'^^ T^' of being, as we saw. Nature, not the accident of circumstances or choice, assigns one sex to one law, the other to the other law ; or conversely both the ethical powers themselves estabhsh their individual existence and actualisation in the two sexes. Thus, then, because on the one side the ethical order consists essentially in this immediate directness 462 PJienomenology of Mind of decision, and therefore only the one law is for con- sciousness the essential reality ; while, on the other side, the powers of the ethical order are actual in the self of conscious life, — in this way these forces acquire the significance of excluding one another and of being fU opposed to one another. They are explicit in self- ^j.^^, consciousness just as they were merely impHcit in the realm of the ethical order. The ethical consciousness, because it is decisively on the side of one of them, is essentially Character. There is not for it equal essentiality in both. The opposition therefore appears as an unfortunate collision of duty merely with reality, on which right has no hold. The ethical con- sciousness is qua self-consciousness in this opposition, and being so, it at once proceeds either to subdue by force this reahty opposing it to the law which it accepts, or to get round this reality by craft. Since it sees right only on its own side, and wrong on the other, so, of these two, that which belongs to divine law detects, on the other side, mere arbitrary fortuitous human violence, while what appertains to human law, finds in the other the obstinacy and disobedience of subjective self-sufficiency. For the commands of teiA^ government have a universal sense and meaning open to the light of day ; the will of the other law, however, is the inner concealed meaning of the realm of darkness {unterirdisch), a meaning which appears expressed as the will of a particular being, and in contradicting the first is malicious offence. There arises in this way in consciousness the opposi- tion between what is known and what is not known, just as, in the case of substance, there was an opposition between the conscious and the unconscious ; and the Ethical Action 463 absolute right of ethical self-consciousness comes into 3$ 8 conflict with the divine right of the essential reahty. Self -consciousness, qua consciousness, takes the objective actuality, as such, to have essential being. Look- ing at its substance, however, it is the unity of itself and this opposite, and the ethical self-consciousness is consciousness of that substance : the object, qua opposed to self-consciousness, has, therefore, entirely lost the characteristic of having essential being by itself. Just as the spheres [of conscious life] where the object is merely a "thing" are long past and gone, so, too, are these spheres, where consciousness sets up and estabhshes something from out itself, and turns a particular moment into the essential reahty (Wesen). Against such one-sidedness actual concrete reahty has a power of its own ; it takes the side of truth against consciousness and shows consciousness itself what the truth is. The ethical consciousness, however, has drunk from the cup of the absolute substance, forgotten all the one-sidedness of isolating self-existence, all its purposes and pecuUar notions, and has, therefore, at the same time drowned in this Stygian stream all essentiality of nature and all the independence claimed by the objective reality. Its absolute right, therefore, when it acts in accordance with ethical law, is to find in this actuahsation nothing else than the fulfilment and performance of this law itself: and that the deed should manifest nothing but ethical action. The ethical, being absolute essence and absolute power at once, cannot endure any perversion of its content. If it were merely absolute essence without power, it might undergo perversion at the hands of 464 Phenomenology of Mind individuality. But this latter, being ethical conscious- ness, has renounced all perverting when it gave up its one-sided subjectivity (Fürsichseyn). Conversely, again, mere power might be perverted by the essential reality, if power were still a subjectivity of that kind. On account of this unity, individuahty is a pure form of the substance which is the content, and action consists in transition from thought over into reahty, merely as the process of an unreal opposition, whose moments have no special and particular content distinct from one another, and no essential nature of their own. The absolute right of ethical consciousness is, therefore, that the deed, the mode and form of its realisation, should be nothing else than it knows it to be. But the essential ethical reahty has spht asunder into two laws, and consciousness, taking up an un- divided single attitude towards law, is assigned only to one. Just as this simple consciousness takes its stand on the absolute right that the essential reahty has appeared to it qua ethical as that reality inherently is, so, too, this essence insists on the right belonging to its reahty, i.e. the right of having a double form.* This right of the essential reahty does not, however, at the same time stand over against and opposed to self- consciousness, as if it were to be found anywhere else ; rather it is the essential nature of self-consciousness. Only there has it its existence and its power ; and its opposition is the act of self- consciousness itself. For the latter, just because it is a self to itself, and proceeds to act, lifts itself out of the state of simple immediacy, and itself sets up the division into two. By the act it gives up the specific character of the ethical hfe, that of * viz. divine and human law. Ethical Action 465 being pure and simple certainty of immediate truth, and sets up the division of itself into self as active and reahty over against it, and for it, therefore, negative. By the act it thus becomes Guilt. For the deed is its doing, and doing is its inmost nature. And the guilt acquires also the meaning of Crime ; for as simple ethical consciousness it has turned to and conformed itself to the one law, but turned away from the other, and thus has broken the latter by its deed. Guilt is not an external indifferent entity {Wesen) with the double meaning, that the deed, as actually manifested to the light of day, may be an action of the guilty self, or may not be so, as if with the doing of it there could be connected something external and accidental that did not belong to it, from which point of view, therefore, the action would be innocent. Rather the act is itself this diremption, this affirming itself for itself, and estabhshing over against this an ahen external reahty. That such a result takes place is due to the deed itself, and is the ■si^c outcome of it. Hence, innocence is an attribute merely of the want of action {NicJit-thun), a state like the mere being of a stone, and one which is not even true of a child. Looking at the content, however, the ethical act con- tains the element of wrongdoing, because it does not cancel and transcend the natural allotment of the two laws to the two sexes ; but rather, being an undivided attitude towards the law, keeps within the sphere of natural immediacy, and, qua acting, turns this one-sided- ness into guilt, by merely laying hold of one side of the essential reahty and taking up a negative relation towards the other, i.e. violating it. Where, in the general ethical life, guilt and crime, deeds and actions, VOL. II.— E 466 Phenomenology of Mind come in, will be more definitely brought out later. Meantime, so much is at once clear, that it is not this particular individual who acts and becomes guilty. For he, qua this particular self, is merely a shadowy reality ; he is merely qua universal self, and indi- viduality is purely the formal aspect of doing anything at all, while its content is the laws and customs which are determined for the individual, the laws and customs of his class or station. He is the substance qua genus, which by its determinateness becomes, no doubt, a species, but the specific form remains at the same time the generic universal. Self-consciousness within the life of a nation descends from the universal only down as far as specific particularity, but not as far as the single indi- viduality, which sets up an exclusive self, estabhshes in its action a reality negative to itself. On the contrary, the action of that self-consciousness rests on secure confidence in the whole, into which there enters nothing alien or foreign, neither fear nor hostility. Ethical self-consciousness now comes to find in its deed the full explicit meaning of concrete real action as much when it followed divine law as when it followed human. The law manifest to it is, in the essential reality, bound up with its opposite ; the essential reality is the unity of both ; but the deed has merely carried out one as against the other. But being bound up with this other in the inner reality, the fulfil- 3i I ment of the one calls forth the other, in the shape of something which, having been violated and now become hostile, demands revenge — an attitude which the deed has made it take up. In the case of action, only one phase of the decision is in general in evidence. The decision, however, is inherently something negative, Ethical Action 467 which plants an "other" in opposition to it, something foreign to the decision, which is clear knowledge. Actual reahty, therefore, keeps concealed within itself this other aspect ahen to clear knowledge, and does not show itself to consciousness as it fully and truly is {an und für sich). In the story of OEdipus the son does not see his own father in the person of the man who has insulted him and whom he strikes to death, nor his mother in the queen whom he makes his wife. In this way a hidden power shunning the light of day, waylays the ethical self-consciousness, a power which bursts forth after the deed is done, and seizes the doer in the act. For the completed deed is the removal of the opposition between the knowing self and the reality over against it. The ethical consciousness cannot disclaim the crime and its guilt. The deed consists in setting in motion what was unmoved, and in bringing out what in the first instance lay shut up as a mere possibiUty, and thereby finking on the unconscious to the conscious, the non-existent to the existent. In this truth, there- fore, the deed comes to the fight ; — it is something in which a conscious element is bound up with what is unconscious, what is pecufiarly one's own with what is alien and external : — it is an essential reality divided in sunder, whose other aspect consciousness discovers and also finds to be its own aspect, but as a power violated by its doing, and roused to hostifity against it. It may well be that the right, which kept itself in reserve, is not in its pecufiar form present to the con- sciousness of the doer, but is merely impficit, present in the subjective inward guilt of the decision and the action. But the ethical consciousness is more complete, its guilt purer, if it knows beforehand the \.t fTAn* 468 Phenomenology of Mind law and the power which it opposes, if it takes them to be sheer violence and wrong, to be a contingency in the ethical hfe, and wittingly, Hke Antigone, commits the crime. The deed when accomplished transforms its point of view : the very performance of it eo if so expresses that what is ethical has to be actual ; for the reahsation of the purpose is the very purpose of acting. Acting expresses precisely the unity of reaHty and the substance ; it expresses the fact that actuality is not an accident for the essential element, but that, in union with that element, is given to no right which is not true right. On account of this actuahty and on account of its deed ethical consciousness must acknowledge its opposite as its own actuality; it must acknowledge its guilt. Because of our sufferings we acknowledge we have erred.* To acknowledge this, is expressly to indicate that the severance between ethical purpose and actuahty has been done away ; it means the return to the ethical frame of mind, which knows that nothing counts but right. Thereby, however, the agent surrenders his character and the reality of his self, and has utterly collapsed. His being lies in belonging to his ethical law, as his substance ; in acknowledging an opposite, however, he has ceased to find his sub- stance in this law; and instead of reaUty this has become an unreality, a mere sentiment, a frame of mind. The substance no doubt appears as the "pathic " elementt in the individuahty, and the individuahty * An adaptation from Antigone, 926. t The element that so permeates his being as to constitute his con- trolling necessity and destiny. Guilt and Destiny 469 appears as the factor which animates the substance, and hence stands above it. But the substance is a " pathic '' element which is at the same time his char- acter; the ethical individuahty is directly and in- herently one with this its universal, exists in it alone, and is incapable of surviving the destruction which this ethical power suffers at the hands of its opposite. This individuality, however, has all the same the cer- tainty, that that individuahty, whose "pathic" ele- ment is this opposite power [the substance], suffers no more harm than it has inflicted. The opposition of the ethical powers to one another, and the process of the individuahties setting up these powers in life and action, have reached their true end merely in the fact that both sides undergo the same destruction. For neither of the powers has any advantage over the other that it should be a more essential moment of the substance common to both. The fact of their being equally and to the same degree essential, and subsisting 3z>.3 independently beside each other means their having no separate self ; in the act they have a self-nature, but a different self, — which contradicts the unity of the self and cancels their claim to independent right, and thus brings about their necessary destruction. Character, too, in part, looking at its " pathic " element, the substance, belongs to one alone ; in part, when we look at the aspect of knowledge, the one character Hke the other is divided into a conscious element and an un- conscious : and since each itself calls forth this opposi- tion, and the want of knowledge is by the act also its doing, each falls into the guilt which consumes it. The victory of one power and its character, and the defeat of the other side, would thus be merely the 470 Phenomenology of Mind part and the incomplete work, which steadily advances till the equilibrium between the two is attained. It is in the equal suppression of both sides that absolute right is first accomphshed, and the ethical substance, as the negative force devouring both sides, in other words omnipotent and righteous Destiny, makes its appearance. If both powers are taken according to their specific content and its individualisation, we have the scene presented of a contest between them as individuated. On its formal side, this is the struggle of the ethical order and of self-consciousness with unconscious nature and a contingency due to this nature. The latter has a right as against the former, because this is only objec- tive spirit, merely in immediate unity with its substance. On the side of content, the struggle is the rupture of divine and human law. The youth goes forth from the unconscious life of the family and becomes the in- dividuality of the community [i.e. Ruler]. But that he still shares the natural Hfe from which he has torn himself away, is seen in the fact that he emerges there- from only to find his claim afiected by the contingency that there are two brothers * who with equal right take possession of the community ; t the inequality due to the one having been born earlier and the other later, an inequahty which is a natural difference, has no importance for them when they enter the ethical life of society. But government, as the single soul, the self of the national spirit, does not admit of a duahty of in- dividuality ; and in contrast to the ethical necessity of this unity, nature appears as by accident providing * Eteocles and Polynices : v. OMipus at Colonus. t viz. the throne of their Father ffidipus. Guilt and Destiny 471 more than one. These two [brothers], therefore, become disunited ; and their equal right in regard to the power of the state is destructive to both, for they are equally wrong. Humanly considered, he has committed the crime who, not being in actual possession, seizes on the community, at the head of which the other stood. While again he has right on his side who knew how to seize the other merely qua particular individual, detached from the community, and banish him, while thus powerless, out of the community ; he has merely laid hands on the individual as such, not the community, not the essential nature of human right. The community, attacked and defended from a point of view which is merely particular, maintains itself ; and both brothers find their destruction reciprocally through one another. For individuality, which involves peril to the whole in the maintenance of its own self- existence (Fürsichseyn), has thrust its ovv^n self out of the community, and is disintegrated in its own nature. The community, however, will do honoiu: to the one who is found on its side ; the government, the re- established singleness of the self of the community, will punish by depriving of the last honour him who already proclaimed its devastation on the walls of the city. He who came to affront the highest spiritual form of conscious hfe, the spirit of the com- munity, must be stripped of the honour of his entire and complete nature, the honour due to the spirit of the departed.