 The Course of the World's History, subsection 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction to The Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The Course of the World's History, subsection 1. The mutations which history presents have been long characterized in the general as an advance to something better, more perfect. The changes that take place in nature, how infinitely manifold so ever they may be, exhibit only a perpetually self-repeating cycle. In nature, there happens nothing new under the sun, and the multi-form play of its phenomena so far induces a feeling of ennui. Only in those changes which take place in the region of spirit does anything new arise. This peculiarity in the world of mind has indicated in the case of man an altogether different destiny from that of merely natural objects, in which we find always one and the same stable character to which all change reverts. Namely, a real capacity for change, and that for the better, an impulse of perfectability. This principle which reduces change itself under a law has met with an unfavorable reception from religions, such as the Catholic, and from states claiming as their just right a stereotype or at least a stable position. If the mutability of worldly things in general, political constitutions, for instance, is conceded, either religion, as the religion of truth, is absolutely accepted, or the difficulty escaped by ascribing changes, revolutions, and abrogations of immaculate theories and institutions to accidents or imprudence. But principally, to the levity and evil passions of man, the principle of perfectability indeed is almost as indefinite a term as mutability in general. It is without scope or goal and has no standard by which to estimate the changes in question. The improved, more perfect state of things towards which it professedly tends is altogether undetermined. The principle of development involves also the existence of a latent germ of being, a capacity or potentiality striving to realize itself. This formal conception finds actual existence in spirit, which has the history of the world for its theater, its possession, and the sphere of its realization. It is not of such a nature as to be tossed to and fro amid the superficial play of accidents, but is rather the absolute arbiter of things, entirely unmoved by contingencies which, indeed, it applies and manages for its own purposes. Development, however, is also a property of organized natural objects. Their existence presents itself not as an exclusively dependent one, subjected to external changes, but as one which expands itself in virtue of an internal unchangeable principle, a simple essence whose existence, that is, as a germ, is primarily simple, but which subsequently develops a variety of parts that become involved with other objects and consequently live through a continuous process of changes. A process, nevertheless, that results in the very contrary of change and is even transformed into a vis conservatrix of the organic principle and the form embodying it. Thus the organized individual produces itself. It expands itself actually to what it was always potentially. So spirit is only that which it attains by its own efforts. It makes itself actually what it always was potentially. That development of natural organisms takes place in a direct, unopposed, unhindered manner. Between the idea and its realization, the essential constitution of the original germ and the conformity to it of the existence derived from it, no disturbing influence can intrude. But in relation to spirit it is quite otherwise. The realization of its idea is mediated by consciousness and will. These very faculties are, in the first instance, sunk in their primary, merely natural life. The first object and goal of their striving is the realization of their merely natural destiny, but which, since it is spirit that animates it, is possessed of vast attractions and displays great power and moral richness. Thus spirit is at war with itself. It has to overcome itself as its most formidable obstacle. That development which in the sphere of nature is a peaceful growth is in that of spirit a severe, mighty conflict with itself. What spirit really strives for is the realization of its ideal being. But in doing so it hides that goal from its own vision and is proud and well satisfied in this alienation from it. Its expansion therefore does not present the harmless tranquility of mere growth as does that of organic life. But a stern, reluctant working against itself. It exhibits moreover not the mere formal conception of development but the attainment of a definite result. The goal of attainment we determined at the outset it is spirit in its completeness in its essential nature, that is, freedom. This is the fundamental object and therefore also the leading principle of the development, that whereby it receives meaning and importance. As in the Roman history, Rome is the object, consequently, that which directs our consideration of the facts related. As conversely, the phenomena of the process have resulted from this principle alone and only as referred to it possess a sense and value. There are many considerable periods in history in which this development seems to have been intermittent, in which, we might rather say, the whole enormous gain of previous culture appears to have been entirely lost. After which, unhappily, a new commencement has been necessary made in the hope of recovering by the assistance of some remains saved from the wreck of a former civilization and by dint of a renewed, incalculable expenditure of strength and time, one of the regions which had been an ancient possession of that civilization. We behold also continued processes of growth, structures and systems of culture in particular spheres, rich in kind and well-developed in every direction. The merely formal and indeterminate view of development in general can neither assign to one form of expansion superiority over the other, nor render comprehensible the object of that decay of older periods of growth, but must regard such occurrences, or to speak more particularly, the retro-sessions they exhibit, as external contingencies in only judge of particular modes of development from indeterminate points of view, which, since the development as such, is all in all, are relative, and not absolute goals of attainment. Universal history exhibits the gradation in the development of that principle whose substantial purport is the consciousness of freedom. The analysis of the successive grades in their abstract form belongs to logic. In their concrete aspect, to the philosophy of spirit. Here it is sufficient to state that the first step in the process presents that immersion of spirit in nature, which has been already referred to. The second shows it as advancing to the consciousness of its freedom. But this initial separation from nature is imperfect and partial, since it is derived immediately from the merely natural state, is consequently related to it, and is still encumbered with it as an essentially connected element. The third step is the elevation of the soul from this still limited and special form of freedom to its pure universal form, that state in which the spiritual essence attains the consciousness and feeling of itself. These grades are the ground principles of the general process, but how each of them on the other hand involves within itself a process of formation, constituting the links in a dialectic of transition, to particularize this must be reserved for the sequel. Here we have only to indicate that spirit begins with a germ of infinite possibility, but only possibility, containing its substantial existence in an undeveloped form, as the object and goal which it