phases of feeling: there is "abstract feeling" or Sentiency, a dull feeling of internal movement and of the processes of nourishment and digestion, etc., where I keep myself to myself; and there is the phase of "difference" when the feeling passes from within me to without me in what we call Irritability. Now the Family may be represented by the sentiency, Civil Society by the irritability, while the State is represented by the nervous system as an organized whole, which is only a living whole so far as it includes both sentiency and irritability (263). If the State is not built on family and civil society, "it stands in the air" ($265). As Hume said that "government is founded on opinion," 1 so Hegel conceives that, though people may say in their haste it is all a matter of brute force, "what really holds things together is the profound feeling of order which all have," and their trust in the stability of political security, a trust which is second nature with them, and is really their will, whether consciously or not (§ 268).

The chief end of the State is the good of the whole community, including therefore the particular and private interests of the members. Though it is true that a constitution is not made but grows (cf. $ 274), the State is above all things self-conscious and deliberate and reasoning in all its actions; and therefore Religion, which is above all things a feeling of what is the truth as distinguished from a logical and reasoned-out statement of it, must not be identified with politics either to the absorption of State in Church, or of Church in State. That "devout men need no laws" is the saying of a fanatic (§ 270).

The Church (if we may leave Hegel for a moment) shows how difficult it is for a spontaneously-formed society to remain quite spontaneous. Without an organization the best Church does not long hold together. The Quakers have felt the difficulty; and the Independents, at one time in our history so strong for assault, have found the need of a central authority like the Presby terian Synods and Assemblies. If organization came first, the result would be as in a French colony in contrast to an English settlement; where spontaneity is not

1 Essay on The First Principles of Government.

found, it is seldom created. The healthy order of development seems to be first the spontaneous union (as of the early Christians), then the deliberate organization. The first beginning would be spiritual life, which simply trusts to itself, and leaves outward organization to come of itself, the faithful meeting only when they felt so disposed. This Anarchism, whether or not it be the highest ideal, has never lasted long. No church has been ever able to dispense with definite rules of faith and order.

Hegel goes on to consider the different forms of the State's necessary activity. There is the domestic constitution, in which executive and legislative powers, distinct as they are, cannot be really separate, but must be one in the Sovereign. The Sovereign Power is best represented by a constitutional monarch. The monarch exists to put (as it were) the dot on the i; but to Hegel this seems a very necessary function; the unity of the national will must be represented by a single personality (§§ 273280). There is truth in the old argument for hereditary monarchy, that it places the throne out of the scope of competing factions; but the deeper reason is that thereby the impression is made on the citizens that the State is above caprice and accident, and endures from age to age. Hegel thinks little of the mere grounds of expediency, or of contract between king and people, alleged by some defenders of the monarchy (§ 281). The hereditary principle in the monarchy is adequately justified by the reason explained; it is the higher and more rational form of the patriarchal principle (§ 286). Primogeniture, too, is defended as furnishing a constant element in civil society as contrasted with the variableness of the industrial classes (§ 306).

The monarch for his part must be constitutional. The kingly acts must show reason for themselves (§§ 283, 284), and "guarantees" must be found in institutions with which the monarchy must feel itself bound up, just as the general liberties are bound up with the monarchy (§ 286). The officials under the sovereign must be neither mere hirelings doing a duty mechanically, nor knights errant doing it fitfully from caprice, but men whose minds are really set on serving the general interests, and who use their own reason, and give play

to their own peculiar talents in the public service (§ 294). The watchfulness of the sovereign, and of the guilds and other bodies in the State will defeat any tendencies to bureaucracy (§ 295).

These organized intermediate groups possess a consciousness of the meaning of the State such as is present nowhere else in the community. They constitute the Middle Classes, which Hegel (like many of our own writers) regards as the centre of political intelligence and stability (§ 297). But it will be noted that he does not identify them with the bourgeoisie. His middle class seems to consist of the whole system of organized social groups, which logically would include the working classes whenever they are organized into trades societies or other disciplined Unions.

