HUME TO HEGEL second, he is viewing that universe as an organic whole which has a life cycle mapped out for it Hegel invites us to look on the universe as we look on speciWc organisms in nature A plant passes through stages of development, producing twigs, leaves, blossom, and fruit; it does so in accordance with a pattern speciWc to its own kind Hegel, with a deliberate bow to Plato, calls this the Idea of the plant A plant, of course, is not conscious of its own Idea But a human child, as its bodily powers develop, and as its intellectual skills emerge, gradually grows into consciousness of itself and its nature or Idea (LHP I 29) The progress of spirit reproduces this development on a cosmic scale: Spirit is not to be considered only as individual, Wnite, consciousness, but as that Spirit which is universal and concrete within itself Spirit’s intelligent comprehension of itself is at the same time the progression of the total evolving reality This progression is not one that takes its course through the thought of an individual and exhibits itself in a single consciousness, for it shows itself to be universal Spirit presenting itself in the history of the world in all the richness of its form (LHP I 33) Thus the history of the world is the history of the ever-growing selfconsciousness of spirit DiVerent stages in the cosmic Idea present themselves at diVerent times to diVerent races Spirit progresses in consciousness of freedom pari passu with the growth of awareness of freedom among human beings Those who lived under oriental despots did not know that they were free beings The Greeks and Romans knew that they themselves were free, but their acceptance of slavery showed that they did not know that man as such was free ‘The German nations, under the inXuence of Christianity, were the Wrst to attain the consciousness that man, as man, is free: that it is the freedom of Spirit that constitutes its essence.’ The freedom of spirit is what marks it oV from matter, which is bound by the necessity of laws such as that of universal attraction The destiny of the world is spirit’s expansion of its freedom and of its consciousness of its freedom Self-interested individuals and nations are the unconscious instruments of spirit working out its destiny: they become conscious of their role in the cosmic drama at the point at which they are formed into a national state The state is ‘the realization of Freedom, i.e of the absolute Wnal aim, and it exists for its own sake.’ The state does not exist for the sake of its citizens; on the contrary, the citizen possesses worth only as a 115