo. Cloth. 275 pages. 
 
 Mailing price, $1.10; for introduction, $1.00. 
 
 rpiIE present volume contains the whole of the third book of the 
 Treatise of Human Nature, and such portions of the second 
 book as throw light upon or are connected with Hume’s moral 
 theory. 
 
 The analysis and criticism of his system follows lines somewhat 
 different from that of Green, and are designed to present Hume 
 in another light. In all respects it is hoped that the volume may 
 prove helpful to those who wish to study the ethical system of 
 Kant’s predecessor. 
 
POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 143 
 
 Political Science and Comparative Constitutional 
 
 Law. 
 
 By John W. Burgess, LL.D., Professor of Constitutional and Inter- 
 national History and Law, and Dean of the School of Political Science 
 in Columbia College. Two volumes. 8vo. Cloth. 781 pages. Retail 
 price, $5.00. Special terms to teachers and for introduction. 
 
 rjJHE first Part of the work is devoted to the general principles of 
 political science. It is divided into three Books. The first 
 book treats of the nation as an ethnological concept ; the second 
 treats of the state, its idea, its origin, its forms, and its ends ; and 
 the third shows the historical development of the four typical 
 constitutions of the modern age, those of England, Germany, 
 France, and the United States. 
 
 The second Part is devoted to a comparison of the provisions of 
 these typical constitutions and a generalization from these provis- 
 ions of some fundamental principles of constitutional law. The 
 three Books of this Part treat, the first of sovereignty within the 
 constitution, the second of civil liberty, and the third, which con- 
 stitutes the second volume , of government, legislative, executive, 
 and judicial. 
 
 The London Times : A very 
 
 learned, elaborate, and suggestive 
 work. . . . His work ... is full of 
 keen analysis and suggestive com- 
 
 ment, and is a noteworthy contribu- 
 tion to the comparative study of 
 political science and jurisprudence. 
 
 Currency, Finance, and Banking. 
 
 Laws of the United States relating to Currency, Finance, and Banking; 
 with Vetoed Bills and other documents. Compiled by Charles F. 
 Dunbar, Professor of Political Economy in Harvard University. 8vo. 
 Cloth. 309 pages. Mailing price, $2.50 ; special terms for use in classes. 
 
 rjJHis book presents in chronological order the exact text of all 
 important acts of Congress relating to currency, finance, coin- 
 age, and banking from 1789 to 1891, with carefully edited abstracts 
 of acts or sections of minor importance. 
 
 The Nation, New York : A work 
 of obvious utility and convenience. 
 . . . Professor Dunbar’s task has been 
 most scrupulously executed, and a 
 
 hare statement of the nature of it 
 will stand in lieu of praise. The 
 volume is beautifully printed. 
 
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