pp. 112 – 141
Transition from Feudalism to Monarchy
The tendencies in the direction of the general were partly of a subjective, partly of a theoretical, order. But we must now give particular attention to the practical political movements in the state. The advance which that period witnessed presents a “negative” aspect in so far as it involves the termination of subjective caprice and the fragmentation of power. Its affirmative aspect is the emergence of a supreme authority which is to all a state power properly so called, whose subjects enjoy an equality of rights, and in which the particular will is subordinated to the substantial end, the common interest. This is the progress from feudalism to monarchy. The principle of feudal rule is the external force of individuals, of princes and liege lords; it is a force destitute of a principle of right and law. The monarchial principle also implies a supreme authority, but it is an authority over persons possessing no independent power to exercise their arbitrary will. Arbitrary will is no longer opposed to arbitrary will, for the supreme power in a monarchy is essentially the power of the state directed toward the substantial legal end. Feudal rule is a polyarchy: there are many lords and servants. In a monarchy, on the contrary, there is one lord and no servant, for servitude is abrogated by it and in it right and law are valid. Monarchy is the source of real freedom. Thus in monarchy the arbitrary will of individuals is suppressed and a commonwealth of rule is established. It seems doubtful whether the desire for law, or arbitrary will, is the impelling motive in the suppression of the fragmented powers, as well as in the resistance to that suppression. Resistance to royal authority is called liberty, and is praised as legitimate and noble when the idea of arbitrary will is associated with that authority. But it «is by the arbitrary will of an individual that a commonwealth is formed; and comparing this state of things with that in which every point is a center of arbitrary violence, we find a much smaller number of points suffering such violence. The great extent of such a realm necessitates general arrangements for the purpose of cohesion, and those who govern in accordance with those arrangements are at the same time, in virtue of their office itself, essentially obedient to the state. Vassals become officials of the state whose duty it is to execute the laws by which the state is ordered. But since this monarchy is developed from feudalism, it bears at first the stamp of the system from which it sprang. Individuals . . . become members of estates and corporations; the vassals are powerful only by sticking together as an estate; facing them the cities constitute a power in the commonwealth. Thus the power of the ruler can no longer be merely arbitrary. The consent of the estates and the corporations is essential. If the prince wishes to have that consent, he must will what is just and reasonable.
We now see a development of states, while feudal rule knows no states. The transition from feudalism to monarchy occurs in three ways:
- Sometimes the lord gains mastery over his independent vassals by subjugating their particular power, thus making himself sole ruler.
- Sometimes the princes free themselves from the feudal relation altogether and become the territorial rulers of their own states.
- Sometimes the lord unites in a more peaceful way the particular lordships with his own, and thus becomes ruler of the whole.
These processes do not indeed present themselves in history in that pure and abstract form in which they are presented here. We often find more than one mode appearing together; but one or the other always predominates. The cardinal consideration is that the basis and essential condition of this formation of states is to be looked for in the ‘particular nations in which it had its birth. Europe is composed of particular nations, each constituting a unity in its very nature, and having the absolute tendency to form a state. All did not succeed in attaining this political unity. . . .
[Here follows a brief discussion of each of the main nations, as they emerged.]
Humanity has now attained the consciousness of a real reconciliation of spirit within itself, and a good conscience in regard to actuality, to secular existence. The human spirit has come to stand on its own feet. There is no revolt against the divine in this new-won sense of self, but rather a manifestation of that better subjectivity which recognizes the divine in its own being, which is permeated by what is genuine, and which directs its activities to general objects, both of rationality and beauty.
Art and Science at the End of the Middle Ages
The heaven of the spirit is clearing for humankind. With that tranquil settling down of the World into the political order of the state which we have reviewed, there was joined a wider, a more concrete progress of the spirit to a nobler humanness. The grave, the dead of the spirit, and the otherworldly, were given up. The principle . . .[*] which drove the world into the Crusades now rather developed in the secular sphere by itself. . . . The Church, however, remained, and retained the principle in question, but not externally and in its immediacy; it was transfigured by art. Art gives spirit and soul the merely external object of the senses by giving it a form which expresses soul, feeling, spirit. Thus a devotional exercise confronts not merely something for the senses, and is pious toward a mere thing, but toward its higher aspect, that expressive form with which spirit has invested it. It is one thing for the mind to have before it a mere thing, such as the host in itself, or a piece of stone, wood, or a bad picture. It is quite another thing for it to contemplate a painting, full of spirit, or a beautiful work of sculpture, wherein soul holds converse with soul, and spirit with spirit. In the former case, spirit is outside itself, bound to something utterly alien to it, the sensuous, the non-spiritual. In the latter, the sensuous object is a beautiful one, and the spiritual form gives it a soul, being true within itself. But, on the other hand, since religion is supposed to be dependence upon some other external being, a something, that kind of religion does not find its satisfaction in being brought into relation to the beautiful: the worst, ugliest, most ordinary representations will suit its purposes equally well, perhaps better. Accordingly real masterpieces such as Raphael’s Madonnas do not enjoy the amount of veneration or elicit the amount of offerings which inferior images receive which are more usually visited and are made the object of greater devotion and generosity. Piety passes by the former for the very reason that were it to linger it would feel an inward stimulus and attraction; but such appeals are something alien, where all that is wanted is a sense of selfless bondage and dependent dullness. Thus art in its very nature transcended the principle of the Church. But as art offers only sensuous representations, it is at first regarded as a harmless and indifferent matter. The Church, therefore, continued to go along with art but broke with the free spirit in which art had originated when this free spirit advanced to thought and science.
