[p. 491]
But the relation of this, which by its nature is another’s and does not have its spirit in itself, to absolutely independent individuality is able, according to its form, to be a twofold one, namely either a relation of the individuals of this estate as particulars to the individuals of the first as particulars, or of universal to universal. That relation of slavery disappeared of itself in the empirical appearance of the universality of the Roman Empire; in the loss of absolute ethical life and with the debasement of the noble estate the two previously particular estates became equal to one another, and with the ceasing of freedom slavery necessarily ceased. Since the principle of formal unity and of equality had to assert itself, it sublated in general the inner true difference of the estates and in the first place did not bring about the segregation of estates posited above, still less the form of their segregation conditioned by it, according to which, under the form of universality, they stand to one another only as a whole estate to a whole estate in the relation of dominion and dependence, so that in this relation too the two that are in the reference remain universal; whereas in the relation of slavery, on the contrary, the form of particularity is the determining one of it, and it is not estate against estate, but this unity of each part is dissolved in the real reference and the individuals are dependent on individuals. The principle of universality and equality had first to take possession of the whole in such a way that it put in the place of a segregation a mixing of the two estates; in this mixing under the law of formal unity the first estate is in truth wholly sublated and the second made into the sole people; of which change Gibbon8) gives in
8) Editors: Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1787; Bd. I, S. 74 f.

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