Up to now, spirit worked in the family and in society like a necessity. The institutions held everything together, even when people did not notice it.

What changes in the state?

Spirit becomes its own object and its own purpose. It is not only the hidden force behind appearances. It is their inner being, which knows itself. In this way, necessity takes on the shape of freedom.

An image:

Someone who learns to swim first fights against the water. Later he knows it and moves freely in it. The water is the same, but now it carries him.

Summary: In the state, spirit becomes its own object and purpose. So the necessity of the institutions appears as freedom.

The transition of the family and civil society into the political state is thus this: that the spirit of those spheres, which is in itself the spirit of the state, now also relates to itself as such and is actual as their inner being. The transition is therefore derived not from the particular essence of the family etc. and the particular essence of the state, but from the general relation of necessity and freedom. It is exactly the same transition that is accomplished in the Logic from the sphere of essence into the sphere of the concept. The same transition is made in the philosophy of nature from inorganic nature into life. It is always the same categories that furnish the soul now for this sphere, now for that one. All that matters is to find, for the individual concrete determinations, the corresponding abstract ones.