(_γγ_) The position, then, that isolated individuals occupy in the State is one which contracts them within a fixed and organized order, and subordinates them thereto; and they stand in this relation for the reason that the character and disposition of each is not the only embodiment of ethical forces; but, if the State to which they belong is a genuine example, they are on the contrary compelled to regulate all the external detail of their actions, opinions, and feelings with a due regard to what is legally permissible, and to bring the same into line with it. This dependence upon the objective rationality of the State in its power of self-assertion above all subjective caprice may either be regarded as a mere subjection, inasmuch as laws and institutions possess, as the paramount power, a constraining force, or we may see in it merely the free recognition and acceptance of the reason that underlies such a necessity of fact, an acknowledgment through which the individual finds himself again in that objective order. But even in the latter case isolated individuals continue to remain as merely incidental facts, and apart from the organic reality of the State possess no real substantiality in themselves. For substantiality, in the sense we here use the term, is by no means only the _particular_ property of this or that individual, but a fully _explicit_ reality[302], minted, as it were, in all aspects of it, and down to the merest detail in a mode universally applicable and _necessary._ All that mere individuals can effect with _volition_ and _accomplishment_ even in actions right, moral, and legal in themselves in the interest of and attendant upon the progress of the whole, remains and must always remain, in contrast with that whole, insignificant and a mere example. Their actions are always only an entirely partial realization of a single case; and, moreover, the realization of the same has no universal significance in the sense that the particular example of it is thereby of objective validity as law, or, as such law, makes its appearance. And for the same reason, to put the matter the other way, it is wholly unimportant whether the validity of right and justice is acknowledged by private individuals judging as individuals. The validity is a vital fact of State life which holds whether it be acknowledged or no. No doubt it is a matter of interest to the general public that every one should fall in with the order established and desire it; but the wishes of isolated individuals have no influence upon that interest in the sense that it is only by virtue of the assent of this or that person that right and a moral order is preserved. Such require no such isolated example of assent; and a breach of either is followed by punishment.