reaches only in its resultant, full reality. In actual existence, progress appears as in advancing from the imperfect to the more perfect, but the former must not be understood abstractly as only the imperfect, but as something which involves the very opposite of itself, the so-called perfect as a germ or impulse. So, reflectively at least, possibility points to something destined to become actual. The Aristotelian dunamis is also potencia, power, and might. Thus the imperfect as involving its opposite is a contradiction, which certainly exists, but which is continually annulled and solved. The instinctive movement, the inherent impulse in the life of the soul, to break through the rind of mere nature, sensuousness, and that which is alien to it, and to attain to the light of consciousness, that is, to itself. We have already made the remark how the commencement of the history of spirit must be conceived so as to be in harmony with its idea, in its bearing on the representations that have been made of a primitive, natural condition, in which freedom and justice are supposed to exist or to have existed. This was, however, nothing more than an assumption of historical existence conceived in the twilight of theorizing reflection, a pretension of quite another order, not a mere inference of reasoning, but making the claim of historical fact and that, supernaturally confirmed, is put forth in connection with a different view that is now widely promulgated by a certain class of speculatists. This view takes up the idea of the primitive, paradisiacal condition of man, which had been previously expanded by the theologians after their fashion, involving, for example, the supposition that God spoke with Adam in Hebrew, but remodeled to suit other requirements. The high authority appealed to in the first instance is the biblical narrative, but this depicts the primitive condition partly only in a few well-known traits, but partly either as in man generically, human nature at large, or so far as Adam is to be taken as an individual and consequently one person, as existing and completed in this one, or only in one human pair. The biblical account by no means justifies us in imagining a people and an historical condition of such people existing in that primitive form. Still less does it warrant us in attributing to them the possession of a perfectly developed knowledge of God and nature. Nature, so the fiction runs, like a clear mirror of God's creation, had originally lain revealed and transparent to the unclouded eye of man. Footnote, confer Friedrich von Schlegel's philosophy of history. And footnote, divine truth is imagined to have been equally manifest. It is even hinted, though left in some degree of obscurity, that in this primary condition men were in possession of an indefinitely extended and already expanded body of religious truths immediately revealed by God. This theory affirms that all religions had their historical commencement in this primitive knowledge, and that they polluted and obscured the original truth by the monstrous creations of error and depravity. Though in all the mythologies invented by error, traces of that origin and of those primitive true dogmas are supposed to be present and cognizable. An important interest therefore accrues to the investigation of the history of ancient peoples, that, namely, of the endeavor to trace their annals up to the point where such fragments of the primary revelation are to be met with in greater purity than lower down. We owe to the interest which has occasioned these investigations very much that is valuable. But this investigation bears direct testimony against itself, for it would seem to be awaiting the issue of an historical demonstration of that which is presupposed by it as historically established. That advanced condition of the knowledge of God and of other scientific, for example astronomical knowledge, such as has been falsely attributed to the Hindus, and the assertion that such a condition occurred at the very beginning of history, or that the religions of various nations were traditionally derived from it and have developed themselves in degeneracy and deprivation, as is represented in the rudely conceived so-called emanation system. All these are suppositions which neither have nor, if we may contrast with their arbitrary subjective origin, the true conception of history, can attain historical confirmation. The only consistent and worthy method which philosophical investigation can adopt is to take up history where rationality begins to manifest itself in the actual conduct of the world's affairs, not where it is merely an undeveloped potentiality, where a condition of things is present in which it realizes itself in consciousness, will, and action. The inorganic existence of spirit, that of abstract freedom, unconscious torpedoity in respect to good and evil and consequently to laws, or, if we please determine so, blessed ignorance, is itself not a subject of history. Natural, and at the same time religious morality, is the piety of the family. In this social relation, morality consists in the members behaving towards each other, not as individuals possessing an independent will, not as persons. The family, therefore, is excluded from that process of development in which history takes its rise, but when this self-involved spiritual unity steps beyond this circle of feeling and natural love, and first attains the consciousness of personality, we have that dark, dull center of indifference in which neither nature nor spirit is open and transparent, and for which nature and spirit can become open and transparent only by means of a further process. A very lengthened culture of that will, at length, becomes self-conscious. Consciousness alone is clearness, and is that alone for which God or any other existence can be revealed. In its true form, in absolute universality, nothing can be manifested except to consciousness made precipiant of it. Freedom is nothing but the recognition and adoption of such universal substantial objects as right and law, and the production of a reality that is accordant with them, the state. Nations may have passed a long life before arriving at this, their destination, and during this period they may have attained considerable culture in some directions. This anti-historical period, consistently with what has been said, lies out of our plan, whether a real history followed it, or the people in question never attained a political constitution. It is a great discovery in history as of a new world, which has been made within rather more than the last twenty years, respecting the Sanskrit and the connection of the European languages with it. In particular, the connection of the German and Indian peoples has been demonstrated, with as much certainty as such subjects allow of. Even at the present time, we know of peoples which scarcely form a society, much less a state, but that have been long known as existing. While with regard to others, which in their advanced condition excite are a special interest, tradition reaches beyond the record of the founding of the state, and they experienced many changes prior to that epoch. In the connection just referred to between the languages of nations so widely separated, we have a result before us which proves the diffusion of those nations from Asia as a center, and the so dissimilar development of what had been originally related as an incontestable fact, not as an inference deduced by that favorite method of combining and reasoning from circumstances grave and trivial, which has already enriched and will continue to enrich history with so many fictions given out as facts. But that apparently so extensive range of events lies beyond the pale of history, in