It first _(a)_ represents the _fact_ of the natural basis of social relations, being the embodiment of natural feeling in the form of love, both as between the parents, and as embodied for them in the children. It is in accordance with Hegel’s general views of the meaning of a system that he sees this element of mind primarily represented by the family, as an organ preserved and differentiated _ad hoc_, and not, or not merely, distributed indefinitely throughout the community. Thus, the modern family represents for him a higher stage {270} of civilisation--an organ to a fuller embodiment of mind--than the clan or tribe, or, in short, than any form of community in which the _whole_ bond of union rests on merely natural feeling, kindness, generosity, or affection. In the nation, indeed, a tinge of natural affection, a colouring of unity by kinship, survives, just as feeling runs through the experience of the individual mind. But the distinctive character of the State is clear intelligence, explicit law and system, and so the natural basis of feeling, though necessary to be preserved and spiritualised, achieves these needs in the family as a special organ, and not in the State as such. All those theories, therefore, which tend to assimilate the State to a family by a sort of levelling down of the former or levelling up of the latter (Plato’s _Republic_, the phalanstery, paternal government, and the like) involve for Hegel a mere confusion of relations. They recognise an element which is essential to society, and may truly be said to be even its foundation. But they do not see its right place in the whole, and do not understand that in order to attain a stronger and deeper unity (which is, in short, a stronger and deeper mind) the different elements must be allowed a greater emphasis and relief, and their respective characteristics must not be slurred or scamped. But _(b)_ in the second place, the family is a factor in the rational whole, the State, though its function _par excellence_ is that of the natural basis of society. Hence its nature and sanction is ethical--it rests neither on mere feeling on {271} the one hand, nor on mere contract on the other. It has a public side, and the acceptance of a universal obligation by a declaration in explicit language (language being the stamp of the universal), in face of the community, is an essential part of marriage, and not a mere accident or accessory, as the votaries of feeling have urged. This view is aimed against the confusion which finds the sole essence of marriage in feeling. This is a perpetually recurring contention, represented in Hegel’s day by Friedrich von Schlegel’s _Lucinde_, which argues that the form of marriage destroys the value of passion. Hegel’s analyses are everywhere directed against this inability to grasp the distinct sides of a many-sided fact.