It is not of the nature of the all-pervading Spirit to die this merely natural death. We have then before us a real and an ideal existence of the Spirit of the Nation. We are sure to see a people putting talk about virtue partly side by side with actual virtue. At the same time the isolation of individuals from each other and from the Whole makes its appearance. 93 Time is the negative element in the sensuous world.
Thought is the same negativity.
94 Thought is that Universal - that Species which is immortal. 95 Spirit, in rendering itself objective and making this an object of thought, destroys the determinate form of its being, but gains a comprehension of its universal element. The life of a people ripens a certain fruit. But this fruit does not fall back into the bosom of the people that produced it, but becomes a poison-draught to it. The principles of the successive phases of Spirit that animate Nations, are only steps of the one universal Spirit.