d its strength." Although
the lectures on the "Philosophy of History" and on the "Philosophy
of Religion" (Vol. XIII) were delivered during this period, they
were not published until a year after his death, when his collected
works were issued.

_I.--In the East Began History_

Universal or world-history travels from east to west, for Europe is
absolutely the end of history, Asia the beginning. The history of the
world has an east in an absolute sense, for, although the earth forms a
sphere, history describes no orbit round it, but has, on the contrary, a
determinate orient--_viz._, Asia. Here rises the outward visible sun,
and in the west it sinks down; here also rises the sun of
self-consciousness. The history of the world is a discipline of the
uncontrolled natural will, bringing it into obedience to a universal
principle and conferring a subjective freedom. The East knew, and to
this day knows, freedom only for one; the Greek and Roman world knew
that some are free; the German world knows that all are free. The first
political form, therefore, that we see in history is despotism; the
second democracy and aristocracy; and the third monarchy.

The first phase--that with which we have to begin--is the East.
Unreflected consciousness--substantial, objective, spiritual
existence--forms the basis; to which the subjective will first sustains
a relation in the form of faith, confidence, obedience. In the political
life of the East we find realised national freedom, developing itself
without advancing to subjective freedom. It is the childhood of history.
In the gorgeous edifices of the Oriental empires we find all national
ordinances and arrangements, but in such a way that individuals remain
as mere accidents. These revolve round a centre, round the sovereign,
who as patriarch stands (not as despot, in the sense of the Roman
imperial constitution) at the head. For he has to enforce the moral and
substantial; he has to uphold those essential ordinances which are
already established; so that what among us belongs entirely to
subjective freedom, here proceeds from the entire and general body of
the state.

The glory of the Oriental conception is the one individual as the
substantial being to which all belongs, so that no other individual has
a separate existence, or mirrors himself in his subjective freedom. All
the riches of imagination and nature are appropriated to that dominant
existence in whic