For art received a further support and experienced an elevating influence as a result of the study of antiquity; through such study the West became acquainted with the true and eternal aspects of man’s activities. . . .
[After some further general remarks, including a brief discussion of the invention of printing, Hegel concludes:]
These three events, the so-called revival of learning, the flourishing of the fine arts, and the discovery of America and of the passage to India by the Cape, may be compared with that golden dawn which after long storms betokens the return of a bright and glorious day. This day is the day of a general culture, which breaks on the world after the long, eventful and terrible night of the Middle Ages, a day which is distinguished by science, art and inventive impulse, that is, by the highest and noblest which the human spirit, freed by Christianity and emancipated by the Church, presents as its eternal and veritable content.
Modem Times
We have now arrived at the third period of the Germanic world, and thus enter upon the period of spirit conscious that it is free, inasmuch as it wills the true, the eternal, that which is in and for itself universal.
In this third period, also, three divisions may be made. First we have to consider the Reformation, the all-enlightening sun following on that golden dawn which we observed at the end of the medieval period; next, the unfolding of the post-Reformation state of things; and lastly, the modern times, dating from the end of the last century.
The Reformation
The Reformation resulted from the corruption of the Church. That corruption was not an accidental phenomenon; it was not the mere abuse of power and dominion. A corrupt state of things is very frequently represented as an abuse; it is taken for granted that the foundation was good, the system, the institution itself, faultless, but that the passion, the subjective interest, in short the arbitrary will of men, has made use of that which in itself was good to further its own selfish ends, and that all that is required is to remove these contingencies. On this showing, the case can be saved, and the evil that disfigures it appears as something foreign. But when accidental abuse of a good thing really occurs, it is limited to particulars. A great and general corruption affecting a body of such large and comprehensive scope as a church is quite another thing.
The corruption of the Church developed from within itself. Henceforth it falls behind the world spirit; it has gone further, for it has become capable of recognizing the sensuous as sensuous, the merely outward as the merely outward. It had learned to work within the finite in a finite way, and in this very activity to maintain an independent and confident position as a rightful valid subjectivity.
There is superstition in this ecclesiastical piety; the mind is fettered to a sensuous object, a mere ordinary thing in its most varied forms. This was slavish deference to authority, for the spirit, in this case having renounced its proper nature in its most essential quality, is un-free, and is held in bondage. This constituted a belief in miracles of the most absurd and childish sort; for the divine was supposed to manifest itself in a quite disconnected and finite way for purely finite and particular purposes. Lastly, lust of power, riotous debauchery, all forms of barbarous and vulgar corruption, hypocrisy and deception manifested themselves in the Church, for in fact the sensuous in it is not subjugated and trained by the mind; it has become free, but only in a rough and barbarous way. On the other hand the virtue of the Church was but abstractly negative, since it was negative only in opposition to sensuous appetite. This virtue does not know how to be ethical in sensuous existence; it merely flees from, renounces, but does not live in actual reality.
These contrasts within the Church—barbarous vice and lust on the one hand, and an all-sacrificing elevation of soul on the other—became still wider in consequence of the energetic position which man is sensible of occupying in his subjective power over outward and material things in the natural world, in which he feels himself free, so gaining for himself an absolute right. The Church, whose office it was to save souls from damnation, made this salvation itself a mere external means, and then became degraded so far as to perform this office in a merely external fashion. The remission of sins, the highest satisfaction which the soul craves, the certainty of its peace with God, that which concerns man’s deepest and most inmost nature, is offered to man in the most grossly superficial and easy-going fashion, to be purchased for mere money. At the same time, it was done for purely material purposes: display. One of the objects of this sale was indeed the building of St. Peters, the most marvelous building of Christianity [erected] in the metropolis of religion. But, as that paragon of works of art, the Athene and her temple-citadel at Athens, was built with the money of the allies and resulted in the loss of both allies and power, so the completion of this Church of St. Peter and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel were the last judgment and ruin of this proud spiritual edifice.
The ancient and ever-preserved inwardness of the German people had to effect this revolution out of the simple, modest heart. While the rest of the world was sailing to India, to America, to gain wealth and acquire a secular dominion to encompass the globe, and on which the sun shall never set, we find a simple monk looking for that specific embodiment of deity which Christendom had formerly sought in an earthly grave of stone, in the deeper grave of absolute ideality of all that is sensuous and external, and finding it in the spirit and the heart—the heart, which, wounded immeasurably by the offer of the most external to satisfy the inmost and deepest cravings, now detects the perversion of the absolute relation of truth in its various features, pursues it and destroys it. Luther’s simple doctrine is that this specific embodiment of deity, infinite subjectivity, that is true spirituality, Christ, is in no way present and actual in an outward form. It is obtained in its essential spiritual form only in being reconciled to God, in faith and spiritual consummation. These two terms express everything. It is not the consciousness of a sensuous thing as God, nor even of something merely conceived, and which is not actual or present, but of a reality that is not sensuous. This elimination of the external reconstructs all the doctrines and reforms all the superstition into which the Church consistently wandered off. This change especially affects the doctrine of works. Works include what may performed in any way, not necessarily in faith, in one’s own soul, but as mere external observances prescribed by authority. Faith is by no means merely a certainty respecting mere finite things, a certainty which belongs only to a finite subject, such, for example, as the belief that such or such a person existed and said this or that, or that the children of Israel passed dryshod through the Red Sea, or that the trumpets before the walls of Jericho worked like our cannons. If nothing of all this had been related to us, our knowledge of God would be none the less complete. In fact it is not a belief in something absent, past and gone, but the subjective certainty of the eternal, of absolute truth, the truth of God. The Lutheran Church affirms that the Holy Spirit alone produces this certainty. The individual attains this certainty not in virtue of his particular but of his essential being. The Lutheran doctrine is therefore altogether the Catholic doctrine, with the exception of all that flows from that element of externality, in so far as the Catholic Church asserts this external aspect. Luther therefore could not do otherwise than refuse to yield an iota in regard to that doctrine of the Eucharist in which the whole question is concentrated. He could not concede to the “reformed” church that Christ is a mere memory, a reminiscence. Thus he agreed with the Catholic Church, that Christ is actually present, but in faith, in the spirit. He maintained that the spirit of Christ really fills the human heart, that Christ therefore is not to be regarded as a merely historical person, but that man has an immediate relation to him in spirit.
