arrangements, constitute the rights of its members; its natural features, its mountains, air, and
waters, are their country, their fatherland, their outward material property; the history of this
State, their deeds; what their ancestors have produced, belongs to them and lives in their
memory. All is their possession, just as they are possessed by it; for it constitutes their existence,
their being.
§ 57
Their imagination is occupied with the ideas thus presented, while the adoption of these laws, and
of a fatherland so conditioned is the expression of their will. It is this matured totality which thus
constitutes one Being, the spirit of one People. To it the individual members belong; each unit is
the Son of his Nation, and at the same time - in as far as the State to which he belongs is
undergoing development - the Son of his Age. None remains behind it, still less advances beyond
it. This spiritual Being (the Spirit of his Time) is his; he is a representative of it; it is that in which he
originated, and in which he lives. Among the Athenians the word Athens had a double import;
suggesting primarily, a complex of Political institutions, but no less, in the second place, that
Goddess who represented the Spirit of the People and its unity. This Spirit of a People is a
determinate and particular Spirit, and is, as just stated, further modified by the degree of its
historical development. This Spirit, then, constitutes the basis and substance of those other forms
of a nation's consciousness, which have been noticed. For Spirit in its self-consciousness must
become a object of contemplation to itself, and objectivity involves, in the first instance, the rise of
differences which make up a total of distinct spheres of objective spirit; in the same way as the
Soul exists only as the complex of its faculties, which in their form of concentration in a simple
unity produce that Soul. It is thus One Individuality which, presented in its essence as God, is
honoured and enjoyed in Religion; which is exhibited as an object of sensuous contemplation in
Art; and is apprehended as an intellectual conception in Philosophy. In virtue of the original
identity of their essence, purport, and object, these various forms are inseparably united with the
Spirit of the State. Only in connection with this particular religion can this particular political
constitution exist; just as in such or such a State, such or such a Philosophy or order of Art.
§ 58
The remark next in order is, that each particular National genius is to be treated as only One
Individual in the process of Universal History. For that history is the exhibition of the divine,
absolute development of Spirit in its highest forms, - that gradation by which it attains its truth and
consciousness of itself. The forms which these grades of progress assume are the characteristic
"National Spirits" of History; the peculiar tenor of their moral life, of their Government, their Art,
Religion, and Science. To realise these grades is the boundless impulse of the World-Spirit - the
goal of its irresistible urging; for this division into organic members, and the full development of
each, is its Idea. - Universal History is exclusively occupied with showing how Spirit comes to a
recognition and adoption of the Truth: the dawn of knowledge appears; it begins to discover
salient principles, and at last it arrives at full consciousness.
§ 59
Having, therefore, learned the abstract characteristics of the nature of Spirit, the means which it
uses to realise its Idea, and the shape assumed by it in its complete realisation in phenomenal
existence - namely, the State - nothing further remains for this introductory section to contemplate
but ...
III. Philosophic History
iii. The course of the World's History
§ 60
The mutations which history presents have been long characterised in the general, as an advance
to something better, more perfect. The changes that take place in Nature — how infinitely manifold
soever they may be — exhibit only a perpetually self-repeating cycle; in Nature there happens
“nothing new under the sun,” and the multiform play of its phenomena so far induces a feeling of
ennui; only in those changes which take place in the region of Spirit does anything new arise. This
peculiarity in the world of mind has indicated in the case of man an altogether different destiny
from that of merely natural objects — in which we find always one and the same stable character,
to which all change reverts; — namely, a real capacity for change, and that for the, better, — an
impulse of perfectibility. This principle, which reduces change itself under a law, has met with an
unfavourable reception from religions — such as the Catholic — and from States claiming as their
just right a stereotyped, or at least a stable position. If the mutability of worldly things in general —
political constitutions, for instance — is conceded, either Religion (as the Religion of Truth) is
absolutely excepted, or the difficulty escaped by ascribing changes, revolutions, and abrogations
of immaculate theories and institutions, to accidents or imprudence, — but principally to the levity
and evil passions of man. The principle of Perfectibility indeed is almost as indefinite a term as
mutability in general; it is without scope or goal, and has no standard by which to estimate the
changes in question: the improved, more perfect, state of things towards which it professedly tends
is altogether undetermined.
§ 61
The principle of Development involves also the existence of a latent germ of being — a capacity
or potentiality striving to realise itself. This formal conception finds actual existence in Spirit; which
has the History of the World for its theatre, its possession, and the sphere of its realisation. It is not
of such a nature as to be tossed to and fro amid the superficial play of accidents, but is rather the
absolute arbiter of things; entirely unmoved by contingencies, which, indeed, it applies and
manages for its own purposes. Development, however, is also a property of organised natural
objects. Their existence presents itself, not as an exclusively dependent one, subjected to external
changes, but as one which expands itself in virtue of an external unchangeable principle; a simple
essence, — whose existence, i.e., as a germ, is primarily simple, — but which subsequently
develops a variety of parts, that become involved with other objects, and consequently live
through a continuous process of changes; — a process nevertheless, that results in the very
contrary of change, and is even transformed into a vis conservatrix of the organic principle, and
the form embodying it. Thus the organised individuum produces itself; it expands itself actually to
what it was always potentially: So Spirit is only that which it attains by its own efforts; it makes
itself actually what it always was potentially. — That development (of natural organisms) takes
place in a direct, unopposed, unhindered manner. Between the Idea and its realisation — the
essential constitution of the original germ and the conformity to it of the existence derived from it
— no disturbing influence can intrude. But in relation to Spirit it is quite otherwise. The realisation
of its Idea is mediated by consciousness and will; these very faculties are, in the first instance, sunk
in their primary merely natural life; the first object and goal of their striving is the realisation of their
merely natural destiny, — but which, since it is Spirit that animates it, is possessed of vast
attractions and displays great power and [moral] richness. Thus Spirit is at war with itself ; it has to
overcome itself as its most formidable obstacle. That development which in the sphere of Nature is
a peaceful growth, is in that of Spirit, a severe, a mighty conflict with itself. What Spirit really
strives for is the realisation of its Ideal being; but in doing so, it hides that goal from its own vision,
and is proud and well satisfied in this alienation from it.