* But if the universal thus lightly knocks off the highest point of its pyramid, and doubtless triumphs victoriously over the family, the rebellious principle * V, Antigone. 472 Phenomenology of Mind of individuation, it has thereby merely put itself into conflict with divine law, the self-conscious with the unconscious spirit. For the latter, this unconscious spirit, is the other essential power, and therefore the power undestroyed, but only insulted by the former. It finds, however, only a bloodless shade to lend it help towards actually carrying itself out in the face of that masterful and openly enunciated law. Being the law of weakness and of darkness, it therefore gives way, to begin with, before law which has force and pub- licity ; for the strength of the former is effective in the nether realm, not on earth and in the light of day. But the actual and concrete, which has taken away from what is inward its honour and its power, has thereby consumed its own real nature. The spirit which is manifest to the light of day has the roots of its power in the lower world : the certainty felt by a nation, a certainty of which it is sure and which makes itself assured, finds the truth of its oath binding all its members into one, solely in the mute unconscious substance of all, in the waters of forgetfulness. In consequence, the fulfilment of the pubhc spirit turns round into its opposite, and learns that its supreme right is supreme wrong, its victory rather its own defeat. The slain, whose right is injured, knows, therefore, how to find means of vengeance which are of the same reahty and strength as the power at whose hands it has suffered. These powers are other communities,* whose altars the dogs or birds defiled with the corpse of the dead, which is not raised into unconscious universality by being restored, as is its due, to the ultimate Individuum, the elemental * Refers to the attack of Argos agaiust Thebes : v. Antigone. Guilt and Destiny 473 earth, but instead has remained above ground in the sphere of reahty, and has now received, as the force of divine law, a self-conscious actual universaHty. They rise up in hostihty, and destroy the community which has dishonoured and destroyed its own power, the sacred claims, the " piety " of the family. Represented in this way, the movement of human and divine law finds the expression of its necessity in indi- viduals, in whom the universal appears as a " pathic " element, and the activity of the movement as action of individuals, which gives the appearance of contingency to the necessity of the process. But individuality and its action constitute the principle of individuation in general, a principle which in its pure universality was called inner divine law. As a moment of the visible community it does not merely exhibit that unconscious activity of the nether world, its operation is not simply external in its existence ; it has an equally manifest visible existence and process, actual in the actual nation. Taken in this form, what was represented as a simple 3/, <^ process of the " pathic '' element as embodied in in- dividuals, assumes another look, and crime and the resulting ruin of the community assume the proper form of their existence. Human law, then, in its universal mode of existence is the community, in its efficient operation in general is the manhood of the community, in its actual efficient operation is government. It has its being, its process, and its subsistence by consuming and absorbing into itself the separatist action of the household gods {Penates), the individualisation into insular independent families which are under the management of woman- kind, and by keeping them dissolved in the fluent 474 Phenomenology of Mind continuum of its own nature. The family at the same time, however, is in general its element, the individual consciousness its universal operative basis. Since the community gets itself subsistence only by breaking in upon family happiness, and dissolving [individual] self-consciousness into the universal, it creates its enemy for itself within its own gates, creates it in what it suppresses, and what is at the same time essen- tial to it — womankind in general. Womankind — the everlasting irony in the life of the community — changes by intrigue the universal purpose of government into a private end, transforms its universal activity into a work of this or that specific individual, and perverts the universal property of the state into a possession and ornament for the family. Woman in this way turns to ridicule the grave wisdom of maturity, which, being dead to all particular aims, to private pleasure, personal satisfaction, and actual activity as well, thinks of, and is concerned for, merely what is imiversal ; she makes this wisdom the laughing-stock of raw and wanton youth, an object of derision and scorn, un- worthy of their enthusiasm. She asserts that it is everywhere the force of youth that really counts ; she upholds this as of primary significance ; extols a son as one who is the lord and master of the mother who has borne him ; a brother as one in whom the sister finds man on a level with herself ; a youth as one through whom the daughter, deprived of her dependence (on the family unity), acquires the satis- faction and the dignity of wifehood. The community, however, can preserve itself only by suppressing this spirit of individualism ; and because -*^. . the latter is an essential element, the community like- Guilt and Destiny 475 wise creates it as well, and creates it, too, by taking up the attitude of seeking to suppress it as a hostile principle. Nevertheless, since, by cutting itself off from the universal purpose, this hostile element is merely evil, and in itself of no account, it would be quite ineffective if the community did not recognise the force of youth, (manhood, which, while immature, still remains in the condition of particularity), as the force of the whole. For the community, the whole, is a nation, it is itself individuality, and really only is something for itself by other individualities being for it, by its excluding these from itself and knowing itself independent of them. The negative side of the com- munity, suppressing the isolation of individuals within its own bounds, but originating activity directed beyond those bounds, finds the weapons of its warfare in individ- uals. War is the spirit and form in which the essential moment of ethical substance, the absolute freedom of ethical self-consciousness from all and every kind of existence, is manifestly confirmed and reahsed. While, on the one hand, war makes the particular spheres of property and. personal independence, as well as the personality of the individual himself, feel the force of negation and destruction, on the other hand this engine of negation and destruction stands out as that which preserves the whole in security. The individual who provides pleasure to woman, the brave youth, the suppressed principle of ruin and destruction, comes now into prominence, and is the factor of primary significance and worth. It is now physical strength and what seems like the chance of fortune, that decide as to the existence of ethical Ufe and spiritual necessity. Because the existence of the ethical Hfe thus rests on 476 Phenomenology of Mind physical strength and the chances of fortune, it is eo ipso settled that its overthrow has come. While only household gods, in the former case, gave way before and were absorbed in the national spirit, here the living individual embodiments of the national spirit fall by their own individuality and disappear in one universal community, whose bare universality is soulless and dead, and whose living activity is found in the particular individual qua particular. The ethical form and embodiment of the life of spirit has passed away, and another mode appears in its place. This disappearance of the ethical substance and its transition into another mode are thus determined by the ethical consciousness being directed upon the law essentially in an immediate way. It lies in this char- acter of immediacy that nature at all enters into the acts which constitute- the ethical life. Its realisation simply reveals the contradiction and the germ of destruction, which lie hid within that very peace and beauty belonging to the gracious harmony and un- broken equihbrium of the ethical spirit. For the essence and meaning of this immediacy contains a contradiction : it is at once the unconscious peace of nature and the self-conscious unresting peace of spirit. On account of this " naturalness," the ethical life of a nation is, in general, a kind of individuality determined by, and therefore limited by, nature, and thus finds its dissolution in, and gives place to, another type of individuahty. This characteristic being given a positive existence, is a Hmitation, but at the same time is the negative element in general and the self of individuality. Since, however, this determinateness passes away, the life of spirit and this substance, conscious of itself Guilt and Destiny 477 in all its component individuals, are lost. The determin- ate character comes forth and stands apart as a formal universality in the case of all the component in- dividuals, and no longer dwells within them as a living spirit; instead, the uniform solidarity of its individuaHty has burst into a plurahty of separate points. The Condition of Right or Legal Status [A further step in the realisation of the principle of coherent sociality is reached when the individual is invested with the universality of the social order by definite enactments of the controlling agency of the social whole. His contingency as an individual is removed by his being expressly treated as a focal unity of the whole order, whose very exist- ence is staked on maintaining him as a unit with a universal significance, and which stands or falls by maintaining him in this condition. The universal order is in this case no longer merely implicit, merely a matter of routine and custom ; it is openly and objectively expressed in and through each individual component of society. The form this takes is the diff"erentiation of the social substance into a totality of " persons," each and all invested with express universal, or legally acknowledged, signifi- cance. This is the sphere of legal personality, or of individuality consti- tuted by a system of Eights. It is a supreme achievement of social existence, and the highest attainment of coherent social experience. Hence the present section. This is a condition or stage in every developed community. But the specific historical material for this section is derived from the law-consti- tuted social order of the Roman Empire, especially the Empire under the Antonines. Here, whether by coincidence or otherwise, the culmination of imperial rule and the " golden age " of law synchronised. The triumph of Roman imperial government and the perfecting of the system of Roman jurisprudence were accomplished during the same period of time, about A.D. 131-235. There is every reason to suppose that the two necessarily arose and fell together, and that the decline and disappearance of the Roman law-constituted state should thus prepare the way for a further achievement of the social spirit of humanity. Hence the historical justifi- cation for the transition to the next stage of social life, that of self- discordant spiritual existence. With this section should be read Hegel's Philosophy of History, Part III, especially the introduction to this part, and Sect. Ill, c. 1., "Rome under the Emperors."] 478 The Condition or Right or Legal Status The general comprehensive unity, into which the living immediate unity of individuality and the ethical substance falls back, is the soulless (geistlos) community, which has ceased to be the un-selfconscious * substance of individuals, and in which they now, each in his separate individual existence, count as selves and substances with a being of their own. The universal being thus spht up into the atomic units of a sheer plurahty of individuals, this inoperative, hfeless spirit is a principle of equahty in which all count for as much as each, i.e. have the significance of Persons. What in the realm of the ethical life was called the hidden divine law has in fact come out of concealment to the light of actuahty. In the former the individual was, and was counted, actual merely as a blood relation, merely as sharing in the general -^Hi hfe of the family. Qua particular individual, he was the selfless departed spirit ; now, however, he has come out of his unreahty. Because tlie ethical sub- stance is only objective, "true," spirit, only imphes spirit, the individual on that account turns back to the im- mediate certainty of his own self ; he is that substance qua positive universal, but his actuality consists in being a negative universal self. We saw the powers and forms of the ethical world sink in the bare necessity of mere Destiny. This * Reading " selbstbewusstlose " (1st ed.). 479 480 Phenomenology of Mind power of the ethical world is the substance turning itself back into its ultimate and simple nature. But that absolute being turning back into itself, that very- necessity of characterless Destiny, is nothing else than the Ego of self-consciousness. This is taken henceforth as what is absolutely real, as the ultimate self-contained reaUty. To be so ac- knowledged is its substantiality ; but this is abstract universahty, because its content is this rigid self, not the self dissolved in the substance. Personahty, then, has here risen out of the hfe and activity of the ethical substance. It is the con- dition in which the independence of consciousness has actual concrete validity. The unrealised abstract thought of such independence, which arises through renouncing actuality, was at an earlier stage before our notice in the form of " Stoical self-consciousness.'* Just as the latter was the outcome of "Lordship and Bondage,"* the mode in which self-consciousness exists immediately, — so personality is the outgrowth of the immediate life of spirit which is the universal controlHng will of all, as well as their dutiful obedience and submissive service. What in Stoicism was imphcit merely in an abstract way, is now an explicit con- crete world. Stoicism is nothing else than the mood of consciousness which reduces to its abstract form the principle of legal status, the principle of the sphere of right, — an independence devoid of the quahties of spirit {geistlos). By its flight from actuahty it attained merely the idea of independence : it is absolutely sub- jective, exists solely for itself, in that it does not hnk its being to anything that exists, but rather wants to * V. p. 175 ff. Legal Status 481 give up every kind of existence, and places its essential meaning in the unity of mere thinking. In the same manner, the " right " of a " person " is not linked on to a richer or more powerful existence of the individual qua -.