In our times, too, this is its general acceptation; only with this modification, that—­since our States are so large, and there are so many of “the many,” the latter (direct action being impossible) should by the indirect method of elective substitution express their concurrence with resolves affecting the common weal—­that is, that for legislative purposes generally the people should be represented by deputies.  The so-called representative constitution is that form of government with which we connect the idea of a free constitution; and this notion has become a rooted prejudice.  On this theory people and government are separated.  But there is a perversity in this antithesis, an ill-intentioned ruse designed to insinuate that the people are the totality of the State.  Besides, the basis of this view is the principle of isolated individuality—­the absolute validity of the subjective will—­a dogma which we have already investigated.  The great point is that freedom, in its ideal conception, has not subjective will and caprice for its principle, but the recognition of the universal will, and that the process by which freedom is realized is the free development of its successive stages.  The subjective will is a merely formal determination—­a carte blanche—­not including what it is that is willed.  Only the rational will is that universal principle which independently determines and unfolds its own being and develops its successive elemental phases as organic members.  Of this Gothic-cathedral architecture the ancients knew nothing.

At an earlier stage of the discussion we established the two elemental considerations:  First, the idea of freedom as the absolute and final aim; secondly, the means for realizing it, i. e., the subjective side of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity.  We then recognized the State as the moral whole and the reality of freedom, and consequently as the objective unity of these two elements.  For although we make this distinction in two aspects for our consideration, it must be remarked that they are intimately connected, and that their connection is involved in the idea of each when examined separately.  We have, on the one hand, recognized the Idea in the definite form of freedom, conscious of and willing itself, having itself alone as its object, involving at the same time the pure and simple Idea of Reason and, likewise, what we have called Subject, self-consciousness, Spirit, actually existing in the world.  If, on the other hand, we consider subjectivity, we find that subjective knowledge and will is thought.  But by the very act of thoughtful cognition and volition, I will the universal object—­the substance of absolute Reason.  We observe, therefore, an essential union between the objective side—­the Idea, and the subjective side—­the personality that conceives and wills it.  The objective existence of this union is the State, which is therefore the basis and centre of the other concrete elements of