exclude a negative treatment of the system of possession, and would let it have entirely free rein and establish itself absolutely; rather, the ethical whole must keep it in the feeling of its own inner nullity, and must hinder its shooting-up in respect of quantity, and its formation toward an ever greater difference and inequality — which is what its nature tends toward; something which is also brought about, in every state, more unconsciously and in the shape of an external natural necessity which the state would itself wish to be exempt from — through the ever greater expenditure of the state itself, growing along with the growth of the system of possession, and, correspondingly, rising levies, and hence a diminishing of possessions and a hindering of acquisition — brought about most of all through war, which throws whatever tends in that direction into manifold confusion, as well as through the jealousy of other estates, and the oppression of trade, in part deliberately, in part against their will through lack of understanding, and so forth — brought about, that is, to such degrees as allow the positive ethical life of the state itself, its independence from the purely real system, and the assertion of a negative and restraining bearing.

The reality in the relation in which it has just now been considered, and of which physical need, enjoyment, possession, and the objects of possession and enjoyment are different sides, is pure reality; it merely expresses the extremes of the relationship. But the relationship also contains an ideality, a relative identity of the opposed determinacies; and this can therefore not be positively absolute, but only formal. Through the identity into which the real is posited in the relation of relationships, possession becomes property, and particularity in general — even living particularity — is at the same time determined as a universal; whereby the sphere of right is constituted. — As for the reflection of the Absolute in this relationship, it has already been determined above, on its negative side, against the subsistence of the real and determinate, as a subduing; on the positive side, for the subsistence of the real, indifference in this determinate material can express itself only as an external, formal equality; and the science that relates to this can only aim, in part, at the gradations of inequality, and, in part, in order that this be possible, at determining the manner in which something living, or inward in general, is to be posited so objectively and externally that it becomes capable of that determination and calculation. Against this superficial appearance, the absolute reality of ethical life, in this power, is restricted by the subsistence of the reality present in the opposition. Not only does the equating and calculating of inequality have its limits, for the sake of the fixed determinacy which encloses within itself an absolute opposition, and strike, as geometry does, upon incommensurability, but, because it is wholly within determinacy, and yet cannot, like

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