The term political liberty, however, is often used to mean formal partic.i.p.ation in the public affairs of state by the will and action even of those individuals who otherwise find their chief function in the particular aims and business of civil society. And it has in part become usual to give the t.i.tle const.i.tution only to the side of the state which concerns such partic.i.p.ation of these individuals in general affairs, and to regard a state, in which this is not formally done, as a state without a const.i.tution. On this use of the term, the only thing to remark is that by const.i.tution must be understood the determination of rights, i.e. of liberties in general, and the organisation of the actualisation of them; and that political freedom in the above sense can in any case only const.i.tute a part of it. Of it the following paragraphs will speak.
-- 540. The guarantee of a const.i.tution (i.e. the necessity that the laws be reasonable, and their actualisation secured) lies in the collective spirit of the nation,-especially in the specific way in which it is itself conscious of its reason. (Religion is that consciousness in its absolute substantiality.) But the guarantee lies also at the same time in the actual organisation or development of that principle in suitable inst.i.tutions. The const.i.tution presupposes that consciousness of the collective spirit, and conversely that spirit presupposes the const.i.tution: for the actual spirit only has a definite consciousness of its principles, in so far as it has them actually existent before it.
The question-To whom (to what authority and how organised) belongs the power to make a const.i.tution? is the same as the question, Who has to make the spirit of a nation? Separate our idea of a const.i.tution from that of the collective spirit, as if the latter exists or has existed without a const.i.tution, and your fancy only proves how superficially you have apprehended the nexus between the spirit in its self-consciousness and in its actuality. What is thus called "making" a "const.i.tution," is-just because of this inseparability-a thing that has never happened in history, just as little as the making of a code of laws. A const.i.tution only develops from the national spirit identically with that spirit"s own development, and runs through at the same time with it the grades of formation and the alterations required by its concept. It is the indwelling spirit and the history of the nation (and, be it added, the history is only that spirit"s history) by which const.i.tutions have been and are made.
-- 541. The really living totality,-that which preserves, in other words continually produces the state in general and its const.i.tution, is the _government_. The organisation which natural necessity gives is seen in the rise of the family and of the "estates" of civil society. The government is the _universal_ part of the const.i.tution, i.e. the part which intentionally aims at preserving those parts, but at the same time gets hold of and carries out those general aims of the whole which rise above the function of the family and of civil society. The organisation of the government is likewise its differentiation into powers, as their peculiarities have a basis in principle; yet without that difference losing touch with the _actual unity_ they have in the notion"s subjectivity.
As the most obvious categories of the notion are those of _universality_ and _individuality_ and their relationship that of _subsumption_ of individual under universal, it has come about that in the state the legislative and executive power have been so distinguished as to make the former exist apart as the absolute superior, and to subdivide the latter again into administrative (government) power and judicial power, according as the laws are applied to public or private affairs. The _division_ of these powers has been treated as _the_ condition of political equilibrium, meaning by division their _independence_ one of another in existence,-subject always however to the above-mentioned subsumption of the powers of the individual under the power of the general. The theory of such "division" unmistakably implies the elements of the notion, but so combined by "understanding" as to result in an absurd collocation, instead of the self-redintegration of the living spirit. The one essential canon to make liberty deep and real is to give every business belonging to the general interests of the state a separate organisation wherever they are essentially distinct. Such real division must be: for liberty is only deep when it is differentiated in all its fullness and these differences manifested in existence. But to make the business of legislation an independent power-to make it the first power, with the further proviso that all citizens shall have part therein, and the government be merely executive and dependent, presupposes ignorance that the true idea, and therefore the living and spiritual actuality, is the self-redintegrating notion, in other words, the subjectivity which contains in it universality as only one of its moments. (A mistake still greater, if it goes with the fancy that the const.i.tution and the fundamental laws were still one day to make,-in a state of society, which includes an already existing development of differences.) Individuality is the first and supreme principle _which_ makes itself fall through the state"s organisation. Only through the government, and by its embracing in itself the particular businesses (including the abstract legislative business, which taken apart is also particular), is the state _one_. These, as always, are the terms on which the different elements essentially and alone truly stand towards each other in the logic of "reason," as opposed to the external footing they stand on in "understanding," which never gets beyond subsuming the individual and particular under the universal. What disorganises the unity of logical reason, equally disorganises actuality.
-- 542. In the government-regarded as organic totality-the sovereign power (princ.i.p.ate) is (_a_) _subjectivity_ as the _infinite_ self-unity of the notion in its development;-the all-sustaining, all-decreeing will of the state, its highest peak and all-pervasive unity. In the perfect form of the state, in which each and every element of the notion has reached free existence, this subjectivity is not a so-called "moral person," or a decree issuing from a majority (forms in which the unity of the decreeing will has not an _actual_ existence), but an actual individual,-the will of a decreeing individual,-_monarchy_. The monarchical const.i.tution is therefore the const.i.tution of developed reason: all other const.i.tutions belong to lower grades of the development and realisation of reason.