Hegel is no more and no less democratic than Aristotle. The term, "the People," is used, he says, sometimes in the sense of "that part of the people that does not know what it wants. To know what one wants needs really much knowledge and wisdom, which 'the people' do not possess ($301). Representation in Parliament is needed not in order to discover political truth and give true decisions on any question, and not in order to provide "checks" on the King, but to complete the articulate and graduated organization, reaching from above to below, and from below to above. If it were only the Monarch and officials that were organized, what is left would be a mere mob (§ 302, cf. § 314). Scope is wanted, too, for freedom in the common sense of the term; and hence publicity is essential to parliamentary deliberations (§ 314); but the members of a parliament, though they give voice to that element of liberty on behalf of particular groups or localities, are, when once elected, not mere delegates with a mandate, but beings possessed of thought and will of their own, and using them in the service, not of a section, but of the whole community (§ 308). Public opinion has been, and always must be, a great power; it represents the views of healthy common-sense as opposed to the prejudiced views of a biassed party in any question; but [as Aristotle said] the "people" can draw no fine distinctions, and unorganized public opinion has as much in it to be despised as

to be respected (§ 316-319). Hegel recognises the need of liberty of the press, though with similar qualifications (319). Public opinion is the counterpart of the subjectivity" of the Monarch at the other extremity of the State. The unity of the State, made evident by the individuality of the Sovereign, implies what Hegel calls "ideality,"-an organic union of inseparable elements (§ 320). But it is not only a union; it is a unit ; besides "ideality" it has individuality, a relation to other individuals whom it excludes,-in this case other States against which it asserts its independence (§§ 321, 322), and from whom it claims recognition (§ 330). In War the sacrifice of life and property for the State shows that the State's claim is higher than any of its members' ; and, on the other hand, war may show that the claim of a particular State to a particular place in the world is by no means absolute (§ 323). Hegel refuses to allow that war is merely evil. With the experience of Prussia and the War of Liberation in memory, he sees many virtues in war. The merely contingent earthly life and finite property of men are sacrificed, and thus show unmistakeably their finitude, which in peace is too easily forgotten. A perpetual peace such as Kant desired would lead to lethargy (§ 324, cf. $$ 330, 333), even were the international compact which Kant suggests not (as it is) an impossibility. The necessity of war involves the necessity of a special institution, a special class, or Standing Army, just as necessarily as other special needs lead to marriage, and to an official and trading class ($ 326). The soldier's virtue is bravery, in the sense of self-sacrifice in the public service, not in the sense of mere personal courage (§ 327). The object of the courage makes all the difference; and in modern times bravery appears rather in the individual's subordinating himself to the ends of that larger body of which he is a member, than in his individual initiative (§ 328).

As the individual person is not really individual till brought into relation with other persons, so the State is not really a State till brought into relation with other States ($331, cf. 322). The others must respect it as a State, just as the other persons must respect me as a person. As between persons, so between States, there

Y

arise contracts or Treaties, of which it is the object of International Law to secure the preservation. But States, having no government over them, are to each other in a state of Nature; and there is no prætor to enforce the contracts (§ 333, cf. 339). War therefore does not seem avoidable (334). Each State regards the good of the whole as supreme law, but it is the good of its own particular whole (§ 337). Hence the difficulty sometimes felt in reconciling morality and politics, morality being usually treated too narrowly, as if that were moral law between States which is so between individuals ($$ 336, 337). When a conflict arises, it must be remembered that it is between State and State, not between individual and individual; accordingly the minimum of injury should be done to individual life and property ($ 338).1

We said there was no prætor to enforce treaties. But in place of a prætor there is Divine Providence, or the Spirit of the World, whose development takes place through the dialectic of this very conflict among the finite spirits of the separate States. "The history of the world is the judgment of the world" (§§ 339, 340, 341). What seems to be merely might is found to be also right; the final victory has belonged to that national spirit which has represented the furthest stage of the universal spirit." Human perfectibility is in this sense no phantasy. But, though the various national spirits are instruments of the supreme spirit, they are unconscious instruments (§§ 342, seq.); and each nation (being limited by the conditions of physical nature) can represent the supreme spirit only in one epoch (§§ 346, 347). Hegel (as Dante in the treatise De Monarchia) considers that, while that epoch lasts, its right to rule other nations is absolute. The individuals at its head, not the less really because unconsciously, are fulfilling the purpose of the divine spirit ($348, etc.). There have been four empires that have played this large part-the Oriental (representing "substantiality," in which individuals are lost), the Greek

1 Cf. Rousseau, Contrat Social, I. 4: “La guerre n'est donc point une relation d'homme à homme, mais une relation d'Etat à Etat," etc. * Träger der gegenwärtigen Entwickelungsstufe des Weltgeistes.