The principle of the ancient State, as concentratedly expressed in Plato’s _Republic_, was weak and undeveloped, and fell short of the true claims of intelligence, [1] just because it dared not really let the individual go--let him assert himself as himself. “Subjectivity” was a principle fatal to it. Not that there was an iron oppression in the States of antiquity. The individual was, for an onlooker, magnificently developed. His limitations were in him, and did not oppress him; but for all that, free choice and the career open to talents were not for him.
[1] “Was not ideal enough” (Hegel, _Geschichte der Philosophie_, ii. 254). The “notion” for him necessarily involves identity, differentiation, and re-integration; and in this respect the ancient State falls short of a true notion, while the modern realises it.
The modern demand--such is Hegel’s conception--is harder and higher. The individual’s life is not predetermined by his birth, but he is thrown face to face with economic necessity, which is a form of the universal end. He has to strip off his crudeness and vanity, and, of himself, mould himself into something which fulfils a want. This is a step without which there can be no true freedom--the giving one’s self by one’s own act a definite place in the region of external necessity, the “becoming _something_” or attaching oneself to { 275} a definite class of service renderers. Thus, we are startled to find culture or education treated in general, and in respect of its indispensableness, under the head of the Bourgeois Society. For culture is the liberation from one’s own caprices, and the acceptance of a universal task. It is a severe process, and therefore unpopular, but it is a necessary one if we are to have true freedom. The criticism that such a world and temper is the world and temper of self-interest does not appeal strongly to Hegel. We shall have to treat of it more fully below. [1]
It may be noted in passing that the insecurity of life, which may seem to attach to dependence on the vast system of wants and work, is more and more seen, as modern economic relations develop, not to be insecurity at all, except in as far as “culture” in the form of industrial training is absent. There is, indeed, in modern life, nowhere any absolute and oyster-like stability. The highest stability to be anywhere attained is that due to fitness for service in the interdependent system of needs. [1]