of this divine Idea–which is no mere Ideal–the phantom of a world whose events are an incoherent concourse of fortuitous circumstances, utterly vanishes. Philosophy wishes to discover the substantial purport, the real side of the divine idea, and to justify the so much despised reality of things; for Reason is the comprehension of the divine work. But as to what concerns the perversion, corruption, and ruin of religious, ethical, and moral purposes and states of society generally, it must be affirmed that, in their essence, these are infinite and eternal, but that the forms they assume may be of a limited order, and consequently may belong to the domain of mere nature and be subject to the sway of chance; they are therefore perishable and exposed to decay and corruption. Religion and morality–in the same way as inherently universal essences–have the peculiarity of being present in the individual soul, in the full extent of their Idea, and therefore truly and really; although they may not manifest themselves in it _in extenso_ and are not applied to fully developed relations. The religion, the morality of a limited sphere of life, for instance that of a shepherd or a peasant, in its intensive concentration and limitation to a few perfectly simple relations of life has infinite worth–the same worth as the religion and morality of extensive knowledge and of an existence rich in the compass of its relations and actions. This inner focus, this simple region of the claims of subjective freedom, the home of volition, resolution, and action, the abstract sphere of conscience–that which comprises the responsibility and moral value of the individual–remains untouched and is quite shut out from the noisy din of the world’s history–including not merely external and temporal changes but also those entailed by the absolute necessity inseparable from the realization of the idea of freedom itself. But, as a general truth, this must be regarded as settled, that whatever in the world possesses claims as noble and glorious has nevertheless a higher existence above it. The claim of the World-Spirit rises above all special claims.
These observations may suffice in reference to the means which the World-Spirit uses for realizing its Idea. Stated simply and abstractly, this mediation involves the activity of personal existences in whom Reason is present as their absolute, substantial being, but a basis, in the first instance, still obscure and unknown to them. But the subject becomes more complicated and difficult when we regard individuals not merely in their aspect of activity, but more concretely, in conjunction with a particular manifestation of that activity in their religion and morality–forms of existence which are intimately connected with Reason and share in its absolute claims. Here the relation of mere means to an end disappears, and the chief bearings of this seeming difficulty in reference to the absolute aim of Spirit have been briefly considered.
(3) The third point to be analyzed is, therefore: What is the object to be realized by these means–that is, What is the form it assumes in the realm of reality? We have spoken of means; but, in carrying out of a subjective, limited aim, we have also to take into consideration the element of a material either already present or which has to be procured. Thus the question would arise: What is the material in which the Ideal of Reason is wrought out? The primary answer would be: Personality itself, human desires, subjectivity generally. In human knowledge and volition as its material element Reason attains positive existence. We have considered subjective volition where it has an object which is the truth and essence of reality–viz., where it constitutes a great world-historical passion. As a subjective will, occupied with limited passions, it is dependent, and can gratify its desires only within the limits of this dependence. But the subjective will has also a substantial life, a reality, in which it moves in the region of essential being and has the essential itself as the object of its existence. This essential being is the union of the subjective with the rational will; it is the moral whole, the _State_, which is that form of reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom, but on the condition of his recognizing, believing in, and willing that which is common to the whole. And this must not be understood as if the subjective will of the social unit attained its gratification and enjoyment through that common will, as if this were a means provided for its benefit, as if the individual, in his relations to other individuals, thus limited his freedom, in order that this universal limitation, the mutual constraint of all, might secure a small space of liberty for each. Rather, we affirm, are law, morality, government, and these alone, the positive reality and completion of freedom. Freedom of a low and limited order is mere caprice, which finds its exercise in the sphere of particular and limited desires.
Subjective volition, passion, is that which sets men in activity, that which effects “practical” realization. The Idea is the inner spring of action; the State is the actually existing, realized moral life. For it is the unity of the universal, essential will, with that of the individual; and this is “morality.” The individual living in this unity has a moral life and possesses a value that consists in this substantiality alone. Sophocles in his _Antigone_ says, “The divine commands are not of yesterday, nor of today; no, they have an infinite existence, and no one could say whence they came.” The laws of morality are not accidental, but are the essentially rational. It is the very object of the State that what is essential in the practical activity of men and in their dispositions should be duly recognized; that it should have a manifest existence and maintain its position. It is the absolute interest of Reason that this moral whole should exist; and herein lies the justification and merit of heroes who have founded States, however rude these may have been. In the history of the world, only those peoples can come under our notice which form a State; for it must be understood that the State is the realization of freedom, i. e., of the absolute final aim, and that it exists for its own sake. It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses–all spiritual reality–he possesses only through the State. For his spiritual reality consists in this, that his own essence, Reason, is objectively present to him, that it possesses objective immediate existence for him. Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a partaker of morality, of a just and moral social and political life. For truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, and in its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more definite shape than before–that in which freedom obtains objectivity and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity. For law is the objectivity of Spirit, volition in its true form. Only that will which obeys law is free; for it obeys itself–it is independent and, therefore, free. When the State or our country constitutes a community of existence, when the subjective will of man submits to laws, the contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes. The rational has necessary existence, as being the reality and substance of things, and we are free in recognizing it as law and following it as the substance of our own being. The objective and the subjective will are then reconciled and present one identical homogeneous whole. For the morality (_Sittlichkeit_) of the State is not of that ethical (_moralische_) reflective kind, in which one’s own conviction bears sway; the latter is rather the peculiarity of the modern time, while the true antique morality is based on the principle of abiding by one’s duty (to the State at large). An Athenian citizen did what was required of him, as it were from instinct; but if I reflect on the object of my activity I must have the consciousness that my will has been called into exercise. But morality is duty–substantial right, a “second nature,” as it has been justly called; for the first nature of man is his primary, merely animal, existence.
The development _in extenso_ of the idea of the State belongs to the philosophy of jurisprudence; but it must be observed that in the theories of our time various errors are current respecting it, which pass for established truths and have become fixed prejudices. We will mention only a few of them, giving prominence to such as have a reference to the object of our history.
The error which first meets us is the direct opposite of our principle that the State presents the realization of freedom–the opinion–that man is free by nature, but that in society, in the State, to which nevertheless he is irresistibly impelled, he must limit this natural freedom. That man is free by nature is quite correct in one sense, namely, that he is so according to the idea of humanity; but we imply thereby that he is such only in virtue of his destiny–that he has an undeveloped power to become such; for the “nature” of an object is exactly synonymous with its “idea.” But the view in question imports more than this. When man is spoken of as “free by nature,” the mode of his existence as well as his destiny is implied; his merely natural and primary condition is intended. In this sense a “state of nature” is assumed in which mankind at large is in the possession of its natural rights with the unconstrained exercise and enjoyment of its freedom. This assumption is not raised to the dignity of the historical fact; it would indeed be difficult, were the attempt seriously made, to point out any such condition as actually existing or as having ever occurred. Examples of a savage state of life can be pointed out, but they are marked by brutal passions and deeds of violence; while, however rude and simple their, conditions, they involve social arrangements which, to use the common phrase, “restrain freedom.” That assumption is one of those nebulous images which theory produces, an idea which it cannot avoid originating, but which it fathers upon real existence without sufficient historical justification.
What we find such a state of nature to be, in actual experience, answers exactly to the idea of a merely natural condition. Freedom as the ideal of that which is original and natural does not exist as original and natural; rather must it first be sought out and won, and that by an incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers. The state of nature is, therefore, predominantly that of injustice and violence, of untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings. Limitation is certainly produced by society and the State, but it is a limitation of the mere brute emotions and rude instincts, as also, in a more advanced stage of culture, of the premeditated self-will of caprice and passion. This kind of constraint is part of the instrumentality by which only the consciousness of freedom and the desire for its attainment, in its true–that is, its rational and ideal form–can be obtained. To the ideal of freedom, law and morality are indispensably requisite; and they are, in and for themselves, universal existences, objects, and aims, which are discovered only by the activity of thought, separating itself from the merely sensuous and developing itself in opposition thereto, and which must, on the other hand, be introduced into and incorporated with the originally sensuous will, and that contrarily to its natural inclination. The perpetually recurring misapprehension of freedom consists in regarding that term only in its formal, subjective sense, abstracted from its essential objects and aims; thus a constraint put upon impulse, desire, passion–pertaining to the particular individual as such–a limitation of caprice and self-will is regarded as a fettering of freedom. We should, on the contrary, look upon such limitation as the indispensable proviso of emancipation. Society and the State are the very conditions in which freedom is realized.
We must notice a second view, contravening the principle of the development of moral relations into a legal form. The patriarchal condition is regarded, either in reference to the entire race of man or to some branches of it, as exclusively that condition of things in which the legal element is combined with a due recognition of the moral and emotional parts of our nature, and in which justice, as united with these, truly influences the intercourse of the social units. The basis of the patriarchal condition is the family relation, which develops the primary form of conscious morality, succeeded by that of the State as its second phase. The patriarchal condition is one of transition, in which the family has already advanced to the position of a race of people, where the union, therefore, has already ceased to be simply a bond of love and confidence and has become one of plighted service.
We must first examine the ethical principle of the Family, which may be reckoned as virtually a single person, since its members have either mutually surrendered their individual personality and consequently their legal position toward one another, with the rest of their particular interests and desires, as in the case of the parents, or, in the care of children who are primarily in that merely natural condition already mentioned, have not yet attained such an independent personality. They live, therefore, in a unity of feeling, love, confidence, and faith in one another, and, in a relation of mutual love, the one individual has the consciousness of himself in the consciousness of another; he lives out of self; and in this mutual self-renunciation each regains the life that had been virtually transferred to the other–gains, in fact, the other’s existence and his own, as involved with that other. The ultimate interests connected with the necessities and external concerns of life, as well as the development that has to take place within their circle, i. e., of the children, constitute a common object for the members of the family. The spirit of the family–the _Penates_–form one substantial being, as much as the spirit of a people in the State; and morality in both cases consists in a feeling, a consciousness, and a will, not limited to individual personality and interest, but embracing the common interests of the members generally. But this unity is, in the case of the family, essentially one of feeling, not advancing beyond the limits of the merely natural. The piety of the family relation should be respected in the highest degree by the State; by its means the State obtains as its members individuals who are already moral (for as mere persons they are not) and who, in uniting to form a State, bring with them that sound basis of a political edifice–the capacity of feeling one with a whole. But the expansion of the family to a patriarchal unity carries us beyond the ties of blood-relationship–the simply natural elements of that basis; and outside of these limits the members of the community must enter upon the position of independent personality. A review of the patriarchal condition, _in extenso_, would lead us to give special attention to the theocratical constitution. The head of the patriarchal clan is also its priest. If the family in its general relations is not yet separated from civic society and the State, the separation of religion from it has also not yet taken place; and so much the less since the piety of the hearth is itself a profoundly subjective state of feeling.
