190. The animal has a limited range of ways and means for satisfying his limited wants. Man in his dependence proves his universality and his ability to become independent, firstly, by multiplying his wants and means, and, secondly, by dissecting the concrete want into parts. The parts then become other wants, and through being specialized are more abstract than the first.
Note.— The object is in right a person, in morals a subject, in the family a member, in the city generally a burgher (bourgeois); and here, at the standpoint of want (§123, note), he is the concrete product of picture-thought which we call man. Here, and properly only here, is it that we first speak of man in this sense.
Addition.— The animal is particular in its being, having instinct, and a strictly limited means of satisfaction. Some insects are confined to a certain kind of plant; other animals have a wider circle and can inhabit different climates, but still their range is limited in contrast with that of man. Man’s need of shelter and clothing, his having to destroy the natural form of food, and adapt it by cooking to his changed taste, give him less aplomb than the animal. Indeed, as spirit, he ought to have less. The understanding, with its grasp of differences, brings multiplicity into wants: and, when taste and utility become criteria of judgment, they change even the wants themselves. It is in the end not the appetite, but the opinion which has to be satisfied. It is the province of education or culture to dissect the concrete need into its elements. When wants are multiplied, the mere appetites are re-stricted; for, when man uses many things, the propulsion to any one of them is not so strong, a sign that the force of physical need in general is diminished.
191. The means for satisfying the specialized wants are similarly divided and increased. These means become in their turn relative ends and abstract wants. Hence the multiplication expands into an infinite series of distinctions with regard to these phases, and of judgments concerning the suitability of the means to their ends. This is refinement.
Addition.— What the English call “comfortable” is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.
192. The satisfaction of want and the attainment of means thereto become a realized possibility for others, through whose wants and labour satisfaction is in turn conditioned. The abstraction, which becomes a quality of wants and means (§191), helps to determine the mutual relation of individuals. This general recognition of others is the element which makes the isolated abstract wants and means concrete and social.
Addition.— Through the compulsion I am under to fashion myself according to others arises the form of universality. I acquire from others the means of satisfaction, and must accordingly fall in with their opinions. At the same time I am compelled to produce the means for the satisfaction of the wants of others. One plays into the other; and the two are interdependent. Everything particular becomes in this way social. In the matter of dress, time of eating, etc., we follow convention, because it is not worth while exercising our insight and judgment. He is the most prudent who does as others do.
193. The social element is a special instrument both of the simple acquisition of the means, and also of the reduplication of the ways by which want is satisfied. Further, it contains directly the claim of equality with others. Both the desire for equality, including the imitation of others, and also the desire of each person to be unique, become real sources of the multiplication and extension of wants.
194. Social want joins the direct or natural want with the spiritual want due to picture-thinking; but the spiritual or universal factor outweighs the other. The social element brings a liberation, by which the stringent necessity of nature is turned aside, and man is determined by his own universal opinion. He makes his own necessity. He has arbitrary choice, being in contact with a contingency which is not external but internal.
Note.— It has been held that man as to want is free in a so-called state of nature, in which he has only the so-called simple wants of nature, requiring for their satisfaction merely the means furnished directly and at random by nature. In this view no account is taken of the freedom which lies in work, of which more hereafter. Such a view is not true, because in natural want and its direct satisfaction the spiritual is submerged by mere nature. Hence, a state of nature is a state of savagery and slavery. Freedom is nowhere to be found except in the return of spirit and thought to itself, a process by which it distinguishes itself from the natural and turns back upon it.
195. This liberation is formal, since the particular side of the end remains the fundamental content. The tendency of the social condition indefinitely to increase and specialize wants, means, and enjoyments, and to distinguish natural from unrefined wants, has no limits. Hence arises luxury, in which the augmentation of dependence and distress is in its nature infinite. It operates upon an infinitely unyielding material, namely, an external means, which has the special quality of being the possession of the free will. Hence it meets with the most obdurate resistance.
Addition.— Diogenes in his completely cynical character is properly only a product of Athenian social life. That which gave birth to him was the public opinion, against which his behaviour was directed. His way of therefore not independent, but occasioned by his social surroundings. It was itself an ungainly product of luxury. Wherever luxury is extreme, there also prevail distress and depravity, and cynicism is produced in opposition to over-refinement.