Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind), vol. I incl. Preface

Sensible singleness thus disappears in the dialectic process of immediate certainty, and becomes universality, but merely sensuous universality. The stage of " meaning " has vanished, and perceiving takes the object as it inherently is in itself, or, put generally, as a universal. Singleness, therefore, makes its appearance there as true singleness, as the inherent nature of the " one," or as reflectedness into self. This is still, however, a conditioned self-existence alongside which appears another self-existence, the universality opposed to singleness and conditioned by it. But these two contradictory extremes are not merely alongside one another, but within one unity ; or, what is the same thing, the common element of both, selfexistence, is entirely fettered to its opposite, i.e. is, at the same time, not an existence-for-self. The Sophistry of perception seeks to save these moments from their contradiction, tries to keep them fixed by distinguishing between " aspects," by using terms hke " also " and " so far as," and seeks in hke manner to lay hold on the truth by distinguishing the unessential element from an essential nature opposed thereto. But these expedients, instead of keeping away deception from the process of apprehension, prove rather to be of no avail at all ; and the real truth, which should be got at through the logic of the perceptual process, proves to be in one and the same "aspect" the opposite (of what those expedients imply), and consequently to have as its essential content undifferentiated and indeterminate universality.

These empty abstractions of " singleness " and its antithetic " universahty," as also of " essence," that is attended with a " non-essential " element, an element which is all the same " necessary," are powers the interplay of which constitutes perceptual understanding, often called " sound common sense " {Menschenver stand). This "healthy common sense," which takes itself for the sohd substantial type of conscious life, is, in the sphere of perception, merely the interplay of these abstractions ; it is always poorest where it pretends to be richest. In that it is tossed about by these unreal entities, bandied from one to the other, and by its sophistry endeavours to affirm and hold fast alternately now one, then the exact opposite, it sets itself against the truth, and imagines philosophy has merely to do with " things of the intellect," (GedanJcendinge) merely manipulates " ideas." As a matter of fact, philosophy does have to do with them, too, and knows them to be the pure essential entities, the absolute powers and 122 Phenomenology of Mind ultimate elements. But, in doing so, pliilosophy knows them at the same time in their determinate and specific constitution, and is, therefore, master over them ; while that perceptual understanding takes them for the real truth, and is led by them from one mistake to another. It does not get the length of being aware that there are such simple essentiahties operating within it and dominating its activity ; it thinks it has always to do with quite sohd material and content, just as sense-certainty is unaware that its essence is the empty abstraction of pure being. But in point of fact it is these essential elements in virtue of which perceptual understanding makes its way hither and thither through every kind of material and content ; they are its principle of coherence and control over its varied material ; they alone are what constitutes for consciousness the essence of sensuous things, what determines their relation to consciousness, and they are that in the medium of which the process of perceiving, with the truth it contains, runs its course. The course of this process, a perpetual alternate determining of the truth and superseding of this determination, constitutes, properly speaking, the constant everyday life and activity of perceptual intelligence, of the consciousness that thinks it hves and moves in the truth. In that process it advances, without halt or stay, till the final result is reached, when these essential ultimate elements or determinations are all alike superseded ; but in each particular moment it is merely conscious of one given characteristic as the truth, and then, again, of the opposite. It no doubt suspects their unessentiality ; and, to save them from the impending danger, it takes to the sophistry of

now asserting to be true what it had just affirmed to be not true. What the nature of these untrue entities wants really to force this understanding to do — viz. to bring together and thereby cancel and transcend the ideas about that " universahty " and " singleness," about " also " and " one " — about that " essentiahty " which is " necessarily " connected with an " unessentiahty," and an " unessential " that is yet " necessary " — understanding strives to resist by leaning for support on the quahfying terms " in-sofar," " a diiierence of aspect," or by making itself answerable for one idea in order to keep the other separate and preserve it as the true one. But the very nature of these abstractions brings them together as they stand and of their own accord. Sound common sense robs these abstractions of their real nature. They compel understanding to go round in their whirhng circle. When understanding tries to give them truth by at one time taking their untruth upon itself, at another by calling deception a mere appearance due to the uncertainty and unrehabihty of things, and, again, by separating the essential from what is necessary, and yet is to be unessential, holding the former to be their truth as against the latter : — when understanding takes this hne, it does not secure them their truth, but convicts itself of untruth.

