But (b) in the second place, the family is a factor in the rational whole, the State, though its function par excellence is that of the natural basis of society. Hence its nature and sanction is ethical—it rests neither on mere feeling on {271} the one hand, nor on mere contract on the other. It has a public side, and the acceptance of a universal obligation by a declaration in explicit language (language being the stamp of the universal), in face of the community, is an essential part of marriage, and not a mere accident or accessory, as the votaries of feeling have urged. This view is aimed against the confusion which finds the sole essence of marriage in feeling. This is a perpetually recurring contention, represented in Hegel’s day by Friedrich von Schlegel’s Lucinde, which argues that the form of marriage destroys the value of passion. Hegel’s analyses are everywhere directed against this inability to grasp the distinct sides of a many-sided fact.
(c) The ethical aspect of the family [1] shows itself in the nature and organisation of the household, as an institution embodying permanent interests and relations of the two persons who are its head, and as an organ of public duties in the bodily and spiritual nurture of the children. The permanent and equal relation of the heads of the household, involved in its nature as the ethical aspect of the family, implies monogamy, and it is the monogamous family alone which can count as a true element of the ethical order.
[1] Cf. Green’s Principles of Political Obligation, p. 235.
(d) The household, being the true and operative ethical organ which makes parentage into family, is the unit which demands to be respected and protected by the State against the less differentiated forms of consanguinity, such as the clan. The true family starts from marriage and the foundation of a household, and in the early {272} development of law we find the State, with a just instinct, protecting the household against the clan, e.g. by conferring the power of bequest. This power, though now it may imply a discretion mainly hostile to the family, presented itself in early law rather as a means of perpetuating the separate household as against the pretensions of the clan to interfere with its property.
Thus, the monogamous family is naturally and necessarily, to some extent, a unit in respect of property; the children, at least, being inevitably under tutelage and incapable of self-support, even if economic equality asserts itself as between husband and wife. This peculiar relation in respect of property is rooted in the unique nature of the household, as an organ for the guardianship of immature lives, and as a unity of feeling rather than of explicit thought. It is noticeable that progress tends to introduce the distinctions of property within its unity [1] (though for children this can never go very far), and very slightly to introduce the relations of the family into the outside world. In as far as such distinctions come to be made, the nature and functions of the household being undisturbed, a somewhat higher intensity of ethical union is rendered necessary, and will no doubt assert itself.
[1] Married Women’s Property, Protection of Earnings of Children, Property assigned by understanding within household to young children.
7. When the man (or woman [1]) arrives at maturity and leaves the safe harbour of the family, he finds himself, prima facie, isolated in a world {273} of conflicting self-interests. He has his living to make, or his property to administer. He is tied to others, in appearance, only by the system of wants and work, with the elementary function which is necessary to it, viz. its police functions and the administration of justice.
[1] Hegel would say only or chiefly the man, who is for him the natural earner and chief of the household.
It is this phase of social life, and the temper or disposition corresponding to it, which Hegel indicates by the expression Bourgeois Society. [1] It presents itself to him as the opposite extreme of life and mind to that embodied in the family. It is an aggregate of families—for the units of the Bourgeois Society are heads of households—as seen from the outside, in the great system of industry and business, where a man has to find his work and do it. It is, in mind, the presence of definite though limited aims, calculation and self-interest. [2]
[1] Bürgerliche Gesellschaft. “Society,” Wallace points out, is here opposed to “community,” and indicates a looser phase of union.