The unification of all concrete state-powers into one existence, as in the patriarchal society,-or, as in a democratic const.i.tution, the partic.i.p.ation of all in all affairs-impugns the principle of the division of powers, i.e. the developed liberty of the const.i.tuent factors of the Idea. But no whit less must the division (the working out of these factors each to a free totality) be reduced to "ideal" unity, i.e. to _subjectivity_. The mature differentiation or realisation of the Idea means, essentially, that this subjectivity should grow to be a _real_ "moment," an _actual_ existence; and this actuality is not otherwise than as the individuality of the monarch-the subjectivity of abstract and final decision existent in _one_ person. All those forms of collective decreeing and willing,-a common will which shall be the sum and the resultant (on aristocratical or democratical principles) of the atomistic of single wills, have on them the mark of the unreality of an abstraction. Two points only are all-important, first to see the necessity of each of the notional factors, and secondly the form in which it is actualised. It is only the nature of the speculative notion which can really give light on the matter. That subjectivity-being the "moment" which emphasises the need of abstract deciding in general-partly leads on to the proviso that the name of the monarch appear as the bond and sanction under which everything is done in the government;-partly, being simple self-relation, has attached to it the characteristic of _immediacy_, and then of _nature_-whereby the destination of individuals for the dignity of the princely power is fixed by inheritance.
-- 543. (_b_) In the _particular_ government-power there emerges, first, the division of state-business into its branches (otherwise defined), legislative power, administration of justice or judicial power, administration and police, and its consequent distribution between particular boards or offices, which having their business appointed by law, to that end and for that reason, possess independence of action, without at the same time ceasing to stand under higher supervision.
Secondly, too, there arises the partic.i.p.ation of _several_ in state-business, who together const.i.tute the "general order" (-- 528) in so far as they take on themselves the charge of universal ends as the essential function of their particular life;-the further condition for being able to take individually part in this business being a certain training, apt.i.tude, and skill for such ends.
-- 544. The estates-collegium or provincial council is an inst.i.tution by which all such as belong to civil society in general, and are to that degree private persons, partic.i.p.ate in the governmental power, especially in legislation-viz. such legislation as concerns the universal scope of those interests which do not, like peace and war, involve the, as it were, personal interference and action of the State as one man, and therefore do not belong specially to the province of the sovereign power. By virtue of this partic.i.p.ation subjective liberty and conceit, with their general opinion, can show themselves palpably efficacious and enjoy the satisfaction of feeling themselves to count for something.
The division of const.i.tutions into democracy, aristocracy and monarchy, is still the most definite statement of their difference in relation to sovereignty. They must at the same time be regarded as necessary structures in the path of development,-in short, in the history of the State. Hence it is superficial and absurd to represent them as an object of _choice_. The pure forms-necessary to the process of evolution-are, in so far as they are finite and in course of change, conjoined both with forms of their degeneration,-such as ochlocracy, &c., and with earlier transition-forms. These two forms are not to be confused with those legitimate structures. Thus, it may be-if we look only to the fact that the will of one individual stands at the head of the state-oriental despotism is included under the vague name monarchy,-as also feudal monarchy, to which indeed even the favourite name of "const.i.tutional monarchy" cannot be refused. The true difference of these forms from genuine monarchy depends on the true value of those principles of right which are in vogue and have their actuality and guarantee in the state-power. These principles are those expounded earlier, liberty of property, and above all personal liberty, civil society, with its industry and its communities, and the regulated efficiency of the particular bureaux in subordination to the laws.
The question which is most discussed is in what sense we are to understand the partic.i.p.ation of private persons in state affairs. For it is as private persons that the members of bodies of estates are primarily to be taken, be they treated as mere individuals, or as representatives of a number of people or of the nation. The aggregate of private persons is often spoken of as the _nation_: but as such an aggregate it is _vulgus_, not _populus_: and in this direction, it is the one sole aim of the state that a nation should _not_ come to existence, to power and action, _as such an aggregate_. Such a condition of a nation is a condition of lawlessness, demoralisation, brutishness: in it the nation would only be a shapeless, wild, blind force, like that of the stormy, elemental sea, which however is not self-destructive, as the nation-a spiritual element-would be. Yet such a condition may be often heard described as that of true freedom. If there is to be any sense in embarking upon the question of the partic.i.p.ation of private persons in public affairs, it is not a brutish ma.s.s, but an already organised nation-one in which a governmental power exists-which should be presupposed. The desirability of such partic.i.p.ation however is not to be put in the superiority of particular intelligence, which private persons are supposed to have over state officials-the contrary may be the case-nor in the superiority of their good will for the general best. The members of civil society as such are rather people who find their nearest duty in their private interest and (as especially in the feudal society) in the interest of their privileged corporation. Take the case of _England_ which, because private persons have a predominant share in public affairs, has been regarded as having the freest of all const.i.tutions. Experience shows that that country-as compared with the other civilised states of Europe-is the most backward in civil and criminal legislation, in the law and liberty of property, in arrangements for art and science, and that objective freedom or rational right is rather _sacrificed_ to formal right and particular private interest; and that this happens even in the inst.i.tutions and possessions supposed to be dedicated to religion. The desirability of private persons taking part in public affairs is partly to be put in their concrete, and therefore more urgent, sense of general wants. But the true motive is the right of the collective spirit to appear as an _externally universal_ will, acting with orderly and express efficacy for the public concerns. By this satisfaction of this right it gets its own life quickened, and at the same time breathes fresh life in the administrative officials; who thus have it brought home to them that not merely have they to enforce duties but also to have regard to rights. Private citizens are in the state the incomparably greater number, and form the mult.i.tude of such as are recognised as persons. Hence the will-reason exhibits its existence in them as a preponderating majority of freemen, or in its "reflectional" universality, which has its actuality vouchsafed it as a partic.i.p.ation in the sovereignty. But it has already been noted as a "moment" of civil society (---- 527, 534) that the individuals rise from external into substantial universality, and form a _particular_ kind,-the Estates: and it is not in the inorganic form of mere individuals as such (after the _democratic_ fashion of election), but as organic factors, as estates, that they enter upon that partic.i.p.ation. In the state a power or agency must never appear and act as a formless, inorganic shape, i.e.
