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head and the maturity of the members provide a natural dissolution of the local ties of the family. Hegel, in his speeches at the prize-giving of the Nürnberg Gymnasium,1 speaks of School life as a preparation for the independent life that follows the life of the Family. In the School the individual discovers that there are interests outside his private circle and duties to others besides his parents. He is made ready for life in Civil Society. In the family he is loved, without any necessary merit of his own; in the world at large he will be valued only by what he is and achieves for himself; in the school he is trained to use his powers for himself, and his place depends partly at least on his merit. He is trained to submit to rules and shape his action in keeping with them (XVI. 171, 172): "In the family the child has to act rightly in the sense of rendering personal obedience and affection,-in the school he must do this, in the sense of doing a duty and obeying a law; and he has in the school to do and to forbear many things which, when he was an individual by himself in the family, would have been left to his choice. Instructed in company with others, he learns to guide his action by regard to others; he learns to gain trust in strangers and confidence in himself in his dealings with them; and thereby he makes a beginning in the culture and the practice of social virtues" (XVI. 172). His life is now twofold. He is no longer absorbed in the family; he has the claims of the school as well as of the family to satisfy; but if the school is rightly conducted, his will is not thereby crushed; he is trained to real independence, and fitted to play his part in the world.

The world means in the first place Civil Society. In the sense in which Hegel uses this expression, Civil Society is distinct both from the family and from the State. It may indeed consist of separate families as competing groups (Rechtsphil., § 181, p. 239), but it is more easily conceived as consisting of individuals (whether heads of families or not) who are in competition with each

1 WVks., XVI. p. 157 (year 1810), ibid., pp. 167, 171 (1811). Compare his Life by Rosenkranz, p. 253. There is a hint of the same perhaps in Rechtsph., pp. 212, 232.

other for the satisfaction of their wants, and for the means. of subsistence in the first place. In Law it was the Person, in Morality the Subject, so here in Civil Society it is the Citizen that is the centre of our attention (§ 190). Men become ends to themselves here, in the sense of excluding others and making others the means to their ends. Every atom seems separate, and there is a war of the private interests of all against all (§ 187); and, ever since Christianity has taught us the infinite worth of the individual (185), there must always be room found for this separate and self-interested action of the individual, or else freedom will lack one constituent element. But the separate action is not so separate as in Law and Morality. In Civil Society it must always imply a positive relation to others; and more especially is this true of the pursuit of wealth.

Individualism is only possible on a social basis.

Even if we conceive the only bond to be the common rule of law regulating the relations of the individuals as persons, we find, as Political Economy shows, that the advancement or depression of one is bound up with the advancement or depression of others. There is a mutual dependence.1 There is a unity, though it is not intended or deliberately contrived. "It is not freedom but necessity" (§ 186). The endeavour to satisfy my subjective particular nature proves to depend for its success on my coincidence with others, in division of labour, and in the other ways which it has been the task of the new science, Political Economy (under Smith, Say, Ricardo) to discover. The object of Political Economy is to look at "the relations and movement of masses of people in their qualitative and quantitative concreteness and complication" (§ 189). "It is a science that does honour to thought, for it finds out laws for a mass of contingencies. It is an interesting spectacle to see how all the combinations here react upon each other, and how the particular spheres form themselves into groups, and have influence on other spheres, and get help or hindrance from them. This inter-connec

1 ἡ χρεία συνέχει ὥσπερ ἕν τι ὄν, Arist., Eth., V. (5), 13; ἐν χρεία ὦσιν ἀλλήλων, ibid.

2 Rechtsphil., § 189, p. 249.

tion, which at first seems incredible, since everything seems at the mercy of the individual's caprice, is in the highest degree remarkable, and reminds us of the Planetary System, which shows to the eye only irregular movements but has its discoverable laws notwithstanding" (ib.). The prominent figure, then, in Civil Society is Man as Citizen, supplying his wants. And in the case of human beings it quickly appears that wants are unlimited (§ 191). And not merely food but good food is wanted-not merely a living but "what the English call a comfortable living." There arises a multiplicity of wants that put the drag on any one particular desire, and (as effectually) put the individual beyond any hope of being sufficient for himself in provision for his life. Division of labour (198), with its necessary social relations, comes to his aid; and by it he gets leisure for mental culture, as well as the healthy discipline of a labour that must be guided by a reference to other men's acts and wants. Even fashion and custom show the social nature of man (§ 193, § 195). The The very mechanical character of division of labour corrects itself by its tendency to lead to the invention of actual machines (§ 198).

