181. In a natural way and essentially through the principle of personality, the family separates into a number of families, which then exist as independent concrete persons, and are therefore related externally to one another. The elements bound up in the unity of the family, which is the social idea still in the form of the conception, must now be released from the conception and given independent reality. This is the stage of difference. Here, at the outset, to use abstract expressions, we have the determination of particularity, which is nevertheless in relation to universality. The universal is, in fact, the basis, which is, however, as yet only internal, and therefore exists in the particular only formally, and in it is manifested externally. Hence in this relation occasioned by reflection the ethical is, as it were, lost; or rather since it, as essence, of necessity appears or is manifested, it occurs in its phenomenal form. This is the civic community.
Note.— The extension of the family or the transition of it into another principle has in the actual world two phases. It is on one side the peaceful expansion of the family into a people or nation, whose component parts have a common natural origin. On the other side it is the collection of scattered groups of families by superior force, or it is their voluntary association, in order to satisfy by co-operation their common wants.
Addition.— Universality has here a point of outlet in the independence of particularity. At this point the ethical appears to be lost. Consciousness finds in the identity of the family what is properly its first divine and obligatory principle. But now there appears a relation, in which the particular is to be the prime factor in determining my conduct. Thus the ethical seems to be discarded and superseded. But in this view I am really in error, for, while I believe myself to be retaining the particular, the universal and also the necessity of social unity still remain for me fundamental and essential. Besides, I am at the stage of appearance, and although my particular nature remains for me the determining factor and end, I serve in this way the universal, which does not relax its own special hold of me.