basing itself on the principle of multeity and mere numbers.
a.s.semblies of Estates have been wrongly designated as the _legislative power_, so far as they form only one branch of that power,-a branch in which the special government-officials have an _ex officio_ share, while the sovereign power has the privilege of final decision. In a civilised state moreover legislation can only be a further modification of existing law, and so-called new laws can only deal with minutiae of detail and particularities (cf. -- 529, note), the main drift of which has been already prepared or preliminarily settled by the practice of the law-courts. The so-called _financial law_, in so far as it requires the a.s.sent of the estates, is really a government affair: it is only improperly called a law, in the general sense of embracing a wide, indeed the whole, range of the external means of government. The finances deal with what in their nature are only particular needs, ever newly recurring, even if they touch on the sum total of such needs. If the main part of the requirement were-as it very likely is-regarded as permanent, the provision for it would have more the nature of a law: but to be a law, it would have to be made once for all, and not be made yearly, or every few years, afresh. The part which varies according to time and circ.u.mstances concerns in reality the smallest part of the amount, and the provisions with regard to it have even less the character of a law: and yet it is and may be only this slight variable part which is matter of dispute, and can be subjected to a varying yearly estimate. It is this last then which falsely bears the high-sounding name of the "_Grant_" of the _Budget_, i.e. of the whole of the finances. A law for one year and made each year has even to the plain man something palpably absurd: for he distinguishes the essential and developed universal, as content of a true law, from the reflectional universality which only externally embraces what in its nature is many. To give the name of a law to the annual fixing of financial requirements only serves-with the presupposed separation of legislative from executive-to keep up the illusion of that separation having real existence, and to conceal the fact that the legislative power, when it makes a decree about finance, is really engaged with strict executive business. But the importance attached to the power of from time to time granting "supply,"
on the ground that the a.s.sembly of estates possesses in it a _check_ on the government, and thus a guarantee against injustice and violence,-this importance is in one way rather plausible than real. The financial measures necessary for the state"s subsistence cannot be made conditional on any other circ.u.mstances, nor can the state"s subsistence be put yearly in doubt. It would be a parallel absurdity if the government were e.g. to grant and arrange the judicial inst.i.tutions always for a limited time merely; and thus, by the threat of suspending the activity of such an inst.i.tution and the fear of a consequent state of brigandage, reserve for itself a means of coercing private individuals. Then again, the pictures of a condition of affairs, in which it might be useful and necessary to have in hand means of compulsion, are partly based on the false conception of a contract between rulers and ruled, and partly presuppose the possibility of such a divergence in spirit between these two parties as would make const.i.tution and government quite out of the question. If we suppose the empty possibility of getting _help_ by such compulsive means brought into existence, such help would rather be the derangement and dissolution of the state, in which there would no longer be a government, but only parties, and the violence and oppression of one party would only be helped away by the other. To fit together the several parts of the state into a const.i.tution after the fashion of mere understanding-i.e. to adjust within it the machinery of a balance of powers external to each other-is to contravene the fundamental idea of what a state is.
-- 545. The final aspect of the state is to appear in immediate actuality as a single nation marked by physical conditions. As a single individual it is exclusive against other like individuals. In their mutual relations, waywardness and chance have a place; for each person in the aggregate is autonomous: the universal of law is only postulated between them, and not actually existent. This independence of a central authority reduces disputes between them to terms of mutual violence, a _state of war_, to meet which the general estate in the community a.s.sumes the particular function of maintaining the state"s independence against other states, and becomes the estate of bravery.
-- 546. This state of war shows the omnipotence of the state in its individuality-an individuality that goes even to abstract negativity.
Country and fatherland then appear as the power by which the particular independence of individuals and their absorption in the external existence of possession and in natural life is convicted of its own nullity,-as the power which procures the maintenance of the general substance by the patriotic sacrifice on the part of these individuals of this natural and particular existence,-so making nugatory the nugatoriness that confronts it.
. External Public Law(168).
-- 547. In the game of war the independence of States is at stake. In one case the result may be the mutual recognition of free national individualities (-- 430): and by peace-conventions supposed to be for ever, both this general recognition, and the special claims of nations on one another, are settled and fixed. External state-rights rest partly on these positive treaties, but to that extent contain only rights falling short of true actuality (-- 545): partly on so-called _international_ law, the general principle of which is its presupposed recognition by the several States. It thus restricts their otherwise unchecked action against one another in such a way that the possibility of peace is left; and distinguishes individuals as private persons (non-belligerents) from the state. In general, international law rests on social usage.
?. Universal History(169).
-- 548. As the mind of a special nation is actual and its liberty is under natural conditions, it admits on this nature-side the influence of geographical and climatic qualities. It is in time; and as regards its range and scope, has essentially a _particular_ principle on the lines of which it must run through a development of its consciousness and its actuality. It has, in short, a history of its own. But as a restricted mind its independence is something secondary; it pa.s.ses into universal world-history, the events of which exhibit the dialectic of the several national minds,-the judgment of the world.