§ 62
Its expansion, therefore, does not present the harmless tranquillity of mere growth, as does that of
organic life, but a stern reluctant working against itself. It exhibits, moreover, not the mere formal
conception of development, but the attainment of a definite result. The goal of attainment we
determined at the outset: it is Spirit in its completeness, in its essential nature, i.e., Freedom. This
is the fundamental object, and therefore also the leading principle of the development, — that
whereby it receives meaning and importance (as in the Roman history, Rome is the object —
consequently that which directs our consideration of the facts related); as, conversely, the
phenomena of the process have resulted from this principle alone, and only as referred to it,
possess a sense and value. There are many considerable periods in History in which this
development seems to have been intermitted; in which we might rather say, the whole enormous
gain of previous culture appears to have been entirely lost; after which, unhappily, a new
commencement has been necessary, made in the hope of recovering — by the assistance of some
remains saved from the wreck of a former civilisation and by dint of a renewed incalculable
expenditure of strength and time, — one of the regions which had been an ancient possession of
that civilisation. We behold also continued processes of growth; structures and systems of culture
in particular spheres, rich in kind, and well developed in every direction. The merely formal and
indeterminate view of development in general can neither assign to one form of expansion
superiority over the other, nor render comprehensible the object of that decay of older periods of
growth; but must regard such occurrences, — or, to speak more particularly, the retrocessions
they exhibit, — as external contingencies; and can only judge of particular modes of development
from indeterminate points of view; which — since the development as such, is all in all — are
relative and not absolute goals of attainment.
§ 63
Universal History exhibits the gradation in the development of that principle whose substantial
purport is the consciousness of Freedom. The analysis of the successive grades, in their abstract
form, belongs to Logic; in their concrete aspect to the Philosophy of Spirit. Here it is sufficient to
state that the first step in the process presents that immersion of Spirit in Nature which has been
already referred to; the second shows it as advancing to the consciousness of its freedom. But this
initial separation from Nature is imperfect and partial, since it is derived immediately from the
merely natural state, is consequently related to it, and is still encumbered with it as an essentially
connected element. The third step is the elevation of the soul from this still limited and special form
of freedom to its pure universal form; that state in which the spiritual essence attains the
consciousness and feeling of itself. These grades are the ground-principles of the general process;
but how each of them on the other hand involves within itself a process of formation, —
constituting the links in a dialectic of transition, — to particularise this may be reserved for the
sequel.
§ 64
Here we have only to indicate that Spirit begins with a germ of infinite possibility, but only
possibility, — containing its substantial existence in an undeveloped form, as the object and goal
which it reaches only in its resultant — full reality. In actual existence Progress appears as an
advancing from the imperfect to the more perfect; but the former must not be understood
abstractly as only the imperfect, but as something which involves the very opposite of itself — the
so-called perfect — as a germ or impulse. So — reflectively, at least - possibility points to
something destined to become actual; the Aristotelian is also potentia, power and might. Thus the
Imperfect, as involving its opposite, is a contradiction, which certainly exists, but which is
continually annulled and solved; the instinctive movement — the inherent impulse in the life of the
soul — to break through the rind of mere nature, sensuousness, and that which is alien to it, and to
attain to the light of consciousness, i.e. to itself.
§ 65
We have already made the remark how the commencement of the history of Spirit must be
conceived so as to be in harmony with its Idea — in its bearing on the representations that have
been made of a primitive “natural condition,” in which freedom and justice are supposed to
exist, or to have existed. This was, however, nothing more than an assumption of historical
existence, conceived in the twilight of theorising reflection. A pretension of quite another order, —
not a mere inference of reasoning, but making the claim of historical fact, and that supernaturally
confirmed, — is put forth in connection with a different view that is now widely promulgated by a
certain class of speculatists. This view takes up the idea of the primitive paradisaical condition of
man, which had been previously expanded by the Theologians, after their fashion, — involving,
e.g., the supposition that God spoke with Adam in Hebrew, — but remodelled to suit other
requirements. The high authority appealed to in the first instance is the biblical narrative. But this
depicts the primitive condition, partly only in the few well-known traits, but partly either as in man
generically, — human nature at large, — or, so far as Adam is to be taken as an individual, and
consequently one person, — as existing and completed in this one, or only in one human pair.
The biblical account by no means justifies us in imagining a people, and an historical condition of
such people, existing in that primitive form; still less does it warrant us in attributing to them the
possession of a perfectly developed knowledge of God and Nature. “Nature,” so the fiction runs,
“like a clear mirror of God's creation, had originally lain revealed and transparent to the