Thus individuals aiming at private wealth secure the general wealth (§ 199). But the participation of any particular individual in the latter depends on two considerations, (1) whether he has capital, (2) whether he has a dexterity prized by other men. There is possibility of unequal participation from both these sides ($200). So men are grouped in Classes according to their property and according to their labour. The class of landowners and the class of artisans are characteristic of civil society. If the grouping of men in families is the first foundation for the State, the grouping of them economically in Classes is the second (§ 203, cf. § 201). The Agricultural class, depending more than the rest on the co-operation of physical nature, have only in our time (sero tamen) been penetrated by the spirit of inquiry and reflection. Their chief feature is "substantiality"; the agricultural popu

1 Hermann has pointed out the economical advantages of fashions, which are less obvious than their disadvantages. See Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen, 2nd ed., 1870, pp. 99, 100, ftn.

lation are wholly buried in local interests; they have little notion of any life beyond the round of their own occupations. They are themselves part and parcel of agriculture. But scientific activity has been always more or less identified with artisan labour, in which nature plays a subordinate part (§ 203). "The first origin of States is rightly ascribed to the introduction of agriculture, bringing with it the institution of Marriage, for agriculture leads to the working of the soil, and thereby to exclusive private property" (§ 203). Agricultural life brings settled manners and permanent possessions. But individual independence is the growth rather of the industrial labour associated with large cities. What a man gets by this kind of labour he owes to himself. He may get it in one of three ways, either (1) by "concrete work, as an artisan, for his own particular wants, or (2) by "abstract" joint work for the general wants, as a manufacturer, or (3) as a merchant by the work of exchanging goods by means of the thing called "money, in which the abstract value of all wares is realized" (§ 204). Money is the means of expressing, and measuring quantitatively, every kind of property; and thus at a later stage (in the "State") we find the citizens made to contribute (to State expenses) more equitably by money than they could ever be made to do by personal services or otherwise (§ 299).2

There is thirdly (in addition to the Agricultural and the Industrial classes) the class of Public Servants. Their business is to serve the general interests of society, and their private wants are supplied by the State that takes their services (§ 205). In modern Europe, as contrasted with India or China or with the Platonic State, room is left for individual energy and choice, to determine to which class a man is to belong. This element can never be wanting to full liberty. Though it is only the particular (and not the universal) side of liberty, it is a particularity which is an essential stage both in the progress of society

1 Compare Rousseau's saying that the man who first drew a line round a strip of land and said "that is mine," was the real founder of Civil Society (Inégalité, pt. II., p. 67).

2 The money-equivalent for services is described by Hegel as "abstract services."

and in that of the individual; liberty must not remain abstract, as if it were a great thing for a man to be nothing in particular, and to choose no profession for fear of limiting himself (§ 207).

This is the region of the respectable virtues of talent, industry, energy, uprightness. Each man is pushing his own way in the world, seeking to satisfy his own wants, and to obtain and retain property for himself. But, as all are doing so, there is needed a general protection of person and property, which is often identified with the whole work of the State, but is only its first work. Civil Society shows its limits by requiring this protection (208 scq.). In other words, the "particularity" of the competing members of a civil society requires a "generality" as its supporting basis-the generality of the laws and their administration. On the other hand, such a system of laws can only grow up where civilization has gone so far that men have discovered how numerous their wants are, and have set themselves methodically to procure the means of satisfying them (§ 209). Not till then will social rules pass from the form of mere custom into the form of written law, which differs from custom in being (a) a defined, and (b) a general expression of what in custom was only indistinct habitual observance. element of individual feeling, prejudice, or revenge, gives place to an endeavour after impartial logic; and (what is of great importance), the matter of the laws is thus brought within the knowledge of all, and what was before taken for granted is now formally brought out and laid down. Knowledge of the laws ought not to be the monopoly of any one profession.

The

Since laws deal with finite matters, they are constantly found to fall short of perfect adequacy; and yet at each given time they should be made quite adequate. The conflict of this postulate of adequacy with the necessity of new laws results in what Hegel calls (in Kantian language) the "antinomy" of legislation; but in spite of it legislation is quite indispensable. We do not cease to plant trees although the leaves will need to be renewed

1 Gesetzt, a play on Gesetz, as if "law" meant what was "laid down." § 215, cf. 217.

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