The political state thus diremps itself into the substantial differences:
a) the power to determine and establish the universal — the legislative power;
b) the subsumption of the particular spheres and individual cases under the universal — the governmental power;
c) subjectivity as the ultimate decision of the will — the power of the crown, in which the differentiated powers are gathered together into individual unity, and which is thus the apex and the beginning of the whole, of constitutional monarchy.

The formation of the state into a constitutional monarchy is the work of the modern world, in which the substantial Idea has won the infinite form. The history of this deepening of the spirit of the world within itself, or, what is the same thing, this free formation, in which the Idea releases its moments — and it is only its moments that they are — from itself as totalities, and thereby just as much contains them within the ideal unity of the concept, wherein real rationality consists — the history of this true configuration of ethical life is the business of universal world history.

The ancient division of constitutions into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy has as its basis the still undivided substantial unity which has not yet arrived at its inner differentiation (a developed organization within itself), and hence not yet at depth and concrete rationality. For that standpoint of the ancient world, this division is therefore the true and correct one; for the difference, as belonging to that unity which is still substantial and has not matured to absolute unfolding within itself, is essentially an external one, and appears in the first instance as a difference of number (Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §82) of those in whom that substantial unity is supposed to be immanent. These forms, which in this way belong to different wholes, are reduced, in constitutional monarchy, to moments; the monarch is one; with the governmental power some enter in, and with the legislative power plurality in general enters in. But such merely quantitative differences are, as has been said, only superficial and do not indicate the concept of the matter. It is likewise inappropriate that, in recent times, so much has been said of the democratic and aristocratic element within monarchy; for the determinations meant by this, precisely in so far as they occur within monarchy, are no longer anything democratic or aristocratic. — There are representations of constitutions in which only the abstraction of the state is set up at the top, which is to govern and command, it being left undecided and regarded as a matter of indifference whether one, or several, or all stand at the head of this state. “All these forms,” says Fichte accordingly in his Natural Right¹, Part 1, p. 196, “are, provided only that an ephorate (a counterweight to the supreme power, invented by him and supposed to exist) is present, lawful, and can produce and maintain universal right within the state.” Such a view (like that invention of an ephorate as well) stems from the shallowness of the concept of the state remarked upon earlier. In a quite simple condition of society, these differences of course have little or no significance, as indeed Moses, in his legislation, for the case in which the people should demand a king, adds no further alteration of the institutions, but only the commandment for the king that his cavalry, his wives, and his gold and silver should not be numerous (see Deuteronomy 17:16 ff.). One can, moreover, in a sense certainly say that, for the Idea too, those three forms (including the monarchical, namely in the restricted sense in which it is placed alongside the aristocratic and democratic) are a matter of indifference — but in the opposite sense, because none of them conforms to the Idea in its rational development (§272), and the Idea could attain its right and actuality in none of them. For this reason it has also become an altogether idle question which of them is the most excellent; — of such forms one can only speak historically. — Otherwise, however, one must, in this matter as in so many others, acknowledge the profound insight of Montesquieu in his famous statement of the principles of these forms of government², though, in order to recognize its correctness, one must not misunderstand this statement. As is well known, he stated virtue as the principle of democracy; for in fact such a constitution rests on disposition as the merely substantial form in which the rationality of the will that is in and for itself still exists within it. But when Montesquieu adds that England, in the seventeenth century, offered the fine spectacle of showing the efforts to establish a democracy to be powerless, since virtue was lacking in its leaders — and when he further adds that, when virtue disappears from the republic, ambition takes hold of those whose minds are capable of it, and avarice takes hold of all, so that the state, then a general prey, has its strength only in the power of a few individuals and in the licentiousness of all — it must be remarked, in response to this, that in a more developed condition of society, and with the development and liberation of the powers of particularity, the virtue of the heads of state becomes insufficient, and another form of rational law, besides that of disposition alone, becomes necessary, so that the whole may possess the strength to hold itself together and to accord to the powers of developed particularity both their positive and their negative right. Likewise, the misunderstanding must be removed that, because the disposition of virtue is the substantial form in the democratic republic, this disposition is thereby declared dispensable, or even absent, in monarchy — and still more the misunderstanding that virtue and an activity determined by law within an articulated organization would be opposed to and incompatible with one another. — That moderation is the principle in aristocracy is bound up with the separation, here beginning, of public power and private interest, which at the same time touch each other so immediately that this constitution stands, within itself, on the point of turning directly into the harshest condition of tyranny or anarchy (one need only look at Roman history) and of destroying itself. — That Montesquieu recognizes honor as the principle of monarchy already shows, on its own, that he does not mean the patriarchal or the ancient monarchy in general, nor the one formed into an objective constitution, but feudal monarchy — and indeed in so far as the relations of its internal constitutional law are fixed as the legal private property and privileges of individuals and corporations. Since, in this constitution, the life of the state rests on privileged personality, in whose discretion a great part of what must be done for the subsistence of the state is placed, the objective character of these performances is not grounded in duties, but in representation and opinion; and thus, instead of duty, it is only honor that holds the state together.

Another question readily presents itself: who is to make the constitution. This question seems clear, but on closer consideration proves at once to be senseless. For it presupposes that no constitution is present, so that a mere atomistic heap of individuals is assembled together. How a heap — whether through itself or through others, through kindness, thought, or force — would arrive at a constitution would have to be left to it, for the concept has nothing to do with a heap. — But if that question already presupposes an existing constitution, then making signifies only a change, and the presupposition of a constitution itself immediately implies that the change can occur only by constitutional means. — In general, however, it is absolutely essential that the constitution, although it has emerged in time, should not be regarded as something made; for it is rather that which is absolutely in and for itself, and is therefore to be regarded as divine and enduring, and as elevated above the sphere of things that are made.

¹ Foundations of Natural Right, 1796 (§16)

² De l’esprit des lois, Book III, ch. 1