History is the contest of the various national spirits for world domination. From this it follows that the reforms advocated by the liberal nationalists are unnecessary, since the nation and its spirit are the leading actors anyway; besides, ‘every nation … has the constitution which is appropriate to it and belongs to it’. (Juridical positivism.) We see that Hegel replaces the liberal elements in nationalism not only by a Platonic-Prussianist worship of the state, but also by a worship of history, of historical success.
