abstract yet necessitated process in the development of truly
independent states is as follows: They begin with regal power, whether
of patriarchal or military origin; in the next phase, particularity and
individuality assert themselves in the form of aristocracy and
democracy; lastly, we have the subjection of these separate interests to
a single power, but one which can be absolutely none other than one
outside of which those spheres have an independent position, viz., the
monarchical. Two phases of royalty, therefore, must be distinguished--a
primary and a secondary. This process is necessitated to the end that
the form of government assigned to a particular stage of development
must present itself; it is therefore no matter of choice, but is the
form adapted to the spirit of the people.

In the constitution the main feature of interest is the self-development
of the rational, that is, the political condition of a people, the
setting free of the successive elements of the Idea, so that the several
powers in the State manifest themselves as separate, attain their
appropriate and special perfection, and yet, in this independent
condition, work together for one object and are held together by
it--i. e., form an organic whole. The State is thus the embodiment of
rational freedom, realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form.
For its objectivity consists in this--that its successive stages are not
merely ideal, but are present in an appropriate reality, and that in
their separate and several workings they are absolutely merged in that
agency by which the totality, the soul, the individuate unity, is
produced, and of which it is the result.

The State is the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human
will and its freedom. It is to the State, therefore, that change in the
aspect of history indissolubly attaches itself; and the successive
phases of the idea manifest themselves in it as distinct political
principles. The constitutions under which world-historical peoples have
reached their culmination, are peculiar to them, and therefore do not
present a generally applicable political basis. Were it otherwise the
differences of similar constitutions would consist only in a peculiar
method of expanding and developing that generic basis, whereas they
really originate in diversity of principle. From the comparison
therefore of the political institutions of the ancient world-historical
peoples, it so happens