FORCE AND UNDERSTANDING— THE WORLD OF APPEARANCE AND THE SUPERSENSIBLE WORLD * [The term "force" holds primarily with reference to the realm of Nature, whether physical or vital : but it is also used, more or less analogically, in reference to other spheres, e.g. morality. It is the objective counterpart of the activity of "understanding " ; it is objectively the same kind of relation of unity to differences which is subjectively realised when the mind "understands." "Force" is a self-conditioned principle of unity; the differences are the "expressions of force,'' the unity evolves the diiferences out of itself. Understanding similarly is a self-conditioned process; it consists in "reducing" differences to some ultimate unity, which is capable of " deriving " or " e.-tplaining " those differences from itself. The ''' unconditioned universal '' to which we are led by tlie analysis of perception takes shape, therefore, as " force." The question is. How are the elements of this "unconditioned universal" related, and how do they hold together? The answer is found in the highest achievement of the operation of understanding — the establishment of a " kingdom of laws," which in its entirety is the meaning of the world so far as understanding goes. But laws pej- se are looked on as an inner realm, which merely "appears" in the detailed particulars which those laws control, and in which those laws are made manifest. Tlie differences, in fact, are "' phenomena," the laws per se are behind the scenes : — the world as a whole thus becomes distinguished into a realm of phenomena and a realm of noumena. These two realms set a new problem to the mind, and must again be brought together in a completer way than understanding can do. This new state of consciousness is " self-consciousness."

In this section we have at once an analysis of empiricism and a critici.sm of the Kantian solution of the problem of empiricism. It is shown that if phenomena are appearances of noumena, then the noumena do appear, and are, in fact, nothing except so far as they appear : — otherwise the noumena, so far being "hidden,"' are worse than appearances, they are illusion. The phenomena arc not merely appearances "to the mind," but appearances of something that does make itself manifest. If phenomena * Cp. Wisseiu-chaft dcr Logik, Buch 2, Absch. 2, Kap 3. 124 are thus not external to and still less independent of noumena, noumena are just as truly immanent in plienomena. Treated in any other way, noumena can at best be only another kind of phenomena ; and this raises anew precisely the problem which the opposition of phenomena or noumena was intended to solve. Phenomena are related to noumena as the trees to the wood, not as a compound to its atoms. The solution of the difficulty is thus only to be found in the type of consciousness which contains both — and this, Hegel says, is self-consciousness.] CONSCIOUSNESS lias found "seeing" and "hearing," etc., pass away in the dialectic process of senseexperience, and has, at the stage of perception, arrived at thoughts which, however, it brings together in the first instance in the unconditioned universal. This unconditioned element, again, if it were taken as inert essence bare and simple, would itself be nothing else than the one-sided extreme of self-existence (Fiirsichseyn) ; for the non-essential would then stand over against it. But if thus related to the latter, it would be itself unessential, and consciousness would not have got disentangled from the deceptions of perception ; whereas this universal has proved to be one which has passed out of such conditioned separate existence and returned into itself.

