199. Through the dependence and co-operation involved in labour, subjective self-seeking is converted into a contribution towards the satisfaction of the wants of all others. The universal so penetrates the particular by its dialectic movement, that the individual, while acquiring, producing, and enjoying for himself, at the same time produces and acquires for the enjoyment of others. This is a necessity, and in this necessity arising out of mutual dependence is contained the fact of a general and permanent wealth (§170). In it each person may share by means of his education and skill. Each, too, is by it assured of subsistence, while the results of his labour preserve and increase the general wealth.
200. But particular wealth, or the possibility of sharing in the general wealth, is based partly on skill, partly on something which is directly the individual’s own, namely, capital. Skill in its turn depends on capital, and on many accidental circumstances. These also in their manifold variety make more pronounced the differences in the development of natural endowments, physical and mental, which were unequal to begin with. These differences are conspicuous everywhere in the sphere of particularity. They, along with other elements of chance and accident, necessarily produce inequalities of wealth and skill.
Note.— Nature is the element of inequality. Yet the objective right of particularity of spirit, contained in the idea itself, does not in the civic community supersede the inequality set up by nature. On the contrary, it produces inequality out of spirit and exalts it to an inequality of talents, wealth, and intellectual and moral education. To oppose to the objective right a demand for equality is a move of the empty understanding, which takes its own abstraction and mandate to be real and reasonable. In the sphere of particularity the universal images itself, forming with the particular merely a relative identity. The particular thus retains both the natural and the capricious particularity, and also a remnant of the state of nature. It is the reason immanent in the system of human wants and their activities, which fashions this system into an organic whole, of which the differences are members. (See next §.)
201. The infinitely varied means and their infinitely interlacing play of mutual production and exchange are gathered together by virtue of the universality inherent in their content, and become divided into general masses. The whole is thus formed into particular systems of wants, means, and labour, ways and methods of satisfaction, and theoretical and practical training. Amongst these systems the individuals are apportioned, and compose a cluster of classes or estates.
Addition.— The manner of sharing in the general wealth is left to each particular individual, but the general differences, found in the division of the civic community, are essential. The family is the first basis of the state, and classes or estates are the second. This second is of consequence because private persons, through self-seeking, are compelled to turn themselves out towards others. This is the link by which self-seeking is joined to the universal or the state, whose care it must be to keep the connection strong and steadfast.
202. Classes are, in terms of the conception, (a) the substantial or direct, (b) the reflecting or formal, and (c) the universal.
203. (a) The wealth of the substantial class is contained in natural products obtained by cultivation. The soil is capable of being an exclusive, private possession, and demands not merely the taking from it what it bears naturally, but an objective working up. Since the returns of labour depend on the seasons, and harvests are influenced by variable weather and other natural conditions, provision for wants must take account of the future. However, owing to the natural conditions, this way of life involves but little reflection, and is but slightly modified by subjective volition. It therefore embodies in substantive feeling an ethical life resting directly upon trust and the family relation.
Note.— States are rightly said to come into existence with the introduction of agriculture along with the introduction of marriage. The principle of agriculture involves the cultivation of the soil, and therefore, also, private ownership of property (compare §170, note). It takes the life of nomadic tribes back to the repose of private right and to the secure satisfaction of wants. Joined also to the agricultural life are the limitation of sexual love to marriage, the extension of this bond to an enduring universal relation, the extension of want to family maintenance and of possession to family wealth. Safety, protection by fortification, and uninterrupted satisfaction of wants are all commendable prima facie characteristics of these two fundamental ethical institutions. They are forms of universality, or ways by which reason or the absolute end seeks to realize itself. In this connection nothing can be more interesting than the ingenious and learned explanations which my much honoured friend, Mr. Creuzer, has given in the fourth volume of his “Mythologie und Symbolik” with regard to the agrarian festivals, images, and sanctuaries of the ancients. In these customs and rites the introduction of agriculture and kindred institutions was known and revered as a divine act.
From the side of private-right, especially the administration of justice, and from the side of instruction, culture, and also of religion, the substantive character of this class undergoes modifications. These modifications, however, are due to the development of reflection, and affect not the substantive content but the form.—They occur also in the other classes.
Addition.— In our time agriculture, losing some of its naturalness, is managed in a reflective way like a factory, and acquires the character of the second class. Tet it will always retain much of the substantive feeling, which pervades the patriarchal life. In it man accepts what is given with a simple mind, thanks God for it, and lives in the assurance that the goodness of Grod will continue. What he gets suffices him, and he uses it because it comes again. This is the simple disposition unaffected by the desire for wealth. It may be described as the type of the old nobility, who consumed simply what was there. In this class na,ture does the chief share of the work, and man’s diligence is in comparison secondary. In the second class the understanding is the essential factor, and the natural products are regarded simply as furnishing material.