-- 549. This movement is the path of liberation for the spiritual substance, the deed by which the absolute final aim of the world is realised in it, and the merely implicit mind achieves consciousness and self-consciousness. It is thus the revelation and actuality of its essential and completed essence, whereby it becomes to the outward eye a universal spirit-a world-mind. As this development is in time and in real existence, as it is a history, its several stages and steps are the national minds, each of which, as single and endued by nature with a specific character, is appointed to occupy only one grade, and accomplish one task in the whole deed.
The presupposition that history has an essential and actual end, from the principles of which certain characteristic results logically flow, is called an _a priori_ view of it, and philosophy is reproached with _a priori_ history-writing. On this point, and on history-writing in general, this note must go into further detail. That history, and above all universal history, is founded on an essential and actual aim, which actually is and will be realised in it-the plan of Providence; that, in short, there is Reason in history, must be decided on strictly philosophical ground, and thus shown to be essentially and in fact necessary. To presuppose such aim is blameworthy only when the a.s.sumed conceptions or thoughts are arbitrarily adopted, and when a determined attempt is made to force events and actions into conformity with such conceptions. For such _a priori_ methods of treatment at the present day, however, those are chiefly to blame who profess to be purely historical, and who at the same time take opportunity expressly to raise their voice against the habit of philosophising, first in general, and then in history. Philosophy is to them a troublesome neighbour: for it is an enemy of all arbitrariness and hasty suggestions. Such _a priori_ history-writing has sometimes burst out in quarters where one would least have expected it, especially on the philological side, and in Germany more than in France and England, where the art of historical writing has gone through a process of purification to a firmer and maturer character.
Fictions, like that of a primitive age and its primitive people, possessed from the first of the true knowledge of G.o.d and all the sciences,-of sacerdotal races,-and, when we come to minutiae, of a Roman epic, supposed to be the source of the legends which pa.s.s current for the history of ancient Rome, &c., have taken the place of the pragmatising which detected psychological motives and a.s.sociations. There is a wide circle of persons who seem to consider it inc.u.mbent on a _learned_ and _ingenious_ historian drawing from the original sources to concoct such baseless fancies, and form bold combinations of them from a learned rubbish-heap of out-of-the-way and trivial facts, in defiance of the best-accredited history.
Setting aside this subjective treatment of history, we find what is properly the opposite view forbidding us to import into history an _objective purpose_. This is after all synonymous with what _seems_ to be the still more legitimate demand that the historian should proceed with _impartiality_. This is a requirement often and especially made on the _history of philosophy_: where it is insisted there should be no prepossession in favour of an idea or opinion, just as a judge should have no special sympathy for one of the contending parties. In the case of the judge it is at the same time a.s.sumed that he would administer his office ill and foolishly, if he had not an interest, and an exclusive interest in justice, if he had not that for his aim and one sole aim, or if he declined to judge at all. This requirement which we may make upon the judge may be called _partiality_ for justice; and there is no difficulty here in distinguishing it from _subjective_ partiality. But in speaking of the impartiality required from the historian, this self-satisfied insipid chatter lets the distinction disappear, and rejects both kinds of interest. It demands that the historian shall bring with him no definite aim and view by which he may sort out, state and criticise events, but shall narrate them exactly in the casual mode he finds them, in their incoherent and unintelligent particularity. Now it is at least admitted that a history must have an object, e.g. Rome and its fortunes, or the Decline of the grandeur of the Roman empire. But little reflection is needed to discover that this is the presupposed end which lies at the basis of the events themselves, as of the critical examination into their comparative importance, i.e. their nearer or more remote relation to it. A history without such aim and such criticism would be only an imbecile mental divagation, not as good as a fairy tale, for even children expect a _motif_ in their stories, a purpose at least dimly surmiseable with which events and actions are put in relation.
In the existence of a _nation_ the substantial aim is to be a state and preserve itself as such. A nation with no state formation, (a _mere nation_), has strictly speaking no history,-like the nations which existed before the rise of states and others which still exist in a condition of savagery. What happens to a nation, and takes place within it, has its essential significance in relation to the state: whereas the mere particularities of individuals are at the greatest distance from the true object of history. It is true that the general spirit of an age leaves its imprint in the character of its celebrated individuals, and even their particularities are but the very distant and the dim media through which the collective light still plays in fainter colours. Ay, even such singularities as a petty occurrence, a word, express not a subjective particularity, but an age, a nation, a civilisation, in striking portraiture and brevity; and to select such trifles shows the hand of a historian of genius. But, on the other hand, the main ma.s.s of singularities is a futile and useless ma.s.s, by the painstaking acc.u.mulation of which the objects of real historical value are overwhelmed and obscured. The essential characteristic of the spirit and its age is always contained in the great events. It was a correct instinct which sought to banish such portraiture of the particular and the gleaning of insignificant traits, into the _Novel_ (as in the celebrated romances of Walter Scott, &c.). Where the picture presents an unessential aspect of life it is certainly in good taste to conjoin it with an unessential material, such as the romance takes from private events and subjective pa.s.sions. But to take the individual pettinesses of an age and of the persons in it, and, in the interest of so-called truth, weave them into the picture of general interests, is not only against taste and judgment, but violates the principles of objective truth. The only truth for mind is the substantial and underlying essence, and not the trivialities of external existence and contingency. It is therefore completely indifferent whether such insignificancies are duly vouched for by doc.u.ments, or, as in the romance, invented to suit the character and ascribed to this or that name and circ.u.mstances.
