waters; are their country; their fatherland; their outward material property; the history of this
State; their deeds; what their ancestors have produced; belongs to them and lives in their
memory。 All is their possession; just as they are possessed by it; for it constitutes their existence;
their being。
§ 57
Their imagination is occupied with the ideas thus presented; while the adoption of these laws; and
of a fatherland so conditioned is the expression of their will。 It is this matured totality which thus
constitutes one Being; the spirit of one People。 To it the individual members belong; each unit is
the Son of his Nation; and at the same time … in as far as the State to which he belongs is
undergoing development … the Son of his Age。 None remains behind it; still less advances beyond
it。 This spiritual Being (the Spirit of his Time) is his; he is a representative of it; it is that in which he
originated; and in which he lives。 Among the Athenians the word Athens had a double import;
suggesting primarily; a plex of Political institutions; but no less; in the second place; that
Goddess who represented the Spirit of the People and its unity。 This Spirit of a People is a
determinate and particular Spirit; and is; as just stated; further modified by the degree of its
historical development。 This Spirit; then; constitutes the basis and substance of those other forms
of a nations consciousness; which have been noticed。 For Spirit in its self…consciousness must
bee a object of contemplation to itself; and objectivity involves; in the first instance; the rise of
differences which make up a total of distinct spheres of objective spirit; in the same way as the
Soul exists only as the plex of its faculties; which in their form of concentration in a simple
unity produce that Soul。 It is thus One Individuality which; presented in its essence as God; is
honoured and enjoyed in Religion; which is exhibited as an object of sensuous contemplation in
Art; and is apprehended as an intellectual conception in Philosophy。 In virtue of the original
identity of their essence; purport; and object; these various forms are inseparably united with the
Spirit of the State。 Only in connection with this particular religion can this particular political
constitution exist; just as in such or such a State; such or such a Philosophy or order of Art。
§ 58
The remark next in order is; that each particular National genius is to be treated as only One
Individual in the process of Universal History。 For that history is the exhibition of the divine;
absolute development of Spirit in its highest forms; … that gradation by which it attains its truth and
consciousness of itself。 The forms which these grades of progress assume are the characteristic
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