204. (b) The business of the industrial class is to alter the form of the products of nature. This class is indebted for its subsistence to its labour, to reflection, and also to the interposition of the wants and labours of others. For that which it produces and enjoys it has to thank mainly its own activity.—Its field of action is again divided into three parts:— (i.) Labour for individual wants of the more concrete kind, and at the request of particular persons. This is manual labour, or the work of single artisans, (ii.) The more abstract collective mass of labour, which is also for particular needs but due to a general demand. This is manufacture, (iii.) Business of exchange, by which one special means of subsistence is given for others, chiefly through money, the general medium of exchange, in which is realized the abstract value of all merchandise. This is commerce.
Addition.— The individual in the industrial class is referred to himself, and this self-reference is intimately connected with the demand for a legal status. Consequently the sense for freedom and order has mainly arisen in cities. The first class needs to think little about itself. What it acquires is the gift of a stranger, nature. With it the feeling of dependence is primary. With this feeling is easily associated a willingness to submit to whatever occurs. The first class is therefore more inclined to subjection, the second to freedom.
205 (c) The business of the universal class is with the universal interests of society. Hence it must be relieved, of the direct task of providing for itself. It must possess private means, or receive an allowance from the state, which claims his activity. His private interest may thus find satisfaction in his labour for the universal.
206. A class is a particularity which has become objective, and the foregoing are the general divisions in accordance with the conception. Yet capacity, birth, and other circumstances have their influence in determining to what class an individual shall belong. But the final and essential factor in the case is subjective opinion and private freedom of choice. In this sphere free choice has its right, honour, and dignity. If a thing happens in this sphere according to internal necessity, it is ipso facto occasioned by free arbitrary choice, and for the subjective consciousness bears the stamp of its will.
Note.— In reference to the principle of particularity or subjective caprice may be clearly discerned the difference between the political life of the East and that of the West, between the ancient and the modern world. In the ancient world the division of the whole into classes was produced objectively of itself, because it is implicitly rational. But the principle of subjectivity does not receive its due, since the separation of individuals into classes is either a function of the rulers, as in Plato’s “Republic” (Rep. iii. 120), or else it rests upon mere birth, as in the caste system of India. Now subjective particularity is an essential element of communal life, and, when it is not taken up into the organization of the whole and reconciled in the whole, it must prove a hostile force and pave the way for the ruin of the social order (see §185, note). It either overturns society, as was the case in the Greek states and the Roman republic, or, when the existing order is able to preserve itself by force or by religious authority, it then manifests itself as internal corruption and complete degradation. This happened in a measure amongst the Lacedemonians, and now is completely the case with the inhabitants of India.
But when subjective particularity is welcomed by objective order, and given its rights and place, it becomes the animating principle of the civic community, stimulates thought and promotes merit and honour. The recognition of the claim that whatever in the civic community and the state is rationally necessary should occur through subjective free choice is a fuller definition of the popular idea of freedom (§121).
207. The particularity of the individual becomes definitely and actually realized, only by his limiting himself exclusively to one of the particular spheres of want. In this system the ethical sense is that of rectitude or class-honour. It involves the decision of the individual by means of his own native activity, diligence, and skill to make himself a member of one of these classes, preserve himself in it, and provide for himself only through the instrumentality of the universal. He should acknowledge this position, and also claim to have it recognized by others.—Morality has its peculiar place in this sphere, where the ruling factor is reflection upon one’s action, or consideration of the end involved in particular wants and in well-being. Here also the element of chance in satisfying these ends makes random and individual assistance a duty.
Note.—Youth is specially apt to struggle against the proposal that it should decide upon a particular vocation, on the ground that any decision is a limitation of its universal scope and a mere external necessity. This aloofness is a product of the abstract thinking, which clings to the universal and unreal. It fails to recognize that the conception must experience a division into conception and its reality, if it is to have a definite and particular realization (§7), and to win for itself reality and ethical objectivity.
Addition.— By the sentence that a man must be something we understand that he must belong to a definite class; for this something signifies a substantive reality. A human being without a vocation is a mere private person, who has no place in any real universal. Still, the individual in his exclusiveness may regard himself as the universal, and may fancy that when he takes a trade or profession, he is sinking to a lower plane. That is the false notion that a thing, when it attains the realization which properly belongs to it, limits itself and gives up its independence.
208. The principle of the system of wants, namely the particularity of knowing and willing, contains absolute universality, or the universality of freedom, only in the abstract form of right of property. But here right is no longer merely implicit, but is found in valid reality as protection of property through the administration of justice.