We have considered two aspects of freedom–the objective and the subjective; if, therefore, freedom is asserted to consist in the individuals of a State, all agreeing in its arrangements, it is evident that only the subjective aspect is regarded. The natural inference from this principle is, that no law can be valid without the approval of all. It is attempted to obviate this difficulty by the decision that the minority must yield to the majority; the majority therefore bears sway; but long ago J.J. Rousseau remarked that, in that case, there would no longer be freedom, for the will of the minority would cease to be respected. At the Polish Diet each individual member had to give his consent before any political step could be taken; and this kind of freedom it was that ruined the State. Besides, it is a dangerous and false prejudice that the people alone have reason and insight, and know what justice is; for each popular faction may represent itself as the people, and the question as to what constitutes the State is one of advanced science and not of popular decision.
If the principle of regard for the individual will is recognized as the only basis of political liberty, viz., that nothing should be done by or for the State to which all the members of the body politic have not given their sanction, we have, properly speaking, no constitution. The only arrangement found necessary would be, first, a centre having no will of its own, but which should take into consideration what appeared to be the necessities of the State, and, secondly, a contrivance for calling the members of the State together, for taking the votes, and for performing the arithmetical operations of reckoning and comparing the number of votes for the different propositions, and thereby deciding upon them. The State is an abstraction, having even its generic existence in its citizens; but it is an actuality, and its simply generic existence must embody itself in individual will and activity. The want of government and political administration in general is felt; this necessitates the selection and separation from the rest of those who have to take the helm in political affairs, to decide concerning them, and to give orders to other citizens, with a view to the execution of their plans. If, for instance, even the people in a democracy resolve on a war, a general must head the army. It is only by a constitution that the abstraction–the State–attains life and reality; but this involves the distinction between those who command and those who obey. Yet obedience seems inconsistent with liberty, and those who command appear to do the very opposite of that which the fundamental idea of the State, viz., that of freedom, requires. It is, however, urged that though the distinction between commanding and obeying is absolutely necessary, because affairs could not go on without it, and indeed, this seems only a compulsory limitation, external to and even contravening freedom in the abstract–the constitution should be at least so framed that the citizens may obey as little as possible and the smallest modicum of free volition be left to the commands of the superiors; that the substance of that for which subordination is necessary, even in its most important bearings, should be decided and resolved on by the people, by the will of many or of all the citizens; though it is supposed to be thereby provided that the State should be possessed of vigor and strength as a reality–an individual unity. The primary consideration is, then, the distinction between the governing and the governed, and political constitutions in the abstract have been rightly divided into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; this gives occasion, however, for the remark that monarchy itself must be further divided into despotism and monarchy proper; that in all the divisions to which the leading idea gives rise, only the generic character is to be made prominent, it being not intended thereby that the particular category under review should be exhausted as a form, order, or kind in its concrete development. But it must especially be observed that the above mentioned divisions admit of a multitude of particular modifications–not only such as lie within the limits of those classes themselves but also such as are mixtures of several of these essentially distinct classes and which are consequently misshapen, unstable, and inconsistent forms. In such a collision, the concerning question is: What is the best constitution–that is, by what arrangement, organization, or mechanism of the power of the State can its object be most surely attained? This object may indeed be variously understood; for instance, as the calm enjoyment of life on part of the citizens, or as universal happiness. Such aims have suggested the so-called ideals of constitutions, and, as a particular branch of the subject, Ideals of the education of princes (Fenelon), or of the governing body, the aristocracy at large (Plato); for the chief point they treat of is the condition of those subjects who stand at the head of affairs, and in these ideals the concrete details of political organization are not at all considered. The inquiry into the best constitution is frequently treated as if not only the theory were an affair of subjective independent conviction, but as if the introduction of a constitution recognized as the best, or as superior to others, could be the result of a resolve adopted in this theoretical manner, as if the form of a constitution were a matter of free choice, determined by nothing else but reflection. Of this artless fashion was that deliberation–not indeed of the Persian people, but of the Persian grandees, who had conspired to overthrow the pseudo-Smerdis and the Magi, after their undertaking had succeeded and when there was no scion of the royal family living–as to what constitution they should introduce into Persia; and Herodotus gives an equally naive account of this deliberation.
In the present day, the constitution of a country and people is not represented as so entirely dependent on free and deliberate choice. The fundamental, but abstractly and therefore imperfectly, entertained conception of freedom, has resulted in the republic being very generally regarded–in theory–as the only just and true political constitution. Even many who occupy elevated official positions under monarchical constitutions, so far from being opposed to this idea are actually its supporters; only they see that such a constitution, though the best, cannot be realized under all circumstances, and that, while men are what they are, we must be satisfied with less freedom, the monarchical constitution, under the given circumstances and the present moral condition of the people, being even regarded as the most advantageous. In this view also the necessity of a particular constitution is made to depend on the condition of the people as though the latter were non-essential and accidental. This representation is founded on the distinction which the reflective understanding makes between an idea and the corresponding reality. This reflection holding to an abstract and consequently untrue idea, not grasping it in its completeness, or–which is virtually, though not in point of form, the same–not taking a concrete view of a people and a State. We shall have to show, further, on, that the constitution adopted by a people makes one substance, one spirit, with its religion, its art, and its philosophy, or, at least, with its conceptions, thoughts and culture generally–not to expatiate upon the additional influences _ab extra_, of climate, of neighbors, of its place in the world. A State is an individual totality, of which you cannot select any particular side, although a supremely important one, such as its political constitution, and deliberate and decide respecting it in that isolated form. Not only is that constitution most intimately connected with and dependent on those other spiritual forces, but the form of the entire moral and intellectual individuality, comprising all the forces it embodies, is only a step in the development of the grand whole, with its place pre-appointed in the process–a fact which gives the highest sanction to the constitution in question and establishes its absolute necessity. The origin of a State involves imperious lordship on the one hand, instinctive submission on the other. But even obedience–lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler–in itself implies some degree of voluntary connection. Even in barbarous states this is the case; it is not the isolated will of individuals that prevails; individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will is the essential bond of political union. This unity of the general and the particular is the Idea itself, manifesting itself as a State, and which subsequently undergoes further development within itself. The abstract yet necessitated process in the development of truly independent states is as follows: They begin with regal power, whether of patriarchal or military origin; in the next phase, particularity and individuality assert themselves in the form of aristocracy and democracy; lastly, we have the subjection of these separate interests to a single power, but one which can be absolutely none other than one outside of which those spheres have an independent position, viz., the monarchical. Two phases of royalty, therefore, must be distinguished–a primary and a secondary. This process is necessitated to the end that the form of government assigned to a particular stage of development must present itself; it is therefore no matter of choice, but is the form adapted to the spirit of the people.
In the constitution the main feature of interest is the self-development of the rational, that is, the political condition of a people, the setting free of the successive elements of the Idea, so that the several powers in the State manifest themselves as separate, attain their appropriate and special perfection, and yet, in this independent condition, work together for one object and are held together by it–i. e., form an organic whole. The State is thus the embodiment of rational freedom, realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form. For its objectivity consists in this–that its successive stages are not merely ideal, but are present in an appropriate reality, and that in their separate and several workings they are absolutely merged in that agency by which the totality, the soul, the individuate unity, is produced, and of which it is the result.
The State is the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human will and its freedom. It is to the State, therefore, that change in the aspect of history indissolubly attaches itself; and the successive phases of the idea manifest themselves in it as distinct political principles. The constitutions under which world-historical peoples have reached their culmination, are peculiar to them, and therefore do not present a generally applicable political basis. Were it otherwise the differences of similar constitutions would consist only in a peculiar method of expanding and developing that generic basis, whereas they really originate in diversity of principle. From the comparison therefore of the political institutions of the ancient world-historical peoples, it so happens that, for the most recent principle of a constitution for the principle of our own times, nothing, so to speak, can be learned. In science and art it is quite otherwise–that is, the ancient philosophy is so decidedly the basis of the modern that it is inevitably contained in the latter and constitutes its basis. In this case the relation is that of a continuous development of the same structure, whose foundation-stone, walls, and roof have remained what they were. In art, the Greek itself, in its original form, furnishes us the best models, but in regard to political constitution it is quite otherwise; here the ancient and the modern have not their essential principle in common. Abstract definitions and dogmas respecting just government–importing that intelligence and virtue ought to bear sway–are, indeed, common to both, but nothing is so absurd as to look to Greeks, Romans, or Orientals, for models for the political arrangements of our time. From the East may be derived beautiful pictures of a patriarchal condition, of paternal government, and of devotion to it on the part of peoples; from Greeks and Romans, descriptions of popular liberty. Among the latter we find the idea of a free constitution admitting all the citizens to a share in deliberations and resolves respecting the affairs and laws of the commonwealth. In our times, too, this is its general acceptation; only with this modification, that–since our States are so large, and there are so many of “the many,” the latter (direct action being impossible) should by the indirect method of elective substitution express their concurrence with resolves affecting the common weal–that is, that for legislative purposes generally the people should be represented by deputies. The so-called representative constitution is that form of government with which we connect the idea of a free constitution; and this notion has become a rooted prejudice. On this theory people and government are separated. But there is a perversity in this antithesis, an ill-intentioned ruse designed to insinuate that the people are the totality of the State. Besides, the basis of this view is the principle of isolated individuality–the absolute validity of the subjective will–a dogma which we have already investigated. The great point is that freedom, in its ideal conception, has not subjective will and caprice for its principle, but the recognition of the universal will, and that the process by which freedom is realized is the free development of its successive stages. The subjective will is a merely formal determination–a _carte blanche_–not including what it is that is willed. Only the rational will is that universal principle which independently determines and unfolds its own being and develops its successive elemental phases as organic members. Of this Gothic-cathedral architecture the ancients knew nothing.