fact preceded it. In our language, the term history, translators note, German Geschichte from Geschehen to happen, and translators note, unites the objective with the subjective side, and denotes quite as much the Historia Rerum Gestorum as the race Geste themselves. On the other hand it comprehends not less what has happened than the narration of what has happened. This union of the two meanings we must regard as a higher order than mere outward accident. We must suppose historical narrations to have appeared contemporaneously with historical deeds and events. It is an internal vital principle common to both that produces them synchronously. Family memorials, patriarchal conditions have an interest confined to the family and the clan. The uniform course of events which such a condition implies is no subject of serious remembrance, though distinct transactions or turns of fortune may arouse nemosity to form conceptions of them, in the same way as love and the religious emotions provoke imagination to give shape to a previously formless impulse. But it is the state which first presents subject matter that is not only adapted to the prose of history, but involves the production of such history in the very progress of its own being. Instead of merely subject of mandates on the part of government, sufficing for the needs of the moment, a community that is acquiring a stable existence and exalting itself into a state requires formal commands and laws, comprehensive and universally binding prescriptions, and thus produces a record as well as an interest concerned with intelligent, definite, and in their results lasting transactions and occurrences. On which nemosity, for the behoof of the perennial object of the formation and constitution of the state, is impelled to confer perpetuity. Profound sentiments generally, such as that of love, as also religious intuition and its conceptions, are in themselves complete, constantly present and satisfying, that outward existence of a political constitution which is enshrined in its rational laws and customs, is an imperfect present, and cannot be thoroughly understood without a knowledge of the past, the periods, whether we suppose them to be centuries or millennia, that were passed by nations before history was written among them, and which may have been filled with revolutions, nomadic wanderings, and the strangest mutations, are on that very account destitute of object of history, because they present no subject of history, no annals. We need not suppose that the records of such periods have accidentally perished, rather because they were not possible to we find them wanting. Only an estate cognizant of laws can distinct transactions take place accompanied by such a clear consciousness of them as supplies the ability, and suggests the necessity of an enduring record. It strikes everyone, in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature, that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought, has no history. And in this respect contrasts most strongly with China, an empire possessing one so remarkable, one going back to the most ancient times. India has not only ancient books relating to religion and splendid poetical productions, but also ancient codes, the existence of which latter kind of literature has been mentioned as a condition necessary to the origination of history. And yet, history itself is not found. But in that country the impulse of organization, in beginning to develop social distinctions, was immediately petrified in the merely natural classification according to casts. So that, although the laws concern themselves with civil rights, they make even these dependent on natural distinctions, and are especially occupied with determining the relations, wrongs rather than rights, of those classes towards each other. That is, the privileges of the higher over the lower. Consequently, the element of morality is banished from the pomp of Indian life and from its political institutions. Where that iron bondage of distinctions derived from nature prevails, the connection of society is nothing but wild arbitrariness, transient activity, or rather the play of violent emotion without any goal of advancement or development. Therefore no intelligent reminiscence, no object for nomosony presents itself, and imagination, confused though profound, expatiates in a region which, to be capable of history, must have had an aim within the domain of reality and, at the same time, of substantial freedom. Since such are the conditions indispensable to a history, it has happened that the growth of families to clans, of clans to peoples, and their local diffusion consequent upon this numerical increase, a series of facts which itself suggests so many instances of social complication, war, revolution, and ruin. A process which is so rich in interest and so comprehensive in extent, has occurred without giving rise to history. Moreover, that the extension and organic growth of the empire of articulate sounds has itself remained voiceless and dumb, a stealthy, unnoticed advance. It is a fact revealed by philological monuments that languages, during a rude condition of the nations that have spoken them, have been very highly developed, that the human understanding occupied this theoretical region with great ingenuity and completeness. For grammar, in its extended and consistent form, is the work of thought which makes its categories distinctly visible therein. It is, moreover, a fact that with advancing social and political civilization, this systematic completeness of intelligence suffers attrition and language thereupon becomes poorer and ruder. A singular phenomenon that the progress towards a more highly intellectual condition while expanding and cultivating rationality should disregard that intelligent amplitude and expressiveness should find it an obstruction and contrive to do without it. Speech is the act of theoretical intelligence in a special sense. It is its external manifestation. Exercises of memory and imagination without language are direct, non-speculative manifestations. But this act of theoretical intelligence itself as also its subsequent development and the more concrete class of facts connected with it, namely the spreading of peoples over the earth, their separation from each other, their co-minglings and wanderings, remain involved in the obscurity of a voiceless past. They are not acts of will becoming self-conscious, of freedom mirroring itself in a phenomenal form and creating for itself a proper reality, not partaking of this element of substantial, veritable existence. These nations, notwithstanding the development of language among them, have never advanced to the possession of a history. The rapid growth of language and the progress and dispersion of nations assume importance and interest for concrete reason only when they have come in contact with states or begin to form political constitutions themselves. After these remarks, relating to the form of the commencement of the world's history and to that anti-historical period which must be excluded from it, we have to state the direction of its course, though here only formally. The further definition of the subject and the concrete comes under the head of arrangement. End the course of the world's history, subsection 1. This recording is in the public domain. The course of the world's history, subsection 2. