§ 539. As a living mind, the state only is as an organised whole, differentiated into particular agencies, which, proceeding from the one notion (though not known as notion) of the reasonable will, continually produce it as their result. The _constitution_ is this articulation or organisation of state-power. It provides for the reasonable will,—in so far as it is in the individuals only _implicitly_ the universal will,—coming to a consciousness and an understanding of itself and being _found_; also for that will being put in actuality, through the action of the government and its several branches, and not left to perish, but protected both against _their_ casual subjectivity and against that of the individuals. The constitution is existent _justice_,—the actuality of liberty in the development all its reasonable provisions. Liberty and Equality are the simple rubrics into which is frequently concentrated what should form the fundamental principle, the final aim and result of the constitution. However true this is, the defect of these terms is their utter abstractness: if stuck to in this abstract form, they are principles which either prevent the rise of the concreteness of the state, i.e. its articulation into a constitution and a government in general, or destroy them. With the state there arises inequality, the difference of governing powers and of governed, magistracies, authorities, directories, &c. The principle of equality, logically carried out, rejects all differences, and thus allows no sort of political condition to exist. Liberty and equality are indeed the foundation of the state, but as the most abstract also the most superficial, and for that very reason naturally the most familiar. It is important therefore to study them closer.