[p. 246]
|246| first, because someone belongs to a family as a member not through his will but through nature, and secondly, because the relations and the conduct of the members towards one another rest not so much on deliberation and resolve as on feeling and drive. The relations are necessary and rational, but the form of conscious insight is lacking. It is more instinct. The love of the family members rests on this, that my I makes up a unity with the other individual I. They do not regard one another as individuals. The family is an organic whole. The parts are properly not parts but members, which have their substance only in the whole and which, separated from the whole, lack independence. The trust which the members of the family have towards one another consists in this, that each has an interest not for himself but for the whole in general. Natural obedience within the family rests on this, that in this whole there is only one will, which belongs, namely, to the head. To that extent the family makes up only one person. (Nation.)
§ 24
The state is the society of human beings under rightful relations, in which they count for one another not on account of a particular natural relation according to natural inclinations and feelings, but as persons, and in which this personality of each is mediately asserted. If a family has expanded into a nation and the state coincides in one with the nation, this is a great good fortune.
Explanation. A people is held together by language, customs and habit, and culture. This connection, however, does not yet form a state. Further, morality, religion, prosperity and wealth of all its citizens are indeed very important for the state, and it must also take care to promote these circumstances; but they do not constitute for it the immediate purpose, but right does.
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