287. Decision is to be distinguished from its execution and application, and in general from the prosecution and preservation of what has been already resolved, namely, the existing laws, regulations, establishments for common ends, and the like. This business of subsumption or application is undertaken by the executive, including the judiciary and police. It is their duty directly to care for each particular thing in the civic community, and in these private ends make to prevail the universal interest.
288. Common interests of private concern occur within the civic community, and fall outside of the self-constituted and self-contained universal of the state (§256). They are administered in the corporations (§251) of the societies, trades, and professions, by their superintendents and representatives. The affairs, overseen by them, are the private property and interest of these particular spheres, whose authority depends upon the mutual trust of the associates, and confidence in the securities. Yet these circles must be subordinate to the higher interest of the state. Hence, in filling these posts generally, there will occur a mingling of the choice of the interested parties with the ratification of a higher authority.
289. To secure the universal interest of the state and to preserve the law in the province of particular rights, and also to lead these rights back to the universal interest, require the attention of subordinates of the executive. These subordinates are on one side executive officers and on the other a college of advisers. These two meet together in the highest offices of all, which are in contact with the monarch.
Note.— The civic community is, as we saw, the arena for the contest of the private interests of all against all. It is also the seat of battle between private interest and the collective special interest, and likewise of both private and collective special interests with the higher standpoint and order of the state. The spirit of the corporation, begotten in the course of regulating the particular spheres, becomes by a process internal to itself converted into the spirit of the state. It finds the state to be the means of preserving particular ends. This is the secret of the patriotism of the citizens in one of its phases. They are aware that the state is their substantive being, because it preserves their particular spheres, sustains their authority, and considers their welfare. Since the spirit of the corporation contains directly the riveting of the particular to the universal, it exhibits the depth and strength of the state as it exists in sentiment. The administration of the business of the corporation through its own representatives is often clumsy, because, while they see and know their own peculiar interests and affairs, they do not discern the connection with remote conditions or the universal standpoint. Other elements contribute to this result, as, e.g., an intimate private relation between the representatives and their subordinates. Circumstances often tend to equalize these two classes which are in many ways mutually dependent. This peculiar territory can be looked on as handed over to the element of formal freedom, in which the knowledge, judgment, and practice of individuals, as also their small passions and fancies, may have room to wrestle with one another. This may all the more easily happen, the more trivial from the universal side of the state is the mismanaged affair, especially when the mismanagement stands of itself in direct relation to the satisfaction and opinion, which are derived from it.
290. In the business of the executive also there is a division of labour (§198). The organized executive officers have therefore a formal though difficult task before them. The lower concrete civil life must be governed from below in a concrete way. And yet the work must be divided into its abstract branches, specially officered by middlemen, whose activity in connection with those below them must from the lowest to the highest executive offices take the form of a continuous concrete oversight.
Addition.—The main point which crops up in connection with the executive is the division of offices. This division is concerned with the transition from the universal to the particular and singular; and the business is to be divided according to the different branches. The difficulty is that the different functions, the inferior and superior, must work in harmony. The police and the judiciary proceed each on its own course, it is true, but they yet in some office or other meet again. The means used to effect this conjunction often consists in appointing the chancellor of state and the prime minister, ministers in council. The matter is thus simplified on its upper side. In this way also everything issues from above out of the ministerial power, and business is, as they say, centralized. With this are associated the greatest possible despatch and efficiency in regard to what may affect the universal interests of state. This regime was introduced by the French Revolution, developed by Napoleon, and in France is found to this day. But France, on the other hand, has neither corporations nor communes, that is to say, the sphere in which particular and general interests coincide. In the Middle Ages this sphere had acquired too great an independence. Then there were states within the state, who persisted in behaving as if they were self-subsistent bodies. Though this ought not to occur, yet the peculiar strength of states lies in the communities. Here the government meets vested interests, which must be respected by it. These interests are inspected, and may be assisted by the government. Thus the individual finds protection in the exercise of his rights, and so attaches his particular interest to the preservation of the whole. For some time past the chief task has been that of organization carried on from above: while the lower and bulky part of the whole was readily left more or less unorganized. Yet it is of high importance that it also should be organized, because only as an organism is it a power or force. Otherwise it is a mere heap or mass of broken bits. An authoritative power is found only in the organic condition of the particular spheres.
291. The offices of the executive are of an objective nature, which is already independently marked out in accordance with their substance (§287). They are at the same time conducted by individuals. Between the objective element and individuals there is no direct, natural connecting tie. Hence individuals are not set aside for these offices by natural personality or by birth. There is required in them the objective element, namely, knowledge and proof of fitness. This proof guarantees to the state what it needs, and, as it is the sole condition, makes it possible for any citizen to devote himself to the universal class.
292. The subjective side is found in this, that out of many one individual must be chosen, and empowered to discharge the office. Since in this case the objective element does not lie in genius, as it does in art, the number of persons from whom the selection may be made is necessarily indefinite, and whom finally to prefer is beyond the possibility of absolute determination. The junction of individual and office, two phases whose relation is always accidental, devolves upon the princely power as decisive and sovereign.