The point of interest of _Biography_-to say a word on that here-appears to run directly counter to any universal scope and aim. But biography too has for its background the historical world, with which the individual is intimately bound up: even purely personal originality, the freak of humour, &c. suggests by allusion that central reality and has its interest heightened by the suggestion. The mere play of sentiment, on the contrary, has another ground and interest than history.
The requirement of impartiality addressed to the history of philosophy (and also, we may add, to the history of religion, first in general, and secondly, to church history) generally implies an even more decided bar against presupposition of any objective aim. As the State was already called the point to which in political history criticism had to refer all events, so here the "_Truth_" must be the object to which the several deeds and events of the spirit would have to be referred. What is actually done is rather to make the contrary presupposition. Histories with such an object as religion or philosophy are understood to have only subjective aims for their theme, i.e. only opinions and mere ideas, not an essential and realised object like the truth. And that with the mere excuse that there is no truth. On this a.s.sumption the sympathy with truth appears as only a partiality of the usual sort, a partiality for opinion and mere ideas, which all alike have no stuff in them, and are all treated as indifferent. In that way historical truth means but correctness-an accurate report of externals, without critical treatment save as regards this correctness-admitting, in this case, only qualitative and quant.i.tative judgments, no judgments of necessity or notion (cf. notes to ---- 172 and 175). But, really, if Rome or the German empire, &c. are an actual and genuine object of political history, and the aim to which the phenomena are to be related and by which they are to be judged; then in universal history the genuine spirit, the consciousness of it and of its essence, is even in a higher degree a true and actual object and theme, and an aim to which all other phenomena are essentially and actually subservient. Only therefore through their relationship to it, i.e. through the judgment in which they are subsumed under it, while it inheres in them, have they their value and even their existence. It is the spirit which not merely broods _over_ history as over the waters, but lives in it and is alone its principle of movement: and in the path of that spirit, liberty, i.e. a development determined by the notion of spirit, is the guiding principle and only its notion its final aim, i.e. truth. For Spirit is consciousness. Such a doctrine-or in other words that Reason is in history-will be partly at least a plausible faith, partly it is a cognition of philosophy.
-- 550. This liberation of mind, in which it proceeds to come to itself and to realise its truth, and the business of so doing, is the supreme right, the absolute Law. The self-consciousness of a particular nation is a vehicle for the contemporary development of the collective spirit in its actual existence: it is the objective actuality in which that spirit for the time invests its will. Against this absolute will the other particular natural minds have no rights: _that_ nation dominates the world: but yet the universal will steps onward over its property for the time being, as over a special grade, and then delivers it over to its chance and doom.
-- 551. To such extent as this business of actuality appears as an action, and therefore as a work of _individuals_, these individuals, as regards the substantial issue of their labour, are _instruments_, and their subjectivity, which is what is peculiar to them, is the empty form of activity. What they personally have gained therefore through the individual share they took in the substantial business (prepared and appointed independently of them) is a formal universality or subjective mental idea-_Fame_, which is their reward.
-- 552. The national spirit contains nature-necessity, and stands in external existence (-- 423): the ethical substance, potentially infinite, is actually a particular and limited substance (---- 549, 550); on its subjective side it labours under contingency, in the shape of its unreflective natural usages, and its content is presented to it as something _existing_ in time and tied to an external nature and external world. The spirit, however, (which _thinks_ in this moral organism) overrides and absorbs within itself the finitude attaching to it as national spirit in its state and the state"s temporal interests, in the system of laws and usages. It rises to apprehend itself in its essentiality. Such apprehension, however, still has the immanent limitedness of the national spirit. But the spirit which thinks in universal history, stripping off at the same time those limitations of the several national minds and its own temporal restrictions, lays hold of its concrete universality, and rises to apprehend the absolute mind, as the eternally actual truth in which the contemplative reason enjoys freedom, while the necessity of nature and the necessity of history are only ministrant to its revelation and the vessels of its honour.
The strictly technical aspects of the Mind"s elevation to G.o.d have been spoken of in the Introduction to the Logic (cf. especially -- 51, note). As regards the starting-point of that elevation, Kant has on the whole adopted the most correct, when he treats belief in G.o.d as proceeding from the practical Reason. For that starting-point contains the material or content which const.i.tutes the content of the notion of G.o.d. But the true concrete material is neither Being (as in the cosmological) nor mere action by design (as in the physico-theological proof) but the Mind, the absolute characteristic and function of which is effective reason, i.e.
the self-determining and self-realising notion itself,-Liberty. That the elevation of subjective mind to G.o.d which these considerations give is by Kant again deposed to a _postulate_-a mere "ought"-is the peculiar perversity, formerly noticed, of calmly and simply reinstating as true and valid that very ant.i.thesis of finitude, the supersession of which into truth is the essence of that elevation.
As regards the "mediation" which, as it has been already shown (-- 192, cf.
-- 204 note), that elevation to G.o.d really involves, the point specially calling for note is the "moment" of negation through which the essential content of the starting-point is purged of its finitude so as to come forth free. This factor, abstract in the formal treatment of logic, now gets its most concrete interpretation. The finite, from which the start is now made, is the real ethical self-consciousness. The negation through which that consciousness raises its spirit to its truth, is the purification, _actually_ accomplished in the ethical world, whereby its conscience is purged of subjective opinion and its will freed from the selfishness of desire. Genuine religion and genuine religiosity only issue from the moral life: religion is that life rising to think, i.e. becoming aware of the free universality of its concrete essence. Only from the moral life and by the moral life is the Idea of G.o.d seen to be free spirit: outside the ethical spirit therefore it is vain to seek for true religion and religiosity.