^'i* individual, nor again connected with a universal living spirit, but, rather, is attached to the mere unit of its abstract reahty, or to that unit qua self-consciousness in general. Now just as the abstract independence of Stoicism set forth the stages of its actuahsation, so, too, this last form of independence [Personahty] will recapitulate the pro- cess of the former mode. The former [Stoicism] passes over into the state of sceptical confusion, into a fickle instabihty of negation, which without adopting any per- manent form strays from one contingent mode of being and thinking to another, dissipates them indeed in absolute independence, but just as readily creates their independence once more. In fact, it is simply the contradiction of consciousness claiming to be at once independent and yet devoid of independence. In hke manner, the personal independence characteristic of the sphere of right is really a similar universal confusion and reciprocal dissolution of this kind. For what passes for the absolute essential reahty is self-consciousness in the sense of the bare empty unit of the person. As against this empty universahty, the substance has the form of what supphes the filhng and the content ; and this content is now left completely detached and dis- connected ; for the spirit, which kept it in subjection and held it in its unity, is no longer present. The empty unit of the person is, therefore, as regards its reahty, an accidental existence, a contingent insub- stantial process and activity that comes to no durable VOL, II. — F 482 Phenomenology of Mind subsistence. Just as was the case in Scepticism, the formahsm of "right" is, thus, by its very conception, without special content ; it finds at its hand the fact of " possession," a fact subsisting in multiphcity, and im- prints thereon the abstract universaHty, by which it is called " property," — the same sort of abstraction as Scepticism made use of. But while the reality so deter- mined is in Scepticism called a mere appearance, a mere semblance, and has merely a negative value, in the case of right it has a positive significance. The negative value in the former case consists in the real having the meaning of self qua thought, qua inherent universal; the positive significance in the latter case, however, consists in its being mine in the sense of the category, as something whose vahdity is admitted, re- cognised, and actual. Both are the same abstract uni- 3 5 ' versal. The actual content, the proper value of what is " mine " — whether it be an external possession, or again inner riches or poverty of mind and character — is not contained in this empty form and does not concern it. The content belongs, therefore, to a peculiar specific power, which is something different from the formal universal, is chance and caprice. Consciousness of right, therefore, in the course of the very process of making its claim good, finds that it loses its own reahty, discovers its complete lack of inherent substantiality, and that to describe an individual as a " person " is to use an expression of contempt. The free and unchecked power possessed by the content takes determinate shape in this way. The absolute plurahty of dispersed atomic personahties is, by the nature of this characteristic feature gathered at the same time into a single centre, alien to Legal Status 483 them and just as devoid of the hfe of spirit (geistlos). That central point is, in one respect, Kke the atomic rigidity of their personaHty, a merely particular reahty ; but in contrast to their empty particularity, it has the significance of the entire content, and hence is taken to be the essential element; while again, in contrast to their pretended absolute, but inherently insubstantial, reahty, it is the universal power, and absolute actuahty. This " lord and master of the world '' takes himself in this way to be the absolute person, comprising at the same time all existence within himself, for whom there exists no higher type of spirit. He is a person : but the sole and single person who has chal- lenged, confronted, and conquered all. These all constitute and establish the triumphant universality of the one person ; for this particular, as such, is truly what it is only qua universal plurality of particular units : cut off from this plurality, the solitary and single self is, in fact, a powerless and unreal self. At the same time, it is the consciousness of the con- tent which is antithetically opposed to that universal personality. This content, however, when liberated from its negative power, means chaos of spiritual powers, which, when let loose as elemental independent agencies, break out into wild extravagances and excesses, and fall on one another in mad destruction. Their help- less self- consciousness is the powerless inoperative en- closure and the arena of their chaotic tumult. But this master and lord of the world, aware of his being the ^e'Z sum and substance of all actual powers, is the titanic self-consciousness, which takes itself to be the living God. Since, however, he exists merely qua formal self, which is unable to tame and subdue those powers, his 484 Phenomenology of Mind procedure and his self- enjoyment are equally gigantic extravagance.* The lord of the world becomes really conscious of what he is, — viz. the universal might of actuaUty, — by that power of destruction which he exercises against the contrasted selfhood of his subjects. For his power is not the spiritual union and concord in which the various persons might get to know their own self- consciousness. Eather they exist as persons separately for themselves, and all continuity with others is ex- cluded from the absolute punctual atomicity of their nature. They are, therefore, in a merely negative relation, a relation of exclusion both to one another and to him, who is their principle of connection or continuity. Qua this continuity, he is the essential being and content of their formal nature, — a content, however, foreign to them, and a being hostile in character, which abolishes just what they take to be their very essence, viz. bare subjectivity without any content, mere empty independent existence each on its own account. And, again, qua the continuity of their personality, he destroys this very personahty itself. Juridical personahty thus finds itself, rather, without any substance of its own, since content ahen to it is imposed on it and holds good within it, — and does so there, because such content is the reahty of that ty3)e of personality. On the other hand the passion for destroying and turning over everything on this unreal field gains for itself the consciousness of its complete supremacy. But this self is barren desolation, and * Cp. with the above Hobbes' Leviathan. The historical reference liere is to the "apotheosis" of the Roman Emperors, Legal Status 485 hence is merely beside itself, and is indeed the very abandonment and rejection of its own self-consciousness. Such, then, is the constitution of that aspect in which self-consciousness qua absolute being is actual. The consciousness, however, that is driven back into itself out of this actuality, thinks this its insub- stantiality, makes it an object of thought. Formerly we saw the stoical independence of pure thought pass through Scepticism and find its true issue in the "unhappy consciousness,'' — the truth about what constitutes its inherent and exphcit nature, its final reahty. If this knowledge appeared at that stage ;;■; merely as the one-sided view of a consciousness qua consciousness, here the actual truth of that view has made its appearance. The truth consists in the fact that this universal accepted objectivity of self-consciousness is reahty estranged from it. This objectivity is the ^ef:hn universal actuahty of the self; but this actuality is directly the perversion of the self as well — it is the loss of its essential being. The reality of the self that was not found in the ethical world, has been gained by its reverting into the " person." What in the case of the former was all harmony and union, comes now on the scene, no doubt in developed form, but self- estranged. B Spirit in Self-estrangement — The Discipline of Culture [The life of spirit as found in the social self-consciousneas has two fundamental factors, the universal spirit or social whole as such, and the individual member as such. The interrelation of these constitutes the spiritual existence of society. Each by itself is abstract, but the realisa- tion of complete spiritual life through and in each is absolutely essential for spiritual fulfilment. In the preceding analysis of spirit, one form of this process has been considered, the realisation of the objective social order in and through individuals. In the succeeding section, with its various subsections, the other process of securing the same general result is analysed : we have the movement by which, starting from the in- dividual spirit, the realisation of comj^lete spiritual existence is established. The former starts from the compact solidarity of the social substance, and results in the establishment of separate and individually complete legal personalities. The latter process starts from the rigidly exclusive unity of the individual self and issues in the establishment of a social order of absolutely universal and therefore absolutely free wills. Both processes are ^er se abstract, necessary though they are : hence, as we shall find, a further stage in the evolution of spirit has still to appear. The process of spirit in this second stage assumes from the start a conscious contrast between the individual spirit and a universal spiritual whole, a contrast, which, while profound, the individual seeks to remove, because the universality of spiritual existence which he seeks to attain is implicitly involved in his very being as a spiritual entity. His spiritual life seems, to begin with, rent in twain, so complete is the sense of the opposition of these factors constituting his life. His true life, his objective embodiment, seems outside him altogether and yet is felt to be his own self. He seems " estranged " from his complete self, and the estrangement seems his own doing, becavise the substance from which he is cut oflf is felt to be his own. The contrast is the deepest that spirit can possibly experience, just because spirit is and knows itself to be self-contained and self -complete, " the only reality." The contrast can only be removed by effort and struggle, for the individual spirit has to create or recreate for itself and by its own activity a universal objective spiritual realm, which 486 Spirit in Self-estrangement 487 It implies and in which alone it can be free and feel itself at home. The struggle spirit goes through is thus the greatest in the whole range of its experience, for the opposition to be overcome is the profoundest that exists. Since its aim is to achieve the highest for itself, nothing sacred can be allowed to stand in its way. It will make any sacrifice, and, if necessary, produce the direst spiritual disaster, a spiritual "reign of terror," to accomplish its result. The movement of spirit here analysed covers every form of the in- dividual's "struggle for a substantial spiritual life." It embraces the " intellectual," " economic," " religious," and the " ethical " in the narrower sense of these terms ; it embraces all that we mean by " culture " and " civilisation." Hence the various parts of the argument : — spiritual " dis- cipline," "enlightenment," the pursuit of "wealth," "belief" and "super- stition," " absolute freedom." The process of spiritual life passed under critical review here is familiar to a greater or less extent in every age and every society. But the actual historical material present to the mind of the writer is derived from (1) the period of European history embracing the entrance of Christianity and Christian philosophy into European civilisation after the fall of the Roman Empire, and the intellectual, " humanistic," awakening of the Renaissance which led on to the ecclesiastical revolution known as the Reformation : (2) the rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century, the so-called "Enlightenment" which preceded and culminated in the French Revolution, the supreme outburst of spiritual emancipation known in European history. These two periods, far removed as they are in time, have much in common. They embody principles of spiritual develop- ment fundamentally alike, and are therefore freely drawn upon in the analysis, regardless of historicity. Much of Hegel's analysis of the first stage of this spiritual move- ment has also directly in view the character of Rameau in Diderot's dialogue Le neveu de Rameau. This remarkable work was written in 1760, but was first brought to the notice of the literary public by Goethe, who translated and published the work in 1805. It thus came into Hegel's hands while he was writing the Phenomenology : and this perhaps accounts for the repeated references to it in the argument. The term " self -estranged spirit" with which he heads this section occurs in Goethe's translation. Rameau is an extreme type of such a spirit. With this section should be read Hegel's Philosophy of History, Pt. Ill, § 3, c. 2 ; Pt. IV, § 2, c. 1, § 3, c. 1, 3 : the History of Philosophy, Pt. 3, Introduction, and c. 2, " The French Philosophy and the German En- lightenment."] Spirit in Self-estrangement — The Discipline of Culture The ethical substance preserved and kept opposition enclosed within its simple conscious life ; and this con- sciousness was in immediate unity with its own essential nature. That nature has therefore the simple characteristic of something merely existing for the consciousness which is directed immediately upon it, and whose "custom" {Sitte) it is. Con- sciousness does not stand for a particular excluding self, nor does the substance mean for it an existence shut out from it, with which it would have to establish its identity only through estranging itself, and yet at the same time have to produce that estrangement. But that mind, whose self is absolutely insular, absolutely discrete, finds its content over against itself in the form of a reahty that is just as impenetrable as itself, and the world here gets the characteristic of being some- thing external, negative to self-consciousness. Yet this world is a spiritual reality, it is essentially the fusion of individuahty with being. This its existence is the work of self-consciousness, but Hkewise an actuality immediately present and alien to it, which has a peculiar being of its own, and in which it does not know itself. This reality is the external element and the free content * of the sphere of legal right. But this external reality, which the master of the world * V, p. 479 fr. Spirit in Self-estrangement 489 of legal right takes control of, is not merely this ele- mentary irreducible entity casually lying before the self ; it is his work, but not in a positive sense, rather negatively so. It preserves its existence by self-con- sciousness of its own accord relinquishing itself and giving up its essentiality, the condition which, in that waste and ruin which prevail in the sphere of right, the external force of the elements let loose seems to bring upon self-consciousness. These elements by themselves are sheer ruin and destruction, and cause their own over- throw. This overthrow, however, this their negative nature, is just the self ; it is their subject, their action, and their process. Such process and activity again, through which the substance becomes actual, are the ahenation of personality, for the immediate self, i.e. the self without estrangement and holding good as it stands, is without substantial content, and the sport of these raging elements. Its substance is thus just its re- linquishment, and the relinquishment is the substance, i.e. the spiritual powers forming themselves into a coherent world, and thereby securing their subsistence. The substance in this way is spirit, self-conscious unity of the self and the essential nature ; but both also take each other to mean and to imply ahenation. Spirit is consciousness of an objective reahty which exists independently on its own account. Over against this consciousness stands, however, that unity of the self with the essential nature, consciousness pure and simple over against actual consciousness. On the one side actual self-consciousness by its self-relinquishment passes over into the real world, and the latter back again into the former. On the other side, however, this very actuality, both person and objectivity, is can- 4Ö0 Phenomenology of Mind .celled and superseded ; they are purely universal. This its alienation is pure consciousness, or the essential nature. The present has at once its opposite in its beyond, which consists in its thinking and its being thought; just as this again has its opposite in what is here in the present, which is its actuality alienated from it. Spirit in this case, therefore, constructs not merely one world, but a twofold world, divided and self-opposed. The world of the ethical spirit is its own proper present ; and hence every power it possesses is found in this unity of the present, and, so far as each separates itself 2>^ from the other, each is still in equilibrium with the whole. Nothing has the significance of a negative of self-consciousness ; even the spirit of the departed is in the life-blood of his relative, is present in the self of the family, and the universal power of government is the will, the self of the nation. Here, however, what is present means merely objective actuality, which has its consciousness in the beyond ; each particular moment, as an essential entity, receives this, and thereby actuality from an other, and so far as it is actual, its essential being is something other than its own actuality. No- thing has a spirit self-established and indwelhng within it ; rather each is outside itself in what is ahen to it. The equihbrium of the whole is not the unity which abides by itself, nor its inwardly secured tranquillity, but rests on the alienation of its opposite. The whole is, therefore, like each particular moment, a self- estranged reality. It breaks up into two spheres : in one kingdom self-consciousness is actually both the self and its object, and in another we have the kingdom of pure consciousness, which, being beyond the former, Spirit in Self-estrangement ' 491 has no actual present, but exists for Faith, is matter of BeHef. Now just as the ethical world passes from the separation of divine and human law, with its various forms, and its consciousness gets away from the division into knowledge and the absence of knowledge, and re- turns into the principle which is its destiny, into the self which is the power to destroy and negate this oppo- sition, so, too, both these kingdoms of self-alienated spirit will return into the self. But while the former was the first self, holding good directly, the particular person, ^tn^^ /r*^^ this second, which returns into itself from its self- ^*^^'^ relinquishment, will be the universal self, the conscious- ness grasping the conception ; and these spiritual worlds, all of whose moments insist on being a fixed reality and an unspiritual subsistence, will be dissolved in the Hght of pure Insight. This insight, being the self grasping itself, completes the stage of culture. It takes up nothing but the self, and everything as the self, i.e. it comprehends everything, extinguishes all objectiveness, 35% and converts everything implicit into something ex- phcit, everything which has a being in itself into what is for itself. When turned against behef, against faith, as the far-away region of inner being lying in the distant beyond, it is Enhghtenment {Aufklärung). This en- lightenment also terminates self-estrangement in this region whither spirit in self-alienation turns to seek its safety as to a region where it becomes conscious of a peace adequate to itself. Enlightenment upsets the household arrangements, which spirit carries out in the house of faith, by bringing in the goods and furnishings belonging to the world of the Here and Now, a world which that spirit cannot refuse to accept as its own property, for its conscious Hfe likewise belongs to that 492 Phenomenology of Mind world. In this negative task pure insight reaHses itself at the same time, and brings to light its own proper object, the " unknowable absolute Being" and utihty.