293. The particular state-business, which monarchy transfers to executive officers, constitutes the objective side of the sovereignty inherent in the monarch. The distinguishing feature of this state-business is found in the nature of its matter. Just as the activity of the officers is the discharge of a duty, so their office is not subject to chance but a right.
294. The individual, who by the act of the sovereign (§292) is given an official vocation, holds it on the condition that he discharges his duty, which is the substantive factor in his relation. By virtue of this factor the individual finds in his official employment his livelihood and the assured satisfaction of his particularity (§264), and in his external surroundings and official activity is free from subjective dependence and influences.
Note.— The state cannot rely upon service which is capricious and voluntary, such, for example, as the administration of justice by knightserrant. This service reserves to itself the right to act in accordance with subjective views, and also the right to withhold itself at will, or to realize subjective ends. The opposite extreme to the knight-errant in reference to public service would be the act of the public servant, who was attached to his employment merely by want, without true duty or right.
The public service requires the sacrifice of independent self-satisfaction at one’s pleasure, and grants the right of finding satisfaction in the performance of duty, but nowhere else. Here is found the conjunction of universal and particular interests, a union which constitutes the conception and the internal stability of the state (§260).
Official position is not based upon contract (§75), although it involves the consent of the two sides and also a double performance. The public servant is not called to a single chance act of service, as is the attorney, but finds in his work the main interest of both his spiritual and his particular existence. So also it is not a matter merely external and particular, the performance of which is intrusted to him. The value of such a matter on its inner side is different from the externality of it, and thus is not as yet injured, as a stipulation is (§77), merely by nonperformance. That which the public servant has to perform is as it stands of absolute value. Hence positive injury or non-performance, either being opposed to the essence of service, is a wrong to the universal content (§95, a negative-infinite judgment), and therefore a fault or crime.
The assured satisfaction of particular want does away with external need. There is no occasion to seek the means for alleviating want at the cost of official activity and duty. In the universal function of state those who are commissioned with the affairs of state are protected also against the other subjective side, the private passion of subjects, whose private interests, etc., may be injured by the furtherance of the universal.
295. Security for the state and its subjects against misuse of power by the authorities and their officers is found directly in their responsibility arising out of their nature as a hierarchy. But it is also found in the legitimate societies and corporations. They hold in check the inflow of subjective wilfulness into the power of the officers. They also supplement from below the control from above, which cannot reach down to the conduct of individuals.
Note.— In the conduct and character of the officers the laws and decisions of government touch individuality, and are given reality. On this depend the satisfaction and confidence of the citizens in the government. On this also depends the execution of the government’s intentions, or else the weakening and frustration of them, since the manner in which the intention is realized is by sensibilitv and sentiment easily estimated more highly than the act itself, even though it be a tax. It is due to this direct and personal contact that the control from above may incompletely attain its end. This end may find an obstacle in the common interest of the official class, which is distinct from both subjects and superiors. Especially when institutions are perhaps not yet perfected, the higher interference of sovereignty for the removal of these hindrances (as for example that of Friedrich II in the famous Müller-Arnold affair) is demanded and justified.
296. Whether or no integrity of conduct, gentleness, and freedom from passion pass into social custom depends upon the nature of the direct ethical life and thought. These phases of character maintain the spiritual balance over against the merely mental acquisition of the socalled sciences, dealing with the objects of these spheres of government, against also the necessary practice of business, and the actual labour of mechanical and other trades. The greatness of the state is also a controlling element, by virtue of which the importance of family relations and other private ties is diminished, and revenge, hate, and the like passions become inoperative and powerless. In concern for the great interests of a large state, these subjective elements sink out of sight, and there is produced an habitual regard for universal interests and affairs.
297. The members of the executive and the state officials constitute the main part of the middle class, in which are found the educated intelligence and the consciousness of right of the mass of a people. The institutions of sovereignty operating from above and the rights of corporations from below prevent this class from occupying the position of an exclusive aristocracy and using their education and skill wilfully and despotically.
Note.— At one time the administration of justice, whose object is the peculiar interest of all individuals, had been converted into an instrument of gain and despotism. The knowledge of law was concealed under a pedantic or foreign speech, and the knowledge of legal procedure under an involved formalism.
Addition.— The state’s consciousness and the most conspicuous education are found in the middle class, to which the state officials belong. The members of this class, therefore, form the pillars of the state in regard to rectitude and intelligence. The state, if it has no middle class, is still at a low stage of development. In Russia, for example, there is a multitude of serfs and a host of rulers. It is of great concern to the state that a middle class should be formed, but this can be effected only in an organization such as we have described, namely, by the legalization of particular circles, which are relatively independent, and by a force of officials, whose wilfulness has no power over these legalized circles. Action in accordance with universal right, and the habit of such action, are consequences of the opposition produced by these self-reliant independent circles.