At an earlier stage of the discussion we established the two elemental considerations: First, the _idea_ of freedom as the absolute and final aim; secondly, the _means_ for realizing it, i. e., the subjective side of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity. We then recognized the State as the moral whole and the reality of freedom, and consequently as the objective unity of these two elements. For although we make this distinction in two aspects for our consideration, it must be remarked that they are intimately connected, and that their connection is involved in the idea of each when examined separately. We have, on the one hand, recognized the Idea in the definite form of freedom, conscious of and willing itself, having itself alone as its object, involving at the same time the pure and simple Idea of Reason and, likewise, what we have called Subject, self-consciousness, Spirit, actually existing in the world. If, on the other hand, we consider subjectivity, we find that subjective knowledge and will is thought. But by the very act of thoughtful cognition and volition, I will the universal object–the substance of absolute Reason. We observe, therefore, an essential union between the objective side–the Idea, and the subjective side–the personality that conceives and wills it. The objective existence of this union is the State, which is therefore the basis and centre of the other concrete elements of the life of a people–of art, of law, of morals, of religion, of science. All the activity of Spirit has only this object–the becoming conscious of this union, i. e., of its own freedom. Among the forms of this conscious union _religion_ occupies the highest position. In it Spirit-rising above the limitations of temporal and secular existence–becomes conscious of the Absolute Spirit, and, in this consciousness of the Self-Existent Being, renounces its individual interest; it lays this aside in devotion–a state of mind in which it refuses to occupy itself any longer with the limited and particular. By sacrifice man expresses his renunciation of his property, his will, his individual feelings. The religious concentration of the soul appears in the form of feeling; it nevertheless passes also into reflection; a form of worship (_cultus_) is a result of reflection. The second form of the union of the objective and subjective in the human spirit is art; this advances farther into the realm of the actual and sensuous than religion. In its noblest walk it is occupied with representing, not, indeed, the Spirit of God, but certainly the Form of God; and, in its secondary aims, that which is divine and spiritual generally. Its office is to render visible the divine, presenting it to the imaginative and intuitive faculty. But the true is the object not only of conception and feeling, as in religion–and of intuition, as in art–but also of the thinking faculty; and this gives us the third form of the union in question–philosophy. This is consequently the highest, freest, and wisest place. Of course we are not intending to investigate these three phases here; they have only suggested themselves in virtue of their occupying the same general ground as the object here considered the _State._
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW (1832)
BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard University
THE STATE
IDEA AND AIM OF THE STATE
The State is the realization of the ethical idea. It is the ethical spirit as revealed, self-conscious, substantial will. It is the will which thinks and knows itself, and carries out what it knows, and in so far as it knows. The unreflected existence of the State rests on custom, and its reflected existence on the self-consciousness of the individual, on his knowledge and activity. The individual, in return, has his substantial freedom in the State, as the essence, purpose, and product of his activity.
The true State is the ethical whole and the realization of freedom. It is the absolute purpose of reason that freedom should be realized. The State is the spirit, which lives in the world and there realizes itself consciously; while in nature it is actual only as its own other or as dormant spirit. Only as present in consciousness, knowing itself as an existing object, is it the State. The State is the march of God through the world, its ground is the power of reason realizing itself as will. The idea of the State should not connote any particular State, or particular institution; one must rather consider the Idea only, this actual God, by itself. Because it is more easy to find defects than to grasp the positive meaning, one readily falls into the mistake of emphasizing so much the particular nature of the State as to overlook its inner organic essence. The State is no work of art. It exists in the world, and thus in the realm of caprice, accident, and error. Evil behavior toward it may disfigure it on many sides. But the ugliest man, the criminal, the invalid, and the cripple, are still living human beings. The affirmative, life, persists in spite of defects, and it is this affirmative which alone is here in question.
In the State, everything depends upon the unity of the universal and the particular. In the ancient States the subjective purpose was absolutely one with the will of the State. In modern times, on the contrary, we demand an individual opinion, an individual will and conscience. The ancients had none of these in the modern sense; the final thing for them was the will of the State. While in Asiatic despotisms the individual had no inner self and no self-justification, in the modern world man demands to be honored for the sake of his subjective individuality.
The union of duty and right has the twofold aspect that what the State demands as duty should directly be the right of the individual, since the State is nothing but the organization of the concept of freedom. The determinations of the individual will are given by the State objectivity, and it is through the State alone that they attain truth and realization. The State is the sole condition of the attainment of the particular end and good.
Political disposition, called patriotism–the assurance resting in truth and the will which has become a custom–is simply the result of the institutions subsisting in the State, institutions in which reason is actually present.
Under patriotism one frequently understands a mere willingness to perform extraordinary acts and sacrifices. But patriotism is essentially the sentiment of regarding, in the ordinary circumstances and ways of life, the weal of the community as the substantial basis and the final end. It is upon this consciousness, present in the ordinary course of life and under all circumstances, that the disposition to heroic effort is founded. But as people are often rather magnanimous than just, they easily persuade themselves that they possess the heroic kind of patriotism, in order to save themselves the trouble of having the truly patriotic sentiment, or to excuse the lack of it.
Political sentiment, as appearance, must be distinguished from what people truly will. What they at bottom will is the real cause, but they cling to particular interests and delight in the vain contemplation of improvements. The conviction of the necessary stability of the State in which alone the particular interests can be realized, people indeed possess, but custom makes invisible that upon which our whole existence rests; it does not occur to any one, when he safely passes through the streets at night, that it could be otherwise. The habit of safety has become a second nature, and we do not reflect that it is the result of the activity of special institutions. It is through force this is frequently the superficial opinion-that the State coheres, but what alone holds it together is the fundamental sense of order, which is possessed by all.
The State is an organism or the development of the idea into its differences. These different sides are the different powers of the State with their functions and activities, by means of which the universal is constantly and necessarily producing itself, and, being presupposed in its own productive function, it is thus always actively present. This organism is the political constitution. It eternally springs from the State, just as the State in turn maintains itself through the constitution. If these two things fall asunder, if both different sides become independent of each other, then the unity which the constitution produces is no longer operative; the fable of the stomach and the other organs may be applied to it. It is the nature of an organism that all its parts must constitute a certain unity; if one part asserts its independence the other parts must go to destruction. No predicates, principles, and the like suffice to express the nature of the State; it must be comprehended as an organism.
The State is real, and its reality consists in the interest of the whole being realized in particular ends. Actuality is always the unity of universality and particularity, and the differentiation of the universal into particular ends. These particular ends seem independent, though they are borne and sustained by the whole only. In so far as this unity is absent, no thing is real, though it may exist. A bad State is one which merely exists. A sick body also exists; but it has no true reality. A hand, which is cut off, still looks like a hand and exists, but it has no reality. True reality is necessity. What is real is internally necessary.
To the complete State belongs, essentially, consciousness and thought. The State knows thus what it wills, and it knows it under the form of thought.
The essential difference between the State and religion consists in that the commands of the State have the form of legal duty, irrespective of the feelings accompanying their performance; the sphere of religion, on the other hand, is in the inner life. Just as the State, were it to frame its commands as religion does, would endanger the right of the inner life, so the church, if it acts as a State and imposes punishment, degenerates into a tyrannical religion.
In the State one must want nothing which is not an expression of rationality. The State is the world which the spirit has made for itself; it has therefore a determinate and self-conscious course. One often speaks of the wisdom of God in nature, but one must not believe that the physical world of nature is higher than the world of spirit. Just as spirit is superior to nature, so is the State superior to the physical life. We must therefore adore the State as the manifestation of the divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend nature, it is infinitely harder to grasp the essence of the State. It is an important fact that we, in modern times, have attained definite insight into the State in general and are much engaged in discussing and making constitutions; but that does not advance the problem much. It is necessary to treat a rational matter in the light of reason, in order to learn its essential nature and to know that the obvious does not always constitute the essential.
When we speak of the different functions of the powers of the State, we must not fall into the enormous error of supposing each power to have an abstract, independent existence, since the powers are rather to be differentiated as elements in the conception of the State. Were the powers to be in abstract independence, however, it is clear that two independent things could never constitute a unity, but must produce war, and the result would be destruction of the whole or restoration of unity by force. Thus, in the French Revolution, at one time the legislative power had swallowed up the executive, at another time the executive had usurped the legislative power.
THE CONSTITUTION
The constitution is rational, in so far as the State defines and differentiates its functions according to the nature of its concept.
Who shall make the constitution? This question seems intelligible, yet on closer examination reveals itself as meaningless, for it presupposes the existence of no constitution, but only a mere mass of atomic individuals. How a mass of individuals is to come by a constitution, whether by its own efforts or by those of others, whether by goodness, thought, or force, it must decide for itself, for with a disorganized mob the concept of the State has nothing to do. But if the question does presuppose an already existing constitution, then to make a constitution means only to change it. The presupposition of a constitution implies, however, at once, that any modification in it must take place constitutionally. It is absolutely essential that the constitution, though having a temporal origin, should not be regarded as made. It (the principle of constitution) is rather to be conceived as absolutely perpetual and rational, and therefore as divine, substantial, and above and beyond the sphere of what is made.
Subjective freedom is the principle of the whole modern world–the principle that all essential aspects of the spiritual totality should develop and attain their right. From this point of view one can hardly raise the idle question as to which form is the better, monarchy or democracy. One can but say that the forms of all constitutions are one-sided that are not able to tolerate the principle of free subjectivity and that do not know how to conform to the fully developed reason.
Since spirit is real only in what it knows itself to be, and since the State, as the nation’s spirit, is the law permeating all its affairs, its ethical code, and the consciousness of its individuals, the constitution of a people chiefly depends upon the kind and the character of its self-consciousness. In it lies both its subjective freedom and the reality of the constitution.
To think of giving a people a constitution _a priori_, though according to its content a more or less rational one–such a whim would precisely overlook that element which renders a constitution more than a mere abstract object. Every nation, therefore, has the constitution which is appropriate to it and belongs to it.
The State must, in its constitution, permeate all situations. A constitution is not a thing just made; it is the work of centuries, the idea and the consciousness of what is rational, in so far as it is developed in a people. No constitution, therefore, is merely created by the subjects of the State. The nation must feel that its constitution embodies its right and its status, otherwise the constitution may exist externally, but has no meaning or value. The need and the longing for a better constitution may often indeed be present in individuals, but that is quite different from the whole multitude being permeated with such an idea–that comes much later. The principle of morality, the inwardness of Socrates originated necessarily in his day, but it took time before it could pass into general self-consciousness.
THE POWER OF THE PRINCE
Because sovereignty contains in ideal all special privileges, the common misconception is quite natural, which takes it to be mere force, empty caprice, and synonymous with despotism. But despotism means a state of lawlessness, in which the particular will as such, whether that of monarch or people (_ochlocracy_), is the law, or rather instead of the law. Sovereignty, on the contrary, constitutes the element of ideality of particular spheres and functions under lawful and constitutional conditions.
The sovereignty of the people, conceived in opposition to the sovereignty residing in the monarch, stands for the common view of democracy, which has come to prevail in modern times. The idea of the sovereignty of the people, taken in this opposition, belongs to a confused idea of what is commonly and crudely understood by “the people.” The people without its monarch and without that whole organization necessarily and directly connected with him is a formless mass, which is no longer a State. In a people, not conceived in a lawless and unorganized condition, but as a self-developed and truly organic totality–in such a people sovereignty is the personality of the whole, and this is represented in reality by the person of the monarch.
The State must be regarded as a great architectonic edifice, a hieroglyph of reason, manifesting itself in reality. Everything referring merely to utility, externality, and the like, must be excluded from its philosophic treatment. That the State is the self-determining and the completely sovereign will, the final decision being necessarily referred to it–that is easy to comprehend. The difficulty lies in grasping this “I will” as a person. By this it is not meant that the monarch can act arbitrarily. He is bound, in truth, by the concrete content of the deliberations of his council, and, when the constitution is stable, he has often nothing more to do than to sign his name–but this name is important; it is the point than which there is nothing higher.