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are on the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction 2, The Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on the course of the world's history, subsection 2. Universal history, as already demonstrated, shows the development of the consciousness of freedom on the part of spirit and of the consequent realization of that freedom. This development implies a gradation, a series of increasingly adequate expressions or manifestations of freedom which result from its idea. The logical and, as still more prominent, the dialectical nature of the idea in general, namely that it is self-determined, that it assumes successive forms which it successively transcends and by this very process of transcending its earlier stages gains an affirmative and, in fact, a richer and more concrete shape. This necessity of its nature and the necessary series of pure abstract forms which the idea successively assumes is exhibited in the Department of Logic. Here we need adopt only one of its results, namely that every step in the process as differing from any other has its determinant peculiar principle. In history this principle is idiosyncrasy of spirit, peculiar national genius. It is within the limitations of this idiosyncrasy that the spirit of the nation, concretely manifested, expresses every aspect of its consciousness and will, the whole cycle of its realization, its religion, its polity, its ethics, its legislation and even its science, art and mechanical skill all bear its stamp. These special peculiarities find their key in that common peculiarity, the particular principle that characterizes a people as, on the other hand, in the facts which history presents in detail that most common characteristic principle may be detected. That such or such a specific quality constitutes the peculiar genius of a people is the element of our inquiry which must be derived from experience and historically proved. To accomplish this presupposes not only a disciplined faculty of abstraction but an intimate acquaintance with the idea. The investigator must be familiar a priori, if we like to call it so, with the whole circle of conceptions to which the principles in question belong. Just as Kepler, to name the most illustrious example in this mode of philosophizing, must have been familiar a priori with ellipses, with cubes and squares and with ideas of their relations before he could discover from the empirical data those immortal laws of his, which are none other than forms of thought pertaining to those classes of conceptions. He who is unfamiliar with the science that embraces these abstract elementary conceptions is as little capable, though he may have gazed on the firmament and the motions of the celestial bodies for a lifetime, of understanding those laws as of discovering them. From this want of acquaintance with the ideas that relate to the development of freedom proceed a part of those objections which are brought against the philosophical consideration of a science usually regarded as one of mere experience. The so-called a priori method and the attempt to insinuate ideas into the empirical data of history being the chief points in the indictment. Where this deficiency exists such conceptions appear alien, not lying within the object of investigation. To minds whose training has been narrow and merely subjective, which have not an acquaintance and familiarity with ideas, they are something strange, not embraced in the notion and conception of the subject which their limited intellect forms. Hence the statement that philosophy does not understand such sciences. It must indeed allow that it has not that kind of understanding which is the prevailing one in the domain of those sciences that it does not proceed according to the categories of such understanding but according to the categories of reason, though at the same time recognizing that understanding and its true value and position. It must be observed that in this very process of scientific understanding it is of importance that the essential should be distinguished and brought into relief in contrast with the so-called non-essential. But in order to render this possible we must know what is essential and that is, in view of the history of the world in general the consciousness of freedom and the phases which this consciousness assumes in developing itself. The bearing of historical facts on this category is their bearing on the truly essential of the difficulty stated and the opposition exhibited to comprehensive conceptions in science part must be referred to the inability to grasp and to understand ideas. If in natural history some monstrous hybrid growth is alleged as an objection to the recognition of clear reasonable classes or species a sufficient reply is furnished by a sentiment often vaguely urged that the exception confirms the rule that is the part of a well-defined rule to show the conditions in which it applies or the deficiency or hybridism of cases that are abnormal. Mere nature is too weak to keep its genera and species pure when conflicting with alien elementary influences. If, for example, on considering the human organization in its concrete aspect we assert that brain, heart, and so forth are essential to its organic life. Some miserable abortion may be adduced which has on the whole human form or parts of it which has been conceived in a human body and has breathed after birth therefrom in which, nevertheless, no brain and no heart is found. If such an instance is quoted against the general conception of a human being the objector persisting in using the name coupled with a superficial idea respecting it it can be proved that a real concrete human being is a truly different object that such a being must have a brain in its head and a heart in its breast. A similar process of reasoning is adopted in reference to the correct assertion that genius, talent moral virtues and sentiments and piety may be found in every zone under all political constitutions and conditions in confirmation of which examples are forthcoming in abundance. If in this assertion the accompanying distinctions are intended to be repudiated as unimportant or non-essential reflection evidently limits itself to abstract categories and ignores the specialities of the object in question which certainly fall under no principle recognized by such categories. That intellectual position which adopts such merely formal points of view presents a vast field for ingenious questions erudite views and striking comparisons for profound seeming reflections and declamations which may be rendered so much the more brilliant in proportion as the subject they refer to is indefinite and are susceptible of new and varied forms in inverse proportion to the importance of the results that can be gained from them and the certainty and rationality of their issues. Under such an aspect the well-known Indian epopees may be compared with the Homeric perhaps since it is the vastness of the imagination by which poetical genius proves itself preferred to them as on account of the similarity of single strokes of imagination in the attributes of the divinities it has been contended that Greek mythological forms may be recognized in those of India. Similarly, the Chinese philosophy as adopting the one as its basis has been alleged to be the same as at a later period appeared as a Leatic philosophy and as the Spinozistic system. While in virtue of its expressing itself also in abstract numbers and lines Pythagorean and Christian principles have been supposed to be detected in it. Instances of bravery and indomitable courage traits of magnanimity of self-denial and self-sacrifice which are found among the most savage and the most pusillanimous nations are regarded as sufficient to support the view that in these nations as much of social virtue and morality may be found as in the most civilized Christian states, or even more. And on this ground a doubt has been suggested whether in the progress of history and of general culture mankind have become better whether their morality