Since, then, the individual knows that he is filled with the divine spirit, all the relations of externality are eliminated. There is no longer a distinction between priests and laymen. We no longer find one class in possession of the substance of the truth, as of all the spiritual and temporal treasures of the Church. The heart, the feeling spirituality of man can and ought to come into possession of the truth; and this subjectivity is the common property of all mankind. Each man has to accomplish the work of reconciliation in his own soul. The subjective spirit has to receive the spirit of truth into itself and give it a dwelling place there. Thus that absolute intense inwardness of the soul which pertains to religion itself and freedom in the Church are both secured. Subjectivity now appropriates the objective content of Christianity, that is, the doctrine of the Church. In the Lutheran Church the subjectivity and the certainty of the individual are just as necessary as the objectivity of the truth. Truth with Lutherans is not a prepared thing; the individual himself must become truthful, surrendering his particular being in exchange for the substantial truth, and making that truth his own. Thus the subjective spirit becomes free in (and through) the truth, negates its particularity and comes to itself in realizing its truth. Thus Christian freedom became actually real. If subjectivity be placed in feeling only, without that objective side, we have the standpoint of the merely natural will*
* This aside of Hegel’s is, like a number of similar comments, made against the “subjective” religiosity, bent on feeling, as expounded by Jacobi and Schleiermacher.—Ed.
In this proclamation of these principles is unfurled the new, the last banner round which the peoples rally, the flag of the free spirit, which is by itself in the truth, and only so [finding its life in the truth, and only enjoying independence in it]. This is the banner under which we serve, and which we bear. Time, since that epoch, has had no other work to do than to shape the world in accordance with this principle; thus the reconciliation and the truth become objective in form. Culture is essentially concerned with form. The work of culture is the production of the form of universality, which is none other than thought. Consequently law, property, ethics, government, constitutions, and the like, must be worked out in a general way in order that they may accord with the idea of free will and be rational. Thus only can the spirit of truth manifest itself in subjective will, in the particular activities of the will. Objective spirit can appear when the intensity of the subjective free spirit arrives at the form of universality. This is the sense in which we must understand the state to be based on religion. States and laws are nothing else than religion manifesting itself in the relations of the actual world.
This is the essence of the Reformation: man is in his very nature destined to be free.
At its commencement the Reformation concerned itself only with particular aspects of the corruption of the Catholic Church. Luther wished to act in union with the whole Catholic world and demanded general councils. His theses found supporters in every country. In answer, Luther and the Protestants are reproached for exaggerating, even misrepresenting, the corruption of the Church in their descriptions. All one needs to do is to consult the statements of the Catholics themselves, bearing upon this point, and particularly the official proceedings of the ecclesiastical councils. But Luthers challenge, which was at first limited to particular points, was soon extended to the doctrines of the Church. Leaving individuals, he attacked institutions at large—the life in the monasteries, the secular rule of the bishops, etc. His writings challenged not merely specific dicta of the Pope and the councils, but the very way of making such decisions; finally, the authority of the Church itself. Luther rejected that authority and set up in its stead the Bible and the testimony of the human spirit. And it is a fact of the greatest importance that the Bible became the basis of the Christian church. Thenceforth each individual should instruct himself from it and direct his conscience in accordance with it. This is the vast change in the principle by which man’s religious life is guided. The entire tradition and the whole fabric of the Church becomes problematical and the principle of its authority is subverted. Luthers translation of the Bible has been of incalculable value to the German people. It has given them a book for all the people such as no nation in the Catholic world has; for though they have a vast number of prayer-books, they have no basic text for popular instruction.
In spite of this, one has argued in modern times whether it is judicious to place the Bible in the hands of the people. Yet the few disadvantages thus entailed are far more than counterbalanced by the enormous benefits. Casual narratives which might be offensive to the heart and understanding are readily recognized for what they are by the religious sense, which, holding fast to the substantial truth, easily vanquishes any such difficulties. . . .
The denial of the authority of the Church necessarily led to a separation. The Council of Trent fixed once more the principles of the Catholic Church. After this Council there could be no question of reuniting the church. Leibnitz later discussed the question of the reunification of the churches with Bishop Bossuet; the Council of Trent remained the insurmountable obstacle. The churches became hostile parties, for a striking difference manifested itself even in respect to secular arrangements. In the non-Catholic countries, monasteries and episcopacies were suspended and the right of propriety was not recognized. Education was reorganized, the fasts and holy days were abolished. Thus there was a secular reform, in regard to the external state of things. A rebellion occurred against the secular authorities in many places. In Munster the Anabaptists expelled the bishop and established a government of their own, and the peasant masses arose to emancipate themselves from the burden weighing upon them. But the world was not yet ripe for a political transformation as a consequence of ecclesiastical reformation.