It may be said that an organic State has already existed in the beautiful democracy of Athens. The Greeks, however, derived the final decision from entirely external phenomena, from oracles, entrails of sacrificial animals, and from the flight of birds. Nature they considered as a power which in this wise made known and gave expression to what was good for the people. Self-consciousness had at that time not yet attained to the abstraction of subjectivity; it had not yet come to the realization that an “I will” must be pronounced by man himself concerning the decisions of the State. This “I will” constitutes the great difference between the ancient and the modern world, and must therefore have its peculiar place in the great edifice of the State. Unfortunately this modern characteristic is regarded as merely external and arbitrary.
It is often maintained against the monarch that, since he may be ill-educated or unworthy to stand at the helm of the State, its fortunes are thus made to depend upon chance. It is therefore absurd to assume the rationality of the institution of the monarch. The presupposition, however, that the fortunes of the State depend upon the particular character of the monarch is false. In the perfect organization of the State the important thing is only the finality of formal decision and the stability against passion. One must not therefore demand objective qualification of the monarch; he has but to say “yes” and to put the dot upon the “i.” The crown shall be of such a nature that the particular character of its bearer is of no significance. Beyond his function of administering the final decision, the monarch is a particular being who is of no concern. Situations may indeed arise in which his particularity alone asserts itself, but in that case the State is not yet fully developed, or else is ill constructed. In a well-ordered monarchy the law alone has objective power to which the monarch has but to affix the subjective “I will.”
Monarchs do not excel in bodily strength or intellect, and yet millions permit themselves to be ruled by them. To say that the people permit themselves to be governed contrary to their interests, aims, and intentions is preposterous, for people are not so stupid. It is their need, it is the inner power of the idea, which, in opposition to their apparent consciousness, urges them to this situation and retains them therein.
Out of the sovereignty of the monarch flows the prerogative of pardoning criminals. Only to the sovereignty belongs the spiritual power to undo what has been done and to cancel the crime by forgiving and forgetting.
Pardon is the remission of punishment, but does not abolish right. Right remains, and the pardoned is a criminal as he was before the pardon. The act of mercy does not mean that no crime has been committed. This remission of punishment may be effected in religion, for by and in spirit what has been done can be made un-done. But in so far as remission occurs in the world, it has its place only in majesty and is due only to its arbitrary decision.
THE EXECUTIVE
The main point upon which the function of the government depends is the division of labor. This division is concerned with the transition from the universal to the particular and the individual; and the business is to be divided according to the different branches. The difficulty lies in harmonizing the superior and the inferior functions. For some time past the main effort has been spent in organizing from above, the lower and bulky part of the whole being left more or less unorganized; yet it is highly important that it should become organic, for only thus is it a power and a force; otherwise it is but a heap or mass of scattered atoms. Authoritative power resides only in the organic state of the particular spheres.
The State cannot count on service which is capricious and voluntary (the administration of justice by knights-errant, for instance), precisely because it is capricious and voluntary. Such service presupposes acting according to subjective opinion, and also the possibility of neglect and of the realization of private ends. The opposite extreme to the knight-errant in reference to public service would be the State-servant who was attached to his task solely by want, without genuine duty and right.
The efficiency of the State depends upon individuals, who, however, are not entitled to carry on the business of the State through natural fitness, but according to their objective qualification. Ability, skill, character, belong to the particular nature of the individual; for a particular office, however, he must be specially educated and trained. An office in the State can, therefore, be neither sold nor bequeathed.
Public service demands the sacrifice of independent self-satisfaction and the giving up of the pursuit of private ends, but grants the right of finding these in dutiful service, and in it only. Herein lies the unity of the universal and the particular interests which constitutes the concept and the inner stability of the State.
The members of the executive and the officials of the State form the main part of the middle class which represents the educated intelligence and the consciousness of right of the mass of a people. This middle class is prevented by the institutions of sovereignty from above and the rights of corporation from below, from assuming the exclusive position of an aristocracy and making education and intelligence the means for caprice and despotism. Thus the administration of justice, whose object is the proper interest of all individuals, had at one time been perverted into an instrument of gain and despotism, owing to the fact that the knowledge of the law was hidden under a learned and foreign language, and the knowledge of legal procedure under an involved formalism.
In the middle class, to which the State officials belong, resides the consciousness of the State and the most conspicuous cultivation: the middle class constitutes therefore the ground pillar of the State in regard to uprightness and intelligence. The State in which there is no middle class stands as yet on no high level.
THE LEGISLATURE
The legislature is concerned with the interpretation of the laws and with the internal affairs of the State, in so far as they have a universal content. This function is itself a part of the constitution and thus presupposes it. Being presupposed, the constitution lies, to that degree, outside the direct province of the legislature, but in the forward development of the laws and the progressive character of the universal affairs of government, the constitution receives its development also.
The constitution must alone be the firm ground on which the legislature stands; hence it must not be created for purposes of legislation. But the constitution not only is, its essence is also to _become_–that is, it progresses with the advance of civilization. This progress is an alteration which is imperceptible, but has not the form of an alteration. Thus, for example, the emperor was formerly judge, and went about the empire administering justice. Through the merely apparent advance of civilization it has become practically necessary that the emperor should gradually yield his judicial function to others, and thus came about the transition of the judicial function from the person of the prince to a body of judges; thus the progress of any condition is an apparently calm and imperceptible one. In this way and after a lapse of time a constitution attains a character quite different from what it had before.
In the legislative power as a whole are operative both the monarchical element and the executive. To the former belongs the final decision; the latter as advisory element possesses concrete knowledge, perspective over the whole in all its ramifications, and acquaintance with the objective principles and wants of the power of the State. Finally, in the legislature the different classes or estates are also active. These classes or estates represent in the legislature the element of subjective formal freedom, the public consciousness, the empirical totality of the views and thought of the many.
The expression “The Many” [Greek: oi polloi] characterizes the empirical totality more correctly than the customary word “All.” Though one may reply that, under this “all,” children, women, etc., are obviously meant to be excluded, yet it is more obvious that the definite expression “all” should not be used when something quite indefinite is in question.
There are, in general, current among the public so unspeakably many distorted and false notions and phrases about the people, the constitution, and the classes, that it would be a vain task to mention, explain, and correct them. The prevalent idea concerning the necessity and utility of an assembly of estates amounts to the assumption that the people’s deputies, nay, the people itself, best understand what would promote the common weal, and that they have indubitably the good will to promote it. As for the first point, the case is just the reverse. The people, in so far as this term signifies a special part of the citizens, stands precisely for the part that does not know what it wills. To know what one wills, and, what is more difficult, to know what the absolute will, viz., reason, wills, is the fruit of deep knowledge and insight; and that is obviously not a possession of the people. As for the especially good will, which the classes are supposed to have for the common good, the usual point of view of the masses is the negative one of suspecting the government of a will which is evil or of little good.
The attitude of the government toward the classes must not be essentially a hostile one. Belief in the necessity of this hostile relation is a sad mistake. The government is not one party in opposition to another, so that both are engaged in wresting something from each other. When the State is in such a situation it is a misfortune and not a mark of health. Furthermore, the taxes, for which the classes vote, are not to be looked upon as gifts, but are consented to for the best interests of those consenting. What constitutes the true meaning of the classes is this–that through them the State enters into the subjective consciousness of the people and thus the people begin to share in the State.
In despotic countries, where there are only princes and people, the people assert themselves, whenever they act, as a destructive force directed against the organization, but the masses, when they become organically related to the State, obtain their interests in a lawful and orderly way. When this organic relation is lacking, the self-expression of the masses is always violent; in despotic States the despot shows, therefore, indulgence for his people, and his rage is always felt by those surrounding him. Moreover, the people of a despotic State pay light taxes, which in a constitutional State are increased through the very consciousness of the people. In no other country are taxes so heavy as they are in England.
There exists a current notion to the effect that, since the private class is raised in the legislature to a participation in the universal cause, it must appear in the form of individuals–either that representatives are chosen for the function, or that every individual exercises a vote. This abstract atomic view prevails neither in the family nor in civic society, in both of which the individual appears only as a member of a universal. The State, however, is in essence an organization of members, and these members are themselves spheres; in it no element shall show itself as an unorganized mass. The many, as individuals, whom one chooses to call the people, are indeed a collection, but only as a multitude, a formless mass, whose movement and action would be elemental, irrational, savage, and terrible.
The concrete State is the whole, organized into its particular spheres, and the member of the State is a member of such a particular class. Only in this objective determination can the individual find recognition in the State. Only in his cooeperate capacity, as member of the community and the like, can the individual first find a real and vital place in the universal. It remains, of course, open to him to rise through his skill to any class for which he can qualify himself, including even the universal class.
It is a matter of great advantage to have among the delegates representatives of every special branch of society, such as trade, manufacture, etc.–individuals thoroughly familiar with their branch and belonging to it. In the notion of a loose and indefinite election this important matter is left to accident; every branch, however, has the same right to be represented as every other. To view the delegates as representatives has, then, an organic and rational meaning only if they are not representatives of mere individuals, of the mere multitude, but of one of the essential spheres of society and of its large interests. Representation thus no longer means substitution of one person by another, but it means, rather, that the interest itself is actually present in the representative.
Of the elections by many separate individuals it may be observed that there is necessarily an indifference, especially in large States, about using one’s vote, since one vote is of such slight importance; and those who have the right to vote will not do so, no matter how much one may extol the privilege of voting. Hence this institution turns into the opposite of what it stands for. The election becomes the business of a few, of a single party, of a special interest, which should, in fact, be neutralized.
Through the publicity of the assembly of classes public opinion first acquires true thoughts and an insight into the condition and the notion of the State and its affairs, and thus develops the capacity of judging more rationally concerning them; it learns, furthermore, to know and respect the routine, talents, virtues, and skill of the authorities and officers of the State. While publicity stimulates these talents in their further development and incites their honorable display, it is also an antidote for the pride of individuals and of the multitude, and is one of the greatest opportunities for their education.
It is a widespread popular notion that everybody already knows what is good for the State, and that it is this common knowledge which finds expression in the assembly. Here, in the assembly, are developed virtues, talents, skill, which have to serve as examples. To be sure, the ministers may find these assemblies onerous, for ministers must possess large resources of wit and eloquence to resist the attacks which are hurled against them. Nevertheless, publicity is one of the best means of instruction in the interests of the State generally, for where publicity is found the people manifest an entirely different regard for the State than in those places where there are no assemblies or where they are not public. Only through the publication of every one of their proceedings are the chambers related to the larger public opinion; and it is shown that what one imagines at home with his wife and friends is one thing, and what happens in a great assembly, where one feat of eloquence wrecks another, is quite a different thing.
