From this comment on the second essential element in the historical embodiment of an aim, we infer—­glancing at the institution of the State in passing—­that a State is well constituted and internally powerful when the private interest of its citizens is one with the common interest of the State, when the one finds its gratification and realization in the other—­a proposition in itself very important.  But in a State many institutions must be adopted, and much political machinery invented, accompanied by appropriate political arrangements—­necessitating long struggles of the understanding before what is really appropriate can be discovered—­involving, moreover, contentions with private interest and passions and a tedious discipline of the latter in order to bring about the desired harmony.  The epoch when a State attains this harmonious condition marks the period of its bloom, its virtue, its vigor, and its prosperity.  But the history of mankind does not begin with a conscious aim of any kind, as is the case with the particular circles into which men form themselves of set purpose.  The mere social instinct implies a conscious purpose of security for life and property; and when society has been constituted this purpose becomes more comprehensive.  The history of the world begins with its general aim—­the realization of the idea of Spirit—­only in an implicit form (an sich), that is, as nature—­a hidden, most profoundly hidden, unconscious instinct; and the whole process of history (as already observed) is directed to rendering this unconscious impulse a conscious one.  Thus appearing in the form of merely natural existence, natural will—­that which has been called the subjective side—­physical craving, instinct, passion, private interest, as also opinion and subjective conception, spontaneously present themselves at the very commencement.  This vast congeries of volitions, interests, and activities, constitute the instruments and means of the World-Spirit for attaining its object, bringing it to consciousness and realizing it.  And this aim is none other than finding itself—­coming to itself—­and contemplating itself in concrete actuality.  But that those manifestations of vitality on the part of individuals and peoples, in which they seek and satisfy their own purposes, are, at the same time, the means and instruments of a higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing-which they realize unconsciously might be made a matter of question-rather has been questioned, and, in every variety of form, negatived, decried, and contemned as mere dreaming and “philosophy.”  But on this point I announced my view at the very outset and asserted our hypothesis—­which, however, will appear in the sequel in the form of a legitimate inference—­and our belief that Reason governs the world and has consequently governed its history.  In relation to this independently universal and substantial existence all else is subordinate, subservient to it, and the means for its development.