Both moments in their undivided unity — the ultimate, groundless self of the will, and the likewise groundless existence bound up with it, a determination consigned to nature — this Idea of that which is unmoved by arbitrary will constitutes the majesty of the monarch. In this unity lies the actual unity of the state, which, precisely through this its inner and outer immediacy, is removed from the possibility of being dragged down into the sphere of particularity, with its arbitrary will, purposes, and opinions, and thus from the struggle of factions against factions for the throne, and from the weakening and shattering of the power of the state.

The right of birth and the right of inheritance constitute the ground of legitimacy, as a ground not of merely positive right, but at the same time in the Idea. — That, through a firmly fixed succession to the throne, i.e., natural succession, factions are forestalled when the throne falls vacant, is a consideration that has long, and rightly, been urged in favor of the heredity of the throne. This consideration, however, is only a consequence; and when made into the ground, it drags majesty down into the sphere of ratiocination, and gives to it — whose character consists precisely in this groundless immediacy and this ultimate being-within-itself — not the Idea of the state immanent to it, but something external to it, a thought distinct from it, such as the welfare of the state or people, as its basis. From such a determination, heredity can certainly be inferred by means of media termini; but it equally admits of other media termini, and hence other consequences — and it is only too well known what consequences have been drawn from this welfare of the people (salut du peuple). — For this reason, too, philosophy alone is permitted to consider this majesty in thought, for any mode of inquiry other than the speculative mode proper to the infinite Idea, grounded in itself, in and for itself abolishes the nature of majesty. — Elective monarchy appears at first to be the most natural conception, i.e., it lies nearest to the shallowness of thought; for since it is the affair and interest of the people that the monarch has to attend to, it must therefore also be left to the choice of the people whom it wishes to entrust with the care of its welfare, and only from such a commission does the right to govern arise. This view, like the conceptions of the monarch as supreme state official, of a contractual relationship between him and the people, and so on, proceeds from the will as the arbitrary pleasure, opinion, and arbitrary will of the many — a determination which, as has long since been considered, counts as primary in civil society, or rather merely seeks to assert itself there, but which is neither the principle of the family, still less of the state, and indeed stands opposed to the Idea of ethical life altogether. — That elective monarchy is, on the contrary, the worst of institutions follows, even for mere ratiocination, from its consequences, which, though they appear to it as merely possible and probable, in fact lie essentially within this institution itself. For in an elective monarchy, the very nature of the relationship — namely, that the particular will is made the ultimate deciding factor — turns the constitution into an electoral capitulation, i.e., a surrender of the power of the state to the discretion of the particular will, from which follows the transformation of the particular powers of the state into private property, the weakening and loss of the sovereignty of the state, and thereby its internal dissolution and external shattering.