* Since in this way actuahty has lost all substantiahty, and there is nothing more implicit in it, the kingdom of faith, as also that of the real world, is overthrown ; and this revolution brings about absolute freedom, the stage at which the spirit formerly estranged has gone back completely into itself, leaves behind this sphere of culture, and passes over into another region, the land of the inner or subjective moral consciousness {moral- ischen BevMSstsein). * Cp. Eighteenth century Deism and utilitarianism. The World of Spirit in Self-estrangement The sphere of spirit at this stage breaks up into two regions. The one is its real world, its self-estrangement, the other is constructed and set up in the ether of pure consciousness, and is exalted above the first. This second world, being constructed in opposition and contrast to that estrangement, is just on that account not free from it ; on the contrary, it is only another form of that very estrangement, which consists precisely in having a conscious existence in two sorts of worlds, and embraces both. Hence it is not self-consciousness of Absolute Being in and for itself, not Religion, which is here dealt with : it is Behef, Faith, in so far as faith is a flight from the actual world, and thus is not a self- complete experience {an und für sich). Such flight from the realm of the present is, therefore, directly in its very nature a dual state of mind. Pure consciousness is the sphere into which spirit rises : but it is not only the element of faith, but of the notion as well. Con- sequently both appear on the scene together at the same time, and the latter comes before us only in anti- thesis to the former. 493 a Culture and its Sphere of Objective Eeality* The spirit of this world is spiritual essence permeated by a self-consciousness which knows itself to be directly- present as a self- existent particular, and has that essence as its objective actuality over against itself. But the existence of this world, as also the actuality of self- consciousness, depends on the process that self-con- sciousness divests itself of its personahty, by so doing creates its world, and treats it as something alien and external, of which it must now take possession. But the renunciation of its self-existence is itself the production of objective actuality, and in doing so, therefore, self-consciousness ipso facto makes itself master of this world. To put the matter otherwise, self-consciousness is only something definite, it only has real existence, so far as it alienates itself from itself. By doing so, it puts itself in the position of something universal, and this its universality actualises it, establishes it objectively, makes it valid. This equahty of the self with all selves is, therefore, not the equahty that was found in the case of right ; self-consciousness does not here, as there, get immediate recognition and acknowledgment merely because it is ; on the contrary, its claim to be rests on * It will be observed that " culture " embraces all means of self- development, "ideas" as well as material factors sucb as *' wealth," 494 Culture and its Sphere of Reality 495 its having made itself, by that mediating process of self- alienation, conform to what is universal. The spiritless formal universality which characterises the sphere of right takes up every natural form of character as well as of existence, and sanctions and establishes them. The universality which holds good here, however, is one that has undergone development, and for that reason it is concrete and actual. The means, then, whereby an individual gets objec- tive vaUdity and concrete actuahty here is the forma- tive process of Culture. The alienation on the part of spirit from its natural existence is here the indi- vidual's true and original nature, his very sub- stance. The rehnquishment of this natural state is, therefore, both his purpose and his mode of existence ; it is at the same time the mediating process, the transi- jf^ tion of the thought-constituted substance to concrete actuality, as well as, conversely, the transition of deter- minate individuahty to its essential constitution. This individuality moulds itself by culture to what it inherently is, and only by so doing is it then something fer se and possessed of concrete existence. The extent* of its culture is the measure of its reahty and its power. Although the self, qua this particular self, knows itself here to be real, yet its concrete reahsation consists solely in cancelhng and transcending the natural self. The original determinateness of its nature is, therefore, reduced to a matter of quantity, to a greater or less energy of will, a non-essential principle of distinc- tion. But purpose and content of the self belong to the universal substance alone, and can only be something universal. The specific particularity of * Bacon's phrase, "Knowledge is power," 496 Phenomenology of Mind a given nature, which becomes purpose and content, is something powerless and unreal: it is a "kind of being " which exerts itself foolishly and in vain to attain embodiment : it is the contradiction of giving reality to the bare particular, while reality is, if so facto, something universal. If, therefore, individuality is falsely held to consist in particularity of nature and character, then the real world contains no individualities and characters ; individuals are all alike for one another ; the pretence {vermeint) of individuality in that case is precisely the mere presumptive {gemeint) existence which has no permanent place in this world where only renunciation of self and, therefore, only universality get actual reality. What is presumed or conjectured to be {Das Gemeinte) passes, therefore, simply for what it is, for a hind of being. "Kind" is not quite the same as Espece* " the most horrible of all nicknames, for it signifies mediocrity, and denotes the highest degree of contempt."! "A kind" and "to be good of its kind " are German expressions, which add an air of honesty to this meaning, as if it were not so badly meant and intended after all ; or which, indeed, do not yet involve a clear consciousness of what " kind " and what culture and reality are. That which, in reference to the particular individual, 59 appears as his culture, is the essential moment of spiritual substance as such, viz. : the direct transition of its ideal, thought-constituted, universality into actual reality; or otherwise put, culture is the single soul of this substance, in virtue of which the essen- * " Espece se dit de personnes auxquelles on ne trouve ni qualite ni merite. " — Littre. t Diderot's Ramcaus Neffe. Culture and its Sphere of Reality 497 tially inherent (AnsicJi) becomes something explicitly acknowledged, and assumes definite objective exist- ence. The process in which an individuahty cultivates itself is, therefore, ipso facto, the development of individuahty qua universal objective being; that is to say, it is the development of the actual world. This world, although it has come into being by means of individuahty, is in the eyes of self-con- sciousness something that is directly alienated and estranged, and, for self-consciousness, takes on the form of a fijxed, undisturbed reality. But at the same time self-consciousness is sure this is its own substance, and proceeds to take it under control. This power over its substance it acquires by culture, which, looked at from this aspect, appears as self-consciousness making itself conform to reahty, and doing so to the extent permitted by the energy of its original character and talents. What seems here to be the individual's power and force, bringing the substance under it, and thereby doing away with that substance, is the same thing as the actuahsation of the substance. For the power of the individual consists in conforming itself to that substance, i.e. in emptying itself of its own self, and thus estab- lishing itself as the objectively existing substance. Its culture and its own reality are, therefore, the process of making the substance itself actual and concrete. The self is conscious of being actual only as trans- cended, as cancelled.* The self does not here constitute the unity of consciousness of self and object ; rather this object is negative as regards the self. By means of the self qua inner soul of the process, the substance is so moulded and worked up in its various moments, * Cp. Hume's view of " personal identity," Treatise, pt. IV, c. 6. VOL. II. — G 498 Phenomenology of Mind that one opposite puts life into the other, each opposite, by its aHenation from the other, gives the other stabiUty, and similarly gets stabihty from the other. At the same time, each moment has its own definite natm:e, in the sense of having an insuperable worth and signifi- cance ; and has a fixed reality as against the other. The process of thought fixes this distinction in the most general manner possible, by means of the absolute opposition of " good " and " bad,'' which are poles asunder, and can in no way become one and the same. 3£,^ But the very soul of what is thus fixed consists in its immediate transition to its opposite ; its existence lies really in transmuting each determinate element into its opposite ; and it is only this alienation that consti- tutes the essential nature and the preservation of the whole. We must now consider this process by which the moments are thus made actual and give each other life ; the alienation will be found to alienate itself, and the whole thereby will take all its contents back into the ultimate principle it implies {seinen Begriff). At the outset we must deal with the substance pure and simple in its immediate aspect as an organisa- tion of its moments ; they exist there, but are inactive, their soul is wanting. We have here something like what we find in nature. Nature, we find, is resolved and spread out into separate and separable elements — air, water, fire, earth. Of these air is the unchanging factor, purely universal and transparent ; water, the reaUty that is for ever being dissolved and given up ; fire, its pervading active unity which is ever dissolving opposition into unity, as well as breaking up simple unity into opposite constituents: earth is the tightly compact knot of these separated factors, the subject Culture and its Sphere of Reality 499 in which these reahties are, where their processes take effect, that which they start from and to which they return. In the same way the inner essential nature, the simple life of spirit that pervades self-conscious reality, is resolved, spread out into similar general areas or masses, spiritual masses in this case, and appears as a whole organised world. In the first area or mass it is the inherently universal spiritual being, self-identical ; in the second it is self-existent being, it has become inherently self-discordant, sacrificing itself, abandon- ing itself ; the third which takes the form of self- consciousness is subject, and possesses in its very nature the fiery force of dissolution. In the first case it is conscious of itself, as immanent and implicit, as existing per se ; in the second it finds independence, self-existence {Fürsichseyn) developed and carried out by means of the sacrifice of what is universal. But spirit itself is the self - containedness and self -com- pleteness of the whole, which splits up into substance qua constantly enduring and substance engaged in self- sacrifice, and which at the same time resumes substance again into its own unity ; a whole which is at once a flame of fire bursting out and consuming the substance, as well as the abiding form of the substance consumed. We can see that the areas of spiritual reahty here referred to correspond to the Community and the Family in the ethical world, without, however, possess- ing the native familiarity of spirit which the latter have. On the other hand, if destiny is ahen to this spirit, self-consciousness is and knows itself here to be the real power underlying them. We have now to consider these separate members 500 Phenomenology of Mind of the whole, in the first instance as regards the way they are presented qua thoughts, qua essential inherent entities falling within pure consciousness, and also secondly as regards the way they appear as objective reahties in concrete conscious life. In the prst form, the simplicity of content found in pure consciousness, the real is the Good, the self-identical, immediate, unchanging, and primal nature of every con- sciousness, the independent spiritual power inherent in its essence, alongside which the activity of the mere self-existent consciousness is only by-play. Its other is the passive spiritual being, the universal so far as it parts with its own claims, and lets individuals get in it the consciousness of their particular existence ; it is a state of nothingness, a being that is null and void, the Bad. This absolute break-up of the real into these disjecta membra is itself a permanent condition; while the first member is the foundation, starting- point, and result of individuals, which are there purely universal, the second member, on the other hand, is a being partly sacrificing itself for another, and, on that very account, is partly their incessant return to self qua individual, and their constant development of a separate being of their own. But, secondly, these bare ideas of Good and Bad are similarly and immediately alienated from one another ; they are actual, and in actual consciousness appear as moments that are objective. In this sense the first state of being is the Power of the State, the second its Resources or Wealth. The state-power is the simple spiritual substance, as well as the achievement of all, the absolutely accomplished fact, wherein individuals find their essential nature expressed, and where their Culture and its S flier e of Reality 501 particular existence is simply and solely a consciousness of their own universality. It is likewise the achieve- ment and simple result from which the sense of its having been their doing has vanished : it stands as the absolute basis of all their action, where all their action securely subsists. This simple pervading sub- stance of their life, owing to its thus determining their unalterable self -identity, has the nature of objective ''^a being, and hence only stands in relation to and exists for '' another." It is thus, if so facto, inherently the opposite of itself — Wealth or Resources. Although wealth is something passive, is nothingness, it is likewise a universal spiritual entity, the continu- ously created result of the labour and action of all, just as it is again dissipated into the enjoyment of all. In enjoyment each individuality no doubt becomes aware of self-existence, aware of itself as particular; but this enjoyment is itself the result of universal action, just as, reciprocally, wealth calls forth universal labour, and produces enjoyment for all. The actual has through and through the spiritual significance of being directly universal. Each individual doubtless thinks he is acting in his own interests when getting this enjoy- ment ; for this is the aspect in which he gets the sense of being something on his own account, and for that reason he does not take it to be something spiritual. Yet looked at even in external fashion, it becomes manifest that in his own enjoyment each gives enjoy- ment to all, in his own labour each works for all as well as for himself, and all for him. His self-existence is, therefore, inherently universal, and self-interest is merely a supposition that cannot get the length of making concrete and actual what it means or sup- 502 Phenomenology of Mind poses, viz. to do something that is not to further the good of all. Thus, then, in these two spiritual potencies self- consciousness finds its own substance, content, and purpose ; it has there a direct intuitive consciousness of its twofold nature ; in one it sees what it is inherently in itself, in the other what it is exphcitly for it- self. At the same time qua spirit, it is the negative unity, uniting the subsistence of these potencies with the