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  ...here involved, between a principle as such and its application--that is, its introduction and fulfilment in the actual phenomena of Spirit and life. This is a point of fundamental importance in our science, and one which must be constantly respected as essential. And in the same way as this distinction has attracted attention in view of the Christian principle of self-consciousness--freedom, it also shows itself as an essential one in view of the principle of freedom generally. The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.   -progress whose development, according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate.
The general statement given above of the various grades in the consciousness of freedom-which we applied in the first instance to the fact that the Eastern nations knew only that one is free, the Greek and Roman world only that _some_ are free, while we know that all men absolutely (man as man) are free--supplies us with the natural division of universal history, and suggests the...   Hegel, Georg

Excerpt from The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07 Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes · This quote is about freedom · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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