has been increased. Morality being regarded in a subject of aspect and view as founded on what the agent holds to be right and wrong, good and evil. Not on a principle which is considered to be in and for itself right and good or a crime and evil or on a particular religion believed to be the true one. We may fairly decline on this occasion the task of tracing the formalism and error of such a view and establishing the true principles of morality or rather of social virtue in opposition to false morality. For the history of the world occupies a higher ground than that on which morality has properly its position which is personal character, the conscience of individuals, their particular will and mode of action. These have a value, imputation, reward or punishment proper to themselves. But the absolute aim of spirit requires and accomplishes what providence does transcends the obligation and the liability to imputation and the ascription of good or bad motives which attach to individuality in virtue of its social relations. They who on moral grounds and consequently with noble intention have resisted that which the advance of the spiritual idea makes necessary and higher in moral worth than those whose crimes have been turned into the means under the direction of a superior principle of realizing the purposes of that principle. But in such revolutions both parties generally stand within the limits of the same circle of transient and corruptible existence. Consequently, it is only a formal rectitude created by the living spirit and by God which those who stand upon ancient right and order maintain. The deeds of great men who are the individuals of the world's history thus appear not only justified in view of that intrinsic result of which they were not conscious but also from the point of view occupied by the secular moralist that from this point moral claims that are irrelevant must not be brought into collision with world historical deeds and their accomplishment. The litany of private virtues, modesty, humility, philanthropy and forbearance must not be raised against them. The history of the world might on principle entirely ignore the circle within which morality and the so much talked up distinction between the moral and the politic lies not only in abstaining from judgments for the principles involved and the necessary reference of the deeds in question to those principles are a sufficient judge of them but in leaving individuals quite out of view and unmentioned. What it has to record is the activity of the spirit of peoples so that the individual forms which that spirit has assumed in the sphere of outward reality might be left to the delineation of special histories. The same kind of formalism avails itself in its peculiar manner of the indefiniteness attaching to genius, poetry and even philosophy thinks equally that it finds these everywhere. We have here products of reflective thought and it is familiarity with those general conceptions which single out and name real distinctions without fathoming the true depth of the matter that we call culture. It is something merely formal in as much as it aims at nothing more than the analysis of the subject, whatever it be, into its constituent parts and the comprehension of these in their logical definitions and forms. It is not the free universality of conception necessary for making an abstract principle the object of consciousness. Such a consciousness of thought itself and of its forms isolated from a particular object is philosophy. This has indeed the condition of its existence in culture, that condition being the taking up of the object of thought and at the same time clothing it with the form of universality in such a way that the material content and the form given by the intellect are held in an inseparable state. Inseparable to such a degree that the object in question which by the analysis of one conception into a multitude of conceptions is enlarged to an incalculable treasure of thought is regarded as a merely empirical datum in whose formation thought has had no share. But it is quite as much an act of thought of the understanding in particular to embrace in one simple conception an object which of itself comprehends a concrete and large significance as earth, man, Alexander or Caesar and to designate it by one word as to resolve such a conception duly to isolate an idea the conceptions which it contains and to give them particular names and in reference to the view which gave occasion to what has just been said thus much will be clear which reflection produces what we include under the general terms genius, talent, art, science formal culture on every grade of intellectual development not only can but must grow and attain a mature bloom while the grade in question is developing itself to a state and on this basis of civilization is advancing to intelligent reflection of all forms of thought as in laws so in regard to all else in the very association of men in a state lies the necessity of formal culture consequently of the rise of the sciences and of a cultivated poetry and art generally the arts designated plastic require besides even in their technical aspect the civilized association of men the poetic art which has less need of external requirements and means and which has the element of immediate existence the voice as its material steps forth with great boldness and with matured expression even under the conditions presented by a people not yet united in a political combination since as remarked above language attains on its own particular ground a high intellectual development prior to the commencement of civilization philosophy also must make its appearance where political life exists since that in virtue of which any series of phenomena is reduced within the sphere of culture as above stated is the form strictly proper to thought and thus for philosophy which is nothing other than the consciousness of this form itself the thinking of thinking the material of which its edifice is to be constructed is already prepared by general culture if in the development of the state itself periods are necessitated which impel the soul of nobler natures to seek refuge from the present in ideal regions in order to find in them that harmony with itself which it can no longer enjoy in the discordant real world where the reflective intelligence attacks all that is wholly in deep which had been spontaneously inwrought into the religion laws and manners of nations and brings them down and attenuates them to abstract godless generalities thought will be compelled to become thinking reason with the view of effecting in its own element the restoration of its principles from the ruin to which they had been brought we find then it is true among all world historical peoples poetry, plastic art, science even philosophy but not only is there a diversity in style and bearing generally but still more remarkably in subject matter and this is a diversity of the most important kind effecting the rationality of that subject matter it is useless for a pretentious aesthetic criticism to demand that our good pleasure should not be made the rule for the matter, the substantial part of their contents and to maintain that it is the beautiful form as such the grandeur of the fancy and so forth which fine art aims at and which must be considered and enjoyed by a liberal taste and cultivated mind a healthy intellect does not tolerate such abstractions and cannot assimilate productions of the kind above referred to granted that the Indian epopays might be placed on a level with the Homeric on account of a number of those qualities of form grandeur of invention and imaginative power liveliness of images and emotions and beauty of diction yet the