separation of individuahty from the universal, or that of reality from the self. Dominion and wealth are, therefore, before the individual as objects he is aware of, i.e. as objects from which he knows himself to be detached and between which he thinks he can choose, or even decUne to choose altogether. In the form of this detached bare consciousness he stands over against the essential reality as one which is merely there for him. He then has the reality qua essential reahty within 3i3 itself. In this bare consciousness the moments of the substance are taken to be not state-power and wealth, but thoughts, the thoughts of Good and Bad. But further, self-consciousness is a relation of his pure consciousness to his actual consciousness, of what is thought to the objective being; it is essentially Judgment. What is Good and what is Bad has aheady been brought out in the case of the two aspects of actual reahty by determin- ing what the aspects primarily are; the one is state- power, the other wealth. But this first judgment, this first distinction of content, cannot be looked at as a "spiritual" judgment; for in that first judgment the one side has been characterised as only the inherently existing or positive, and the other side as only the explicit self- existent and negative. But qua Culture and its S'phere of Reality 503 spiritual realities, each permeates both moments, per- vades both aspects; and thus their nature is not ex- hausted in those specific characteristics [positive and negative]. The self-consciousness that has to do with them is self-complete, is in itself and for itself. It must, therefore, relate itself to each in that twofold form in which they appear; and by so doing, this nature of theirs, which consists in being self-estranged determin- ations, will come to light. Now self-consciousness takes that object to be good, and to exist per se, in which it finds itself ; and that to be bad when it finds the opposite of itself there. Goodness means its identity with objective reality, badness their disparity. At the same time what is for it good and bad, is per se good and bad ; because it is just that in which these two aspects — of being per se, and of being for it — are the same : it is the real indwelhng soul of the objective facts, and the judgment is the evidence of its power within them, a power which makes them into what they are in themselves. What they are when spirit is actively related to them, their identity or non-identity with spirit, — that is their real nature and the test of their true meaning, and not how they are identical or diverse taken immediately in them- selves apart from spirit, i.e. not their inherent being and self-existence in abstracto. The active relation of spirit to these moments, — which are first put forward as objects to it and thereafter pass by its action into what is essential and inherent — becomes at the same ^(,, time their reflection into themselves, in virtue of which they obtain actual spiritual existence, and their spiritual meaning comes to light. But as their first immediate characteristic is distinct from the relation of 504 Phenomenology of Mind spirit to them, the third determinate moment — their own proper spirit — is also distinguished from the second moment. Their second inherent natm:e {Das zweite Ansich derselben) — their essentiahty which comes to Kght through the relation of spirit to them — must in the first instance turn out different from the immediate inherent nature ; for indeed this mediating process of spiritual activity puts in motion the im- mediate characteristic, and turns it into something else. As a result of this process, the self-contained con- scious mind doubtless finds now in the Power of the State its reality pure and simple, and its subsistence ; but it does not find its individuality as such ; it finds its inherent and essential being, but not what it is for itself. Rather, it finds there its action qua individual action rejected and denied, and subdued into obedience. The individual thus recoils before this power and tiirns back into himself ; it is the reahty that suppresses him, and is the bad. For instead of being identical with him, that with which he is at one, it is something utterly in discordance with individuality. In contrast with this. Wealth and Riches are the good ; they tend to the general enjoyment, they are there simply to be disposed of, and they ensure for every one the conscious- ness of his particular self. Riches means in its very nature universal beneficence : if it refuses any benefit in a given case, and does not gratify every need, this is merely an accident which does not detract from its universal and necessary nature of imparting to every individual his share and being a thousand-handed benefactor. These two judgments provide the ideas of goodness Culture and its S'phere of Reality 505 and badness with a content which is the reverse of what they had for us. Self-consciousness has up till now, however, been related to its objects only incompletely, viz. only according to the criterion of the self-existent. But consciousness is also real in its inherent nature, and has Hkewise to take this aspect for its point of view and criterion, and by so doing round ofi completely the judgment of self-conscious spirit. According to this aspect state-power expresses its essential nature : the power of the state is in part the quiet insistence of law, in part government and prescription, which appoints and regulates the particular processes of universal action. The one is the substance pure and simple, the other its action which animates and sustains itself and all individuals. The individual thus finds therein his ground and nature expressed, organised, and exercised. As against this, the individual, by the enjoyment of riches, does not get to know his own imiversal nature : he only gets a transitory consciousness and enjoyment of himself qua particular and self- existing, and discovers his discordance, his want of harmony with his own essential nature. The conceptions good and bad thus receive here a content the opposite of which they had before. These two ways of judging find each of them an identity and a disagreement. In the first case conscious- ness finds the power of the state out of agreement with it, and the enjoyment that came from wealth in accord with it ; while in the second case the reverse holds good. There is a twofold attainment of identity and a twofold form of disagreement : there is an opposite relation established towards both the essential reahties. We must pass judgment on these different 506 Phenomenology of Mind ways of judging as such ; to this end we have to apply the criterion akeady brought forward. The conscious relation where identity or agreement is found, is, according to this standard, the good ; that where want of agreement obtains, the bad. These two types of relation must henceforth be regarded as modes or forms of conscious existence. Conscious life, through taking up a different kind of relation, thereby becomes itself characterised as different, comes to be itself good or bad. It is not simply distinct in virtue of the fact that it took as its constitutive principle either existence for itself, or mere being in itself ; for both are equally essential moments of its life : that dual way of judging, above discussed, presented those principles as separated, and contained, therefore, merely abstract ways of judging. Concrete actual conscious life has 31 fc within it both principles, and the distinction between them falls solely within its own nature, viz. inside the relation of itself to the real. This relation takes opposite forms ; in the one there is an active attitude towards state-power and wealth as to something with which it is in accord, in the other it is related to these realities as to something with which it is at variance. A conscious Hfe which finds itself at one with them has the attribute of Nobility. In the case of the public authority of the state, it beholds what is in accord with itself, and sees that it has there its own nature pure and simple and the region for the exercise of its own powers, and takes up the position of open willing and obedient service in its interests, as well as that of inner reverence towards it. In the same way in the sphere of wealth, it sees that wealth secures for it the consciousness of self-existence, of Culture and its Sphere of Reality 507 realising the other essential aspect of its nature : hence it looks upon wealth hkewise as something essential in relation to itself, acknowledges him from whence the enjoyment comes as a benefactor, and considers itself under a debt of obligation. The conscious life involved in the other relation, again, that of disagreement, has the attribute of Baseness. It remains at variance with both those essential elements. It looks upon the authoritative power of the state as a chain, as something suppressing its separate existence for its own sake, and hence hates the ruler, obeys only with secret malice, and stands ever ready to burst out in rebelHon. It sees, too, in wealth, by which it attains to the enjoyment of its own independent existence, merely something discordant, or out of harmony with its permanent nature ; since through wealth it only gets a sense of its particular isolated existence and a con- sciousness of passing enjoyment, this type of mind loves wealth, but despises it, and, with the disappearance of enjoyment, of what is inherently evanescent, regards its relation to the man of wealth as having ceased too. These relations now express, in the first instance, a judgment, the determinate characterisation of what both those facts [state-power and wealth] are as objects for consciousness ; not as yet what they are in their complete objective nature {an und für sich). The reflection which is presented in this judgment is partly at first for us [who are philosophising] an affirmation of the one characteristic along with the other, and hence is a simultaneous cancelling of both ; it is not yet the reflection of them for consciousness itself. Partly, again, they are at first immediate essential entities ; they have not become this nor is there in 5ÖÖ Phenomenology of Mind them consciousness of self : that for which they are is not yet their animating principle : they are predicates which are not yet themselves subject. On account of this separation, the entirety of the spiritual process of judgment also breaks asunder into two existent modes of consciousness, each of which has a one-sided character. Now, just as at the outset the indifference of the two aspects in the process of self- estrangement — one of which was the inherent essential being of pure consciousness, viz. the determinate ideas of good and bad, the other their actual ex- istence in the form of state-power and wealth — passed to the stage of being related the one to the other, passed to the level of judgment ; in the same way this external relation must be raised to the level of their inner unity, must become a relation of thought to actual reality. In this way the spirit animating both the forms of judgment will make its appearance. This takes place when judgment passes into inference, becomes the mediating process in which the middle term necessitating and connecting both sides of the judgment is brought forward. The noble type of consciousness, then, finds itself in the judgment related to state-power, in the sense that this power is indeed not a self as yet but at first is universal substance, in which however this form of mind feels its own essential nature to exist, is conscious of its own purpose and absolute content. By taking up a positive relation to this substance, it assumes a negative attitude towards its own special purposes, its par- ticular content and individual existence, and lets them disappear. This type of mind is the heroism of Service ; the virtue which sacrifices individual being Culture and its Sfhere of Reality 509 to the universal, and thereby brings this into existence ; the type of personaUty which renounces possession and enjoyment, acts for the sake of the prevailing power, and becomes a concrete reality in this way. Through this process the universal becomes united and bound up with existence in general, just as the individual consciousness makes itself by this renuncia- tion essentially universal. That from which this con- sciousness alienates itself by submitting to serve is its consciousness immersed in mere existence : but the being alienated from itself is the inherent nature. By thus shaping its life in accord with what is universal, it acquires a Reverence for itself, and gets reverence 3 6i> from others. The power of the state, however, which to start with was merely universal in thought, the inherent nature, becomes through this very process universal in fact, becomes actual power. It is actually so only in getting that actual obedience which it obtains through self -consciousness judging it to be the essential reality, and through the self being freely surrendered to it. The result of this action, binding the essential reahty and self indissolubly together, is to produce a twofold actuality, — a self that is truly actuahsed, and a state-power whose authority is accepted as true. Owing to this alienation [implied in the idea of sacrifice] state-power, however, is not yet a self- consciousness that knows itself as state-power. It is merely the law of the state, its inherent prin- ciple, that is accepted ; the state-power has as yet no particular will. For as yet the self-consciousness rendering service has not ahenated its pure self- hood, and made it an animating influence in the exercise of state-power ; the serving attitude merely 610 Phenomenology of Mind gives the state its bare being, sacrifices merely ^Ä./«'»,'^ its existence to the state, not its essential nature. This type of self-consciousness passes thus for some- thing that is in conformity with the essential nature, and is acknowledged and accepted because of its in- herent reality. The others find their essential nature operative in it, but not their independent existence — find their thinking, their pure consciousness fulfilled, but not their specific individuality. It has a value, therefore, in their thoughts, and is honoured accord- ingly. Such a type is the haughty vassal ; he is active in the interests of the state-power, so far as the latter is not a personal will [a monarch] but merely an essential will. His self-importance lies only in the honour thus acquired, only in the general opinion think- ing of his concern for the essential will, not in an indi- viduality gratefully thinking of his services ; for he has not helped this individuality [the monarch] to get inde- pendence. The language he would use, were he to occupy a direct relation to the personal will of the state-power, which thus far has not arisen, would take the form of " counsel " imparted in the interests of what is the best for all. State-power has, therefore, still at this stage no will to meet the advice, and does not decide between the different opinions as to what is universally the best. It is not yet governmental control, and on that account 5 1 ^ is in truth not yet real state-power. Individual self- existence, the possession of an individual will that is not yet qua will surrendered, is the inner separa- tist spiritual principle of the various classes and stations, a spirit which keeps for its own behoof what suits itself best, in spite of its words about Culture and its SfJiere of Reality 511 the universal best, and this clap-trap about what is universally the best tends to be made a substi- tute for action bringing it about. The sacrifice of existence, which takes place in the case of service, is indeed complete when it goes so far as death. But the constant danger of a death which the individual survives, leaves a specific kind of existence, and hence a particular self-reference still untouched ; and this makes the counsel imparted in the interests of the universally best ambiguous and open to suspicion ; it really means, in point of fact, retaining the claim to a private opinion of his own, and a separate individual will as against the power of the state. Its relation to the latter is, therefore, still one of discordance ; and it possesses the characteristic found in the case of the base type of consciousness — it is ever at the point of breaking out into rebellion. This contradiction, which has to be got rid of, in this form of discordance and opposition between the independence of the individual conscious hfe and the universality belonging to state-authority, contains at the same time another aspect. That renunciation of existence, when it is complete, as it is in death, is one that does not revert to the conscious hfe that makes the sacrifice ; it simply is : this conscious hfe does not survive the renunciation and exist by itself as an objective fact {an und für sich), it merely passes away in the unreconciled opposition. That alone is true sacrifice of individuality, therefore, in which it gives itself up as completely as in the case of death, but all the while preserves itself in the renunciation. It comes thereby to be actually what it is implicitly, — the identical unity of self with its opposed self. In this way, by the 512 Phenomenology of Mind inner withdrawn