Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/678

662 their indubitable right to true freedom, and "they have made an artificial man, which we call a commonwealth; so, also, have they made artificial chains, called 'civil laws.'" In mere point of language, at any rate, the view of Rousseau, as contained in his famous sentence, "Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains," is not unlike the view of Hobbes. It would be necessary to bring these words of Hobbes and Rousseau into relation with their entire system of thought, before a competent judgment could be passed upon them; for nothing is so easy, and at the same time so ineffectual, as to prove unsound a detached expression, which was never intended by itself to claim validity. But, as it is Hegel with whom we are now concerned, we may, perhaps, assume that these views of Hobbes and Rousseau are 'self-standing,' and can, on that assumption, deal with them summarily. Hegel himself calls them 'nebulous images,' which are without any justification in history. Instead of the theory that civil law is a restraint, he argues, as we have shown, that it is the expression of reason; and instead of the view that he who obeys law sacrifices his liberty, he is at pains to prove that only he who yields obedience to rational law can be free. Hence, Hegel does certainly make short work of the freedom of the human will, if to 'freedom' is to be given the meaning which it bears in the philosophies of Rousseau and Hobbes. And yet, while destroying freedom in one of its possible significations, he is at the same time with open eyes indefinitely deepening the idea of freedom, by his proof that man is not really free except as he identifies himself with the state as the revelation of the divine. Thus, the contest between Hegel and his critics would seem to be happily settled in favor of Hegel.

But a glance at the views of Schwegler and v. Hartmann is sufficient to convince us that they could not have taken up weapons in defense of the banished theories of Hobbes and Rousseau. The real question is very different, and probes more deeply. That question may be put provisionally in this way: Does spirit or reason exhaust itself in the logical