Under the third phase of morality, Hegel treats the idea of the good, and the nature of conscience. The sense of responsibility, the relation of the individual pursuit of happiness to the welfare of the whole community, leads to the forming in the mind of the moral being of an ideal of duty, and this ideal of duty is the good when it is realized. The subjective consciousness of this ideal is called conscience, because it is in a deep sense of the word a knowledge of the true self, that is to say of the universal or social self within the individual self. It is, therefore, self-consciousness in the highest sense of the word. It is a knowledge of the transcendental element of our personality. Conscience teaches us that we are not obliged to yield to such necessities as our bodily wants for food, clothing, and shelter, nor are we obliged to pursue happiness in any of its many phases. Even life itself is not an absolute good, but to do right although we lose our lives in the act is our supreme duty. Here it is that, in the ethical or moral, man reaches the highest sense of the dignity and worth of his humanity. It is a sense of the eternal element in man. Hegel discusses under this topic the moral forms of evil, such as hypocrisy and the forms of casuistry (Probabilismus), by which a person trumps up a good reason for his selfish action, to satisfy his conscience. He discusses also the justification of the action by good intentions, and also the romantic view of irony, under which was included the egotistic conceit which placed the individual above all law, and made his obedience to it an act of mere condescension.
Hegel made a sharp distinction between the subjective phase of right, which appears in morality, and the objective phase, which appears in the ethical system of institutions, and is realized in the family, civil society, and the state. Inasmuch as man must unite with his fellow-men in order to accomplish anything rational in the world, institutions are necessary for civilization. Of these Hegel has treated (1) the family, under the heads of (a) marriage, (b) the family property, and (c) the education of the children, and the dissolution of the family by the separation from it of the children in order to form new families. Under (2) the civic community, Hegel has outlined a pretty complete treatise on sociology or social science, first discussing the system of wants (Bedürfnisse, the wants of food, clothing, shelter, and means of amusement and culture).
The seventy-five pages of this book (pp. 152-256) devoted to what we call political economy, deserve to be studied in all of our colleges and universities, and to have at least one course of lectures delivered