and separatist spiritual principle, the self as such, coming forward and abrogating itself, the state-power becomes if so facto raised into a proper self of its own ; without this aHenation of self the deeds of honour, the actions of the noble type of consciousness, and the counsels which its insight reveals, would con- tinue to maintain the ambiguous character which, as 2,yo we saw, kept that secret reserve of private intention and self-will, in spite of its overt pretensions. This estrangement, however, takes place in Language, in words alone, and language assumes here its peculiar role. Both in the sphere of the general social order {Sittlichkeit), where language conveys laws and com- mands, and in the sphere of actual life, where it ap- pears as conveying advice, the content of what it expresses is the essential reality, and language is the form of that essential content. Here, however, it takes the form in which qua language it exists to be its con- tent, and possesses authority, qua spoken word ; it is the power of utterance qua utterance which, just in speaking, performs what has to be performed. For it is the existence of a pure self qua self ; in speech the particular self-existent self-consciousness comes as such into existence, so that its particular individuality is something for others. Ego qua this particular pure ego is non-existent otherwise ; in every other mode of expression it is absorbed in some concrete actuality, and appears in a shape from which it can withdraw ; it turns reflectively back into itself, away from its act, as well as from its physiognomic expression, and leaves such an incomplete existence, (in which there is always at once too much as well as too little), lying soul- less behind. Speech, however, contains this ego in its Culture and its Sphere of Reality 513 purity ; it alone expresses I, qua self. Its existence in this case is, qua existence, a form of objectivity which has in it the true nature of existence. Ego is this particular ego, but at the same time universal ; its appearing is ipso facto and at once the alienation and disappear- ance of this particular ego, and in consequence its remaining all the while universal. The I, that ex- presses itself, is apprehended as an ego ; it is a kind of infection, in virtue of which it establishes at once a unity with those who are aware of it, a spark that kindles a imiversal consciousness of self. That it is perceived as a fact by others means eo ipso that its existence is itself dying away : this its otherness is taken back into itself ; and its existence hes just in this, that, qua self-conscious Now, as it exists, it has no subsistence and that it subsists just through its disappearance. This disappearance is, therefore, itself ipso facto its continuance ; it is its own cognition of itself, and its knowing itself as something that has passed into another self that has been perceived and 37/ apprehended and is universal. Spirit maintains this form of reality here, because the extremes, too, whose unity spirit is, have directly the character of being reahties each on its own account. Their unity is disintegrated into rigid as- pects, each of which is an actual object for the other, and each is excluded from the other. The unity, therefore, appears in the role of a mediating term, which is excluded and distinguished from the separated reahty of the two sides ; it has, therefore, itself the actual character of something objective, apart, and distinguished from its aspects, and objective for them, i.e. the unity is an existent objective fact. J~-ciJz.'^ie^ VOL. II.— H 514 Phenomenology of Mind The spiritual substance comes as such into existence only when it has been able to take as its aspects those self- consciousnesses, which know this pure self to be a reality claiming immediate validity, and therein immediately know, too, that they are such reahties merely through the process of alienation. Through that pure self the moments of substance get the transparency of a self-knowing category, and become clarified so far as to be moments of spirit ; through the mediating process spirit comes to exist in spiritual form. Spirit in this way is the mediating term, presupposing those extremes and produced through their existence ; but it is also the spiritual whole breaking out between them, which sunders its self into them, and creates each solely in virtue of that contact with the whole which belongs to its very principle. The fact that both extremes are from the start and in their very nature transcended and disintegrated brings out their unity; and this is the process which fuses both together, inter- changes their characteristic features, and binds them together, and does so in each extreme. This mediating process consequently actuahses the principle of each of the two extremes, or makes what each is inherently in itself its controlling and moving spirit. Both extremes, the state-authority and the noble type of consciousness, are disintegrated by this latter. In state-power, the two sides are the abstract universal which is obeyed, and the individual will existing on its own account, which, however, does not yet belong to the universal itself. In nobility, the two sides are the obedience in giving up existence, or the inherent maintenance of self-respect and honour, and, on the other hand, a self which exists purely for its own sake Culture and its S'phere of Reality 515 and whose self-existence is not yet done away with, the self-will that remains always in reserve. These two moments into which the extremes are refined, and which, therefore, find expression in language, are the abstract universal, which is called the "universal best," and the pure self which by rendering service abrogated the life of absorption in the manifold variety of existence. Both in principle are the same ; for pure self is just the abstract universal, and hence their unity acts as their mediating term. But the self is, to begin with, actual only in consciousness as one extreme, while the inherent nature {Ansich) is actuahsed in state-authority as the other extreme. That state-power not merely in the form of honour but in reality should be transferred to it, is lacking in the case of conscious- ness; while in the case of state-authority there is lacking the fact that it was obeyed not merely as a so-called universal best, but as will, in other words, as state-power which is the self regulating and de- ciding. The unity of the principle in which state- power still remains, and into which consciousness has been refined, becomes real in this mediating pro- cess, and this exists qua mediating term in the simple form of speech. All the same, the aspects of this unity are not yet present in the form of two selves as selves ; for state-power comes first to be inspired with active self-hood. This language is, therefore, not yet spiritual existence in the sense in which spirit com- pletely knows and expresses itself. Nobihty of consciousness, because the extreme form of self, assumes the role of creating the language by which the separate factors related are formed into active spiritual wholes. The heroism of dumb service 516 Phenomenology of Mind passes into the heroism of flattery. This reflection of service in express language constitutes the self- conscious self-disintegrating mediating term, and re- flects back into itself not only its own special extreme, but reflects the extreme of universal power back into this self too, and makes that power, which is at first implicit, into an independent self-existence, and gives it the individualistic form of self-consciousness. Through this process the indwelling spirit of this state-power 3y3 comes into existence — that of an unlimited monarch. It is unlimited ; the language, of flattery raises power into transparent, clearly-acknowledged univer- sality; this moment being the product of language, of transparent spiritualised existence, is a purified form of self-identity. It is a monarch; for flattering language likewise puts individualistic self-consciousness on its pinnacle; what conscious nobility abandons as regards this aspect of pure spiritual unity is the pure essential natiu-e of its thought, its ego itself. The naked particularity of its ego, which otherwise is only imagined, flattery brings out more definitely into relief as an actual existence, by giving the monarch a proper name. For it is in the name alone that the distinction of the individual from every one else is not imagined but is actually made by all. By having a name the individual passes for a pure individual not merely in his own consciousness of him- self, but in the consciousness of all. By its name, then, the monarch becomes absolutely detached from every one, exclusive and solitary, and in virtue of it is unique as an atom that cannot commute any part of its essential nature, and has nothing like itself. This name is thus its reflection into itself, or is the actual reality Culture and its Sphere of Reality 517 which universal power has inherently within itself : through the name the power is the monarch.* Con- versely he, this particular individual, thereby knows himself, this individual self, to be universal power, knows that the nobles not only are ready and pre- pared for the service of the state-authority, but are grouped as an ornamental setting round the throne, and that they are for ever telHng him who sits thereon what he is. The language of their professed praise is in this way the spirit that unites together the two extremes in the case of state-power itself. This language reflects in itself the abstract power and gives to it the moment peculiar to the other extreme, an isolated self of its own, willing and deciding on its own account, and consequently gives it self-conscious exist- ence. Or again, by that means this self-conscious particular being comes to be aware of itself for certain as the supreme authority. This power is the central focal self into which, through relinquishing their own inner certainty of self, the many separate centres of self- j7/^ hood are fused together into one. Since, however, this proper spirit of state-power subsists by getting its realisation and its noiu'ishment from the homage of action and thought rendered by the nobility, it is a form of independence in internal self-estrangement. The noble, the extreme form of self-existence, keeps back the other extreme of actual universahty, and keeps it back for the universahty of thought which was relinquished. The power of the state has passed over to and fallen upon the noble. It falls to the noble primarily to make the state- * Cp. " L'etat c'est moi. " 518 Phenomenology of Mind authority truly effective : in his existence as a self on his own account, that authority ceases to be the inert being it appeared to be qua extreme of abstract and merely implicit reality. Looked at "per se, state-power reflected back into itself, or becoming spiritual, means nothing else than that it has come to be a moment of self-conscious Hfe, i.e. is only by being sublated. Consequently it is now the real in the sense of something whose spiritual mean- ing lies in being sacrificed and squandered ; it exists in the sense of wealth. It continues, no doubt, to subsist at the same time as a form of reaHty over against wealth, into which in principle it is forever passing ; but it is a reality, whose inherent principle is this very process of passing over — owing to the service and the reverence rendered to it, and by which it arises — into its opposite, into the condi- tion of relinquishing its power. Thus from its point of view {Fürsich) the special and pecuhar self, which constitutes its will, becomes, by the self-abasement of the nobility, a universal that renounces itself, becomes completely an isolated particular, a mere accident, which is the prey of every stronger will. What remains to it of the universally acknowledged and incommunic- able independence is the empty name. While, then, the nobility may adopt the attitude of something that can in a similar way stand related to the universal power, its true nature lies rather in retaining its own separateness of being when rendering its service, but, in what is properly the abnegation of its person- Z'l^ aUty, its true being Hes in actually cancelling and rending in pieces the universal substance. Its spirit is the attitude of thoroughgoing discordance (inequahty) : Culture and its Sphere of Reality 519 on one side it retains its own will in the honour it receives, on the other hand it gives up its will : in part it alienates its inner nature from itself, and arrives at the extreme of discordance with itself, in part it subdues the universal substance to itself, and puts this entirely at variance with itself. It is obvious that, as a result, its own specific nature, which kept it distinct from the so-called base type of mind, disappears, and with that this latter type of mind too. The base type has gained its end, that of subordinating universal power to self-centred isolation of self. Endowed in this way with universal power, self- consciousness exists in the form of universal beneficence : or, from another point of view, universal power is wealth that again is itself an object for consciousness. For wealth is here taken to be the universal put in subjec- tion, which, however, through this first transcendence, is not yet absolutely returned into the self. Self has not as yet its self as such for object, but the universal essential reahty in a state of sublation. Since this object has first come into being, the relation of con- sciousness towards it is immediate, and consciousness has thus not yet set forth its want of congruity with this object : we have here the nobility preserving its own self-centred existence in the universal that has become non-essential, and hence acknowledging the object and feehng grateful to its benefactor. Wealth has within it from the first the aspect of self- existence {Fürsichsein). It is not the self-less universal of state-power, or the unconstrained simphcity of the natural life of spirit ; it is state-power as holding its own by effort of will in opposition to a will that wants to get the mastery over it and get enjoyment out of it. 520 Phenomenology of Mind But since wealth has merely the form of being essen- Äa* Vfo^»*^, tial, this one-sided self-existent Hfe, — which has no being in itself, which is rather the sublation of inherent being, — is the retm:n of the individual into himself to find no essential reaHty in his enjoyment. It thus itself 3rV> needs to be given animation ; and its reflective process of bringing this about consists in its becoming some- thing real in itself as well as for itself, instead of being merely for itself ; wealth, which is the sublated essential reality, has to become the essentially real. In this way it preserves its own spiritual principle in itself. It will be sufficient here to describe the content of this process since we have already explained at length its form. Nobility, then, stands here in relation not to the object in the general sense of something essen- tial ; what is alien to it is self-existence itself. It finds itself face to face with its own self as such in a state of alienation, as an objective solid actuality which it has to take from the hands of another self-centred being, another equally fixed and solid entity. Its object is self-existence, i.e. its own being : but by being an object this is at the same time if so facto an alien reality, which is a self-centred being on its own account, has a will of its own ; i.e. it sees its self under the power of an alien will on which it depends for the concession of its self. From each particular aspect self-consciousness can abstract, and for that reason, even when under an obligation to one of these aspects, retains the recognition and inherent validity of self-consciousness as an independent reality. Here, however, it finds that, as regards its own ego, its own proper and Culture and its S'phere of Reality 521 peculiar actuality, it is outside itself and belongs to an other, finds its personality as such dependent on the chance personahty of another, on the accident of a moment, of an arbitrary caprice, or some other sort of irrelevant circumstance. In the sphere of legal right, what lies in the power of the objective being appears as an incidental content, from which it is possible to make abstraction ; and the governing power possessed does not affect the self as such; rather this self is recognised. But here the self sees its self-certainty as such to be the most unreal thing of all, finds its pure personality to be absolutely without the character of personahty. The sense of its grati- tude is, therefore, a state in which it feels profoundly this condition of being utterly outcast, and feels also the deepest revolt as well. Since the pure ego sees itself outside self, and torn in sunder, everything that gives continuity and universahty, everything that bears the name of law, good, and right, is thereby torn to pieces at the same time, and goes to wreck and ruin : all identity and concord break up, for what holds sway is the purest discord and disunion, what was absolutely essential is absolutely unessential, what has a being on its own account has its being outside itself : the pure ego itself is absolutely disintegrated. Thus since this consciousness receives back from the sphere of wealth the objective form of being a separate self-existence, and cancels that objective character, it is in principle not only, like the preced- ing reflexion, not completed, but is consciously un- satisfied : the reflexion, since the self receives itself as an objective fact, is the immediate contradiction that has taken root in the pure ego as such. Qua self, however. 