[p. 464]
|464| as if necessity ruled in these, but in what happens only chance, because their concepts are as limited as their view of things, which they apprehend only as individual events, not as a system of them governed by one spirit; and whether they otherwise suffer through them or merely find them contradicting their concepts, they find in the fact that they maintain their concepts the right to blame bitterly what has happened.
Above all, the passing of time has probably afflicted the Germans with this vice. In eternal contradiction between what they demand and what does not happen according to their demand, they appear not merely censorious but, when they speak merely of their concepts, untruthful and dishonest, because they place necessity in their concepts of right and of duties, but nothing happens according to this necessity and they themselves are so accustomed to this, partly that their words always contradict their deeds, partly that they seek to make of the events something quite other than they actually are, and to twist the explanation of them according to certain concepts.
But whoever wished to get to know what is wont to happen in Germany according to the concepts of what ought to happen, namely according to the laws of the state, would err in the highest degree. For the dissolution of the state is recognised chiefly by this, that everything goes otherwise than the laws. Equally he would err if the form11) which is taken from these laws appeared to him in truth the ground and cause of them. For precisely on account of their concepts the Germans appear so dishonest, to confess nothing as it is, nor to give it out as more or less than lies in the force of the matter. They remain faithful to their concepts, to right and to the laws, but the events are not wont to agree with them, and so the side that has the advantage
11) Editors: The word is barely legible. Rosenkranz (Hegels Leben, p. 241): “Farbe”
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