infinite difference of matter remains consequently one of substantial importance and involving the interest of reason which is immediately concerned with the consciousness of the idea of freedom and its expression in individuals there is not only a classical form but a classical order of subject matter and in a work of art form and subject matter are so closely united that the former can only be classical to the extent to which the latter is so with a fantastical indeterminate material and rule is the essence of reason the form becomes measureless and formless or mean and contracted in the same way in that comparison of the various systems of philosophy of which we have already spoken the only point of importance is overlooked namely the character of that unity which is found alike in the Chinese the Eliotic and the Spinozistic philosophy the distinction between the recognition of that unity as abstract and as concrete concrete to the extent of being a unity in and by itself a unity synonymous with spirit but that coordination proves that it recognizes only such an abstract unity so that while it gives judgment respecting philosophy it is ignorant of that very point which constitutes the interest of philosophy but there are also spheres which amid all the variety that is presented in the substantial content of a particular form of culture remain the same the difference above mentioned in art, science, philosophy concerns the thinking reason and freedom which is the self-consciousness of the former and which has the same one root with thought as it is not the brute but only the man that thinks he only and only because he is a thinking thing has freedom his consciousness imports this that the individual comprehends itself as a person that is recognizes itself in its single existence as possessing universality as capable of abstraction from and of surrendering all speciality and therefore as inherently infinite consequently those spheres of intelligence which lie beyond the limits of this consciousness are a common ground among those substantial distinctions even morality which is so intimately connected with the consciousness of freedom can be very pure while that consciousness is still wanting as far that is to say as it expresses duties and rights only as objective commands or even as far as it remains satisfied with the merely formal elevation of the soul the surrender of the sensual and of all sensual motives in a purely negative self-denying fashion the Chinese morality since Europeans have become acquainted with it and with the writings of Confucius has obtained the greatest praise and proportionate attention from those who are familiar with Christian morality there is a similar acknowledgement of the sublimity with which the Indian religion and poetry a statement that must however be limited to the higher kind but especially the Indian philosophy expatiate upon and demand the removal and sacrifice of sensuality yet both these nations are it must be confessed entirely wanting in the essential consciousness of the idea of freedom to the Chinese their moral laws are just like natural laws external positive commands claims established by force compulsory duties or rules of courtesy towards each other freedom through which alone the essential determinations of reason become moral sentiments is wanting morality is a political affair and its laws are administered by officers of government and legal tribunals their treatises upon it which are not law books but are certainly addressed to the subject of will and individual disposition read as do the moral writings of the Stoics like a string of commands stated as necessary for realizing the goal of happiness so that it seems to be left free to men on their part to adopt such commands to observe them or not while the conception of an abstract subject a wise man forms the culminating point among the Chinese as also among the Stoic moralists also in the Indian doctrine of the renunciation of the sensuality of desires and earthly interests positive moral freedom is not the object and end but the annihilation of consciousness spiritual and even physical privation of life it is the concrete spirit of a people which we have distinctly to recognize and since it is spirit it can only be comprehended spiritually that is by thought it is this alone which takes the lead in all the deeds and tendencies of that people and which is occupied in realizing itself in satisfying its ideal and becoming self-conscious for its great business is self-production but for spirit the highest attainment is self-knowledge and advance not only to the intuition but to the thought the clear conception of itself this it must and is also destined to accomplish but the accomplishment is at the same time its dissolution and the rise of another spirit another world historical people another epoch of universal history this transition and connection leads us to the connection of the whole to the idea of the world's history as such which we have now to consider more closely and of which we have to give a representation and the course of the world's history subsection 2 this recording is in the public domain the course of the world's history subsection 3 this is the Libervox recording all Libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libervox.org introduction to the philosophy of history by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel the course of the world's history subsection 3 history in general is there for the development of spirit in time as nature is the development of the idea in space if then we cast a glance over the world's history generally we see a vast picture of changes and transactions of infinitely manifold forms of peoples, states, individuals in unresting succession everything that can enter into and interest the soul of man all our sensibility to goodness, beauty and greatness is called into play on every hand aims are adopted and pursued which we recognize whose accomplishment we desire we hope and fear for them in all these occurrences and changes we behold human action and suffering predominant everywhere something akin to ourselves and therefore everywhere something that excites our interest for or against sometimes it attracts us by beauty, freedom and rich variety sometimes by energy such as enables even vice to make itself interesting sometimes we see the more comprehensive mass of some general interest advancing with comparative slowness and subsequently sacrificed to an infinite complication of trifling circumstances and so dissipated into atoms then again with a vast expenditure of power a trivial result is produced while from what appears unimportant a tremendous issue proceeds on every hand there is the motleyest throng of events drawing us within the circle of its interest and when one combination vanishes another immediately appears in its place the general thought the category which first presents itself in this restless mutation of individuals and peoples existing for a time and then vanishing is that of change at large the sight of the ruins of some ancient sovereignty directly leads us to contemplate this thought of change in its negative aspect what traveler among the ruins of Carthage of Palmyra, Persepolis or Rome has not been stimulated to reflections on the transiency of kingdoms and men and to sadness at the thought of a vigorous and rich life now departed a sadness which does not expend itself on personal losses and the uncertainty of one's own undertakings but is a disinterested sorrow at the decay of a splendid and highly cultured national life but the next consideration which allies itself with that of change is that change while it imports dissolution involves at the same time the rise of a new life that