This unconditioned universal, which henceforward is the true object of consciousness, is still object of consciousness ; consciousness has not yet grasped its principle, or notion, qua notion. There is an essential distinction between the two which must be drawn. On the one hand, consciousness is aware that the object has passed from its relation to an other back into itself, and thereby become inherentlj^ and implicitly {an sich) notion ; but, on the other hand, consciousness is not yet the notion explicitly or for itself, and consequently it does not know itself in that reflected object. We 126 Phenomenology of Mind (who are analysing experience) found this object arise through the process of consciousness in such a way that consciousness is imphcated and involved in the development of the object, and the reflection is the same on both sides, i.e. there is only one reflection. But because in this movement consciousness had as its content merely the objective entity, and not consciousness as such, the result has to be given an objective significance for consciousness ; consciousness, however, still withdrawing from what has arisen, so that the latter in objective form is the essential reahty to consciousness. Understanding has, indeed, eo if so, done away with its own untruth and the untruth in its object. What has thereby come to view is the notion of the truth as imphcit inherent truth, which is not yet notion, or lacks a consciously explicit existence for itself (Fiirsichseyn) , and is something which understanding allows to have its way without knowing itself in it. It works out its own reality for itself, so that consciousness has no share in its process of free reahsation, but merely looks on and apprehends that reahsation as a naked fact. It is, consequently, our business in the first instance to step into its place and be the notion, which works up into shape what is contained in the result. With this complete formation of the object, which is presented to consciousness as a bare existent fact {ein Seyendes), mere conscious awareness becomes for the first time conceptual consciousness, conscious comprehension.

The result arrived at was an unconditioned universal, in the first instance in the negative and abstract sense that consciousness negated its one-sided notions and abstracted them: it surrendered them. This result, however, has inherently a positive significance ; it has established the unity of existence-for-self, and existence-for-another ; in other words, absolute opposites are immediately posited as one and the same reality. At first this seems to affect merely the formal relation of the moments to one another. But to be for-self and to be for-another constitutes the content itself as well, because the opposition, looked at truly, can have no other nature than what has come about in the result — viz. that the content, taken in perception for truth, belongs, in point of fact, solely to the form, and is dissipated into its unity. This content is at the same time universal ; there can be no other content which by its peculiar constitution would refuse to return into this unconditioned universahty. Such a content would be some specific way or other of being for-itself and taking up a relation to something else. But to be in general for-self and to stand in relation to something else constitutes the very nature and meaning of that whose truth lies in being unconditionally universal ; and the result is through and through universal.

Since, however, this unconditioned universal is an object for consciousness, the distinction of form and content makes its appearance within it ; and, in the shape of content, the moments have the aspect in which they were first presented — that of being on one side a universal medium of many substantial elements, and, on the other, a unit reflected into self, where their substantial independence is overthrown and done away with. The former dissolves the independence of the thing, is the condition of passivity 128 Phenomenology of Mind which consists in being something for something else ; the latter is its individual subsistence, its being something on its own account {fiir sicli). We have to see what shape these moments take in the unconditioned universal which is their essential nature. It is obvious at the outset that, by existing only in this universal, they do not in general he any longer apart from one another, but rather are in themselves essentially selfcancelhng aspects, and what is estabhshed is only their transition into one another. One moment, then, appears as imiversal medium, or as the subsistence of independent constituents, as the reahty that has stepped aside. The independence of these constituent elements, however, is nothing else than this medium ; i.e. this universal is simply and entirely the plurality of such diverse universals. That the miiversal is fcr se in -undivided unity with this plurality means, however, that these elements are each where the other is ; they m.utually permeate one another — without touching one another, because, conversely, the manifold diversity is equally independent. Along with that, too, goes the fact that they are absolutely pervious and porous, or are cancelled and superseded. To be thus superseded, again, or the reduction of this diversity to bare and simple self-existence, is nothing else than the medium itself, and this is the independence of the different elements. In otlier words, the elements set up as independent pass directly over into their unity, and their unity directly into its exphcit diversity, and the latter back once again into the reduction to unity. This process is what is called Force. One of its moments, where Force takes the form of a dispersion of the independent elements each with a