But-as is the case with all speculative process-this development of one thing out of another means that what appears as sequel and derivative is rather the absolute _prius_ of what it appears to be mediated by, and what is here in mind known as its truth.
Here then is the place to go more deeply into the reciprocal relations between the state and religion, and in doing so to elucidate the terminology which is familiar and current on the topic. It is evident and apparent from what has preceded that moral life is the state retracted into its inner heart and substance, while the state is the organisation and actualisation of moral life; and that religion is the very substance of the moral life itself and of the state. At this rate, the state rests on the ethical sentiment, and that on the religious. If religion then is the consciousness of "absolute"_ truth_, then whatever is to rank as right and justice, as law and duty, i.e. as _true_ in the world of free will, can be so esteemed only as it is partic.i.p.ant in that truth, as it is subsumed under it and is its sequel. But if the truly moral life is to be a sequel of religion, then perforce religion must have the _genuine_ content; i.e. the idea of G.o.d it knows must be the true and real. The ethical life is the divine spirit as indwelling in self-consciousness, as it is actually present in a nation and its individual members. This self-consciousness retiring upon itself out of its empirical actuality and bringing its truth to consciousness, has in its _faith_ and in its _conscience_ only what it has consciously secured in its spiritual actuality. The two are inseparable: there cannot be two kinds of conscience, one religious and another ethical, differing from the former in body and value of truth. But in point of form, i.e. for thought and knowledge-(and religion and ethical life belong to intelligence and are a thinking and knowing)-the body of religious truth, as the pure self-subsisting and therefore supreme truth, exercises a sanction over the moral life which lies in empirical actuality. Thus for self-consciousness religion is the "basis" of moral life and of the state. It has been the monstrous blunder of our times to try to look upon these inseparables as separable from one another, and even as mutually indifferent. The view taken of the relationship of religion and the state has been that, whereas the state had an independent existence of its own, springing from some force and power, religion was a later addition, something desirable perhaps for strengthening the political bulwarks, but purely subjective in individuals:-or it may be, religion is treated as something without effect on the moral life of the state, i.e. its reasonable law and const.i.tution which are based on a ground of their own.
As the inseparability of the two sides has been indicated, it may be worth while to note the separation as it appears on the side of religion. It is primarily a point of form: the att.i.tude which self-consciousness takes to the body of truth. So long as this body of truth is the very substance or indwelling spirit of self-consciousness in its actuality, then self-consciousness in this content has the certainty of itself and is free. But if this present self-consciousness is lacking, then there may be created, in point of form, a condition of spiritual slavery, even though the _implicit_ content of religion is absolute spirit. This great difference (to cite a specific case) comes out within the Christian religion itself, even though here it is not the nature-element in which the idea of G.o.d is embodied, and though nothing of the sort even enters as a factor into its central dogma and sole theme of a G.o.d who is known in spirit and in truth. And yet in Catholicism this spirit of all truth is in actuality set in rigid opposition to the self-conscious spirit. And, first of all, G.o.d is in the "host" presented to religious adoration as an _external thing_. (In the Lutheran Church, on the contrary, the host as such is not at first consecrated, but in the moment of enjoyment, i.e. in the annihilation of its externality, and in the act of faith, i.e. in the free self-certain spirit: only then is it consecrated and exalted to be present G.o.d.) From that first and supreme status of externalisation flows every other phase of externality,-of bondage, non-spirituality, and superst.i.tion. It leads to a laity, receiving its knowledge of divine truth, as well as the direction of its will and conscience from without and from another order-which order again does not get possession of that knowledge in a spiritual way only, but to that end essentially requires an external consecration. It leads to the non-spiritual style of praying-partly as mere moving of the lips, partly in the way that the subject foregoes his right of directly addressing G.o.d, and prays others to pray-addressing his devotion to miracle-working images, even to bones, and expecting miracles from them. It leads, generally, to justification by external works, a merit which is supposed to be gained by acts, and even to be capable of being transferred to others. All this binds the spirit under an externalism by which the very meaning of spirit is perverted and misconceived at its source, and law and justice, morality and conscience, responsibility and duty are corrupted at their root.
Along with this principle of spiritual bondage, and these applications of it in the religious life, there can only go in the legislative and const.i.tutional system a legal and moral bondage, and a state of lawlessness and immorality in political life. Catholicism has been loudly praised and is still often praised-logically enough-as the one religion which secures the stability of governments. But in reality this applies only to governments which are bound up with inst.i.tutions founded on the bondage of the spirit (of that spirit which should have legal and moral liberty), i.e. with inst.i.tutions that embody injustice and with a morally corrupt and barbaric state of society. But these governments are not aware that in fanaticism they have a terrible power, which does not rise in hostility against them, only so long as and only on condition that they remain sunk in the thraldom of injustice and immorality. But in mind there is a very different power available against that externalism and dismemberment induced by a false religion. Mind collects itself into its inward free actuality. Philosophy awakes in the spirit of governments and nations the wisdom to discern what is essentially and actually right and reasonable in the real world. It was well to call these products of thought, and in a special sense Philosophy, the wisdom of the world(170); for thought makes the spirit"s truth an actual present, leads it into the real world, and thus liberates it in its actuality and in its own self.
