[p. 481]
|481| practical sciences will result. Since what matters here first is the determination of these relations contained herein, and the side of infinity must therefore be brought out, we presuppose the positive, that absolute ethical totality is nothing other than a people, which will also already make itself clear in the negative that we consider here, in the following moments of it.
In absolute ethical life, then, infinity or form, as the absolutely negative, is nothing other than the subduing itself, grasped above, taken up into its absolute concept, in which it does not relate to individual determinacies but to the whole actuality and possibility of them, namely life itself, so that the matter is equal to the infinite form, but in such a way that the positive of it is the absolutely ethical, namely belonging to a people, the oneness with which the individual proves in the negative, through the danger of death alone, in an unequivocal manner. Through the absolute identity of the infinite, or of the side of the relation, with the positive, the ethical totalities, such as the peoples are, take shape, constitute themselves as individuals and thereby place themselves as individual against individual peoples; this placing and individuality is the side of reality, and thought without it they are thought-things; it would be the abstraction of essence without the absolute form, which essence would be essenceless precisely thereby. This relationship of individuality to individuality is a relation and therefore a doubled one: the one the positive, the calm equal subsistence of both beside one another in peace, the other the negative, the excluding of the one by the other; and both relationships are absolutely necessary. For the second we have grasped the rational relation as a subduing taken up into its concept, or as absolute formal virtue, which is bravery. Through this second side of the relationship, the

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