The Catholic was thus essentially influenced by the Reformation. The reins of discipline were drawn tighter and the greatest occasions of scandal, the most crying abuses were abated. Much of the intellectual life that lay outside its sphere, but with which it had previously maintained friendly relations, it now repudiated. The Church came to a dead stop, “hitherto and no further!” It severed itself from advancing science, from philosophy and humanistic literature, and an occasion soon offered itself of declaring its hostility to scientific pursuits. The celebrated Copernicus had discovered that the earth and the planets revolve around the sun, but the Church declared against this forward step. Galileo, who had explained in the form of a dialogue the evidence for and against the Copernican theory (declaring, indeed, himself in favor of it), was forced to ask forgiveness for this crime on his knees. Greek literature was not made the basis of culture; education was intrusted to the Jesuits. Thus the spirit of the Catholic world in general fell behind the spirit of the age.
Here an important question must be answered: why was the Reformation limited to certain nations, and why did it not permeate the whole Catholic world? The Reformation originated in Germany and struck root only in the purely Germanic nations. Outside of Germany itself, it established itself in Scandinavia and England. But the Romanic and Slavic nations kept decidedly aloof from it. Even Southern Germany has only partially adopted the Reformation; the general situation there was a mixed one. In Swabia, Franconia and the Rhine region there were many monasteries and bishoprics, and many free imperial towns, and the reception or rejection of the Reformation very much depended on the influences which these ecclesiastical and civil bodies exercised. We have already noted that the Reformation was a change influencing the political life of the age. Furthermore, authority is much more important than people are inclined to believe. There are certain premises which men are in the habit of accepting on the strength of authority, and it was thus mere authority which often decided for or against the adoption of the Reformation. In Austria, Bavaria and Bohemia the Reformation had already made great progress; and though it is commonly said that when truth has once entered men’s souls, it cannot be rooted out again, it was nonetheless stifled in the countries in question, by force of arms, by stratagem, or by persuasion.
The Slavic nations were agricultural. This condition of life brings with it the relation of lord and servant. The work of nature predominates in agriculture; human industry and subjective activity are on the whole less brought into play in such work. The Slavic peoples did not therefore arrive so quickly or readily as other nations at the fundamental sense of subjective self, at the consciousness of a general interest, nor at political power (state); hence they could not participate in the emerging freedom.
But neither did the Reformation permeate the Romanic nations: Italy, Spain, Portugal, and in part France. Physical force perhaps did much to repress it; yet this alone would not be sufficient to explain the fact, for when the spirit of a nation demands anything no force can subdue it. Nor can it be said that these nations were lacking in culture; on the contrary, they were rather in advance of the Germans in this respect. It was rather owing to the fundamental character of these nations that they did not adopt the Reformation. But what is this peculiarity of character which was such a hindrance to the freedom of spirit? The pure, tender inwardness of the Germanic nations was the proper soil for the emancipation of spirit. The Romanic nations, on the contrary, have maintained in the very depth of their soul, in their spiritual consciousness, the disunion and estrangement; they are a product of the fusion of Roman and Germanic blood, and still retain this heterogeneous heritage. The German cannot deny that the French, the Italians and the Spaniards possess a more finite character, that they pursue a settled end (even though it may have a fixed idea for its object) with perfectly clear consciousness and the greatest attention, that they carry out a plan with great circumspection and that they exhibit the greatest determination in regard to specific objects. The French call the Germans “entiers” entire, that is, stubborn; they are also strangers to the whimsical originality of the English. The Englishman has his sense of freedom in relation to the specific; he does not trouble himself about the intellect, but on the contrary feels himself so much the more free, the more what he does or may do is contrary to reason, i.e., to general principles. But among the Romanic peoples we immediately encounter that internal division, that holding fast to an abstract principle, and [as the counterpart of this] an absence of the totality of spirit and sentiment which we call Gemut (feeling mind):[†] there is none of that meditation of the spirit about itself. In their inmost beings these people may be said to be alienated from themselves. The inner life is a region whose depth they do not appreciate, for it is absorbed in particular interests, and the infinity of the spirit is not there. Their inmost being is not their own. They leave it ‘over there” and are glad to have its concerns settled for them by another. That other to which they leave it is the Church. They have indeed something to do with it themselves; but since that which they have to do is not self-originated and self-prescribed, not their very own, they attend to it in a superficial way. “Eh, bien” said Napoleon, “We shall go to Mass again, and my comrades will say: ‘That is the word of the command!” ” This is the leading feature in the character of these nations—the separation of the religious from the secular interest, as the special sense of self. The ground of this disunion lies in their inmost soul, which has lost that collectedness, its profoundest unity. Catholicism does not claim the essential direction of the secular; religion remains an indifferent matter on the one side, while the other side of life is different from it, and by itself. Cultivated Frenchmen therefore feel an antipathy to Protestantism because it seems to them something pedantic, sad, and meanly moral. It requires that spirit and thought should be directly involved with religion. In attending Mass and other ceremonies, on the contrary, it is not necessary to think; one has an imposing sensuous spectacle before one’s eyes, during which one reiterates words without much attention, while yet the necessary is being done.
