Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

476 Phenomenology of Mind physical strength and the chances of fortune, it is eo ipso settled that its overthrow has come.

While only household gods, in the former case, gave way before and were absorbed in the national spirit, here the living individual embodiments of the national spirit fall by their own individuality and disappear in one universal community, whose bare universality is soulless and dead, and whose living activity is found in the particular individual qua particular.

The ethical form and embodiment of the life of spirit has passed away, and another mode appears in its place. This disappearance of the ethical substance and its transition into another mode are thus determined by the ethical consciousness being directed upon the law essentially in an immediate way. It lies in this character of immediacy that nature at all enters into the acts which constitute- the ethical life.

Its realisation simply reveals the contradiction and the germ of destruction, which lie hid within that very peace and beauty belonging to the gracious harmony and unbroken equihbrium of the ethical spirit. For the essence and meaning of this immediacy contains a contradiction : it is at once the unconscious peace of nature and the self-conscious unresting peace of spirit.

On account of this " naturalness," the ethical life of a nation is, in general, a kind of individuality determined by, and therefore limited by, nature, and thus finds its dissolution in, and gives place to, another type of individuahty. This characteristic being given a positive existence, is a Hmitation, but at the same time is the negative element in general and the self of individuality. Since, however, this determinateness passes away, the life of spirit and this substance, conscious of itself

Guilt and Destiny 477 in all its component individuals, are lost. The determinate character comes forth and stands apart as a formal universality in the case of all the component individuals, and no longer dwells within them as a living spirit; instead, the uniform solidarity of its individuaHty has burst into a plurahty of separate points.

The Condition of Right or Legal Status [A further step in the realisation of the principle of coherent sociality is reached when the individual is invested with the universality of the social order by definite enactments of the controlling agency of the social whole.

His contingency as an individual is removed by his being expressly treated as a focal unity of the whole order, whose very existence is staked on maintaining him as a unit with a universal significance, and which stands or falls by maintaining him in this condition.

The universal order is in this case no longer merely implicit, merely a matter of routine and custom ; it is openly and objectively expressed in and through each individual component of society. The form this takes is the diff"erentiation of the social substance into a totality of " persons," each and all invested with express universal, or legally acknowledged, significance.

This is the sphere of legal personality, or of individuality constituted by a system of Eights. It is a supreme achievement of social existence, and the highest attainment of coherent social experience. Hence the present section. This is a condition or stage in every developed community.

But the specific historical material for this section is derived from the law-constituted social order of the Roman Empire, especially the Empire under the Antonines. Here, whether by coincidence or otherwise, the culmination of imperial rule and the " golden age " of law synchronised. The triumph of Roman imperial government and the perfecting of the system of Roman jurisprudence were accomplished during the same period of time, about A.D.

131-235. There is every reason to suppose that the two necessarily arose and fell together, and that the decline and disappearance of the Roman law-constituted state should thus prepare the way for a further achievement of the social spirit of humanity. Hence the historical justification for the transition to the next stage of social life, that of selfdiscordant spiritual existence.

With this section should be read Hegel's Philosophy of History, Part III, especially the introduction to this part, and Sect. Ill, c. 1., "Rome under the Emperors."]