every year (§ 216). There seems to be another contradiction in the fact that crime, by being treated as a wrong to society, and not merely to an individual, seems to be made greater, whereas the punishments of it may often be made less than they would be before or outside. of civilization, say in the heroic times (§ 218). But there is no contradiction; the punishment can be safely made less because Society is conscious of greater strength than any individual revenger of injuries, and can be merciful in proportion to its strength (§ 218). Another apparent contradiction results from the fact that, where law is developed, rights can only be secured in so far as the law prescribes them, and individuals may occasionally be aggrieved at their failure to secure rights which they are convinced they possess (§ 222). But such is the condition on which a civil society must exist; and Courts of Equity will lessen the grievance, such as it is (§ 223).

Hegel goes on to vindicate trial by jury and publicity of proceedings. The verdict of the Jury is (as it were) the utterance of guilt or innocence of the accused out of his own mouth and heart, for in being judged by the jury he is judged by his peers (§ 227). It is his own sentence on himself, and no longer a mere external fate to him (§ 228). Civil Society thus, in spite of its "atomistic" character, has come to a consciousness of its general element.

This general element expresses itself still more unmistakeably in the formation of a corporate body for local government. The aim of a Corporation is not the mere securing of justice between man and man in accordance with the laws, but the positive advancement of the prosperity of the citizens (§ 229). The first duty of it is no doubt the enforcement of Police regulations to secure law and order and prevent cheating (by Adulteration Acts for example) (§§ 234 seq.) Hegel is in these matters no blind lover of laissez-faire (see esp. § 236). The individual has been torn from the family by civil society, and he has claims on it as he had on the family. For its own part, regarded as a unity, civil society has claims on him as standing to him in place of the family, and as itself collectively one family. Hence for example it can enforce education and vaccination (§ 239),

and prevent the existence of such things as a mob or proletariate (dass kein Pöbel entstehen soll) even if this involves protection of the individual against himself. (§ 240). And it stands towards the Poor as a father to his family (§ 241). "With the poor the General Power takes the place of the Family, coping with their immediate destitution and also with their aversion to labour, their tendency to crime, and the other vices that spring from their situation and their feeling of wrong" (§ 241). The growth of population and industry is a feature of every unhampered civil society, and the result is on the one hand wider commerce and greater production, leading to great profits and accumulation, and on the other hand greater specializing of individual labour and greater dependence of the workers, who run the risk of losing all the higher enjoyments and intellectual benefits of civil society (§ 243). A proletariate arises in a country when any considerable numbers fall below the standard of living deemed necessary for a member of society in that country. The existence of this excessive poverty aids the concentration of excessive wealth in few hands. The proletariate have lost self-respect, and have lost the desire to make their own living; and yet they claim the right to receive their subsistence; they are full of rebellious feelings and hatred of the rich. Against Nature no man can assert a right, but in a state of Society destitution at once wears the garb of a wrong, inflicted on a particular class" (244). The question how best to help the poor is amongst the most imperative and anxious questions of modern societies. One difficulty is that to give relief without labour is contrary to the first principle of civil society, individual independence, and to give it for labour is to increase the overproduction of goods which (in conjunction with the want of corresponding productive consumers) was the very cause of the evil at first. For all its overflowing abundance of wealth, civil society seems too poor' to cope with the excess of poverty and the growth of the proletariate. We see that in England the Poor Rate and indiscriminate private charities undermine

1 He says "too poor in the sort of property (Vermögen) that is peculiar to it" which may mean saleable goods.

the body corporate itself. In Scotland, to prevent the demoralizing influence of legal relief, the extremely poor are left to resort to begging (245). The dialectic, which has shown itself in this tendency to the growth of a proletariate over against great fortunes, pushes civil societies beyond their own bounds, and leads them to colonization, either sporadic or systematic, in order to find customers and subsistence (§ 246, cf 248).

As family life and terra firma go together, so do industry and the sea. To be afloat is to be loosed from local ties and exposed to dangers. But the sea, while detaching men from their own civil society, brings them into contact with other such societies. It unites far more than it separates, and is a true civilizing agency (247). The securing of the independence of colonies Hegel regards as analogous to the liberation of a slave; it is the greatest advantage for the mother country, just as the slave's freedom is really so for his master (§ 248).

