Such a fragment must needs assume a different guise, when by the progress of thought it is lifted into a totality. It is this totality which has throughout the whole process been the real point of attraction. Indeed, only by tacit reference to it, is it possible to show that what are called its earlier phases are incomplete and fractional.
With these precautions it is possible to understand the course which Hegel has followed in evolving his perfectly free man. The point of departure is, as has been said, abstract personality taken as implying a consciousness of one's self and others as independent and separate conscious units. After Hegel has explained how abstract personality reveals its own incompleteness, he goes on to show in successive parts of the Philosophy of Right how the abstract person comes to his full stature. In this process, the first stage is called abstract right, the second, morality, and the third, the social system. The idea most significant in the first part is that of property, which Hegel regards not as so much external matter, separable from the owner of it, but as the owner's outer self. Each thing a man owns is a piece of him; and he who owns something is more complete than he who owns nothing. With regard to freedom, the point is that in full ownership my liberty becomes something higher and better, because in it are found all the relations to others commonly associated with the term 'rights,' and the individual in making a thing his own is willing the maintenance of these relations.
It is not necessary to follow Hegel closely, as he points out the different phases of ownership and contract, nor can we consider his view of crime, which he after his manner looks upon as transitional between rights and morality. It is enough to notice that the dialectic impulse of spirit or reason takes us beyond rights to something higher, in its task of realizing the absolutely free will. This movement does not mean that in the upper chambers of the free spirit a man no longer has rights. The absolutely emancipated will must have rights, but he will see them in connection with higher relations. So we come to morality. The characteristic feature of this second