being of its own, is the Expression of Force ; when, however, force takes the form of that wherein they disappear and vanish, it is Force proper, force withdrawn from expressing itself and driven back into itself. But in the first place force driven back into itself must express itself ; and, secondly, in that expression it is still force existing within itself, as much as in thus being within itself it is expression. " When we thus keep both moments in this immediate unity, it is Understanding, to which the conception of force belongs, that is, properly speaking, the principle which carries the difierent moments qua different. For per se they should not be different ; the distinction consequently exists only in thought. Stated otherwise, only the mere conception of force has been put forward in the above, not its reahsation. In point of fact, however, force is the rmconditioned universal, which is in itself just what it is for something else, or which holds its difference within itself — for it is nothing else than existence-for-an-other. Hence for force to be what it truly is, it has to be completely set free from thought, and put forward as the substantial reality of these differences, that is, first the substance qua the entire force remaining essentially self-contained (an und fiir sich), and then its differences as substantial entities, or as moments subsisting each on its own account. Force as such, force as driven back within itself, is in this way by itself an excluding unit, for which the unfolding of the elements or differences is another thing subsisting separately ; and thus there are set up two sides, distinct and independent. But force is also the whole, or it remains what, in its very conception, it is ; that is to say, these differences remain

130 Phenomenology of Mind mere forms, superficial vanishing " moments. ^ Ine differences between force proper, withdrawn into itself, and force unfolded and expressed in independent constituent elements, would at the same time have no being at all if they had no subsistence ; i.e. force would have no being if it did not really exist in these opposite ways. But to exist in this way as opposite aspects means nothing else than that both moments are themselves at the same time independent. It is this process we have now to deal with — the process by which both moments get themselves fixed as independent and then cancel their independence again. Looked at broadly, it is manifest that this process is nothing else than the process of perceiving, where the aspects, both percipient and content perceived, are at once inseparably miited as regards the process of grasping the truth, and yet, by that very fact, each aspect is at the same time reflected into itself, is something on its own account. In the present case these two aspects are elements or moments of force ; they subsist within one unity, just as much as this unity, which appears as the middle term for the distinct and independent extremes, always gets broken up into these very extremes, which only become such through this taking place. Thus the process, which formerly took the shape of the self-negation of contradictory conceptions, here assumes objective form, and is a movement of force, the result of which is to bring out the " unconditioned imiversal " as something which is not objective — which is the inner (unperceived) being of things. .^^

Force, as thus determined, since it is taken as force, or as reflected into itself, is the one side of its notion and meaning : but a substantiated extreme, and, moreover, the extreme established with the characteristic of oneness. In virtue of this, the subsistence of the elements which have arisen falls outside it, and is something other than it. Since of necessity it has to he this subsistence, i.e. to express, externaUse itself, its expression takes the form that the other approaches it and incites it. But, in point of fact, since it must necessarily express itself, it has within itself this other, which to begin with took up a position as something outside it. The latter (this other) must be retracted, in order that force should be estabhshed as a single " one," and its essential nature — which consists in self-expression — put forward as an other, approaching it externally. Force itself is rather this universal medium for the subsistence of the moments as constituent elements ; or, in other words, it has expressed or externalised itself, and what was to be something outside it attracting or inciting it is really force itself. It exists now as the medium of the constituent elements which have been evolved. But at the same time it is in its very nature one and single, and has essentially the form of being that in which these various elements are superseded. This oneness is in consequence now something other than, external to, force, since force takes its place as the medium for the elements to exist in ; and force therefore has this its essential being outside itself. Since, however, it must of necessity be this essential nature, which as yet it is not affirmed to be, this other comes forward soliciting or inciting it to reflect into self, to turn this pseudo-external factor into an aspect of itself ; in other words, this other cancels its external expression. In point of fact, however, it is force itself that is thus reflected into self,

132 Plienmnenology of Mind that is the sublation of the external expression. The oneness vanishes as it appeared, viz. as something external ; force is that very other, is force thrust back into itself. What took the character of an external other, and incited force at once to expression and to return into self, turns out directly to be itself force : for the other shows itself to be luiiversal medium as well as one and single, and shows this in such a way that each of the forms assumed appears at the same time to be merely a vanishing moment. Consequently force, in that there is an other for it, and it is for an other, has as a whole not yet developed its complete meaning. There are two forces present at the same time ; the notion of both is no doubt the same notion, but it has passed out of its unity into duality. Instead of the opposition continuing to be entirely and essentially a mere moment, it appears to have escaped from the control of the unity and to have become, owing to this diremption, two quite independent forces. We have now to see more precisely what sort of situation this independence introduces.