We spoke above of the relation of the new church to secular life, and now we have only to give further detail. The development and advance of spirit from the time of the Reformation onward consists in this, that spirit, having now gained the consciousness of its freedom, through the process of mediation which takes place between man and God . . . now takes it up and follows it out in shaping the secular existence. Through this reconciliation man becomes conscious that the secular is capable of embodying the truth, whereas it had been formerly regarded as an evil only, as incapable of good, which remained other-worldly. It is now known that the ethic and law in the state are also divine and commanded by God, and that contentwise there is nothing higher or more sacred. It follows that marriage is no longer deemed less holy than celibacy. Luther took a wife to show that he respected marriage, not fearing the calumnies to which he exposed himself by such a step. It was his duty to do so, as it was also his to eat meat on Fridays in order to prove that such things are permitted and right, in opposition to the imagined superior value of abstinence. Man, through the family, enters the community, as he does the relation of interdependence in society. This is an ethical union. The monks, on the other hand, separated as they were from the ethical society, formed as it were the standing army of the Pope, like the Janizaries who formed the basis of Turkish power. The marriage of the priests lets the outward distinction between laity and clergy disappear.
Unemployment no longer was seen as something saintly; it was acknowledged to be better to make oneself independent by activity, intelligence and industry. It is considered more honest that he who has money should spend it even on un-urgent needs than that he should give it away to idlers and beggers for he gives it to an equal number of persons, and these must at any rate have worked for it. Industry, crafts and trades now have become ethical, and the obstacles which the Church had erected to their recognition have vanished. For the Church had pronounced it a sin to lend money on interest: but the necessity of doing so led to the opposite, the direct violation of her injunctions. The Lombards and particularly the house of Medici, advanced money to princes in every part of Europe.
The third aspect of sanctity in the Catholic Church, blind obedience, was also suspended. Obedience to the laws of the state, the reason in will and action, was made the principle of human conduct.[‡] In this obedience man is free, for the particular obeys the general. Man himself has a conscience; therefore he is free to obey. This involves the possibility of a development of reason and freedom, and of their introduction into human relations; and what is reason, now also are the divine commands. The rational no longer meets with objections from the religious conscience; it can develop steadily in its own sphere, without having to resort to force against an adverse power.
This reconciliation of church and state occurred immediately. We have, as yet, no reconstruction of the state, of the system of law, and the like, for thought must first discover the essential principles of right. The laws of freedom had first to be developed into a system of what is right in and by itself. The spirit does not appear in such perfection right away; the Reformation limits itself at first to direct and simple changes, such as the secularization of monasteries, bishoprics, etc. The reconciliation between God and the world was at first developed in an abstract form, and was not yet expanded into a system of an ethical world.
In the first instance this reconciliation must take place in the individual soul, must be realized by conscious sentiment; the individual must gain the assurance that the spirit dwells within him, that, in the language of the Church, a brokenness of heart has been experienced, and that divine grace has entered into the heart. By nature man is not what he ought to be; only through a transforming process does he arrive at truth. This, then, is the general and speculative aspect of the matter, that the human heart is not what it should be. It has been asked of the individual that he become conscious of what he is in himself. Dogmatism insisted upon man’s knowing that he is evil. But the individual is evil only when the natural manifests itself in mere sensual desire, when an unrighteous will exists untrained, untamed, violent. And yet it is asked that such a person know that he is depraved, and that the good spirit dwells in him. He thus is required to have and to experience in a direct way what is, in a speculative way, by itself. Reconciliation having, then, assumed this abstract form, men tormented themselves with a view to force upon their souls the consciousness of their sinfulness and to know themselves as evil. The most simple souls, the most innocent natures followed broodingly the most secret workings of the heart, in order to observe them. With this duty was linked the opposite one that man should know that the good spirit dwells in him, that divine grace has entered his soul.
The important distinction between the knowledge of abstract truth and the knowledge of what has actual existence was neglected. Men became the victims of a tormenting uncertainty as to whether the good spirit has an abode in man, and it was deemed indispensable that the entire process of spiritual transformation should become perceptible to the individual himself. An echo of these torments may still be traced in many of the chorals of that time; the Psalms of David which exhibit a similar character were at that time introduced as church hymns. Protestantism took this turn of pedantic pondering and was for a long time characterized by a self-tormenting disposition and spiritual wretchedness. This has at present induced many people to enter the Catholic Church, that they might exchange this inward uncertainty for a formal broad certainty based on the imposing totality of the Church. Yet, into the Catholic Church too there entered some elaborate reflection upon the character of human actions The Jesuits pondered the first beginnings of volition as elaborately as the Protestant; but they had a casuistry which enabled them to discover a good reason for everything, and so get rid of evil, i.e., the burden of guilt.
Another remarkable phenomenon was connected with this, common to the Catholic and the Protestant world. The human mind was driven into the inward, the abstract, and the religious element was regarded as different from the secular. That lively consciousness of his subjective life and of the inward origin of his will which had been awakened in man brought with it the belief in evil as a vast power in the secular world. This belief presents a parallelism with the view in which the sale of in dulgences originated. Just as eternal salvation could be bought by money, it was now believed that by paying the price of one’s salvation by a compact with the devil the riches of the world and the unlimited gratification of desires and passions could be secured. Thus arose that famous legend of Faust, who, in disgust at the unsatisfying character of theoretical science, is said to have plunged into the world and purchased all its glory at the expense of his salvation. Faust, if one may trust the poet, had in exchange the enjoyment of all that the world could give. But those poor women who were called witches were reputed to get nothing more by the bargain than the gratification of a petty revenge by making the neighbor’s cow go dry or by making a child get sick. But in dealing out punishment it was not the magnitude of the injury, the loss of milk or the sickness of child, that was considered; it was the abstract power of evil in them which was persecuted. The belief in this abstract, special power whose dominion is the world, in the devil and his devices, occasioned an incalculable number of trials for witchcraft both in Catholic and Protestant countries. It was impossible to prove the guilt of the accused. They were only suspected. It was therefore only an immediate conviction on which this fury against the evil was based. One felt indeed compelled to have recourse to proofs, but the basis of these judicial processes was simply the belief that certain individuals were possessed by the power of evil. This delusion raged among the nations in the sixteenth century with the fury of a pestilence. The main impulse was suspicion. The principle of suspicion assumed a comparable terrible form under the Roman Emperors, and under Robespierre’s reign of terror, when mere conviction was punished. . . .
