The individual gives itself actuality only in that it enters into existence in general, and thus into determinate particularity, thereby exclusively restricting itself to one of the particular spheres of need. The ethical disposition, within this system, is therefore rectitude and the honour of one’s estate: to make oneself, and indeed by one’s own determination, through one’s activity, diligence, and skill, into a member of one of the moments of civil society, and to maintain oneself as such, and to provide for oneself only through this mediation with the universal, and thereby to be recognized, in one’s own representation and in the representation of others. — Morality has its peculiar place within this sphere, where reflection on one’s own action, the purpose of particular needs and welfare, is dominant, and where the contingency in the satisfaction of these also makes an occasional and individual act of help into a duty.

That the individual, at first (that is, especially in youth), resists the representation of resolving upon a particular estate, and regards this as a limitation on his universal determination, and as a merely external necessity, lies in that abstract thinking which remains fixed on the universal, and thus on the unactual, and does not recognize that, in order to exist, the concept in general enters into the distinction between the concept and its reality, and thus into determinacy and particularity (see § 7), and that only thereby can it gain actuality and ethical objectivity.