To begin with, the second force stands towards the force incited in the character of inciting force, and, moreover, with respect to its content, plays the part of universal medium. But since that second force consists essentially in an alternation of these two moments and is itself force, it is likewise, in point of fact, their imiversal medium only then when it is incited or solicited to being so ; and in the same way, too, it is negative unity, or incites and leads to the retraction of force, only by being incited thereto. As a result, this distinction, which took place between one force re- garded as inciting and tlie other as incited, turns also into one and the same reciprocal interchange of characteristics. The interplay of the two forces in this way arises from and consists in the two being thus determined with opposite characteristics, in their being for one another in virtue of this determination and in the complete and direct exchange of their characteristics— a transition from one to the other, whereby alone these determinations, in which the forces seem to appear independently, have being. For example, the inciting force is set up as universal medium, and, on the other hand, the force incited as a force repressed. But the former is universal medium just by the very fact of the latter being repressed : that is to say, this latter is really what incites the former, and makes it the medium it claims to be. The former gets the character it has only through the other, and is an inciting force only so far as it is incited by the latter to be so. And it loses just as readily this character given to it, for this character passes, or rather has already passed, into the character of the other. The former, acting in an external way, takes the part of universal medium, but only by its having been incited by the other force to do so. This means, however, that the latter gives it that position, and is really itselj essentially universal medium : it gives the inciting agency this character just because this other character is essentially its own, i.e. because it is really its own self.

To complete our insight into the principle of this process, we may notice, further, that the distinctions themselves reveal distinction in a twofold manner. They are, on the one hand, distinctions of 134 Phenomenology of Mind content, since one extreme is force reflected into itself, while the other is a medium for the constituent elements involved : on the other hand, they appear as distinctions of form, since one incites and the other is incited, the former being active, the latter passive. As regards the distinction of content, they are in a general way distinct, or distinct for us [who are analysing the process] ; as regards form, however, they are independent, in their relation they break away from one another of themselves, and stand opposed. In the perception of the movement of force, consciousness becomes aware that the extremes, in both these aspects, are nothing fer se, that rather these sides, in which their distinction of nature was meant to consist, are merely vanishing moments, an immediate transition of each into its opposite. For us, however [who are analysing the process], it was also true, as stated above, that per se the distinctions, qiia distinctions of content and form, vanished : and on the side of form, the active, inciting, or independent factor was in its very nature the same as what, from the side of content, was presented as repressed force, force driven back into itself ; the passive, incited, or related factor was, from the side of form, the same as what, from the side of content, took shape as universal medium for the many constituent elements.

^ From this we see that the notion of Force becomes actual when resolved into two forces, and we see too how it comes to be so. These two forces exist as independent entities : but their existence lies in a movement each towards each, of such a kind that in order to be, each has in reality to get its position purely through the other ; that is to say, their being has purely the significance of disappearance. They are not hke extremes, that keep to themselves something positively fixed, and merely transmit an external property to one another through their common medium and by external contact : they are what they are solely in this mediimi and in their contact with each other. We have there immediately both force as it is independently, force repressed within itself, and also its expression, force inciting and force being incited. These moments are thus not divided and set up as two extremes, offering each other only an opposite pole : rather their true nature is simply and solely to be each through the other, and to be in the first instance no more than just what each is thus through the other, since it is just that. They have thus, in point of fact, no substances of their own which could support and maintain them. The notion of force rather maintains itself as the essence in its very actuality : force when actual exists wholly and only in its expression ; and this, at the same time, is nothing else than a process of cancelling itself. This actual force, when represented as detached from its expression and existing by itself, is force driven back into itseK ; but this feature is itself, in point of fact, as appears from the foregoing, merely a moment in the expression of force. The true nature of force thus remains merely the thought or idea of force ; the moments in its realisation, its substantial independence and its process, rush, without let or hindrance, together into one single undivided unity, a unity which is not force withdrawn into itself (for this is merely one of those moments), but is its notion qua notion. The realisation of force is, then, at the same time dissipation or loss of reality;