Influence of the Reformation on Political Development
In tracing the course of the political development of the period, we observe in the first place the consolidation of the monarchy, and the monarch invested with the authority of the state. We have earlier the incipient stage in the rise of royal power, and the beginning unity of the states of Europe. The entire body of private obligations and rights which had been handed down from the Middle Ages still retained validity. Infinitely important is this form of private rights, which the constituents of the state’s power have assumed. At their apex we find something very positive—the exclusive right of one family to the possession of the throne, and the hereditary succession of sovereigns further restricted by the law of primogeniture. This gives the state an immovable center. The fact that Germany was an elective empire prevented its being consolidated into one state. Poland has vanished from the family of independent states for the same reason. The state must have a final decisive will: and if an individual is to be the final deciding power, he must be determined in a direct and natural way, not by election, wisdom, etc. Even among the free Greeks the oracle was the external power which decided their policy on critical occasions. Here birth was the oracle, something independent of any arbitrary will. But the circumstance that the highest position in a monarchy is assigned to a family seems to indicate that the dominion is the private property of the family. As such dominion would seem to be divisible, and since the idea of the division of power is opposed to the principle of the state, the rights of the monarch and his family needed to be more strictly defined. Domains do not belong alone to the individual ruler, but are assigned to the dynastic family as a trust. The estates of the realm possess a control; for they have to guard the unity of the body politic. The royal power thus no longer denotes a kind of private property, private possession of estates, demesnes, jurisdiction, etc. It has become a property of the state, a function pertaining to the state.
Equally important, and connected with that just noted, is the transformation into state property of the executive powers, functions, duties and rights, which naturally belong to the state, but which had become private property and private contracts and obligations. The rights of seigneurs and barons were annulled, and they were obliged to content themselves with official positions in the state. This transformation of the rights of vassals into official functions took place in different ways in the several kingdoms. In France the great barons, who were governors of the provinces, who could claim such offices as matters of right, and who, like the Turkish Pashas, maintained with the revenues from such offices a body of troops which they might bring into the field against the king at any moment, were reduced to a position of mere landed proprietors or court nobility. Their governorships became offices held under the government. The nobility were employed as officers, generals in an army belonging to the state. Because of this, the rise of standing armies is so important. For these armies supply the monarchy with an independent force and are as necessary for the security of the central authority against the rebellion of the subject individuals as for the defense of the state against foreign enemies. Fiscal organization indeed had not as yet assumed a systematic character, the revenue being derived from customs, taxes and tolls in countless variety, besides the subsidies and contributions paid by the estates of the realm. In return for these payments the right of presenting a statement of grievances was conceded to them.
[Here follows a similar discussion of Spain.]
It would lead us too far to pursue in detail the process of the suppression of the aristocracy in the several states of Europe. The main purpose of this process was, as already stated, the curtailment of the private rights of the feudal nobility and the transformation of their seigneurial authority into an official position in connection with the state. This change was in the interest of both the king and the people. The powerful barons seemed to constitute an intermediate body charged with the defense of liberty; but, properly speaking, it was only their own privileges which they maintained against the royal power on the one hand and the citizens on the other. The barons of England won Magna Carta from the king, but the citizens gained nothing from it; on the contrary, they remained in their former position. Polish liberty, too, meant nothing more than the freedom of the barons in contraposition to the king,, the nation being reduced to a state of absolute subordination- When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really private interests which are being discussed. For although the nobility were deprived of their sovereign power, the people were still oppressed in consequence of their absolute dependence, their serfdom, and subjection to aristocratic jurisdiction. They were partly declared utterly incapable of possessing property, partly subjected to a condition of bond service which did not permit their freely selling the products of their industry. The supreme interest of emancipation from this condition concerned the power of the state as well as the subjects. This emancipation was to give them as citizens the character of free individuals, and determined that what was to be performed for the general good should be a matter of justice and not mere chance. The aristocracy of possession maintains possession against both the power of the state at large and against individuals. The aristocracy should fulfill their true task, to support the throne, to be occupied and active on behalf of the state and the general good, and at the same time to maintain the freedom of the citizens. This in fact is the advantage of that class which forms the link between ruler and the people, that they undertake to know and to be active for that is intrinsically rational and general. This knowledge of and concern for the general must take the place of positive personal right.
There now first appears a system of states and a relation of states to each other. They became involved in various wars. The kings, having enlarged their political authority, turned their attention to foreign lands, insisting on claims of all kinds. Conquest was invariably the end and real interest of the wars of the period.