while death is the issue of life is also the issue of death this is a grand conception one which the Oriental thinkers attained and which is perhaps the highest in their metaphysics in the idea of metempsychosis we find it evolved in its relation to individual existence but a myth more generally known is that of the phoenix as a type of the life of nature eternally preparing for itself its funeral pile and consuming itself upon it but so that from its ashes is produced the new renovated fresh life but this image is only Asiatic Oriental not Occidental Spirit consuming the envelope of its existence does not merely pass into another envelope nor rise rejuvenessant from the ashes of its previous form it comes forth exalted glorified a purer spirit it certainly makes war upon itself consumes its own existence but in this very destruction it works up that existence into a new form and each successive phase becomes in its turn a material working on which it exalts itself to a new grade if we consider spirit in this aspect regarding its changes not merely as rejuvenessant transitions that is returns to the same form but rather as manipulations of itself by which it multiplies the material for future endeavors we see it exerting itself in a variety of modes and directions developing its powers and gratifying its desires in a variety which is inexhaustible because every one of its creations in which it has already found gratification meets it anew as material and is a new stimulus to plastic activity the abstract conception of mere change gives place to the thought of spirit manifesting developing and perfecting its powers in every direction which its manifold nature can follow what powers it inherently possesses we learn from the variety of products and formations which it originates in this pleasurable activity it has to do only with itself as involved with the conditions of mere nature internal and external it will indeed meet in these not only opposition and hindrance but will often see its endeavors thereby fail often sink under the complications in which it is entangled either by nature or by itself but in such case it perishes in fulfilling its own destiny and proper function and even thus exhibits the spectacle of self-demonstration as spiritual activity the very essence of spirit is activity it realizes its potentiality makes itself its own deed its own work and thus it becomes an object to itself contemplates itself as an objective existence thus is it with the spirit of a people it is a spirit having strictly defined characteristics which erects itself into an objective world that exists and persists in a particular religious form of worship customs, constitution and political laws in the whole complex of its institutions in the events and transactions that make up its history that is its work that is what this particular nation is nations are what their deeds are every Englishman will say we are the men who navigate the ocean and have the commerce of the world to whom the East Indies belong and their riches who have a parliament, juries, etc the relation of the individual to that spirit is that he appropriates to himself this substantial existence that it becomes his character and capability enabling him to have a definite place in the world to be something for he finds the being of the people to which he belongs an already established firm world objectively present to him with which he has to incorporate himself in this its work therefore its world the spirit of the people enjoys its existence and finds its satisfaction a nation is moral, virtuous, vigorous while it is engaged in realizing its grand objects and defends its work against external violence during the process of giving to its purposes an objective existence the contradiction between its potential subject of being its inner aim and life and its actual being is removed it has attained full reality has itself objectively present to it but this having been attained the activity displayed by the spirit of the people in question is no longer needed it has its desire the nation can still accomplish much in war and peace at home and abroad but the living substantial soul itself may be said to have ceased its activity the essential supreme interest has consequently vanished from its life for interest is present only where there is opposition the nation lives the same kind of life as the individual when passing from maturity to old age in the enjoyment of itself in the satisfaction of being exactly what it desired and was able to attain although its imagination might have transcended that limit it nevertheless abandoned any such aspirations as objects of actual endeavor if the real world was less than favorable to their attainment and restricted its aim by the conditions thus imposed this mere customary life the watch wound up and going on of itself is that which brings on natural death custom is activity without opposition for which there remains only a formal duration in which the fullness and zest that originally characterized the aim of life is out of the question a merely external sensuous existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its object thus perish individuals thus perish peoples by a natural death and though the latter may continue in being it is an existence without intellect or vitality having no need of its institutions because the need for them is satisfied a political nullity and tedium in order that a truly universal interest may arise the spirit of a people must advance to the adoption of some new purpose but once can this new purpose originate it would be a higher, more comprehensive conception of itself a transcending of its principle but this very act would involve a principle of a new order a new national spirit such a new principle does in fact enter into the spirit of a people that has arrived at full development and self-realization it dies not a simply natural death for it is not a mere single individual but a spiritual generic life in its case natural death appears to imply destruction through its own agency the reason of this difference from the single natural individual is that the spirit of a people exists as a genus and consequently carries within it its own negation in the very generality which characterizes it a people can only die a violent death when it has become naturally dead in itself as for example the german imperial cities the german imperial constitution it is not of the nature of the all-pervading spirit to die this merely natural death it does not simply sink into the senile life of mere custom but as being a national spirit belonging to universal history attains to the consciousness of what its work is it attains to a conception of itself in fact it is world historical only in so far as a universal principle has lain in its fundamental element in its grand aim only so far is the work which such a spirit produces a moral political organization if it be mere desires that impel nations to activity such deeds pass over without leaving a trace or their traces are only ruin and destruction thus it was first chronos time that ruled the golden age without moral products and what was produced the offspring of that chronos was devoured by it it was Jupiter from whose head Minerva sprang and to whose circle of divinities belongs Apollo and the Muses that first put a constraint upon time and set a bound to its principle of decadence he is the political God who produced a moral work the state in the very element of an achievement the quality of generality of thought is contained without thought it has no objectivity that is its basis the highest point in the development of a people is this to have gained a conception of its life and condition to have reduced its laws its ideas