Thus, the principle of the third phase is that of universality, of an end which exists as such, but as yet in abstract universality; this is the era of the Roman Empire. The end with which the individuals are confronted and to which all their actions are directed is the state as such. This phase can be regarded as the manhood of history. For manhood follows neither the arbitrary will of a master, nor its own aesthetic arbitrariness; its life is one of arduous labour and service, not of the free and happy pursuit of its own end. But although the end to which man must dedicate himself is universal, it is also an inflexible one. A state, laws, and constitutions are ends, and it is these which the individual must serve: the individual is immersed in them and achieves his own end only in the universal one. (Such an empire seems destined to last for ever, especially if it also embodies the principle of subjective satisfaction, even in its religion, as was the case in the Holy Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the Holy Roman Empire came to an end two decades ago.)
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The empire of self-knowing subjectivity marks the rise of the real spirit; this is the beginning of the fourth phase in history, which, in natural terms, would correspond to the old age of the spirit. In the natural world, old age is equivalent to weakness; but the old age of the spirit is the age of its complete maturity, in which it returns to a condition of unity while retaining its spiritual nature. The spirit as infinite power contains within itself the moments of its earlier development and thereby attains its totality.
We have now reached the stage of spirituality and spiritual reconciliation; and this spiritual reconciliation is the principle of the fourth phase in history. The spirit has become conscious that the spirit itself is the truth, and it now exists as an object of thought. This fourth phase necessarily consists of two parts: on the one hand, the spirit as consciousness of an inner world – i.e. the spirit which is known as the essential being, as thinking consciousness of the highest things, or the will of the spirit – is again of an abstract nature, for it remains tied to spiritual abstraction. So long as consciousness remains at this stage, worldly existence is at odds with itself, and is given over to savagery and barbarism; it is accompanied by a total indifference towards worldly things, for the latter have no connection with the spiritual world and have not attained a rational organisation within the consciousness. Such is the nature of the Mohammedan world, in which the Oriental world reaches its highest transfiguration and its highest perception of the One. Its origin is admittedly later than that of Christianity; but it took many centuries for Christianity to achieve world importance, a process which was finally completed by Charlemagne. Mohammedanism, however, because of the abstract nature of its principle, was able to become a world empire within a short space of time; but it is a more primitive system than that of Christianity.
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