The two realms fight hard with each other. And yet they have their roots in one Idea.

What happens in this struggle?

The Church pulls its heaven down into worldliness. The worldly realm, in turn, builds itself up to thought, to the reason of right and law. So the opposition fades. The present sheds its barbarism and arbitrary will. Truth sheds its beyond.

The result:

True reconciliation has become real. The state unfolds into the image and actuality of reason. In it consciousness finds its truth in three ways. In the state as actual knowing and willing. In religion as feeling and representation. In science as knowledge that grasps it freely. It is the same truth in the state, in nature and in the world of spirit.

Summary: In the struggle between Church and worldly realm, the opposition fades. The state becomes the actuality of reason. State, religion and science show the same truth.

At first the new principle lives only inside. As faith, love and hope.

How does it unfold?

It forms a worldly realm. This realm rests on the heart, on loyalty and on the fellowship of free men. But at the same time it is a realm of raw arbitrary will and barbaric customs.

And beside it?

Over against it stands a spiritual realm beyond this world, the Church. It possesses the truth, but not yet in thought. It wraps the truth in raw images. As a spiritual power over hearts, it becomes an unfree, terrible force.

Summary: At first the new principle forms a worldly realm of loyalty, but also of arbitrary will. Over against it stands the Church, a power beyond this world, unfree and terrible.

From the loss of itself and of its world grows an infinite grief. The people of Israel stood ready for this grief.

What happens then?

Spirit falls back wholly into itself. At this outermost point it finds something infinitely positive within. The principle of the unity of divine and human nature. Reconciliation. Truth and freedom now appear in one’s own consciousness.

Who is to make this real?

This task falls to the Germanic peoples of the North.

Summary: Spirit grieves over the loss of the old world. Out of this grief it finds the reconciliation of the divine and the human. The Germanic peoples have the task of making it real.

In the Roman realm ethical life tears apart.

Which extremes?

On one side the private consciousness of the single person. On the other an abstract universality.

How does it go?

It begins with the struggle between aristocracy and democracy. One side turns into superstition and cold, greedy power. The other decays into a rabble.

The end:

The whole dissolves in general misfortune. Ethical life dies. The spirits of the nations die out in a shared pantheon. All become private persons, equal in formal right. Only a boundless arbitrary will still holds them together.

Summary: In the Roman realm ethical life tears apart into private persons and abstract universality. It ends in the death of ethical life. Only arbitrary will still holds the equals together.

Here too the unity of the divine and the human still exists. But it has withdrawn into dim memory, into mysteries and images of tradition.

What is new?

Spirit steps into the bright light of knowing. It becomes beauty and a free, serene ethical life. The individual unfolds as a person. But he is not yet closed up in himself. He stays held in the beautiful whole.

The limits:

The whole breaks into many separate cities and peoples. The final decision does not yet lie in man himself. People fetch it from a higher power, for example from the oracle. And the work for needs stays shut out of freedom. It falls to the slaves.

Summary: In the Greek realm spirit becomes beauty and serene ethical life. But the final decision still lies outside man. And work remains the business of slaves.

The first realm starts from the rule of the fathers, from a natural whole. Here nothing has split apart yet.

What does it look like?

The government is rule by priests. The ruler is also high priest or even god himself. Constitution and law are at the same time religion. The commands of religion and custom are at the same time laws of the state.

And the individual?

In the splendor of this whole he perishes without rights. People regard nature as divine. Instead of laws there are elaborate, superstitious ceremonies. And the arbitrary will of personal power. The estates harden into castes.

Calm and raging:

In this state nothing moves. What is firm has turned to stone. The state is alive only when it turns outward. Then it becomes a wild raging and laying waste. The calm inside is weakness and exhaustion.

Summary: In the Oriental realm state and religion are one. The individual perishes in it without rights. Inside everything is rigid; outside it rages and lays waste.

From the four principles come four realms of world history:

First, the Oriental realm.

Second, the Greek realm.

Third, the Roman realm.

Fourth, the Germanic realm. This is the Christian world of the peoples who shaped Europe after Rome.

Summary: The four realms of world history are the Oriental, the Greek, the Roman and the Germanic.

Which principles underlie the four realms?

The first: spirit is still an undivided unity. The individual remains submerged in the whole. He has no right of his own.

The second: spirit knows of this unity. The individual lives it in beautiful, ethical freedom.

The third: spirit withdraws into itself, into an abstract universality. The outer world stands over against it, foreign and without spirit.

The fourth: spirit finds its truth in its inner self. It reconciles itself with the world and is at home in it. It creates its truth and knows it, as thought and as a world of laws.

Summary: There are four principles. Sinking into unity, beautiful ethical freedom, retreat into abstract inwardness. And finally the reconciliation of inner and outer.

The spirits of the nations have their truth in the world spirit. They stand around its throne. They make it real, and they bear witness to its splendor and adorn it.

What does the world spirit do?

It wants to know itself fully. It wants to free itself from mere nature and come to itself. On this path of liberation there are four stages. These are the four realms of world history.

Summary: The nations are stages and tools of the world spirit. On its path to self-knowledge and freedom there are four realms of world history.

Something further follows from the same right.

Civilized nations see other nations as barbarians if these lag behind on the way to the state. Herding peoples see hunting peoples in this way. Farming peoples see both in this way. They treat them with the awareness of an unequal right. To them, the independence of these others counts only as something formal.

What do the wars that arise from this mean?

They are struggles for recognition. They are about a definite content, about a higher stage of the state. That gives them their meaning for world history.

Summary: Civilized nations treat less developed ones as barbarians, with unequal right. The wars that follow are struggles for recognition. That is their meaning for world history.