From “History of Philosophy.”

LAW, considered as freedom determining itself, is the objectivity of spirit: hence that alone is true volition, the will in the truth of it, which obeys law, for it then obeys only itself; it is then with itself and free; this is the freedom in the State for which the citizen is active, and which fills his soul. In that the state, the fatherland, constitutes a community of existence,—in that the subjective will of man becomes subject to the laws, the opposition between freedom and necessity vanishes. The rational, that which we have recognized as law, is necessary; and we are free when we follow what is rational; the objective and subjective will are thus reconciled. The ethics of the state are not to be regarded as the same thing with mere morality, are not the mere result of reflection, are not dependent upon private convictions alone; this is the system of morals familiar to the modern world, while the true and ancient system was based on this, that each man stood to his duty. A citizen of Athens did as it were by instinct what belonged to him to do; but if I reflect upon the object of my actions, I must then have the consciousness that my own will is first to come in as an essential element. But the true ethics consists in duty, in conformity with right, with law which has a real, substantial existence; it has been justly called the second nature, for the first nature of man is his primitive, animal existence.