PUBLIC OPINION
Public opinion is the unorganized way in which what a people wants and thinks is promulgated. That which is actually effective in the State must be so in an organic fashion. In the constitution this is the case. But at all times public opinion has been a great power, and it is particularly so in our time, when the principle of subjective freedom has such importance and significance. What shall now prevail, prevails no longer through force, little through use and custom, but rather through insight and reasons.
Public opinion contains, therefore, the eternal substantial principles of justice, the true content, and the result of the whole constitution, legislation, and the universal condition in general. The form underlying public opinion is sound common sense, which is a fundamental ethical principle winding its way through everything, in spite of prepossessions. But when this inner character is formulated in the shape of general propositions, partly for their own sake, partly for the purpose of actual reasoning about events, institutions, relations, and the recognized wants of the State, there appears also the whole character of accidental opinion, with its ignorance and perversity, its false knowledge and incorrect judgment.
It is therefore not to be regarded as merely a difference in subjective opinion when it is asserted on the one hand–
“Vox populi, vox dei”;
and on the other (in Ariosto, for instance)–[2]
“Che’l Volgare ignorante ogn’ un riprenda E parli piue di quel che meno intenda.”
Both sides co-exist in public opinion. Since truth and endless error are so directly united in it, neither one nor the other side is truly in earnest. Which one is in earnest, is difficult to decide–difficult, indeed, if one confines oneself to the direct expression of public opinion. But as the substantial principle is the inner character of public opinion, this alone is its truly earnest aspect; yet this insight cannot be obtained from public opinion itself, for a substantial principle can only be apprehended apart from public opinion and by a consideration of its own nature. No matter with what passion an opinion is invested, no matter with what earnestness a view is asserted, attacked, and defended, this is no criterion of its real essence. And least of all could public opinion be made to see that its seriousness is nothing serious at all.
A great mind has publicly raised the question whether it is permissible to deceive a people. The answer is that a people will not permit itself to be deceived concerning its substantial basis, the essence, and the definite character of its spirit, but it deceives itself about the way in which it knows this, and according to which it judges of its acts, events, etc.
Public opinion deserves, therefore, to be esteemed as much as to be despised; to be despised for its concrete consciousness and expression, to be esteemed for its essential fundamental principle, which only shines, more or less dimly, through its concrete expression. Since public opinion possesses within itself no standard of discrimination, no capacity to rise to a recognition of the substantial, independence of it is the first formal condition of any great and rational enterprise (in actuality as well as in science). Anything great and rational is eventually sure to please public opinion, to be espoused by it, and to be made one of its prepossessions.
In public opinion all is false and true, but to discover the truth in it is the business of the great man. The great man of his time is he who expresses the will and the meaning of that time, and then brings it to completion; he acts according to the inner spirit and essence of his time, which he realizes. And he who does not understand how to despise public opinion, as it makes itself heard here and there, will never accomplish anything great.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
The freedom of public utterance (of which the press is one means, having advantage over speech in its more extended reach, though inferior to it in vivacity), the gratification of that prickling impulse to express and to have expressed one’s opinion, is directly controlled by the police and State laws and regulations, which partly hinder and partly punish its excesses. The indirect guarantee lies in its innocuousness, and this again is mainly based on the rationality of the constitution, the stability of the government, and also on the publicity given to the assemblies of the classes. Another security is offered by the indifference and contempt with which insipid and malicious words are, as a rule, quickly met.
The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write what one pleases, is parallel to the one of freedom in general, viz., as freedom to do what one pleases. Such views belong to the uneducated crudity and superficiality of naive thinking. The press, with its infinite variety of content and expression, represents what is most transient, particular, and accidental in human opinion. Beyond the direct incitation to theft, murder, revolt, etc., lies the art of cultivating the expression which in itself seems general and indefinite enough, but which, in a measure, conceals a perfectly definite meaning. Such expressions are partly responsible for consequences of which, since they are not actually expressed, one is never sure how far they are contained in the utterances and really follow from them. It is this indefiniteness of the content and form of the press which prevents the laws governing it from assuming that precision which one demands of laws. Thus the extreme subjectivity of the wrong, injury, and crime committed by the press, causes the decision and sentence to be equally subjective. The laws are not only indefinite, but the press can, by the skill and subtlety of its expressions, evade them, or criticise the judgment of the court as wholly arbitrary. Furthermore, if the utterance of the press is treated as an offensive deed, one may retort that it is not a deed at all, but only an opinion, a thought, a mere saying. Consequently, impunity is expected for opinions and words, because they are merely subjective, trivial, and insignificant, and, in the same breath, great respect and esteem is demanded for these opinions and words–for the opinions, because they are mine and my mental property, and for the words, because they are the free expression and use of that property. And yet the basic principle remains that injury to the honor of individuals generally, abuse, libel, contemptuous caricaturing of the government, its officers and officials, especially the person of the prince, defiance of the laws, incitement to revolt, etc., are all offenses and crimes of different grades.
However, the peculiar and dangerous effect of these acts for the individuals, the community, and the State depends upon the nature of the soil on which they are committed, just as a spark, if thrown upon a heap of gunpowder, has a much more dangerous result than if thrown on the mere ground, where it vanishes and leaves no trace. But, on the whole, a good many such acts, though punishable by law, may come under a certain kind of nemesis which internal impotence is forced to bring about. In entering upon opposition to the superior talents and virtues, by which impotence feels oppressed, it comes to a realization of its inferiority and to a consciousness of its own nothingness, and the nemesis, even when bad and odious, is, by treating it with contempt, rendered ineffectual. Like the public, which forms a circle for such activity, it is confined to a harmless malicious joy, and to a condemnation which reflects upon itself.
MEANING OF WAR
There is an ethical element in war. It must not be regarded as an absolute ill, or as merely an external calamity which is accidentally based upon the passions of despotic individuals or nations, upon acts of injustice, and, in general, upon what ought not to be. The recognition of the finite, such as property and life, as accidental, is necessary. This necessity is at first wont to appear under the form of a force of nature, for all things finite are mortal and transient. In the ethical order, in the State, however, nature is robbed of its force, and the necessity is exalted to a work of freedom, to an ethical law. The transient and negative nature of all things is transformed in the State into an expression of the ethical will. War, often painted by edifying speech as a state in which the vanity of temporal things is demonstrated, now becomes an element whereby the ideal character of the particular receives its right and reality. War has the deep meaning that by it the ethical health of the nations is preserved and their finite aims uprooted. And as the winds which sweep over the ocean prevent the decay that would result from its perpetual calm, so war protects the people from the corruption which an everlasting peace would bring upon it. History shows phases which illustrate how successful wars have checked internal unrest and have strengthened the entire stability of the State.
In peace, civic life becomes more extended, every sphere is hedged in and grows immobile, and at last all men stagnate, their particular nature becoming more and more hardened and ossified. Only in the unity of a body is health, and, where the organs become stiff, there is death. Eternal peace is often demanded as an ideal toward which mankind should move. Thus Kant proposed an alliance of princes, which should settle the controversies of States, and the Holy Alliance probably aspired to be an institution of this kind. The State, however, is individual, and in individuality negation is essentially contained. A number of States may constitute themselves into a family, but this confederation, as an individuality, must create an opposition and so beget an enemy. Not only do nations issue forth invigorated from their wars, but those nations torn by internal strife win peace at home as a result of war abroad. War indeed causes insecurity in property, but this real insecurity is only a necessary commotion. From the pulpits much is preached concerning the insecurity, vanity, and instability of temporal things, and yet every one, though he may be touched by his own words, thinks that he, at least, will manage to hold on to his possessions. Let the insecurity finally come, in the form of Hussars with glistening sabres, and show its earnest activity, and that touching edification which foresaw all this now turns upon the enemy with curses. In spite of this, wars will break out whenever necessity demands them; but the seeds spring up anew, and speech is silenced before the grave repetitions of history.
The military class is the class of universality. The defense of the State is its privilege, and its duty is to realize the ideality contained in it, which consists in self-sacrifice. There are different kinds of bravery. The courage of the animal, or the robber, the bravery which arises from a sense of honor, the chivalrous bravery, are not yet the true forms of it. In civilized nations true bravery consists in the readiness to give oneself wholly to the service of the State, so that the individual counts but as one among many. Not personal valor, but the important aspect of it, lies in self-subordination to the universal cause.
To risk one’s life is indeed something more than mere fear of death, but this is only negative; only a positive character–an aim and content–gives meaning to bravery. Robbers and murderers in the pursuit of crime, adventurers in the search of their fanciful objects, etc., also possess courage, and do not fear death. The principle of the modern world–the power of thought and of the universal–has given to bravery a higher form; the higher form causes the expression of bravery to appear more mechanical. The brave deeds are not the deeds of any particular person, but those of the members of a whole. And, again, since hostility is directed, not against separate individuals, but against a hostile whole, personal valor appears as impersonal. This principle it is which has caused the invention of the gun; it is not a chance invention that has brought about the change of the mere personal form of bravery into the more abstract.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Just as the individual is not a real person unless related to other persons, so the State is no real individuality unless related to other States. The legitimate power of a State, and more especially its princely power, is, from the point of view of its foreign relations, a wholly internal affair. A State shall, therefore, not interfere with the internal affairs of another State. On the other hand, for a complete State, it is essential that it be recognized by others; but this recognition demands as a guarantee that it shall recognize those States which recognize it, and shall respect their independence. Hence its internal affairs cannot be a matter of indifference to them.
When Napoleon, before the peace of Campoformio, said, “The French Republic requires recognition as little as the sun needs to be recognized,” his words suggest nothing but the strength of existence, which already carries with it the guarantee of recognition, without needing to be expressed.
When the particular wills of the State can come to no agreement their controversy can be decided only by war. What offense shall be regarded as a breach of a treaty, or as a violation of respect and honor, must remain indefinite, since many and various injuries can easily accrue from the wide range of the interests of the States and from the complex relations of their citizens. The State may identify its infinitude and honor with every one of its single aspects. And if a State, as a strong individuality, has experienced an unduly protracted internal rest, it will naturally be more inclined to irritability, in order to find an occasion and field for intense activity.
The nations of Europe form a family according to the universal principle of their legislation, their ethical code, and their civilization. But the relation among States fluctuates, and no judge exists to adjust their differences. The higher judge is the universal and absolute Spirit alone–the World-Spirit.