of justice and morality to a science for in this unity of the objective and subjective lies the most intimate unity that spirit can attain to in and with itself in its work it is employed in rendering itself an object of its own contemplation but it cannot develop itself objectively in its essential nature except in thinking itself at this point then spirit is acquainted with its principles the general character of its acts but at the same time in virtue of its very generality this work of thought is different in point of form from the actual achievements of the national genius and from the vital agency by which those achievements have been performed we have then before us a real and an ideal existence of the spirit of the nation if we wish to gain the general idea and conception of what the Greeks were we find it in Sophocles and Aristophanes in Thucydides and Plato in these individuals the Greek spirit conceived and thought itself this is the profounder kind of satisfaction which the spirit of a people attains but it is ideal and distinct from its real activity at such a time therefore we are sure to see a people finding satisfaction in the idea of virtue putting talk about virtue partly side by side with actual virtue but partly in the place of it on the other hand pure universal thought since its nature is universality is apt to bring the special and spontaneous belief, trust, customary morality to reflect upon itself and its primitive simplicity to show up the limitation with which it is fettered partly suggesting reasons for renouncing duties partly itself demanding reasons and the connection of such requirement with universal thought and not finding that connection seeking to impeach the authority of duty generally as destitute of a sound foundation at the same time the isolation of individuals from each other and from the whole makes its appearance their aggressive selfishness and vanity their seeking personal advantage and consulting this at the expense of the state at large that inward principle in transcending its outward manifestations is subjective also in form namely selfishness and corruption in the unbound passions and ecotistic interests of men Zeus therefore who is represented as having put a limit to the devouring agency of time and stayed this transiency by having established something inherently and independently durable Zeus and his race are themselves swallowed up and that by the very power that produced them the principle of thought perception reasoning insight derived from rational grounds and the requirement of such grounds time is the negative element in the sensuous world thought is the same negativity but it is the deepest the infinite form of it in which therefore all existence generally is dissolved first finite existence determinant limited form existence generally in its object of character is limited it appears therefore as a mere datum something immediate authority and is either intrinsically finite and limited or presents itself as a limit for the thinking subject and its infinite reflection on itself but first we must observe how the life which proceeds from death is itself on the other hand only individual life so that regarding the species as the real and substantial in this vicissitude the perishing of the individual is a regress of the species into individuality the perpetuation of the race is therefore none other than the monotonous repetition of the same kind of existence further we must remark how perception the comprehension of being by thought is the source and birthplace of a new and in fact higher form in a principle which while it preserves dignifies its material for thought is that universal that species which is immortal which preserves identity with itself the particular form of spirit not merely passes away in the world by natural causes in time but is annulled in the automatic self-mirroring activity of consciousness because this annulling is an activity of thought it is at the same time conservative and elevating in its operation while then on the one side spirit annulles the reality the permanence of that which it is it gains on the other side the essence the thought the universal element of that which it only was its transient conditions its principle is no longer that immediate import and aim which it was previously but the essence of that import and aim the result of this process is then that spirit in rendering itself objective and making this its being an object of thought on the one hand destroys the determinant form of its being on the other hand gains a comprehension of the universal element which it involves and thereby gives a new form to its inherent principle in virtue of this the substantial character of the national spirit has been altered that is its principle has risen into another and in fact a higher principle it is of the highest importance in apprehending and comprehending history to have and to understand the thought involved in this transition the individual traverses as a unity various grades of development and remains the same individual in like manner also does a people till the spirit which it embodies reaches the grade of universality in this point lies the fundamental the ideal necessity of transition this is the soul the essential consideration of the philosophical comprehension of history spirit is essentially the result of its own activity its activity is the transcending of immediate simple unreflected existence the negation of that existence and the returning into itself we may compare it with the seed for with this the plant begins yet it is also the result of the plants entire life but the weak side of life is exhibited in the fact that the commencement and the result are disjoined from each other thus also is it in the life of individuals and peoples the life of a people ripens a certain fruit its activity aims at the complete manifestation of the principle which it embodies but this fruit does not fall back into the bosom of the people that produced and matured it on the contrary it becomes a poison draft to it that poison draft it cannot let alone for it has an insatiable thirst for it the taste of the draft is its annihilation though at the same time the rise of a new principle we have already discussed the final aim of this progression the principles of the successive phases of spirit that animate the nations in a necessitated gradation are themselves only steps in the development of the one universal spirit which through them elevates and completes itself to a self-comprehending totality while we are thus concerned exclusively with the idea of spirit and in the history of the world regard everything as only its manifestation we have in traversing the past however extensive its periods only to do with what is present for philosophy as occupying itself with the true has to do with the eternally present nothing in the past is lost for it for the idea is ever present spirit is immortal with it there is no past no future but an essential now this necessarily implies that the present form of spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps these have indeed unfolded themselves in succession independently but what spirit is it has always been essentially distinctions are only the development of this essential nature the life of the ever present spirit is a circle of progressive embodiments which looked at in one aspect still exist beside each other and only is looked at from another point of view appear as past the grades which spirit seems to have left behind it it still possesses in the depths of its present and introduction to the philosophy of history by Gjörg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel translated by J. Sibri this recording is in the public domain