Italy especially had become an object of such conquest, and was a prey to the rapacity of the French, the Spaniards, and, at a later date, of the Austrians. In fact absolute isolation I and dismemberment has always been an essential feature of the character of the Italians in ancient as well as in modern times. 1 Their stubborn individuality was united. But the original character reappeared in full sharpness as soon as the bond was broken. In later times the Italians attained a joy in the fine I arts, as bond of union, after having escaped from the selfishness ‘ of the most monstrous order which displayed its perverse na- I ture in crimes of every description. Thus their culture, the 1 mitigation of their selfishness, reached only beauty but not rationality, the higher unity of thought. The Italian nature is different from ours even in poetry and song. The Italians j are ready improvisers; they pour out their very souls in art I and the ecstatic enjoyment of it. For such an artistic character, I the state must be casual.
The wars in which Germany engaged were not yielding her much honor. She allowed Burgundy, Alsace, Lorraine, and other parts of the empire to be wrested from it.
Common interests arose from these wars between the various political powers. The object of this community of interest was the maintenance of the status quo, the preservation of the independence of the several states, in fact, the balance of power. The motivation for this was of a decidedly practical hind, that is, the protection of the several states from conquest. The alliance of the states of Europe as a means of shielding individual states from the violence of the powerful, the preservation of this balance of power took the place of that general aim of former times, the defense of Christendom, whose center was the papacy. This new political motive was necessarily accompanied by a diplomatic relation, by which all the members of the great European system, however distant, felt what happened to any one of them. Diplomacy had been brought to the greatest refinement in Italy, and it was thence transferred to Europe at large.
Several princes in succession seemed to threaten the balance of power in Europe. Charles V was aiming at universal monarchy at the very beginning of the state system. He was at the same time emperor of Germany and king of Spain. The Netherlands and Italy were his, and the whole wealth of America flowed into his coffers. With this enormous power, which, like the contingencies of fortune in the case of private property, had been accumulated by the most felicitous combinations of political dexterity—marriage among other things—but which lacked inner, true cohesion, he was nevertheless successful against France, or even against the German princes; nay, he was even compelled to a peace by Maurice of Saxony. His whole life was spent in quelling disturbances in all parts of his empire and in conducting foreign wars.
The balance of power in Europe was similarly threatened by Louis the Fourteenth. He had become absolute ruler by the suppression of the grandees of his kingdom which Richelieu and after him Mazarin had accomplished. Besides, France had the consciousness of its intellectual superiority in a refinement of culture in advance of anything in the rest of Europe. The pretensions of Louis were founded not on extent of dominion (as was the case with Charles V) so much as on that culture which distinguished his people, and which at that time was received and admired everywhere together, with the language that embodied it. The French could therefore plead a higher justification than the Emperor Charles V. But the very rock on which the vast military resources of Philip II had already foundered—the heroic resistance of the Dutch—also proved fatal to the ambitious schemes of Louis. . . .
[There follow some brief remarks on Charles VII of Sweden and on the Turks. Then Hegel continues:]
An event of special importance following in the train of the Reformation was the struggle of the Protestant church for political existence. The Protestant church, even in its original appearance, was too intimately affecting secular interests not to occasion secular complications and political contentions respecting political possession. The subjects of Catholic princes became Protestants, they had and made claims to ecclesiastical property, changed the nature of the tenure and repudiated or declined the discharge of those ecclesiastical functions to whose due performance the emoluments were attached. Moreover, a Catholic government is bound to be the secular arm of the Church. The Inquisition, for example, never put a man to death, but, acting as a kind of jury, simply declared him a heretic. He was then punished according to civil laws. Again, innumerable occasions of offense and irritation originated with the processions and feasts, the carrying of the host through the streets, withdrawals from convents, etc. Still more excitement would be felt when an archbishop of Cologne attempted to make his archbishopric a secular principality for himself and his family. Their confessors made it a matter of conscience with Catholic princes to wrest estates that had been the property of the Church from the hands of the heretics. In Germany, however, the condition of things was favorable to Protestantism since several territories which had been imperial fiefs had become autonomous principalities. But in countries like Austria the princes were indifferent to Protestants or hostile to them. In France they were not safe in the exercise of their religion except as protected by fortresses. Without war the existence of the Protestants could not be secured. The question was not one of simple conscience, but involved decisions respecting public and private property which had been taken possession of in contravention of the rights of the Church, and whose restitution the Church demanded. A condition of absolute mistrust developed; absolute because mistrust bound up with the religious conscience was its root. The Protestant princes and towns formed a feeble union at that time and the defensive operations they conducted were much feebler still. After they had been worsted, Maurice the Elector of Saxony, by an utterly unexpected and adventurous piece of daring, extorted an equivocal peace, which left the deep sources of hate altogether untouched. It was necessary basically to fight out the issue. This took place in the Thirty Years’ War, in which first Denmark and then Sweden took over the cause of freedom. The former was soon compelled to quit the field, but Sweden, under Gustavus Adolphus, that hero of the North of glorious memory, played a part which was so much the more brilliant inasmuch as she began to wage war against the vast force of the Catholics, alone, without the help of the Protestant estates of the Empire. All the powers of Europe, with a few exceptions, now fell upon Germany, flowing back toward it as the fountain from which they had originally started, and where now the right of religious inwardness and that of internal separateness were to be fought out. The struggle ended without an idea being discovered, without having gained a principle or an intellectual concept. The struggle ended in the exhaustion of all parties, in a scene of utter desolation, where all the contending forces had been wrecked. It ended with letting parties simply take their course and maintain their existence on the