The relation of one particular State to another presents, on the largest possible scale, the most shifting play of individual passions, interests, aims, talents, virtues, power, injustice, vice, and mere external chance. It is a play in which even the ethical whole, the independence of the State, is exposed to accident. The principles which control the many national spirits are limited. Each nation as an existing individuality is guided by its particular principles, and only as a particular individuality can each national spirit win objectivity and self-consciousness; but the fortunes and deeds of States in their relation to one another reveal the dialectic of the finite nature of these spirits. Out of this dialectic rises the universal Spirit, the unlimited World-Spirit, pronouncing its judgment–and its judgment is the highest–upon the finite nations of the world’s history; for the history of the world is the world’s court of justice.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART (1820-21)
BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard University
THE MEANING OF ART
The appropriate expression for our subject is the “Philosophy of Art,” or, more precisely, the “Philosophy of Fine Arts.” By this expression we wish to exclude the beauty of nature. In common life we are in the habit of speaking of beautiful color, a beautiful sky, a beautiful river, beautiful flowers, beautiful animals, and beautiful human beings. But quite aside from the question, which we wish not to discuss here, how far beauty may be predicated of such objects, or how far natural beauty may be placed side by side with artistic beauty, we must begin by maintaining that artistic beauty is higher than the beauty of nature. For the beauty of art is beauty born–and born again–of the spirit. And as spirit and its products stand higher than nature and its phenomena, by so much the beauty that resides in art is superior to the beauty of nature.
To say that spirit and artistic beauty stand higher than natural beauty, is to say very little, for “higher” is a very indefinite expression, which states the difference between them as quantitative and external. The “higher” quality of spirit and of artistic beauty does not at all stand in a merely relative position to nature. Spirit only is the true essence and content of the world, so that whatever is beautiful is truly beautiful only when it partakes of this higher essence and is produced by it. In this sense natural beauty appears only as a reflection of the beauty that belongs to spirit; it is an imperfect and incomplete expression of the spiritual substance.
[Illustration: ROYAL OLD MUSEUM IN BERLIN _By Schinkel_]
Confining ourselves to artistic beauty, we must first consider certain difficulties. The first that suggests itself is the question whether art is at all worthy of a philosophic treatment. To be sure, art and beauty pervade, like a kindly genius, all the affairs of life, and joyously adorn all its inner and outer phases, softening the gravity and the burden of actual existence, furnishing pleasure for idle moments, and, where it can accomplish nothing positive, driving evil away by occupying its place. Yet, although art wins its way everywhere with its pleasing forms, from the crude adornment of the savages to the splendor of the temple with its marvelous wealth of decoration, art itself appears to fall outside the real aims of life. And though the creations of art cannot be said to be directly disadvantageous to the serious purposes of life, nay, on occasion actually further them by holding evil at bay, on the whole, art belongs to the relaxation and leisure of the mind, while the substantial interests of life demand its exertion. At any rate, such a view renders art a superfluity, though the tender and emotional influence which is wrought upon the mind by occupation with art is not thought necessarily detrimental, because effeminate.
There are others, again, who, though acknowledging art to be a luxury, have thought it necessary to defend it by pointing to the practical necessities of the fine arts and to the relation they bear to morality and piety. Very serious aims have been ascribed to art. Art has been recommended as a mediator between reason and sensuousness, between inclination and duty, as the reconcilor of all these elements constantly warring with one another. But it must be said that, by making art serve two masters, it is not rendered thereby more worthy of a philosophic treatment. Instead of being an end in itself, art is degraded into a means of appealing to higher aims, on the one hand, and to frivolity and idleness on the other.
Art considered as means offers another difficulty which springs from its form. Granting that art can be subordinated to serious aims and that the results which it thus produces will be significant, still the means used by art is deception, for beauty is appearance, its form is its life; and one must admit that a true and real purpose should not be achieved through deception. Even if a good end is thus, now and then, attained by art its success is rather limited, and even then deception cannot be recommended as a worthy means; for the means should be adequate to the dignity of the end, and truth can be produced by truth alone and not by deception and semblance.
It may thus appear as if art were not worthy of philosophic consideration because it is supposed to be merely a pleasing pastime; even when it pursues more serious aims it does not correspond with their nature. On the whole, it is conceived to serve both grave and light interests, achieving its results by means of deception and semblance.
As for the worthiness of art to be philosophically considered, it is indeed true that art can be used as a casual amusement, furnishing enjoyment and pleasure, decorating our surroundings, lending grace to the external conditions of life, and giving prominence to other objects through ornamentation. Art thus employed is indeed not an independent or free, but rather a subservient art. That art might serve other purposes and still retain its pleasure-giving function, is a relation which it has in common with thought. For science, too, in the hands of the servile understanding is used for finite ends and accidental means, and is thus not self-sufficient, but is determined by outer objects and circumstances. On the other hand, science can emancipate itself from such service and can rise in free independence to the pursuit of truth, in which the realization of its own aims is its proper function.
Art is not genuine art until it has thus liberated itself. It fulfils its highest task when it has joined the same sphere with religion and philosophy and has become a certain mode of bringing to consciousness and expression the divine meaning of things, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most universal truths of the spirit. Into works of art the nations have wrought their most profound ideas and aspirations. Fine Art often constitutes the key, and with many nations it is the only key, to an understanding of their wisdom and religion. This character art has in common with religion and philosophy. Art’s peculiar feature, however, consists in its ability to represent in _sensuous form_ even the highest ideas, bringing them thus nearer to the character of natural phenomena, to the senses, and to feeling. It is the height of a supra-sensuous world into which _thought_ reaches, but it always appears to immediate consciousness and to present experience as an alien _beyond_. Through the power of philosophic thinking we are able to soar above what is merely _here_, above sensuous and finite experience. But spirit can heal the breach between the supra-sensuous and the sensuous brought on by its own advance; it produces out of itself the world of fine art as the first reconciling medium between what is merely external, sensuous, and transient, and the world of pure thought, between nature with its finite reality and the infinite freedom of philosophic reason.
Concerning the unworthiness of art because of its character as appearance and deception, it must be admitted that such criticism would not be without justice, if appearance could be said to be equivalent to falsehood and thus to something that ought not to be. Appearance is essential to reality; truth could not be, did it not shine through appearance. Therefore not appearance in general can be objected to, but merely the particular kind of appearance through which art seeks to portray truth. To charge the appearance in which art chooses to embody its ideas as deception, receives meaning only by comparison with the external world of phenomena and its immediate materiality, as well as with the inner world of sensations and feelings. To these two worlds we are wont, in our empirical work-a-day life, to attribute the value of actuality, reality, and truth, in contrast to art, which is supposed to be lacking such reality and truth. But, in fact, it is just the whole sphere of the empirical inner and outer world that is not the world of true reality; indeed it may be called a mere show and a cruel deception in a far stricter sense than in the case of art. Only beyond the immediacy of sense and of external objects is genuine reality to be found. Truly real is but the fundamental essence and the underlying substance of nature and of spirit, and the universal element in nature and in spirit is precisely what art accentuates and makes visible. This essence of reality appears also in the common outer and inner world, but it appears in the form of a chaos of contingencies, distorted by the immediateness of sense perception, and by the capriciousness of conditions, events, characters, etc. Art frees the true meaning of appearances from the show and deception of this bad and transient world, and invests it with a higher reality, born of the spirit. Thus, far removed from being mere appearances, the products of art have a higher reality and a more genuine being than the things of ordinary life.
THE CONTENT AND IDEAL OF ART
The content of art is spiritual, and its form is sensuous; both sides art has to reconcile into a united whole. The first requirement is that the content, which art is to represent, must be worthy of artistic representation; otherwise we obtain only a bad unity, since a content not capable of artistic treatment is made to take on an artistic form, and a matter prosaic in itself is forced into a form quite opposed to its inherent nature.
The second requirement demands of the content of art that it shall be no abstraction. By this is not meant that it must be concrete, as the sensuous is alleged to be concrete in contrast to everything spiritual and intellectual. For everything that is genuinely true, in the realm of thought as well as in the domain of nature, is concrete, and has, in spite of universality, nevertheless, a particular and subjective character. By saying, for example, that God is simply One, the Supreme Being as such, we express thereby nothing but a lifeless abstraction of an understanding devoid of reason. Such a God, as indeed he is not conceived in his concrete truth, can furnish no content for art, least of all for plastic art. Thus the Jews and the Turks have not been able to represent their God, who is still more abstract, in the positive manner in which the Christians have represented theirs. For in Christianity God is conceived in his truth, and therefore concrete, as a person, as a subject, and, more precisely still, as Spirit. What he is as spirit appears to the religious consciousness as a Trinity of persons, which at the same time is One. Here the essence of God is the reconciled unity of universality and particularity, such unity alone being concrete. Hence, as a content in order to be true must be concrete in this sense, art demands the same concreteness; because a mere abstract idea, or an abstract universal, cannot manifest itself in a particular and sensuous unified form.
If a true and therefore concrete content is to have its adequate sensuous form and shape, this sensuous form must–this being the third requirement–also be something individual, completely concrete, and one. The nature of concreteness belonging to both the content and the representation of art, is precisely the point in which both can coincide and correspond to each other. The natural shape of the human body, for example, is a sensuous concrete object, which is perfectly adequate to represent the spiritual in its concreteness; the view should therefore be abandoned that an existing object from the external world is accidentally chosen by art to express a spiritual idea. Art does not seize upon this or that form either because it simply finds it or because it can find no other, but the concrete spiritual content itself carries with it the element of external, real, yes, even sensuous, representation. And this is the reason why a sensuous concrete object, which bears the impress of an essentially spiritual content, addresses itself to the inner eye; the outward shape whereby the content is rendered visible and imaginable aims at an existence only in our heart and mind. For this reason alone are content and artistic shape harmoniously wrought. The mere sensuously concrete external nature as such has not this purpose for its only origin. The gay and variegated plumage of the birds shines unseen, and their song dies away unheard; the torch-thistle which blossoms only for a night withers without having been admired in the wilds of southern forests; and these forests, groves of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, with the most odorous and fragrant perfumes, perish and waste, no more enjoyed. The work of art is not so unconsciously self-immersed, but it is essentially a question, an address to the responsive soul, an appeal to the heart and to the mind.
Although the sensuous form in which art clothes its content is not accidental, yet it is not the highest form whereby the spiritually concrete may be grasped. A higher mode than representation through a sensuous form, is thought. True and rational thinking, though in a relative sense abstract, must not be one-sided, but concrete. How far a definite content can be adequately treated by art and how far it needs, according to its nature, a higher and more spiritual form, is a distinction which we see at once if, for example, the Greek gods are compared with God as conceived in accordance with Christian notions. The Greek god is not abstract but individual, closely related to the natural human form. The Christian God is also a concrete personality, but he is pure spiritually, and can be known only as spirit and in spirit. His sphere of existence is therefore essentially inner knowledge, and not the outer natural shape through which he can be represented but imperfectly and not in the whole depth of his essence.
