But to this plurality, the positive unity that expresses itself as absolute totality must, for empiricism, be added as something other and alien; and already in this form of connecting the two sides of the absolute identity it is implied that the totality will present itself just as clouded and impure as that of the original unity. The ground of the being of one of these here separated unities for the other, or of the transition from the first to the second, is as easy for empiricism to state as grounding in general comes easily to it. According to the fiction of the state of nature, it is abandoned for the sake of the evils it brings with it — which means nothing other than that what one wishes to arrive at is presupposed from the outset, namely that an accord among what conflicts as chaos is the good, or is that to which one must come; or into the representation of the original qualities as possibilities such a ground of transition is immediately inserted, as a drive toward sociability; or the conceptual form of a faculty is renounced altogether, and one proceeds at once to the wholly particular manifestation of that second unity, to the historical — as the subjugation of the weaker by the more powerful, and so on. The unity itself, however, can, according to the principle of absolute qualitative plurality — as in empirical physics — present nothing but, once again, manifold entanglements of the simple and separated many posited as original, superficial contacts among these qualities, which are in themselves, in their particularity, indestructible and capable only of entering into slight, partial combinations and admixtures, in place of the many atomic qualities — that is, a plurality of what is divided, or of relations; and, insofar as unity is posited as a whole, it can posit nothing but the empty name of a formless and external harmony, under the name of society and the state. Even if this unity, whether taken by itself or in a more empirical relation, is represented, according to its origin, as absolute, receiving its immediate origin from God, and even if, in its subsistence, its center and inner essence too are represented as divine, this representation nonetheless remains again something merely formal, merely hovering over the plurality, not permeating it. Suppose that God is recognized not only as the founder of the union but also as its sustainer, and, in relation to the latter, that the majesty of the supreme power is recognized as its reflection and as in itself divine — even so, the divine element of the union remains something external for the united many, who must be posited in relation to it only in the relation of dominion, because the principle of this empiricism excludes the absolute unity of the one and the many; at which point of this relation it coincides immediately with the principle opposed to it, for which the abstract unity is the first — except that empiricism is not embarrassed by its inconsistencies, which arise from the mixing of things posited as so specifically different as the abstract unity and the absolute plurality, and precisely for that reason also has the advantage of not closing off access to views which, apart from their merely material side, are appearances of a pure and divine inwardness — inasmuch as this can occur only according to the principle of opposition, in which alone ruling and obeying are possible.

The state of nature, and the majesty and divinity of the whole of the condition of right — alien to individuals and therefore itself singular and particular — as well as the relation of the absolute submissiveness of the subjects under that supreme power, are the forms in which the splintered moments of organic ethical life — the moment of absolute unity, and of this unity insofar as it comprehends within itself the opposition of unity and plurality and is absolute totality, and the moment of infinity, or of the nothingness of the realities of the opposition — are fixed as particular essences, and precisely thereby, like the Idea, are inverted. The absolute Idea of ethical life, by contrast, contains the state of nature and majesty as simply identical, since the latter is itself nothing other than absolute ethical nature; and no loss of the absolute freedom that one would have to understand by natural freedom, nor any surrender of ethical nature, can be thought through the real being of majesty; but the natural element which, within the ethical relation, would have to be thought of as something to be surrendered, would itself be nothing ethical, and would hence least of all present that same nature in its originality. Just as little are the infinity, or the nothingness, of the individual, of the subjects, fixed in the absolute Idea in relative identity with majesty, as a relation of submissiveness in which singularity too would be something simply posited; rather, in the Idea, infinity is truly — singularity as such is nothing — and is simply one with the absolute ethical majesty; and this true, living, non-submissive being-one alone is the true ethical life of the individual.

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