Thus set free, the content of religion a.s.sumes quite another shape. So long as the form, i.e. our consciousness and subjectivity, lacked liberty, it followed necessarily that self-consciousness was conceived as not immanent in the ethical principles which religion embodies, and these principles were set at such a distance as to seem to have true being only as negative to actual self-consciousness. In this unreality ethical content gets the name of _Holiness_. But once the divine spirit introduces itself into actuality, and actuality emanc.i.p.ates itself to spirit, then what in the world was a postulate of holiness is supplanted by the actuality of _moral_ life. Instead of the vow of chast.i.ty, _marriage_ now ranks as the ethical relation; and, therefore, as the highest on this side of humanity stands the family. Instead of the vow of poverty (muddled up into a contradiction of a.s.signing merit to whosoever gives away goods to the poor, i.e. whosoever enriches them) is the precept of action to acquire goods through one"s own intelligence and industry,-of honesty in commercial dealing, and in the use of property,-in short moral life in the socio-economic sphere. And instead of the vow of obedience, true religion sanctions obedience to the law and the legal arrangements of the state-an obedience which is itself the true freedom, because the state is a self-possessed, self-realising reason-in short, moral life in the state.
Thus, and thus only, can law and morality exist. The precept of religion, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar"s and to G.o.d what is G.o.d"s" is not enough: the question is to settle what is Caesar"s, what belongs to the secular authority: and it is sufficiently notorious that the secular no less than the ecclesiastical authority have claimed almost everything as their own.
The divine spirit must interpenetrate the entire secular life: whereby wisdom is concrete within it, and it carries the terms of its own justification. But that concrete indwelling is only the aforesaid ethical organisations. It is the morality of marriage as against the sanct.i.ty of a celibate order;-the morality of economic and industrial action against the sanct.i.ty of poverty and its indolence;-the morality of an obedience dedicated to the law of the state as against the sanct.i.ty of an obedience from which law and duty are absent and where conscience is enslaved. With the growing need for law and morality and the sense of the spirit"s essential liberty, there sets in a conflict of spirit with the religion of unfreedom. It is no use to organise political laws and arrangements on principles of equity and reason, so long as in religion the principle of unfreedom is not abandoned. A free state and a slavish religion are incompatible. It is silly to suppose that we may try to allot them separate spheres, under the impression that their diverse natures will maintain an att.i.tude of tranquillity one to another and not break out in contradiction and battle. Principles of civil freedom can be but abstract and superficial, and political inst.i.tutions deduced from them must be, if taken alone, untenable, so long as those principles in their wisdom mistake religion so much as not to know that the maxims of the reason in actuality have their last and supreme sanction in the religious conscience in subsumption under the consciousness of "absolute" truth. Let us suppose even that, no matter how, a code of law should arise, so to speak _a priori_, founded on principles of reason, but in contradiction with an established religion based on principles of spiritual unfreedom; still, as the duty of carrying out the laws lies in the hands of individual members of the government, and of the various cla.s.ses of the administrative _personnel_, it is vain to delude ourselves with the abstract and empty a.s.sumption that the individuals will act only according to the letter or meaning of the law, and not in the spirit of their religion where their inmost conscience and supreme obligation lies. Opposed to what religion p.r.o.nounces holy, the laws appear something made by human hands: even though backed by penalties and externally introduced, they could offer no lasting resistance to the contradiction and attacks of the religious spirit. Such laws, however sound their provisions may be, thus founder on the conscience, whose spirit is different from the spirit of the laws and refuses to sanction them. It is nothing but a modern folly to try to alter a corrupt moral organisation by altering its political const.i.tution and code of laws without changing the religion,-to make a revolution without having made a reformation, to suppose that a political const.i.tution opposed to the old religion could live in peace and harmony with it and its sanct.i.ties, and that stability could be procured for the laws by external guarantees, e.g. so-called "chambers," and the power given them to fix the budget, &c. (cf. -- 544 note). At best it is only a temporary expedient-when it is obviously too great a task to descend into the depths of the religious spirit and to raise that same spirit to its truth-to seek to separate law and justice from religion. Those guarantees are but rotten bulwarks against the consciences of the persons charged with administering the laws-among which laws these guarantees are included. It is indeed the height and profanity of contradiction to seek to bind and subject to the secular code the religious conscience to which mere human law is a thing profane.
The perception had dawned upon Plato with great clearness of the gulf which in his day had commenced to divide the established religion and the political const.i.tution, on one hand, from those deeper requirements which, on the other hand, were made upon religion and politics by liberty which had learnt to recognise its inner life. Plato gets hold of the thought that a genuine const.i.tution and a sound political life have their deeper foundation on the Idea,-on the essentially and actually universal and genuine principles of eternal righteousness. Now to see and ascertain what these are is certainly the function and the business of _philosophy_. It is from this point of view that Plato breaks out into the celebrated or notorious pa.s.sage where he makes Socrates emphatically state that philosophy and political power must coincide, that the Idea must be regent, if the distress of nations is to see its end. What Plato thus definitely set before his mind was that the Idea-which implicitly indeed is the free self-determining thought-could not get into consciousness save only in the form of a thought; that the substance of the thought could only be true when set forth as a universal, and as such brought to consciousness under its most abstract form.
To compare the Platonic standpoint in all its definiteness with the point of view from which the relationship of state and religion is here regarded, the notional differences on which everything turns must be recalled to mind. The first of these is that in natural things their substance or genus is different from their existence in which that substance is as subject: further that this subjective existence of the genus is distinct from that which it gets, when specially set in relief as genus, or, to put it simply, as the universal in a mental concept or idea.