522 Phenomenology of Mind it at the same time ipso facto rises above this contradic- tion ; it is absolutely elastic, and again cancels this sublation of itself, repudiates this repudiation of itself, wherein its self-existence is made to be something alien to it, revolts against this acceptance of itself and in the very reception of itself is self-existent. Since, then, the attitude of this type of consciousness is bound up with this condition of utter disintegration, the distinction constituting its spiritual nature — that of being nobility and opposed to baseness — falls away and both aspects are the same. The spirit of well-doing that characterises the action of wealth may, fmther, be distinguished from that of the conscious life accepting the benefit it confers, and deserves special consideration. The spirit animating wealth had an unreal insubstan- tial independence; wealth was something to be given up. By communicating what it has, however, it passes into something essential and inherent ; since it fulfils its nature in sacrificing itself, it cancels the aspect of par- ticularity, of merely seeking enjoyment for one's own particular self, and, being thus sublated qua particular, the type of spirit here is universahty or essentially real. What it imparts, what it gives to others, is self- existence. It does not hand itself over, however, as a natural self- less object, as the frankly and freely offered condition of unconscious Ufe, but as self-conscious, as a reality keeping hold of itself : it is not Hke the power 3-7 g of an inorganic element which is felt by the conscious- ness receiving its force to be inherently transitory ; it is the power over self, a power aware that it is indepen- dent and voluntary, and knowing at the same time that what it dispenses becomes the self of some one else. Culture and its Sphere of Reality 523 Wealth thus shares reprobation with its chentele ; but in place of revolt appears arrogance. For in one aspect it knows, as well as the self it benefits, that its self-existence is a matter of accident ; but itself is this accident in whose power personaHty is placed. In this mood of arrogance — which thinks it has secured through a dole an ahen ego -nature, and thereby brought its inmost being into submis- sion— it overlooks the secret rebellion of the other self : it overlooks the fact of all bonds being com- pletely cast aside, overlooks this pure disintegra- tion, in which, the self-identity of what exists for its own sake having become sheer internal discordance, all oneness and concord, all subsistence is rent asunder, and in which in consequence the thoughts and inten- tions of the benefactor are the first to be shattered. It stands directly in front of this abyss, cleaving it to the innermost, this bottomless pit, where every soHd base and stay have vanished : and in the depths it sees nothing but a common thing, a display of whims on its part, a chance result of its own caprice. Its spirit consists in quite unreal imagining, in being super- ficiality forsaken of all true spiritual import. Just as self-consciousness had its own manner of speech in deahng with state-power, in other words, just as spirit took the form of expressly and actually mediat- ing between these two extremes, self-consciousness has also a mode of speech in dealing with wealth ; but still more when in revolt does it adopt a language of its own. The form of utterance which supphes wealth with the sense of its own essential significance, and thereby makes it master of itself, is likewise the language of flattery, but of ignoble flattery ; for what it gives 524 Phenomenology of Mind out to be the essential reality, it knows to be a reality without an inherent nature of its own, to be something at the mercy of another. The language of flattery, however, as already remarked, is that of a one-sided spirit. To be sure its constituent elements are, on the one hand, a self moulded by service into a shape where 3//^ it is reduced to bare existence, and, on the other, the inherent reahty of the power dominating the self. Yet the bare principle, the pure conception, in which the mere self and the inherent reality (Ansich), that pure ego and this pure reality or thought, are one and the same thing — this conceptual unity of the two aspects between which the reciprocity takes effect, is not consciously felt when this language is used. The object is consciously still the inherent reality in opposition to the self; in other words, the object is not for consciousness at the same time its own proper self as such. The language expressing the condition of disintegra- tion, wherein spiritual life is rent asunder, is, however, the perfect form of utterance for this entire stage of spiritual culture and development, the formative process of moulding self-consciousness (Bildung), and expresses the spirit in which it most truly exists. This self-con- sciousness, which finds befitting the rebelhon that repudiates its own repudiation, is eo ipso absolute self- identity in absolute disintegration, the pure activity of mediating pure self-consciousness with itself. It is the oneness expressed in the identical judgment, where one and the same personality is subject as well as predicate. But this identical judgment is at the same time the infinite judgment ; for this personality is absolutely split in two, and subject and predicate Culture and its Sphere of Reality 525 are entities utterly indifferent one to the other, which have nothing to do with each other, with no necessary unity, so much so that each has the power of an in- dependent personahty of its own. What exists as a self on its own account has for its object its own self- existence, which is object in the sense of an absolute other, and yet at the same time directly in the form of itself — itself in the sense of an other, not as if this had an other content, for the content is the same self in the form of an absolute opposite, with an existence completely all its own and indifferent. We have, then, here the spirit of this real world of formative culture, conscious of its own nature as it truly is, and conscious of its ultimate and essential principle [Begriff'). This type of spiritual life is the absolute and universal inversion of reality and thought, their entire estrange- ment the one from the other ; it is pure cultm'e. What is found out in this sphere is that neither the concrete reahties, state-power and wealth, nor their determin- ate conceptions, good and bad, nor the consciousness of good and bad (the consciousness that is noble and the consciousness that is base) possess real truth ; it -So is found that all these moments are inverted and trans- muted the one into the other, and each is the opposite of itself. The universal power, which is the substance, since it gains a spiritual nature pecuHarly its own through the principle of individuality, accepts the possession of a self of its own merely as a name by which it is described, and, even in being actual power, is really so powerless as to have to sacrifice itself. But this self-less reahty given over to another, this 526 Phenomenology of Mind self that is turned into a thing, is in fact the return of the reahty into itself ; it is a self- existence that is there for its own sake, the existential form of spirit. The principles belonging to these reahties, the thoughts of good and bad, are similarly transmuted and reversed in this process; what is characterised as good is bad, and vice versa. The consciousness of each of these moments by itself, the conscious types judged as noble and base — these are rather in their real truth simi- larly the reverse of what these specific forms should be ; nobility is base and repudiated, just as what is repudiated as base turns round into the nobleness that characterises the most highly developed form of free self-conscious- ness. Looked at formally, everji^hing is Hkewise in its external aspects the reverse of what it is internally for itself ; and again it is not really and in truth what it is for itself, but something else than it wants to be; self-existence on its own account is, strictly speaking, the loss of self, and ahenation of self is really self- preservation. The state of things brought about here, then, is that all moments execute justice on one another all round, each is just as much in a condition of inherent alienation as it fancies itself in its opposite, and in this way reverses its nature. Spirit truly objective, however, is just this unity of absolutely separate moments, and in fact comes into existence as the common ground, the mediating agency, just through the independent reality of these self-less extremes. Its very existence hes in universal talk and depreciatory judgment rending and tearing everything, before which all those moments are broken Culture and its Sphere of Reality 527 up that are meant to signify something real and to stand for actual members of the whole, and which at the same time plays with itself this game of self-dis- solution. This judging and talking is, therefore, the .3,5 ; real truth, which cannot be got over, while it over- powers everything — it is that which in this real world is alone truly of importance. Each part of this world comes to find there its spirit expressed, or gets to be spoken of with spirit and finds said of it what it is. The honest * soul takes each moment as a permanent and essential fact, and is an uncultivated unreflective condition, which does not think and does not know that it is just doing the very inverse. The distraught and disintegrated soul is, however, aware of inversion; it is, in fact, a condition of absolute inversion : the con- ceptual principle predominates there, brings together into a single unity the thoughts that lie far apart in the case of the honest soul, and the language clothing its meaning is, therefore, full of esfrit and wit {geistreich). The content uttered by spirit and uttered about itself is, then, the inversion and perversion of all con- ceptions and realities, a universal deception of itself and of others. The shamelessness manifested in stating this deceit is just on that account the greatest truth. This style of speech is the madness of the musician " who piled and mixed up together some thirty airs, Itahan, French, tragic, comic, of all sorts and kinds ; now, in a deep undertone, he descended to the depths of hell, then, contracting his throat to a high, piping falsetto, he rent the vault of the skies, raving and soothing, haughtily * V. p. 402 ff. 528 Phenomenology of Mind imperious and mockingly j eering by turns. " * The placid soult that in simple honesty of heart takes the music of the good and true to consist in harmony of sound and uniformity of tone, i.e. in a melodious chord, regards this style of expression as a " fickle fantasy of wisdom and folly, a melee of so much skill and low cunning, composed of ideas as likely to be right as wrong, with as complete a perversion of sentiment, with as much consummate shamefulness in it, as abso- lute frankness, candour, and truth. It is not able to refrain from bringing out the sound of every note, and running up and down the whole gamut of feeling, from the depths of contempt and repudiation to the highest pitch of admiration and stirring emotion. 'isi. A vein of the ridiculous will be diffused through the latter, which takes away from their nature " ; the former will find in their very candour a strain of atoning reconcilement, will find in their shuddering depths the all-powerful qualities which give spirit a self. If we consider, by way of contrast to the mode of utterance indulged in by this self-transparent distracted type of mind, the language adopted by that simple, placid consciousness of the good and the true, we find that it can only speak in monosyllables when face to face with the frank and self-conscious eloquence of the mind developed under the influence of culture ; for it can say nothing to the latter that the latter does not know and say. If it gets beyond speaking in monosyllables, then it says the same thing that the cultivated mind expresses, but in doing so commits, * Diderot, Rameau's Neffc. f The " philosopher " in Diderot's Dialogue. Culture and its Sphere of Reality 529 in addition, the folly of imagining that it is saying something new, something different. Its very syllables, "disgraceful, " "base," are this folly already, for the other says them of itself. This latter type of mind perverts in its mode of utterance everything that sounds the same, because this self -sameness is merely an abstraction, but in its actual reality is intrinsically and inherently perversion. On the other hand, again, the unsophisti- cated mind takes under its protection the good and the noble (i.e. what retains its identity of meaning in being objectively expressed), and takes care of it in the only way here possible — that is to say, the good must not lose its value because it may be linked with what is bad or mingled with it, for to be thus associated with badness is its condition and necessity, and the wisdom of nature lies in this fact. Yet this unsophisticated mind, while it intended to contradict, has merely, in doing so, gathered into a trifling form the mean- ing of what spirit said, and put it in a manner which, by turning the opposite of noble and good into the necessary condition of noble and good, means, in an unthinking way, to state something else than that the so-called noble and good is by its very nature the reverse of itself, or that what is bad is, conversely, something excellent. If the naive consciousness makes up for this barren, soulless idea by the concrete reahty of what is excellent, when it produces an example of what is excellent, whether in the form of a fictitious case or a true story, and thus shows it to be not an empty name, but an^^g 3 actual fact, then the universal reality of perverted action stands in sharp contrast to the entire real world, where that example constitutes merely something VOL. U.— I 530 Phenomenology of Mind quite isolated and particular, merely an esfece, a sort of thing. And to represent the existence of the good and the noble as an isolated particular anecdote, whether fictitious or true, is the bitterest thing that can be said about it. Finally, should the naive mind require this entire sphere of perversion to be dissolved and broken up, it cannot ask the individual to withdraw out of it, for even Diogenes in his tub [with his pretence of withdrawal] is under the sway of that perversion ; and to ask this of the particular individual is to ask him to do pre- cisely what is taken to be bad, viz. to care for the self as particular. But if the demand to withdraw is directed at the universal individual, it cannot mean that reason must again give up the culture and development of spiritual conscious life which has been reached, that reason should let the extensive riches of its moments sink back into the naivete of natural emotion, and revert and approximate to the wild condition of the animal consciousness, which is also called the natural state of innocence. On the contrary, the demand for this dissolution when addressed to the spirit reahsed in culture can only mean that it must qua spirit return out of its confusion into itself, and win for itself a still higher level of conscious life. In point of fact, however, spirit has already accom- plished this result. To be conscious of its own distraught and torn condition and to express itself accordingly, — this is to pour scornful laughter on its existence, on the confusion pervading the whole and on itself as well : it is at the same time this whole confusion dying away and yet apprehending itself to be doing so. This self-apprehending vanity of all reality and of every Culture and its Sphere of Reality 531 definite principle reflects the real world into itself in a twofold form : — in the particular self of consciousness qua particular, and in the pure imiversahty of con- sciousness, in thought. According to the one aspect, mind thus come to itself has directed its gaze into the world of actual reahty, and makes that reality its own .'i^i^ purpose and its immediate content : from the other side, its gaze is in part turned solely on itself and against that world of reality, in part turned away from it towards heaven, and its object is the region beyond the world. In respect of that return into self the vanity of all things is its own peculiar vanity, it is itself vain. It is self existing for its own sake, a self that knows not only how to sum up and chatter about everything, but with esprit and wit to hit off the contradiction that Hes in the heart of the all so solid seeming reality, and the fixed determinations which judgment sets up ; and that contradiction is their real truth. Looked at formally it finds everything estranged from itself, self-existence is cut off from essential being {Ansich), what is intended and