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The estate, as particularity that has become objective, thus divides itself, on the one hand, according to the concept, into its universal differences. On the other hand, however, natural disposition, birth, and circumstances have their influence on which particular estate the individual belongs to; but the final and essential determination lies in subjective opinion and particular arbitrary will, which, within this sphere, give to themselves their right, merit, and honour, so that what happens within it through inner necessity is, at the same time, mediated through arbitrary will, and has, for subjective consciousness, the shape of being the work of its own will.

In this respect, too, the difference between the political life of the East and the West, and of the ancient and the modern world, shows itself with regard to the principle of particularity and of subjective arbitrary will. Among the former, the division of the whole into estates does indeed arise objectively of itself, because it is in itself rational; but the principle of subjective particularity does not, at the same time, receive its right thereby, since, for example, the assignment of individuals to the estates is left to the rulers, as in the Platonic state (De republica III [415], p. 320, ed. Bip. T. VI), or to mere birth, as in the Indian castes. |205| Thus not taken up into the organization of the whole, and not reconciled within it, subjective particularity shows itself, precisely because it also emerges as an essential moment, as something hostile, as the corruption of the social order (see § 185, Remark) — either overturning that order, as in the Greek states and in the Roman republic, or, if that order maintains itself as possessing force, or, say, as religious authority, as inner corruption and complete degradation, as is, to a certain extent, the case with the Lacedaemonians, and now, most completely, with the Indians. — Preserved, however, by the objective order, in conformity with it, and, at the same time, in its own right, subjective particularity becomes the principle of all animation of civil society, of the development of thinking activity, of merit, and of honour. The recognition and the right that what is necessary, through reason, in civil society and in the state, should, at the same time, occur as mediated through arbitrary will, is the more precise determination of what is chiefly called, in the general representation, freedom (§ 121).