System of Ethical Life

[p. 353]

|353| enjoyment itself it idealises itself into the purest, most refined enjoying; cultivated enjoying, in volatilising the crudeness of need, must seek out or prepare the noblest, and the more different its stimuli become, the greater becomes the labour which they make necessary; for both the difference of the stimuli and their indifference, their concentration, which the reality of nature separates, are to unite together; the indifferent element, which the natural product has as a totality for itself, is to [be] sublated, and merely its difference for enjoyment is to remain.

This ideality of enjoyment then also presents itself as otherness, as foreignness in the external relation of the product, and attaches itself to rarity, and both this foreign kind of satisfaction and the most convenient kind, already appropriated beforehand through the manner of preparation, put the whole earth to expense.

Empirically infinite, the ideality of enjoyment presents itself finally in objectified, inhibited enjoyment, in possession, and in this respect all limit likewise ceases.

Over against this infinity stands the particularity of enjoyment and of possession, and since possible possession, which is the objective side of the potency of enjoyment, and labour have their limit, are a determinate quantum, then with the accumulation of possession in one place, possession must decrease in another place.

This inequality of wealth is necessary in and for itself; every natural inequality is able to express itself as such when the natural turns in this direction, and the drive towards the increase of wealth is nothing other than the necessity of taking the determinate singular, which possession is, up into the infinite. But the trade which is the more universal, more ideal, is the one which as such yields greater gain for itself.

This necessary inequality, which within the estate of acquisition separates itself again into many particular estates of acquisition, and these into estates of differing wealth and enjoyment, brings forth, however, through its quantitative constitution, which relates to degrees and is capable of no determination other than that of degree, a relation of lordship; the singular, immensely rich individual becomes a

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