the purpose are separated from real truth, and from both again existence for another, what is ostensibly put forward is cut ofi from the proper meaning, the real fact, the true intention. It thus knows exactly how to put each moment in antithesis to every other, knows in short how to express correctly the perversion that dominates all of them : it knows better than each what each is, no matter how it is constituted. Since it apprehends what is substantial from the side of that disunion and contradiction of elements combined within its nature, but not from the side of this union itself, it under- 532 Phenomenology of Mind stands very well how to pass judgment on this substantial reality, but has lost the capacity of truly grasping it. This vanity needs at the same time the vanity of all things, in order to get from them consciousness of itself ; it therefore itself creates this vanity, and is the soul that supports it. State-power and wealth are the supreme purposes of its strenuous exertion, it is aware that through renunciation and sacrifice it is moulded into universal shape, that it attains universality, and in possessing universality finds general recognition and acceptance : state-power and wealth are the real and actually acknowledged sources of power. But its gain- ing acceptance thus is itself vain, and just by the fact that it gets the mastery over them it knows them to be not real by themselves, knows rather itself to be the power within them, and them to be vain and empty. That in possessing them it thus itself is able to stand apart from and outside them, — this is what it expresses in spirited languages ; and to express this is, therefore, 3 S b its supreme interest, and the true meaning of the whole process. In such utterance this self, — in the form of a pure self not associated with or bound by determina- tions derived either from reality or thought, — comes consciously to be a spiritual entity having a truly universal significance and value. It is the condition in which the nature of all relationships is rent asunder, and it is the conscious rending of them all. But only by self- consciousness being roused to revolt does it know its own peculiar torn and shattered condition ; and in its know- ing this it has if so facto risen above that condition. In that state of self-conscious vanity all substantial content comes to have a negative significance, which can no Öulture and^its Sffiere of Reality 53ä longer be taken in a positive sense. The positive object is merely the pure ego itself ; and the consciousness that is rent in sunder is inherently and essentially this pure self-identity of self-consciousness returned to itself. Belief and Pure Insight* The spiritual condition of self-alienation exists in the sphere of culture as a fact. But since this whole has become estranged from itself, there lies beyond this sphere the nonactual region of pure consciousness, of thought. Its content consists of what has been reduced piu:ely to thought, its absolute element is thinking. Since, however, thinking is in the first instance the element of this sphere, consciousness has merely these thoughts, but it does not as yet thinh them or does not know that they are thoughts : to consciousness they appear in the form of presentations, they are objects in the form of ideas. For it comes out of the sphere of actuality into that of pure consciousness, but is itself still to all intents and purposes in the sphere of actuahty with the determinateness that implies. The conscious state of being rent and torn to pieces is still essentially and inherently the self-identity of pure consciousness not as a fact that itself is aware of but only as presented to us who are considering its condition. It has thus not as yet completed within itself the process of rising above this condition, it is simply there ; and it still has within itself the opposite * The contrast between these two elements is found both in the pre- Reformation period and in the eighteenth century period ; — in the latter the contrast assumes perhaps its acutest form. 534 Belief and Pure Insight 535 principle by which it is conditioned, without as yet having become master of that principle through a mediating process. Hence the essential content of its thought is not taken to be an essential object merely in the form of abstract immanence (Ansich), but in the form of a common object, an object that has merely been elevated into another element, without having lost the character of an object that is not constituted 3.3^? by thought. It is essentially distinct from the immanent nature which constitutes the essential being of the stoic type of consciousness. The significant factor for Stoicism was merely the form of thought as such, which has any content foreign to it that is drawn from reahty. In the case of the consciousness just described, however, the form of thought is not the significant element. Similarly it is essentially distinct from the inherent principle of the virtuous type of conscious life ; here the essential fact stands, no doubt, in a relation to reahty ; it is the essence of reahty itself : but it is no more than an unreahsed essence of it. In the above type of consciousness the essence, although no doubt beyond reahty, stands all the same for an actual real essence. In the same way, the inherently right and good which reason as lawgiver estabhshes, and the universal operating when consciousness tests and examines laws — neither of these has the character of actual reahty. Hence while pure thought fell within the sphere of spiritual culture as an aspect of the estrangement characteristic of this sphere, as the standard in fact for judging abstract good and abstract bad, it has become enriched, by having gone through the process 536 Phenomenology of Mind of the whole, with the element of reahty and thereby with content. This reahty of its essential being, how- ever, is at the same time merely a reality of pure consciousness, not of concrete actual consciousness : it is no doubt lifted into the element of thought, but this concrete consciousness does not yet take it for a thought ; it is beyond the reality peculiar to this con- sciousness, for it means flight from the latter. In the form in which Religion here appears — for it is religion obviously that we are speaking about — as the belief which belongs to the realm of culture, rehgion does not yet appear as it is truly and completely {an und für sich). It has already come before us in other phases, viz. as the un- happy consciousness, as a form of conscious process with no substantial content in it. So, too, in the case of the ethical substance, it appeared as a belief in the nether-world. But a consciousness of departed spirits is, strictly speaking, not belief, not the inner essence subsisting in the element of pure consciousness away beyond the actual : there the belief has itself an ' immediate existence in the present ; its element, its substance is the family. But at the stage we are now considering, religion is in part the outcome of the substance, and is the pure consciousness of that substance ; in part this pure consciousness is alienated from its concrete actual consciousness, the essence from its existence. It is thus doubtless no longer the insubstantial process of con- sciousness ; but it has still the characteristic of opposi- tion to reality qua the given reality in general, and of opposition to the reality of self-consciousness in par- ticular. It is essentially therefore merely a belief. Belief and Pure Insight 537 This pure consciousness of Absolute Being is a con- sciousness in alienation. Let us see more closely what is the characteristic of that whose other it is ; we can only consider it in connection with this other. In the first instance this pure consciousness seems to have over against it merely the world of actuality. But since its nature is to flee from this actuality, and thereby is characterised by opposition, it has this actuality inherent within its own being ; pure consciousness is, therefore, essentially in its very being self-alienated, and belief constitutes merely one side of it. The other side has already arisen too. For pure consciousness is reflexion out of the world of culture in such a way that the substantial content of this sphere, as also the separate fragments into which it falls, are shown to be what they inherently are, — essential modes of spiritual life, abso- lutely restless processes or determinate moments which are at once cancelled in their opposite. Their essential nature, bare consciousness, is thus the bare simplicity of absolute distinction, distinction which as it stands is no distinction. Consequently it is pure self-existence not of a particular self, but essentially universal self, whose being consists in a restless process invading and pervading the stable existence of actual fact. In it is found the certainty that knows itself at once to be the truth ; there we have pure thought in the sense of absolute notion with all its power of negativity, which annihilates every objective existence that would claim to stand over against consciousness, and turns it into a form of conscious existence. This pure consciousness is at the same time simple and undifferentiated as well, just because its distinction is no distinction. Being this form of bare and simple 538 Phenomenology of Mind reflexion into self, however, it is the element of beHef, in which spirit has the special feature of positive universality, of what is inherent and essential in contrast with that self-existence on the part of self-consciousness. Forced back upon itself away from this unsubstan- tial world whose being is mere dissolution, spirit in its undivided unity is, when we consider its true meaning, at once the absolute movement, the ceaseless process of negating its appearance, as well as the essen- tial substance thereof satisfied within itself, and the positive stability of that appearance. But, bearing as they inherently do the characteristic of alienation, both these moments fall apart in the shape of a twofold consciousness. The former is pure Insight, the spiritual process concentrated and focussed in self- consciousness, a process which has over against it the consciousness of something positive, the form of objectivity or pre- sentation, and which directs itself upon this presented object. The proper and peculiar object of this insight is, however, merely pure ego.* The bare consciousness of the positive element, of unbroken self-identity, finds its object, on the other hand, in the inner reality as such. Pure insight has, therefore, in the first instance, no content within it, because it exists for itself by negating everything in it ; to belief, on the other hand, belongs the content, but without insight. While the former does not get away from self-consciousness, the latter to be sure has its content as well in the element of pure self-consciousness, but only in presentation, not in conceptions — in pure consciousness, not in pure self- consciousness. Behef is, as a fact, in this way pure * Kaut : " Pure ego is the absolute unity of apperception." Belief and Pure Insight 539 consciousness of the essential reality, i.e. of tlie bare and simple inner nature, and is thus thought — the primary factor in the nature of beUef , which is generally overlooked.* The immediateness which characterises the presence of the essential reaHty within it is due to the fact that its object is essence, inner nature, i.e. pure thought, f This immediateness, however, so far as thinking enters consciousness, or pure conscious- ness enters into self-consciousness, maintains the signifi- cance of an objective being that lies beyond consciousness of self. It is because of the significance which imme- diacy and simplicity of pure thought thus retain in consciousness that the essential reality in the case of behef drops into being an objectively presented idea (Vorstellung), instead of being the content of thought, and comes to be looked at as a supersensible world, which is essentially an " other " for self-consciousness. In the case of pure insight, on the other hand, the entrance of pure thought into consciousness has the opposite character : objectivity has the significance of a content that is merely negative, that cancels itself and returns into the self ; that is to say, only the self is properly object to self, or, to put it otherwise, the object only has truth so far as it has the form of self. As behef and pure insight fall in common within pure consciousness, they also in common involve the mind's return out of the concrete sphere of spiritual culture. There are three aspects, therefore, from which they show what they are. In one aspect each * " Belief is a kind of knowledge." — Encycl. : § 554. + Kant : " I am the essential realitj' when conscious of myself in pure thought.' 540 Phenomenology oj Mmd is outside every relation, and has a being all its own ; in another each takes up an attitude towards the concrete actual world standing in antithesis to pure consciousness ; while in the third form each is related to the other inside pure consciousness. In the case of belief the aspect of complete being, of being in-and-for-itself, is its absolute object, whose content and character we have already come to know. For it lies in the very notion of belief that this object is nothing else than the real world lifted into the uni- versality of pure consciousness. The articulation of this world, therefore, constitutes the organisation be- longing to pure universality also, except that the parts in the latter case do not alienate one another when spiritualised, but are complete realities all by themselves, are spirits* returned into themselves and self-contained. The process of their transition from one into the other is, therefore, only for us [who are analysing the process] an ahenation of the characteristic nature in which their distinction lies, and only for us, the i<}» observers, does it constitute a necessary series; for belief, however, their distinction is a static diversity, and their movement simply a historical fact. To deal shortly with the external character of their form : as in the world of culture state-power or the good was primary, so here the first and foremost moment is Absolute Being, spirit absolutely self-con- tained, so far as it is simple eternal substance.! But in the process of realising its constitutive notion, which consists in being spirit, that substance passes over into * The ''persons" of the "Trinity.'' t God transcendent, God as Suhstance. Belief and Pure Insight 541 a form where it exists for an other ; its self-identity becomes actual Absolute Being, actualised in self-sacri- fice ; it becomes a self, but a self that is transitory and passes away.* Hence the third stage is the return of self thus alienated, the substance thus abased into its first primal simplicity of nature. Only when this is done is spirit presented and manifested as spirit, f These distinct ultimate Realities, when brought back by thought into self out of the flux of the actual world, are changeless, eternal spirits, whose being lies in think- ing the unity which they constitute. While thus torn away from self-consciousness, these Realities all the same lay hold on it; for if the Ultimate Reality were to be fixed and unmoved in the form of the first bare and simple substance, it would remain alien to self-consciousness. But the laying aside, the " empty- ing,"' of this substance, and afterwards its spirit, in- volves the element of concrete actuality, and thereby participates in the believing self-consciousness, or the believing attitude of consciousness belongs to the real world. According to this second condition, the believing type of consciousness partly finds its actuality in the real world of culture, and constitutes its spirit and its existence, which have been described ; partly, how- ever, behef takes up an attitude of opposition to this its own actuality, looks on this as something vain, and is the process of cancelling and abohshing it. This process does not consist in the believing conscious- ness having ingenious views about the perverted condition of that reahty ; for it is bare and simple * The God-man, Christ. t God as Absolute Spirit and Subject. 542 Phenomenology of Mind consciousness, which reckons esprit and wit as some- thing vain and empty, because this still has the real world for its purpose. On the contrary, in opposition to its placid realm of thought stands concrete actuahty as a soulless form of existence, which on that account 3 <] I has to be overcome in external fashion. This obedience through service and rewards, by cancelHng sense-know- ledge and action, brings out the consciousness of unity with the self-complete and self-existing Being, though not in the sense of an actual perceived unity. This service is merely the incessant process of producing the sense of unity, a process that never completely reaches its goal in the actual present. The religious communion no doubt does so, for it is universal self-consciousness. But for the individual self-consciousness the realm of pure thought necessarily remains something away beyond its sphere of reality ; or, again, since this remote region by the emptying, the *'kenosis," of the eternal Being, has entered the sphere of actuality, its ,