But the task of art is to represent a spiritual idea to direct contemplation in sensuous form, and not in the form of thought or of pure spirituality. The value and dignity of such representation lies in the correspondence and unity of the two sides, of the spiritual content and its sensuous embodiment, so that the perfection and excellency of art must depend upon the grade of inner harmony and union with which the spiritual idea and the sensuous form interpenetrate.
The requirement of the conformity of spiritual idea and sensuous form might at first be interpreted as meaning that any idea whatever would suffice, so long as the concrete form represented this idea and no other. Such a view, however, would confound the ideal of art with mere correctness, which consists in the expression of any meaning in its appropriate form. The artistic ideal is not to be thus understood. For any content whatever is capable, according to the standard of its own nature, of adequate representation, but yet it does not for that reason lay claim to artistic beauty in the ideal sense. Judged by the standard of ideal beauty, even such correct representation will be defective. In this connection we may remark that the defects of a work of art are not to be considered simply as always due to the incapacity of the artist; defectiveness of form has also its root in defectiveness of content. Thus, for instance, the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, in their artistic objects, their representations of the gods, and their idols, adhered to formlessness, or to a vague and inarticulate form, and were not able to arrive at genuine beauty, because their mythological ideas, the content and conception of their works of art, were as yet vague and obscure. The more perfect in form works of art are, the more profound is the inner truth of their content and thought. And it is not merely a question of the greater or lesser skill with which the objects of external nature are studied and copied, for, in certain stages of artistic consciousness and artistic activity, the misrepresentation and distortion of natural objects are not unintentional technical inexpertness and incapacity, but conscious alteration, which depends upon the content that is in consciousness, and is, in fact, demanded by it. We may thus speak of imperfect art, which, in its own proper sphere, may be quite perfect both technically and in other respects. When compared with the highest idea and ideal of art, it is indeed defective. In the highest art alone are the idea and its representation in perfect congruity, because the sensuous form of the idea is in itself the adequate form, and because the content, which that form embodies, is itself a genuine content.
The higher truth of art consists, then, in the spiritual having attained a sensuous form adequate to its essence. And this also furnishes the principle of division for the philosophy of art. For the Spirit, before it wins the true meaning of its absolute essence, has to develop through a series of stages which constitute its very life. To this universal evolution there corresponds a development of the phases of art, under the form of which the Spirit–as artist–attains to a comprehension of its own meaning.
This evolution within the spirit of art has two sides. The development is, in the first place, a spiritual and universal one, in so far as a gradual series of definite conceptions of the universe–of nature, man, and God–finds artistic representation. In the second place, this universal development of art, embodying itself in sensuous form, determines definite modes of artistic expression and a totality of necessary distinctions within the sphere of art. These constitute the particular arts.
We have now to consider three definite relations of the spiritual idea to its sensuous expression.
SYMBOLIC ART
Art begins when the spiritual idea, being itself still indefinite and obscure and ill-comprehended, is made the content of artistic forms. As indefinite, it does not yet have that individuality which the artistic ideal demands; its abstractness and one-sidedness thus render its shape defective and whimsical. The first form of art is therefore rather a mere search after plasticity than a capacity of true representation. The spiritual idea has not yet found its adequate form, but is still engaged in striving and struggling after it. This form we may, in general, call the _symbolic_ form of art; in such form the abstract idea assumes a shape in natural sensuous matter which is foreign to it; with this foreign matter the artistic creation begins, from which, however, it seems unable to free itself. The objects of external nature are reproduced unchanged, but at the same time the meaning of the spiritual idea is attached to them. They thus receive the vocation of expressing it, and must be interpreted as if the spiritual idea were actually present in them. It is indeed true that natural objects possess an aspect which makes them capable of representing a universal meaning, but in symbolic art a complete correspondence is not yet possible. In it the correspondence is confined to an abstract quality, as when, for example, a lion is meant to stand for strength.
This abstract relation brings also to consciousness the foreignness of the spiritual idea to natural phenomena. And the spiritual idea, having no other reality to express its essence, expatiates in all these natural shapes, seeks itself in their unrest and disproportion, but finds them inadequate to it. It then exaggerates these natural phenomena and shapes them into the huge and the boundless. The spiritual idea revels in them, as it were, seethes and ferments in them, does violence to them, distorts and disfigures them into grotesque shapes, and endeavors by the diversity, hugeness, and splendor of such forms to raise the natural phenomena to the spiritual level. For here it is the spiritual idea which is more or less vague and non-plastic, while the objects of nature have a thoroughly definite form.
The incongruity of the two elements to each other makes the relation of the spiritual idea to objective reality a negative one. The spiritual as a wholly inner element and as the universal substance of all things, is conceived unsatisfied with all externality, and in its _sublimity_ it triumphs over the abundance of unsuitable forms. In this conception of sublimity the natural objects and the human shapes are accepted and left unaltered, but at the same time recognized as inadequate to their own inner meaning; it is this inner meaning which is glorified far and above every worldly content.
These elements constitute, in general, the character of the primitive artistic pantheism of the Orient, which either invests even the lowest objects with absolute significance, or forces all phenomena with violence to assume the expression of its world-view. This art becomes therefore bizarre, grotesque, and without taste, or it represents the infinite substance in its abstract freedom turning away with disdain from the illusory and perishing mass of appearances. Thus the meaning can never be completely molded into the expression, and, notwithstanding all the aspiration and effort, the incongruity between the spiritual idea and the sensuous form remains insuperable. This is, then, the first form of art-symbolic art with its endless quest, its inner struggle, its sphinx-like mystery, and its sublimity.
CLASSICAL ART
In the second form of art, which we wish to designate as the _classical_, the double defect of symbolic art is removed. The symbolic form is imperfect, because the spiritual meaning which it seeks to convey enters into consciousness in but an abstract and vague manner, and thus the congruity between meaning and form must always remain defective and therefore abstract. This double aspect disappears in the classical type of art; in it we find the free and adequate embodiment of the spiritual idea in the form most suitable to it, and with it meaning and expression are in perfect accord. It is classical art, therefore, which first affords the creation and contemplation of the completed ideal, realizing it as a real fact in the world.
But the congruity of idea and reality in classical art must not be taken in a formal sense of the agreement of a content with its external form; otherwise every photograph of nature, every picture of a countenance, landscape, flower, scene, etc., which constitutes the aim of a representation, would, through the conformity of content and form, be at once classical. The peculiarity of classical art, on the contrary, consists in its content being itself a concrete idea, and, as such, a concrete spiritual idea, for only the spiritual is a truly essential content. For a worthy object of such a content, Nature must be consulted as to whether she contains anything to which a spiritual attribute really belongs. It must be the World-Spirit itself that _invented_ the proper form for the concrete spiritual ideal–the subjective mind–in this case the spirit of art–has only _found_ it, and given it natural plastic existence in accordance with free individual spirituality. The form in which the idea, as spiritual and individual, clothes itself when revealed as a temporal phenomenon, is _the human form_. To be sure, personification and anthropomorphism have frequently been decried as a degradation of the spiritual; but art, in so far as its task is to bring before direct contemplation the spiritual in sensuous form, must advance to such anthropomorphism, for only in its body can mind appear in an adequately sensuous fashion. The migration of souls is, in this respect, an abstract notion, and physiology should make it one of its fundamental principles that life has necessarily, in its evolution, to advance to the human shape as the only sensuous phenomenon appropriate to the mind.
The human body as portrayed by classical art is not represented in its mere physical existence, but solely as the natural and sensuous form and garb of mind; it is therefore divested of all the defects that belong to the merely sensuous and of all the finite contingencies that appertain to the phenomenal. But if the form must be thus purified in order to express the appropriate content, and, furthermore, if the conformity of meaning and expression is to be complete, the content which is the spiritual idea must be perfectly capable of being expressed through the bodily form of man, without projecting into another sphere beyond the physical and sensuous representation. The result is that Spirit is characterized as a particular form of mind, namely, as human mind, and not as simply absolute and eternal; but the absolute and eternal Spirit must be able to reveal and express itself in a manner far more spiritual.
This latter point brings to light the defect of classical art, which demands its dissolution and its transition to a third and higher form, to wit, the _romantic_ form of art.
ROMANTIC ART
The romantic form of art destroys the unity of the spiritual idea and its sensuous form, and goes back, though on a higher level, to the difference and opposition of the two, which symbolic art left unreconciled. The classical form of art attained, indeed, the highest degree of perfection which the sensuous process of art was capable of realizing; and, if it shows any defects, the defects are those of art itself, due to the limitation of its sphere. This limitation has its root in the general attempt of art to represent in sensuous concrete form the infinite and universal Spirit, and in the attempt of the classical type of art to blend so completely spiritual and sensuous existence that the two appear in mutual conformity. But in such a fusion of the spiritual and sensuous aspects Spirit cannot be portrayed according to its true essence, for the true essence of Spirit is its infinite subjectivity; and its absolute internal meaning does not lend itself to a full and free expression in the confinement of the bodily form as its only appropriate existence.
Now, romantic art dissolves the inseparable unity which is the ideal of the classical type, because it has won a content which goes beyond the classical form of art and its mode of expression. This content–if familiar ideas may be recalled–coincides with what Christianity declares to be true of God as Spirit, in distinction to the Greek belief in gods which constitutes the essential and appropriate subject for classical art. The concrete content of Hellenic art implies the unity of the human and divine nature, a unity which, just because it is merely _implied_ and _immediate_, permits of a representation in an immediately visible and sensuous mold. The Greek god is the object of naive contemplation and sensuous imagination; his shape is, therefore, the bodily shape of man; the circle of his power and his essence is individual and confined. To man the Greek god appears as a being and a power with whom he may _feel_ a kinship and unity, but this kinship and unity, are not reflected upon or raised into definite knowledge. The higher stage is the _knowledge_ of this unconscious unity, which underlies the classical form of art and which it has rendered capable of complete plastic embodiment. The elevation of what is unconscious and implied into self-conscious knowledge brings about an enormous difference; it is the infinite difference which, for example, separates man from the animal. Man is an animal, but, even in his animal functions, does not rest satisfied with the potential and the unconscious as the animal does, but becomes conscious of them, reflects upon them, and raises them–as, for instance, the process of digestion–into self-conscious science. And it is thus that man breaks through the boundary of his merely immediate and unconscious existence, so that, just because he knows himself to be animal, he ceases in virtue of such knowledge to be animal, and, through such self-knowledge only, can characterize himself as mind or spirit.
If in the manner just described the unity of the human and divine nature is raised from an _immediate_ to a _conscious,_ unity, the true mold for the reality of this content is no longer the sensuous, immediate existence of the spiritual, the bodily frame of man, but self-consciousness and internal contemplation. For this reason Christianity, in depicting God as Spirit–not as particularized individual mind, but as absolute and universal Spirit–retires from the sensuousness of imagination into the sphere of inner being, and makes this, and not the bodily form, the material and mold of its content; and thus the unity of the human and divine nature is a conscious unity, capable of realization only by spiritual knowledge. The new content, won by this unity, is not dependent upon sensuous representation; it is now exempt from such immediate existence. In this way, however, romantic art becomes art which transcends itself, carrying on this process of self-transcendence within its own artistic sphere and artistic form.