This additional "individuality"-the soil on which the universal and underlying principle _freely_ and expressly exists,-is the intellectual and thinking _self_. In the case of _natural_ things their truth and reality does not get the form of universality and essentiality through themselves, and their "individuality" is not itself the form: the form is only found in subjective thinking, which in philosophy gives that universal truth and reality an existence of its own. In man"s case it is otherwise: his truth and reality is the free mind itself, and it comes to existence in his self-consciousness. This absolute nucleus of man-mind intrinsically concrete-is just this-to have the form (to have thinking) itself for a content. To the height of the thinking consciousness of this principle Aristotle ascended in his notion of the entelechy of thought, (which is ???s?? t?? ???se??), thus surmounting the Platonic Idea (the genus, or essential being). But thought always-and that on account of this very principle-contains the immediate self-subsistence of subjectivity no less than it contains universality; the genuine Idea of the intrinsically concrete mind is just as essentially under the one of its terms (subjective consciousness) as under the other (universality): and in the one as in the other it is the same substantial content. Under the subjective form, however, fall feeling, intuition, pictorial representation: and it is in fact necessary that in point of time the consciousness of the absolute Idea should be first reached and apprehended in this form: in other words, it must exist in its immediate reality as religion, earlier than it does as philosophy. Philosophy is a later development from this basis (just as Greek philosophy itself is later than Greek religion), and in fact reaches its completion by catching and comprehending in all its definite essentiality that principle of spirit which first manifests itself in religion. But Greek philosophy could set itself up only in opposition to Greek religion: the unity of thought and the substantiality of the Idea could take up none but a hostile att.i.tude to an imaginative polytheism, and to the gladsome and frivolous humours of its poetic creations. The _form_ in its infinite truth, the _subjectivity_ of mind, broke forth at first only as a subjective free _thinking_, which was not yet identical with the _substantiality_ itself,-and thus this underlying principle was not yet apprehended as _absolute mind_. Thus religion might appear as first purified only through philosophy,-through pure self-existent thought: but the form pervading this underlying principle-the form which philosophy attacked-was that creative imagination.
Political power, which is developed similarly, but earlier than philosophy, from religion, exhibits the onesidedness, which in the actual world may infect its _implicitly_ true Idea, as demoralisation. Plato, in common with all his thinking contemporaries, perceived this demoralisation of democracy and the defectiveness even of its principle; he set in relief accordingly the underlying principle of the state, but could not work into his idea of it the infinite form of subjectivity, which still escaped his intelligence. His state is therefore, on its own showing, wanting in subjective liberty (-- 503 note, -- 513, &c.). The truth which should be immanent in the state, should knit it together and control it, he, for these reasons, got hold of only the form of thought-out truth, of philosophy; and hence he makes that utterance that "so long as philosophers do not rule in the states, or those who are now called kings and rulers do not soundly and comprehensively philosophise, so long neither the state nor the race of men can be liberated from evils,-so long will the idea of the political const.i.tution fall short of possibility and not see the light of the sun." It was not vouchsafed to Plato to go on so far as to say that so long as true religion did not spring up in the world and hold sway in political life, so long the genuine principle of the state had not come into actuality. But so long too this principle could not emerge even in thought, nor could thought lay hold of the genuine idea of the state,-the idea of the substantial moral life, with which is identical the liberty of an independent self-consciousness. Only in the principle of mind, which is aware of its own essence, is implicitly in absolute liberty, and has its actuality in the act of self-liberation, does the absolute possibility and necessity exist for political power, religion, and the principles of philosophy coinciding in one, and for accomplishing the reconciliation of actuality in general with the mind, of the state with the religious conscience as well as with the philosophical consciousness. Self-realising subjectivity is in this case absolutely identical with substantial universality. Hence religion as such, and the state as such,-both as forms in which the principle exists-each contain the absolute truth: so that the truth, in its philosophic phase, is after all only in one of its forms. But even religion, as it grows and expands, lets other aspects of the Idea of humanity grow and expand also (-- 500 sqq.). As it is left therefore behind, in its first immediate, and so also one-sided phase, Religion may, or rather _must_, appear in its existence degraded to sensuous externality, and thus in the sequel become an influence to oppress liberty of spirit and to deprave political life.
Still the principle has in it the infinite "elasticity" of the "absolute"
form, so as to overcome this depraving of the form-determination (and of the content by these means), and to bring about the reconciliation of the spirit in itself. Thus ultimately, in the Protestant conscience the principles of the religious and of the ethical conscience come to be one and the same: the free spirit learning to see itself in its reasonableness and truth. In the Protestant state, the const.i.tution and the code, as well as their several applications, embody the principle and the development of the moral life, which proceeds and can only proceed from the truth of religion, when reinstated in its original principle and in that way as such first become actual. The moral life of the state and the religious spirituality of the state are thus reciprocal guarantees of strength.
SECTION III. ABSOLUTE MIND(171).
-- 553. The _notion_ of mind has its _reality_ in the mind. If this reality in ident.i.ty with that notion is to exist as the consciousness of the absolute Idea, then the necessary aspect is that the _implicitly_ free intelligence be in its actuality liberated to its notion, if that actuality is to be a vehicle worthy of it. The subjective and the objective spirit are to be looked on as the road on which this aspect of _reality_ or existence rises to maturity.