ot connote any particular State, or
particular institution; one must rather consider the Idea only, this
actual God, by itself. Because it is more easy to find defects than to
grasp the positive meaning, one readily falls into the mistake of
emphasizing so much the particular nature of the State as to overlook
its inner organic essence. The State is no work of art. It exists in the
world, and thus in the realm of caprice, accident, and error. Evil
behavior toward it may disfigure it on many sides. But the ugliest man,
the criminal, the invalid, and the cripple, are still living human
beings. The affirmative, life, persists in spite of defects, and it is
this affirmative which alone is here in question.

In the State, everything depends upon the unity of the universal and the
particular. In the ancient States the subjective purpose was absolutely
one with the will of the State. In modern times, on the contrary, we
demand an individual opinion, an individual will and conscience. The
ancients had none of these in the modern sense; the final thing for them
was the will of the State. While in Asiatic despotisms the individual
had no inner self and no self-justification, in the modern world man
demands to be honored for the sake of his subjective individuality.

The union of duty and right has the twofold aspect that what the State
demands as duty should directly be the right of the individual, since
the State is nothing but the organization of the concept of freedom. The
determinations of the individual will are given by the State
objectivity, and it is through the State alone that they attain truth
and realization. The State is the sole condition of the attainment of
the particular end and good.

Political disposition, called patriotism--the assurance resting in truth
and the will which has become a custom--is simply the result of the
institutions subsisting in the State, institutions in which reason is
actually present.

Under patriotism one frequently understands a mere willingness to
perform extraordinary acts and sacrifices. But patriotism is essentially
the sentiment of regarding, in the ordinary circumstances and ways of
life, the weal of the community as the substantial basis and the final
end. It is upon this consciousness, present in the ordinary course of
life and under all circumstances, that the disposition to heroic effort
is founded. But as people are often rather magnanimous than just, they
easily persuad