self-renunciation each regains the life that had been virtually transferred to the other—­gains, in fact, the other’s existence and his own, as involved with that other.  The ultimate interests connected with the necessities and external concerns of life, as well as the development that has to take place within their circle, i. e., of the children, constitute a common object for the members of the family.  The spirit of the family—­the Penates—­form one substantial being, as much as the spirit of a people in the State; and morality in both cases consists in a feeling, a consciousness, and a will, not limited to individual personality and interest, but embracing the common interests of the members generally.  But this unity is, in the case of the family, essentially one of feeling, not advancing beyond the limits of the merely natural.  The piety of the family relation should be respected in the highest degree by the State; by its means the State obtains as its members individuals who are already moral (for as mere persons they are not) and who, in uniting to form a State, bring with them that sound basis of a political edifice—­the capacity of feeling one with a whole.  But the expansion of the family to a patriarchal unity carries us beyond the ties of blood-relationship—­the simply natural elements of that basis; and outside of these limits the members of the community must enter upon the position of independent personality.  A review of the patriarchal condition, in extenso, would lead us to give special attention to the theocratical constitution.  The head of the patriarchal clan is also its priest.  If the family in its general relations is not yet separated from civic society and the State, the separation of religion from it has also not yet taken place; and so much the less since the piety of the hearth is itself a profoundly subjective state of feeling.

We have considered two aspects of freedom—­the objective and the subjective; if, therefore, freedom is asserted to consist in the individuals of a State, all agreeing in its arrangements, it is evident that only the subjective aspect is regarded.  The natural inference from this principle is, that no law can be valid without the approval of all.  It is attempted to obviate this difficulty by the decision that the minority must yield to the majority; the majority therefore bears sway; but long ago J.J.  Rousseau remarked that, in that case, there would no longer be freedom, for the will of the minority would cease to be respected.  At the Polish Diet each individual member had to give his consent before any political step could be taken; and this kind of freedom it was that ruined the State.  Besides, it is a dangerous and false prejudice that the people alone have reason and insight, and know what justice is; for each popular faction may represent itself as the people, and the question as to what constitutes the State is one of advanced science and not of popular decision.