that anything is the same excepting in name. The state is likewise the essence of the individuals; the individual when separate from the whole, is just as little complete in himself as any other organic part separated from the whole.” This is directly antagonistic to the modern principle in which the particular will of the individual, as absolute, is made the starting-point; so that all men by giving their votes, decide what is to be the law, and thereby a commonweal is brought into existence. But with Aristotle, as with Plato, the state is the _prius_, the substantial, the chief, for its end is the highest in respect of the practical. “But whoever was incapable of this society, or so complete in himself as not to want it, would be either a beast or a god.” From these few remarks it is clear that Aristotle could not have had any thought of a so-called natural right (if a natural right be wanted), that is, the idea of the abstract man outside of any actual relation to others. For the rest, his Politics contain points of view even now full of instruction for us, respecting the inward elements of a state,[108] and a description of the various constitutions;[109] the latter, however, has no longer the same interest, on account of the different principle at the base of ancient and modern states. No land was so rich as Greece, alike in the number of its constitutions, and in the frequent changes from one to another of these in a single state; but the Greeks were still unacquainted with the abstract right of our modern states, that isolates the individual, allows of his acting as such, and yet, as an invisible spirit, holds all its parts together. This is done in such a way, however, that in no one is there properly speaking either the consciousness of, or the activity for the whole; but because the individual is really held to be a person, and all his concern is the protection of his individuality, he works for the whole without knowing how. It is a divided activity in which each has only his part, just as in a factory no one makes a whole, but only a part, and does not possess skill in other departments, because only a few are employed in fitting the different parts together. It is free nations alone that have the consciousness of and activity for the whole; in modern times the individual is only free for himself as such, and enjoys citizen freedom alone—in the sense of that of a _bourgeois_ and not of a _citoyen_. We do not possess two separate words to mark this distinction. The freedom of citizens in this signification is the dispensing with universality, the principle of isolation; but it is a necessary moment unknown to ancient states. It is the perfect independence of the points, and therefore the greater independence of the whole, which constitutes the higher organic life. After the state received this principle into itself, the higher freedom could come forth. These other states are sports and products of nature which