Within these spheres, in which its moments — individuality and particularity — have their immediate and reflected reality, spirit is present as their objective universality shining into them, as the power of the rational within necessity (§ 184), namely as the institutions considered above.
The state as spirit differentiates itself into the particular determinations of its concept, of its manner of being. If we wish to adduce an example here from nature, then the nervous system is the properly sentient system: it is the abstract moment of being with oneself and having therein the identity of oneself. The analysis of sensation, however, now indicates two sides, and divides in such a way that the differences appear as whole systems: the first is abstract feeling, self-containment, the dull movement within itself, reproduction, the inward nourishing, producing, and digesting of itself. The second moment is that this being-with-itself has opposite to it the moment of difference, the going-outward. This is irritability, the going-outward of sensation. This constitutes a system of its own, and there are lower classes of animals that have developed only this, not the soulful unity of sensation within itself. If we compare these natural relations with those of spirit, then the family is to be set alongside sensibility, civil society alongside irritability. The third is now the state, the nervous system by itself, organized within itself; but it is alive only insofar as both moments, here family and civil society, are developed within it. The laws that govern them are the institutions of the rational as it shines into them. The ground, the ultimate truth of these institutions, however, is spirit, which is their universal end and known object. The family, too, is indeed ethical, but its end is not present as known; in civil society, by contrast, separation is what is determinative.
§ 263: The Institutions
Spirit is already at work in the family and in society. There it appears as the institutions we have looked at. Marriage, property, the court, the corporation.
A comparison with the body:
A living being has two basic forces. One works inward: it feeds itself, digests, keeps itself alive. The other works outward: it reacts and moves. The family resembles the first, society the second. The state is like the nervous system, which joins both into a unity. It lives only if both forces have developed in it.
Summary: Spirit works in the family and in society as their institutions. The state joins both, as the nervous system joins a body.
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