basis of external power. The issue is in fact of an exclusively political nature. In England too separateness was established by war. The struggle was directed in this case against the kings, who were secretly attached to Catholicism because they found the principle of absolute and arbitrary rule confirmed by its doctrines. The fanaticized people rebelled against the assertion of absolute power according to which kings are obliged to render account to God alone (that is, to the Father Confessor), and, in opposition to Catholic externality, achieved the extreme of inwardness in Puritanism, which, when developing in the real world, appears partly fanatically elevated, partly ridiculous. The fanatics of England, like those of Munster, wanted to govern the state directly by the fear of God. The soldiery sharing the same fanatical views prayed while they fought for the cause they had espoused. But a military leader now had the physical force of the country and consequently the government in his hands. In the state there must be government, and Cromwell knew what governing is. He therefore made himself ruler and sent that praying parliament about their business. His right to authority, however, vanished with his death, and the old dynasty gained possession of the throne. Catholicism, we may observe, is commended to the support of princes as promoting the security of their government particularly if the Inquisition be connected with the government; the former constituting the bulwark of the latter. But such a security is based on a servile rehgious obedience and is only present when the constitution and the law of the state still rest upon actual positive possession. But if the constitution and laws are to be founded on a veritable eternal right, then security is to be found only in the Protestant religion, in whose principle rational subjective freedom also attains development. The Catholic principle was fought especially by the Dutch as bound up with Spanish rule. Belgium was still attached to the Catholic religion and remained subject to Spain. The northern part of the Netherlands, Holland, on the contrary, stood its ground with heroic valor against its oppressors. The trading class and the guilds and companies of marksmen formed a militia whose heroic courage was more than a match for the then famous Spanish infantry. The trading cities held out against disciplined troops, just as the Swiss peasants had resisted the Knights of Austria. During this struggle on the continent itself, the Dutch fitted out fleets and deprived the Spaniards of a part of their colonial possessions, from which all their wealth was derived. As independence was secured for Holland in its holding to the Protestant principle, so that of Poland was lost through its endeavor to suppress that principle in the case of dissidents.
The Protestant church had been acknowledged as independent by the Peace of Westphalia, to the vast dishonor and humiliation of Catholicism. This peace has often passed for the palladium of Germany, as having established its political constitution. But this constitution was in fact a confirmation of the particular rights of the countries into which Germany had been broken up. It involved no thought, no conception of the proper end of a state. One must read Hyppolytus a Laplde (a book which, written before the conclusion of the peace, had a great influence on the relations within the Empire) if one wants to become acquainted with the character of that German freedom of which so much is made. In this peace the establishment of a complete particularity, the determination of all relations on the principle of private right is proclaimed. This peace is constituted anarchy such as the world had never seen before. Guaranteed and secured by the most inviolable sanctions was the proposition that the Empire is properly a unity, a whole, a state, while yet all relations are determined so exclusively on the principle of private right that the interest of all the constituent parts is to act for themselves contrary to the interest of the whole, or to neglect that which its interest demands, even if required by law. It was shown immediately after this settlement what the German Empire was as a state in relation to other states. It waged ignominious wars with the Turks, from whom Vienna had to be liberated by the Poles. Still more ignominious was its relation to France, which in time of peace took possession of free cities, the bulwarks of Germany, and of flourishing provinces, and retained them undisturbed.
This constitution, which completely terminated the career of Germany as an Empire, was chiefly the work of Richelieu, by whose assistance, Roman cardinal though he was, religious freedom in Germany was saved. Richelieu, with a view to further the interests of the state whose affairs he superintended, adopted for it the exact opposite of the policy which he promoted in the case of his enemies; for he reduced the latter to political impotence by establishing the political independence of the several parts, while at home he destroyed the autonomy of the Protestant party. His fate was that of many great statesmen: he was cursed by his countrymen, while his enemies looked upon the work by which he ruined them as the most sacred goal of their desires, the consummation of their rights and liberties.
The Protestant church later perfected the guarantee of its political existence by the fact that one of the states which had adopted the principles of the Reformation raised itself to the position of an independent European power. This power was bound to come into existence with Protestantism: Prussia, which made its appearance at the end of the seventeenth century, found in Frederick the Great, if not its founder, yet certainly the consolidator of its strength. The Seven Years’ War was the struggle by which that consolidation was accomplished. Frederick II demonstrated the independent vigor of his power by resisting almost all of Europe—an alliance of its leading states. He appeared as the hero of Protestantism, and that not merely as an individual, like Gustavus Adolphus, but as the ruler of a state. The Seven Years War was indeed itself not a war of religion; but it was such in view of its ultimate issues, and in the conviction of the soldiers as well as of the powers. The Pope consecrated the sword of Field-Marshal Daun, General of Maria Theresa of Hapsburg, and the chief object of the allied powers was the crushing of Prussia as the bulwark of the Protestant church. But Frederick the Great not only made Prussia one of the great powers of Europe as a Protestant power, but was also a philosophical king, an altogether peculiar and unique phenomenon in modern times. There had been English kings who were subtle theologians, contending for the principle of absolutism. Frederick on the contrary took up the Protestant principle in its secular aspect. Being disinclined toward religious controversies he did not side with this or that opinion, yet he had the consciousness of general aims, which is the profoundest depth to which spirit can attain, and which is thought conscious of its own inherent power.
[*] Hegel says: “Das Prinzip des Dieses”—the meaning being quite obscure. See below, the excerpt of the Logic, for elucidation.—Ed.
[†] See above p. 95.
[‡] This point is well illustrated by the legislation on supremacy in England in the reign of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.