(ββ) On the other hand, it is not uncommon to find such subsistency ascribed to purely formal individuality, consisting solely in its self-reliance upon the fixed determinacy of its subjective characteristics. This subjectivity, however, in so far as the actual content of life drops away from it, so that the forces and substances which lie without it acquire in themselves an independent stability, and as such confront the subject and the inward life as a content wholly unrelated, lapses through this, too, into unequivocable contradiction with the actual substantiality of determinate existence, and forfeits all claim to self-subsistency and freedom of content. True self-subsistence consists alone in the unity and interpenetration of both individuality and universality with each other. The universal acquires through the individual a concrete existence; the subjectivity of the particular thing discovers for the first time in the universal the unassailable basis and the most genuine form of its realized totality.
(γγ) Consequently in making this demand of the universal world-condition we must ask for a form of self-subsistency in the same sense, namely, that the substantially universal in such a condition must contain within itself as the vehicle of its self-subsistence the form of subjectivity. The most obvious presentment of this identity is that of thought. For if thought is, in one aspect of it, subjective, in another it possesses universality as the product of its inherent activity, and encloses both universality and subjectivity in unfettered unity. The universal of thought is, however, not that of art, whose object is the beautiful. And, indeed, apart from this distinction, particular individuality as confronted by thought in its natural envisagement, or form, no less than in its active effects and complete realization, stands in no necessary correspondence with the universality of thought. There is, for example, a clear distinction between the subject apprehended in its concrete content of the actual world and that which is simply the thinking subject, or at least it is open to such a distinction. The same kind of cleavage affects the form of the universal itself. In other words the moment the universal begins to assert itself in distinction from its otherwise related reality by that act it has in objective existence separated itself from all the varied play of its phenomenal particularity, and, in opposition to the same, has already established an independent position assured and powerful.
In the Ideal, however, it is precisely the particular individuality which ought to persist in inseparable co-ordination with the substantive reality, and to the full extent that freedom and the self-subsistency of the subjective principle may attach to the Ideal the world-environment of conditions and relations should possess no essential objectivity independent of the individual in the subjective aspect above referred to or already presupposed. For the ideal individual is a self-enclosed totality, which already includes the objective principle, and it must not be permitted to have independent motion and development apart from the individuality of the subject; otherwise the subject falls back into a purely subordinate position in contrast to a world whose independence is already assured. Consequently the universal must indeed be actual in the individual as that which is in a unique sense its own, but not so as the property of the individual, as a thinker, but as that of his character and temperament. To put the same truth in another way, what is required for this unity of the universal and individual in art as opposed to the mediation and differentiation of thought, is the form of immediacy; and the self-subsistency which we claim here is the form of immediate self-subsistency. With that, however, the element of contingency is associated. That is to say, so long as the universal and effective[301] constituents of spiritual life, such as the self-subsistency of individuals exhibits, are only presented to us in the immediate guise of subjective feeling, temperament, and disposition of character, and debarred any other category of existence, such are thereby already given over to the contingency of volition and its realization. All we have left us, then, is what is peculiar to each individual viewed as such and his sensuous experience. Such a possession of what is nothing more than personal idiosyncracy is unable to assert for itself any further potency or necessity; it appears simply as inclusion of content, fixed achievement and at the same time arbitrary commitment of the wholly self-dependent subject to the influence of feeling, disposition, energy, general ability, cunning, and talents, instead of carrying out its realization over and over again according to a principle of universal import and acknowledged stability.
This type of contingency, then, is the characteristic quality of the condition which we required for the ground upon which all the varied wealth of the Ideal is to appear.
(β) In order to make more clear the actual character of the reality which is most adapted to artistic treatment we will contrast it with that aspect of existence which is not so adapted.
(αα) We find this pre-eminently where the ethical notion, that is, justice and rational freedom, have already won for themselves and maintain a fixed position in the social order regulated by law, so that, even in the external world, it appears as a positive and necessary power, which is quite independent of the individuality and subjectivity of specific temperament and characters. This is the case in the life of the State, where that life is manifested in a form adequate to the true notion of citizenship. For obviously it is not every chance association of human beings, any more than every patriarchal community, that will fulfil the requisites of State-life. In the true State laws, customs, and rights, in so far as they constitute the determinations of freedom applicable to all, are of paramount force even in this universal and abstract relation, and are not conditioned in their applicability by the chance requirements of any individual's idiosyncracy. As the consciousness of society has issued for itself commands and laws in a mode of statement of general application, in the same way these are externally valid as such universal fiat, which proceeds in the path of order thereby indicated, armed with powers of restraint and compulsion against any individual who may attempt to assert his caprice in an injurious opposition to such regulations.
(ββ) Such a condition at once assumes a dividing line between the universal ordinances of the regulative understanding and the immediate life, connoting by this latter term the unity in which all that is substantive and essential in morals and the conduct of justice only finds a form for its existence in the experience of individuals, their ethical feeling and opinion, that is to say, and thereby alone is exercised. In the civilized State right and justice, even religion and science, or, at any rate, provident interest in religious and scientific education, are subject to public control, which directs and co-ordinates the same.
(γγ) The position, then, that isolated individuals occupy in the State is one which contracts them within a fixed and organized order, and subordinates them thereto; and they stand in this relation for the reason that the character and disposition of each is not the only embodiment of ethical forces; but, if the State to which they belong is a genuine example, they are on the contrary compelled to regulate all the external detail of their actions, opinions, and feelings with a due regard to what is legally permissible, and to bring the same into line with it. This dependence upon the objective rationality of the State in its power of self-assertion above all subjective caprice may either be regarded as a mere subjection, inasmuch as laws and institutions possess, as the paramount power, a constraining force, or we may see in it merely the free recognition and acceptance of the reason that underlies such a necessity of fact, an acknowledgment through which the individual finds himself again in that objective order.
But even in the latter case isolated individuals continue to remain as merely incidental facts, and apart from the organic reality of the State possess no real substantiality in themselves. For substantiality, in the sense we here use the term, is by no means only the particular property of this or that individual, but a fully explicit reality[302], minted, as it were, in all aspects of it, and down to the merest detail in a mode universally applicable and necessary. All that mere individuals can effect with volition and accomplishment even in actions right, moral, and legal in themselves in the interest of and attendant upon the progress of the whole, remains and must always remain, in contrast with that whole, insignificant and a mere example. Their actions are always only an entirely partial realization of a single case; and, moreover, the realization of the same has no universal significance in the sense that the particular example of it is thereby of objective validity as law, or, as such law, makes its appearance. And for the same reason, to put the matter the other way, it is wholly unimportant whether the validity of right and justice is acknowledged by private individuals judging as individuals. The validity is a vital fact of State life which holds whether it be acknowledged or no. No doubt it is a matter of interest to the general public that every one should fall in with the order established and desire it; but the wishes of isolated individuals have no influence upon that interest in the sense that it is only by virtue of the assent of this or that person that right and a moral order is preserved. Such require no such isolated example of assent; and a breach of either is followed by punishment.