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state's subsistence cannot be made conditional on any other circumstances, nor can the state's subsistence be
put yearly in doubt. It would be a parallel absurdity if the government were, e.g., to grant and arrange the
judicial institutions always for a limited time merely; and thus, by the threat of suspending the activity of
such an institution and the fear of a consequent state of brigandage, reserve for itself a means of coercing
private individuals. Then again, the pictures of a condition of affairs, in which it might be useful and
necessary to have in hand means of compulsion, are partly based on the false conception of a contract
between rulers and ruled, and partly presuppose the possibility of such a divergence in spirit between these
two parties as would make constitution and government quite out of the question. If we suppose the empty
possibility of getting help by such compulsive means brought into existence, such help would rather be the
derangement and dissolution of the state, in which there would no longer be a government, but only parties,
and the violence and oppression of one party would only be helped away by the other. To fit together the
several parts of the state into a constitution after the fashion of mere understanding - i.e. to adjust within it
the machinery of a balance of powers external to each other - is to contravene the fundamental idea of what a
state is.
¤ 545 The final aspect of the state is to appear in immediate actuality as a single nation marked by physical
conditions. As a single individual it is exclusive against other like individuals. In their mutual relations,
waywardness and chance have a place; for each person in the aggregate is autonomous: the universal of law
is only postulated between them, and not actually existent. This independence of a central authority reduces
disputes between them to terms of mutual violence, a state of war, to meet which the general estate in the
community assumes the particular function of maintaining the state's independence against other states, and
becomes the estate of bravery.
¤ 546 This state of war shows the omnipotence of the state in its individuality - an individuality that goes
even to abstract negativity. Country and fatherland then appear as the power by which the particular
independence of individuals and their absorption in the external existence of possession and in natural life is
convicted of its own nullity - as the power which procures the maintenance of the general substance by the
C. THE MORAL LIFE, OR SOCIAL ETHICS(1) 58
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
patriotic sacrifice on the part of these individuals of this natural and particular existence - so making
nugatory the nugatoriness that confronts it.
(b) External Public Law(8)
¤ 547 In the state of war the independence of States is at stake. In one case the result may be the mutual
recognition of free national individualities (¤ 430): and by peace-conventions supposed to be for ever, both
this general recognition, and the special claims of nations on one another, are settled and fixed. External
state-rights rest partly on these positive treaties, but to that extent contain only rights failing short of true
actuality (¤ 545): partly so-called international law, the general principle of which is its presupposed
recognition by the several States. It thus restricts their otherwise unchecked action against one another in such
a way that the possibility of peace is left; and distinguishes individuals as private persons (non-belligerents)
from the state. In general, international law rests on social usage.
(c) Universal History(9)
¤ 548 As the mind of a special nation is actual and its liberty is under natural conditions, it admits on this
nature-side the influence of geographical and climatic qualities. It is in time; and as regards its range and
scope, has essentially a particular principle on the lines of which it must run through a development of its
consciousness and its actuality. It has, in short, a history of its own. But as a restricted mind its independence
is something secondary; it passes into universal world-history, the events of which exhibit the dialectic of the
several national minds - the judgement of the world.
¤ 549 This movement is the path of liberation for the spiritual substance, the deed by which the absolute final
aim of the world is realized in it, and the merely implicit mind achieves consciousness and
self-consciousness. It is thus the revelation and actuality of its essential and completed essence, whereby it
becomes to the outward eye a universal spirit - a world-mind. As this development is in time and in real
existence, as it is a history, its several stages and steps are the national minds, each of which, as single and
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