ation. The Idea is the inner spring of
action; the State is the actually existing, realized moral life. For it
is the unity of the universal, essential will, with that of the
individual; and this is "morality." The individual living in this unity
has a moral life and possesses a value that consists in this
substantiality alone. Sophocles in his _Antigone_ says, "The divine
commands are not of yesterday, nor of today; no, they have an infinite
existence, and no one could say whence they came." The laws of morality
are not accidental, but are the essentially rational. It is the very
object of the State that what is essential in the practical activity of
men and in their dispositions should be duly recognized; that it should
have a manifest existence and maintain its position. It is the absolute
interest of Reason that this moral whole should exist; and herein lies
the justification and merit of heroes who have founded States, however
rude these may have been. In the history of the world, only those
peoples can come under our notice which form a State; for it must be
understood that the State is the realization of freedom, i. e., of the
absolute final aim, and that it exists for its own sake. It must further
be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses--all
spiritual reality--he possesses only through the State. For his
spiritual reality consists in this, that his own essence, Reason, is
objectively present to him, that it possesses objective immediate
existence for him. Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a
partaker of morality, of a just and moral social and political life. For
truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the
universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, and in its universal
and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on
earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more
definite shape than before--that in which freedom obtains objectivity
and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity. For law is the
objectivity of Spirit, volition in its true form. Only that will which
obeys law is free; for it obeys itself--it is independent and,
therefore, free. When the State or our country constitutes a community
of existence, when the subjective will of man submits to laws, the
contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes. The rational has
necessary existence, as being the reality and substance of things, and
we ar