The Oriental World

We have to begin with the Oriental World, but not before the period in which we discover States in it. The diffusion of Language and the formation of races lie beyond the limits of History. History is prose, and myths fall short of History. The consciousness of external definite existence only arises in connection with the power to form abstract distinctions and assign abstract predicates; and in proportion as a capacity for expressing Laws (of natural or social life) is acquired, in the same proportion does the ability manifest itself to comprehend objects in an unpoetical form. While the ante-historical is that which precedes political life, it also lies beyond self-cognizant life; though surmises and suppositions may be entertained respecting that period, these do not amount to facts. The Oriental World has as its inherent and distinctive principle the Substantial (the Prescriptive), in Morality. We have the first example of a subjugation of the mere arbitrary will, which is merged in this substantiality. Moral distinctions and requirements are expressed as Laws, but so that the subjective will is governed by these Laws as by an external force. Nothing subjective in the shape of disposition, Conscience, formal Freedom, is recognized. Justice is administered only on the basis of external morality, and Government exists only as the prerogative of compulsion. Our civil law contains indeed some purely compulsory ordinances. I can be compelled to give up another man's property, or to keep an agreement which I have made; but the Moral is not placed by us in the mere compulsion, but in the disposition of the subjects – their sympathy with the requirements of law. Morality is in the East likewise a subject of positive legislation, and although the moral prescriptions (the substance of their Ethics) may be perfect, what should be internal subjective sentiment is made a matter of external arrangement. There is no want of a will to command moral actions, but of a will to perform them because commanded from within. Since Spirit has not yet attained subjectivity, it wears the appearance of spirituality still involved in the conditions of Nature. Since the external and the internal, Law and Moral Sense, are not yet distinguished – still form an undivided unity – so also do Religion and the State. The Constitution generally is a Theocracy, and the Kingdom of God is to the same extent also a secular Kingdom as the secular Kingdom is also divine. What we call God has not yet in the East been realized in consciousness, for our idea of God involves an elevation of the soul to the supersensual. While we obey, because what we are required to do is confirmed by an internal sanction, there the Law is regarded as inherently and absolutely valid without a sense of the want of this subjective confirmation. In the law men recognize not their own will, but one entirely foreign. Of the several parts of Asia we have already eliminated as unhistorical, Upper Asia (so far and so long as its Nomad population do not appear on the scene of history), and Siberia. The rest of the Asiatic World is divided into four districts: first, the River-Plains, formed by the Yellow and Blue Stream, and the Upland of farther Asia – China and the Mongols. Secondly, the valley of the Ganges and that of the Indus. The third theatre of History comprises the river-plains of the Oxus and Jaxartes, the Upland of Persia, and the other valley-plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, to which Hither-Asia attaches itself. Fourthly, the River-plain of the Nile.

With China and the Mongols – the realm of theocratic despotism – History begins. Both have the patriarchal constitution for their principle – so modified in China, as to admit the development of an organized system of secular polity; while among the Mongols it limits itself to the simple form of a spiritual, religious sovereignty. In China the Monarch is Chief as Patriarch. The laws of the state are partly civil ordinances, partly moral requirements; so that the internal law – the knowledge on the part of the individual of the nature of his volition, as his own inmost self – even this is the subject of external statutory enactment. The sphere of subjectivity does not then, attain to maturity here, since moral laws are treated as legislative enactments, and law on its part has an ethical aspect. All that we call subjectivity is concentrated in the supreme head of the State, who, in all his legislation has an eye to the health, wealth, and benefit of the whole. Contrasted with this secular Empire is the spiritual sovereignty of the Mongols, at the head of which stands the Lama, who is honored as God. In this Spiritual Empire no secular political life can be developed.