|347| The nation to which such a moment falls as its natural principle is entrusted with the execution of that principle in the course of the world spirit’s self-developing self-consciousness. In world history, this nation is, for this epoch — and it can (§ 346) make an epoch in it only once — the dominant one. Against this its absolute right to be the bearer of the present stage of development of the world spirit, the spirits of the other nations are without right, and they, like those whose epoch has passed, no longer count in world history.
The particular history of a world-historical nation contains, in part, the development of its principle from its childlike, still-enveloped condition up to its flowering, when, having attained free ethical self-consciousness, it now intervenes in universal history, and in part also the period of its decline and decay; for it is in this way that the emergence of a higher principle manifests itself in that nation, as being nothing but the negative of its own principle. This indicates the transition of spirit into that principle, and thus of world history to another nation, a period from which that nation has lost its absolute interest; it then indeed also takes up the higher principle positively into itself and forms itself in accordance with it, but in doing so relates to that principle as to something merely received, without immanent vitality and freshness — perhaps losing its independence, perhaps also continuing or dragging itself on as a particular state or a group of states, and thrashing about at random amid manifold internal attempts and external conflicts.
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