This freedom does not mean that Spirit could choose at any moment to develop in a different way; its actual development is necessary and is the embodiment of reason.

Freedom consists in fully recognising the fact.
Of the particular features which distinguish Hegel's treatment, the first is that he identifies "history" with political history, the development of the state.

Art, religion, philosophy, the creations of social man, belong to a different and higher stage of Spirit's self-revelation.

[Footnote: The three phases of Spirit are (1) subjective; (2) objective; (3) absolute.

Psychology, e.g., is included in (1), law and history in (2), religion in (3).] In the second place, Hegel ignores the primitive prehistoric ages of man, and sets the beginning of his development in the fully-grown civilisation of China.
He conceives the Spirit as continually moving from one nation to another in order to realise the successive stages of its self-consciousness: from China to India, from India to the kingdoms of Western Asia; then from the Orient to Greece, then to Rome, and finally to the Germanic world.