Corporate government, i.e. Civil Society as a corporate unity and as a group of corporations, has the task of caring for the general interests which have just been discussed, as well as for mere law and order; and in this care for the general weal we see the immanent social morality (as distinguished from law) beginning to show itself; it is the universal element supervening on the particularity of competition (§ 249). The industrial classes above described, being most characteristic of civil society, most markedly show the tendency to form corporate groups (such as Guilds and Trades' Societies), caring for, and, it may be, training their members and thereby securing their means of living. In this way corporate life reinforces and strengthens family life, and the individual himself gets recognition and standing before his neighbours. In this way, too, help may be given to poverty without the degradation of the recipient. To Hegel, the sanctity of Marriage and the Sense of Honour in members of a guild, club, or association, are the two roots of a well-ordered State. The rise of trade-guilds among the industrial classes seemed to him an event comparable in importance with the introduction

1 A common idea of the Greek Philosophers.

66

of agriculture and property among the rural classes ($253, cf. $ 255). A man's natural right" to practise his trade where he best can is no doubt in some degree limited by a guild. (In many German towns in Hegel's days the right to work at a trade was not conceded unless the would-be worker contributed to a benefit society.) But the workman is also in some degree saved from the reign of chance, and he is trained to labour with others. for a common end (§ 254).

Such spontaneously formed associations, commercial or otherwise, Hegel considers to be essential to a perfect State ($ 289, 303, etc.); they make Society organic throughout instead of a loose aggregate. The abolition of them in France, in 1789, seems to him therefore regrettable; and he considers that it necessarily led to centralization, for it left the masses inorganic and left all organization to come from above. The appearance of such associations is a sign of the need felt by the "particular element" to "throw down roots" into the universal (§ 289).

Still the common interest sought in the guild is not the interest of all citizens but only of a class; and the guild owes its own dignity to its place in a greater body that cares for the whole people, and this body is the State. Though last in theory, the State is first in the actual world; the family and civil society, as they now are, could only arise within the shelter of the State and on the soil of it (§ 256). In the State we have a more true individuality and more true universality than in civil society. In its best form it is a condition of the best kind of individual action.1 It is not a mere sum of the other elements; it is "something more, a bringer of new things." It is not simply a name for the aggregate of the particular wills embraced by it; but, as Rousseau happily suggested, it is an expression of the "general will," or of the resolutions formed by the citizens as members one of another and not capable of being formed (still less carried out) without that organic union.

Hegel therefore regards the State as the "eternal and necessary" realization of the spirit of man; it is God

1 Cf. Sax, Staatswirthschaft, pp. 13, 17.

come down to us in the likeness of men (§ 258). No doubt in this world of chance and caprice the divine idea is marred by many imperfections; but it is still recognisable, even as in the criminal and cripple may be recognised the likeness of humanity (§ 258).

Hegel proceeds to deal with the three features of the State its constitution and domestic legislation, its relation to other individual States (or its place in International Law), and its place in the greater world and Universal History, where the spirit of man is Judge over the contending States (§ 259).1

The first of these three aspects receives much the largest share of his attention. The State is the realization of concrete freedom. Modern States are immeasurably stronger and deeper than ancient because "the principle of subjectivity" is fully recognised, and brought into the service of the "substantial unity" of the State. We are to have the same religious devotion to the State as the ancient Greeks and Romans, with a fulness of independent individual life that was not allowed in Greece and Rome. The modern State is bound up with the happiness of all its members; in relation to the State, a man's rights and duties coincide absolutely "in one and the same respect.' The conscious will and effort of the individuals are as essential to the State as is the State to them. The general interest becomes their own particular interest. The State is not to them a mere external Fate, or it would not be what it is, a living "organization of freedom." In ancient States the identity of the individual's will with the State's was secured only by the ignoring of any distinct individual will, whereas now the individual is to have views of his own and a will of his own, but in the good State his views and his will prove to be at one with those of the State, though distinguishable and distinct from them (§§ 260-262, cf. § 268, etc.).

Hegel illustrates his conception that "the State is an organism," not only (§ 269) by the old fable of the belly and the members, but by an original physiological analogy. In the nervous system (he says) there are two

1 See Schiller's poem, "Resignation:" "Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht."