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.