[p. 336]
|336| are not in the infinite concept, through which this, which is posited only for their consciousness as something external, would be absolutely their own absolute spirit moving them, which would overcome all their differences and determinacies; that their ethical nature attains to this intuition, this benefit the first estate affords them; insofar as this, presenting itself in the shape of something objective, is their absolute inner essence, it remains for them something hidden, and does not unite with their individuality and their consciousness. – The other benefit, in their manner, is in the negative, and on the side of the first estate labour is likewise posited, but the absolutely indifferent labour, that of government and of bravery; in relation to the other estates, or in them, this labour is the security of their property and possession, and the absolute security is that they themselves, at least the second estate, are exempted from bravery.
b. The estate of rectitude is in the labour of need, in possession and acquisition and property. Since the unity which is in these relations is something absolutely ideal, something thought, for the sake of the fixedness of difference, it receives a reality only in the people; it is abstract, contentless power in general, without wisdom; its content is posited through the contingency of real things and of the arbitrary will which is in them, in acquisition, in contracts and so on; the universal, rightful element of these relations becomes real, physical force against the particularity which wants to be negative towards it. This being-sunk in possession and particularity here ceases to be bondage towards absolute indifference; it is indifferentiated as well as it can be, or the formal indifference, being-a-person, is respected in the people, and the possessor, through his difference, does not fall with the whole essence, thus does not fall into personal dependence; rather, his negative indifference is posited as something real, and he is thus a citizen, bourgeois; and is recognised as a universal. In the first estate all particularity of individuality is annihilated, and so it also conducts itself towards the second as a universal, which is thereby itself so determined, but, for the sake of the fixedness of its possession, only as something formally universal; [it is] an absolutely singular one.
Since labour likewise becomes a universal labour, then, since it is directed towards the totality of need not according to its matter but only according to the concept, a universal dependence on account of the satisfaction of physical need is
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