idea of property and contract, crime and retribution, to the inner necessity of right; and this standpoint is that of morality, which is the subject of the second part of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Until the human being has obtained a conscience, that is to say, has obtained an insight into the binding necessity of doing right, morality has not yet developed. Morality is the sense of the inward obligation to direct his conduct by his idea of the good. This inward necessity is something very different from the external necessity, which obliges him to do good because it is required in the laws of the state, or in the customs of the community. Human history until recent times, say until the time of the Greek thinker Socrates, was governed chiefly by the sense of the necessity to conform to custom or legality, and not by the sense of the inward obligation, which is morality. Modern Christian nations all have this moral sense well developed, and it differentiates them from the other peoples of the world.
Hegel divides his discussion of morality into three parts, first treating the sense of responsibility or the consciousness of the power of origination in the will (Vorsatz und Schuld). This feeling of responsibility is the immediate consciousness of the freedom of the will. In the language of Kant, it is the sense of transcendental freedom. It is the consciousness that the self or ego can interfere with the course of events and modify the chain of causality in which it finds itself in the world. I am responsible for what I change or modify in the chain of causality, and also for what I permit to pass on through my actions without protest or modification. This sense of responsibility is justly esteemed the highest attribute of the soul. Its appearance in human history marks the greatest of all epochs.
The second phase of morality is discussed by Hegel under intention and well-being (Absicht und das Wohl), words which might perhaps better be paraphrased, the former meaning the intellectual coefficient of the overt act—or the wilful deed, the premeditated action—and the latter word (Wohl) meaning the particular good or satisfaction which the individual aims to obtain by his premeditated act. When it is said that happiness is our being's end and aim, or that one of the natural rights of man is the pursuit of happiness, this word Wohl is described or defined. This second phase of morality, therefore, deals with the self-seeking of the individual, which must be curbed or limited by the moral ideal so as to make the individual self-seeking harmonize with the good of the entire community. The individual must square his intents and purposes by his sense of what is due to the freedom of others.