Briefly stated, the essence of romantic art consists in the artistic object being the free, concrete, spiritual idea itself, which is revealed in its spirituality to the inner, and not the outer, eye. In conformity with such a content, art can, in a sense, not work for sensuous perception, but must aim at the inner mood, which completely fuses with its object, at the most subjective inner shrine, at the heart, the feeling, which, as spiritual feeling, longs for freedom within itself and seeks and finds reconciliation only within the inner recesses of the spirit. This _inner_ world is the content of romantic art, and as such an inner life, or as its reflection, it must seek embodiment. The inner life thus triumphs over the outer world–indeed, so triumphs over it that the outer world itself is made to proclaim its victory, through which the sensuous appearance sinks into worthlessness.
On the other hand, the romantic type of art, like every other, needs an external mode of expression. But the spiritual has now retired from the outer mode into itself, and the sensuous externality of form assumes again, as it did in symbolic art, an insignificant and transient character. The subjective, finite mind and will, the peculiarity and caprice of the individual, of character, action, or of incident and plot, assume likewise the character they had in symbolic art. The external side of things is surrendered to accident and committed to the excesses of the imagination, whose caprice now mirrors existence as it is, now chooses to distort the objects of the outer world into a bizarre and grotesque medley, for the external form no longer possesses a meaning and significance, as in classical art, on its own account and for it own sake. Feeling is now everything. It finds its artistic reflection, not in the world of external things and their forms, but in its own expression; and in every incident and accident of life, in every misfortune, grief, and even crime, feeling preserves or regains its healing power of reconciliation.
Hence, the indifference, incongruity, and antagonism of spiritual idea and sensuous form, the characteristics of symbolic art, reappear in the romantic type, but with this essential difference. In the romantic realm, the spiritual idea, to whose defectiveness was due the defective forms of symbolic art, now reveals itself in its perfection within mind and feeling. It is by virtue of the higher perfection of the idea that it shuns any adequate union with an external form, since it can seek and attain its true reality and expression best within itself.
This, in general terms, is the character of the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art, which stand for the three relations of the spiritual idea to its expression in the realm of art. They consist in the aspiration after, and the attainment and transcendence of, the ideal as the true idea of beauty.
THE PARTICULAR ARTS
But, now, there inhere in the idea of beauty different modifications which art translates into sensuous forms. And we find a fundamental principle by which the several particular arts may be arranged and defined–that is, the species of art contain in themselves the same essential differences which we have found in the three general types of art. External objectivity, moreover, into which these types are molded by means of a sensuous and particular material, renders them independent and separate means of realizing different artistic functions, as far as each type finds its definite character in some one definite external material whose mode of portrayal determines its adequate realization. Furthermore, the general types of art correspond to the several particular arts, so that they (the particular arts) belong each of them _specifically_ to _one_ of the general types of art. It is these particular arts which give adequate and artistic external being to the general types.
ARCHITECTURE
The first of the particular arts with which, according to their fundamental principle, we have to begin, is architecture. Its task consists in so shaping external inorganic nature that it becomes homogeneous with mind, as an artistic outer world. The material of architecture is matter itself in its immediate externality as a heavy mass subject to mechanical laws, and its forms remain the forms of inorganic nature, but are merely arranged and ordered in accordance with the abstract rules of the understanding, the rules of symmetry. But in such material and in such forms the ideal as concrete spirituality cannot be realized; the reality which is represented in them remains, therefore, alien to the spiritual idea, as something external which it has not penetrated or with which it has but a remote and abstract relation. Hence the fundamental type of architecture is the _symbolical_ form of art. For it is architecture that paves the way, as it were, for the adequate realization of the God, toiling and wrestling in his service with external nature, and seeking to extricate it from the chaos of finitude and the abortiveness of chance. By this means it levels a space for the God, frames his external surroundings, and builds him his temple as the place for inner contemplation and for reflection upon the eternal objects of the spirit. It raises an inclosure around those gathered together, as a defense against the threatening of the wind, against rain, the thunder-storm, and wild beasts, and reveals the will to gather together, though externally, yet in accordance with the artistic form. A meaning such as this, the art of architecture is able to mold into its material and its forms with more or less success, according as the determinate nature of the content which it seeks to embody is more significant or more trivial, more concrete or more abstract, more deeply rooted within its inner being or more dim and superficial. Indeed, it may even advance so far as to endeavor to create for such meaning an adequate artistic expression with its material and forms, but in such an attempt it has already overstepped the bounds of its own sphere, and inclines towards sculpture, the higher phase of art. For the limit of architecture lies precisely in this, that it refers to the spiritual as an internal essence in contrast with the external forms of its art, and thus whatever spirit and soul are possessed it must point to as something other than itself.
SCULPTURE
Architecture, however, has purified the inorganic external world, has given it symmetric order, has impressed upon it the seal of mind, and the temple of the God, the house of his community, stands ready. Into this temple now enters the God himself. The lightning-flash of individuality strikes the inert mass, permeates it, and a form no longer merely symmetrical, but infinite and spiritual, concentrates and molds its adequate bodily shape. This is the task of sculpture. Inasmuch as in it the inner spiritual element, which architecture can no more than hint at, completely abides with the sensuous form and its external matter, and as both sides are so merged into each other that neither predominates, sculpture has the _classical_ form of art as its fundamental type. In fact, the sensuous realm itself can command no expression which could not be that of the spiritual sphere, just as, conversely, no spiritual content can attain perfect plasticity in sculpture which is incapable of being adequately presented to perception in bodily form. It is sculpture which arrests for our vision the spirit in its bodily frame, in immediate unity with it, and in an attitude of peace and repose; and the form in turn is animated by the content of spiritual individuality. Therefore the external sensuous matter is here not wrought, either according to its mechanical quality alone, as heavy mass, nor in forms peculiar to inorganic nature, nor as indifferent to color, etc., but in ideal forms of the human shape, and in the whole of the spatial dimensions. In this last respect sculpture should be credited with having first revealed the inner and spiritual essence in its eternal repose and essential self-possession. To such repose and unity with itself corresponds only that external element which itself persists in unity and repose. Such an element is the form taken in its abstract spatiality. The spirit which sculpture represents is that which is solid in itself, not variously broken up in the play of contingencies and passions; nor does its external form admit of the portrayal of such a manifold play, but it holds to this one side only, to the abstraction of space in the totality of its dimensions.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMANTIC ARTS
After architecture has built the temple and the hand of sculpture has placed inside it the statue of the God, then this sensuously visible God faces in the spacious halls of his house the _community_. The community is the spiritual, self-reflecting element in this sensuous realm, it is the animating subjectivity and inner life. A new principle of art begins with it. Both the content of art and the medium which embodies it in outward form now demand particularization, individualization, and the subjective mode of expressing these. The solid unity which the God possesses in sculpture breaks up into the plurality of inner individual lives, whose unity is not sensuous, but essentially ideal.
And now God comes to assume the aspect which makes him truly spiritual. As a hither-and-thither, as an alternation between the unity within himself and his realization in subjective knowledge and individual consciousness, as well as in the common and unified life of the many individuals, he is genuinely Spirit–the Spirit in his community. In his community God is released from the abstractness of a mysterious self-identity, as well as from the naive imprisonment in a bodily shape, in which he is represented by sculpture. Here he is exalted into spirituality, subjectivity, and knowledge. For this reason the higher content of art is now this spirituality in its absolute form. But since what chiefly reveals itself in this stage is not the serene repose of God in himself, but rather his appearance, his being, and his manifestation to others, the objects of artistic representation are now the most varied subjective expressions of life and activity for their own sake, as human passions, deeds, events, and, in general, the wide range of human feeling, will, and resignation. In accordance with this content, the sensuous element must differentiate and show itself adequate to the expression of subjective feeling. Such different media are furnished by color, by the musical sound, and finally by the sound as the mere indication of inner intuitions and ideas; and thus as different forms of realizing the spiritual content of art by means of these media we obtain painting, music, and poetry. The sensuous media employed in these arts being individualized and in their essence recognized as ideal, they correspond most effectively to the spiritual content of art, and the union between spiritual meaning and sensuous expression develops, therefore, into greater intimacy than was possible in the case of architecture and sculpture. This intimate unity, however, is due wholly to the subjective side.
Leaving, then, the symbolic spirit of architecture and the classical ideal of sculpture behind, these new arts in which form and content are raised to an ideal level borrow their type from the _romantic_ form of art, whose mode of expression they are most eminently fitted to voice. They form, however, a totality of arts, because the romantic type is the most concrete in itself.
PAINTING
The first art in this totality, which is akin to sculpture, is painting. The material which it uses for its content and for the sensuous expression of that content is visibility as such, in so far as it is individualized, viz., specified as color. To be sure, the media employed in architecture and sculpture are also visible and colored, but they are not, as in painting, visibility as such, not the simple light which contrasts itself with darkness and in combination with it becomes color. This visibility as a subjective and ideal attribute, requires neither, like architecture, the abstract mechanical form of mass which we find in heavy matter, nor, like sculpture, the three dimensions of sensuous space, even though in concentrated and organic plasticity, but the visibility which appertains to painting has its differences on a more ideal level, in the particular kinds of color; and thus painting frees art from the sensuous completeness in space peculiar to material things only, by confining itself to a plane surface.
On the other hand, the content also gains in varied particularization. Whatever can find room in the human heart, as emotion, idea, and purpose, whatever it is able to frame into a deed, all this variety of material can constitute the many-colored content of painting. The whole range of particular existence, from the highest aspirations of the mind down to the most isolated objects of nature, can obtain a place in this art. For even finite nature, in its particular scenes and aspects, can here appear, if only some allusion to a spiritual element makes it akin to thought and feeling.
MUSIC
The second art in which the romantic form finds realization, on still a higher level than in painting, is music. Its material, though still sensuous, advances to a deeper subjectivity and greater specification. The idealization of the sensuous, music brings about by negating space. In music the indifferent extension of space whose appearance painting admits and consciously imitates is concentrated and idealized into a single point. But in the form of a motion and tremor of the material body within itself, this single point becomes a concrete and active process within the idealization of matter. Such an incipient ideality of matter which no longer appears under the spatial form, but as temporal ideality, is sound the sensuous acknowledged as ideal, whose abstract visibility is transformed into audibility. Sound, as it were, exempts the ideal from its absorption in matter.
This earliest animation and inspiration of matter furnishes the medium for the inner and intimate life of the spirit, as yet on an indefinite level; it is through the tones of music that the heart pours out its whole scale of feelings and passions. Thus as sculpture constitutes the