136 Phenomenology of Mind it has thereby become something quite different, viz. this universahty, which understanding knows from the start or immediately to be its essential nature, and which shows itself, too, to be the essence of it in what is supposed to be its reaHty, in the actual substances. So far as we look on the first universal as the notion of understanding, where force does not yet exist for itself, the second is now its essential reahty, as it is revealed in and for itself. Or, conversely, if we look on the first universal as the immediate, which should be an actual object for consciousness, then this second has the characteristic of being the negative of sensuously objective force : it is force, in the form in which, in its true being, force exists merely as object for understanding. The first Vt^ould be force withdrawn into itself, i.e. force as substance ; the second, however, is the inner being of things qua imier, which is one and the same with the notion qua notion. This true being of things has here the characteristic that it does not exist immediately for consciousness ; rather, consciousness takes up a mediated relation to the inner ; in the form of understanding it looks through the intervening play of forces into the real and true backgromid of things. The middle term combining the two extremes, understanding and the inner of things, is the explicitly evolved being of force, which is now and henceforth a vanishing process for understanding itself. Hence it is called Appearance (Erscheinung) ; for being which is per se straightway non-being we call a show, a semblance (Schein). It is, however, not merely a show, but appearance, a totality of seeming {Schein). This totahty as totahty or universal is what makes up the inner world, the play of forces

in the sense of its rejlection into itself. There consciousness has before itself in objective form the things of perception as they truly are, i.e. as moments turning, without halt or separate subsistence, directly into their opposite, the "one" changing immediately into the universal, the essential becoming at once something unessential, and vice versa. This play of forces is consequently the development of the negative ; but its true nature is the positive element, viz. the universal, the implicit object, the object existing 'per se. The being of this object for consciousness is mediated through the movement of appearance, by which the content of perception and the sensuous objective world as a whole, get merely negative significance. There consciousness is turned back upon itself as the truth ; but, being consciousness, it again makes this truth into an inner being of the object, and distinguishes this reflection of things from its own reflection into self : just as the mediating process likewise is for it still an objective process. This inner natm:e is therefore for it an extreme placed over against it. But it is on that accotmt the truth for it, because therein, as in something essentially real, it possesses at the same time the certainty of its own self, the moment of its own self-existence. But it is not yet conscious of this basis [its self-existence], for the independence, its being on its own account, v/hich should have the inner world within it, would be nothing else than the negative process. This negative process, however, is for consciousness still objective vanishing appearance, and not yet its own proper self-existence (Filrsichseyn). Hence the inner is no doubt taken to be

138 Phenomenology of Mind notion, but consciousness does not yet know the nature of the notion. Within this inner truth, this absolute universal which has got rid of the opposition between imiversal and particular, and become the object of understanding, is a supersensible world which henceforth opens up as the true world, lying beyond the sensuous world which is the world of appearance. Away remote from the changing vanishing present (Diesseits) hes the permanent beyond (Jenseits) : an immanent inherent reahty {ein Ansich), which is the first and therefore imperfect manifestation of Reason, i.e. it is merely the pure element where the truth finds its abode and its essential being. Our object henceforward has thus the form of a syllogistic inference (Schluss), whose extremes are the inner being of things and understanding, and its middle term the sphere of appearance. The course of this inferential process, however, furnishes the further characterisation of what imderstanding detects in the inner world by the aid of the middle term ; and gives rise to the experience understanding goes through regarding this relation of the combined and mutually inferrible terms. The inner world is so far for consciousness a bare and simple beyond, because consciousness does not as yet find itself in it. It is empty, for it is merely the nothingness of appearance, and positively the naked universal. This type of inwardness suits those who say that the inner being of things cannot be known ;* but the reason for the position would have to be taken in some other sense. Certainly there is no laiowledge to be had of this

* Cp. Goethe, " /m innern der Natur," etc. inner world, as we have it here ; not, however, owing to reason being too short-sighted, or limited, or whatever you care to call it (on this point there is as yet nothing known at this stage ; we have not gone deep enough for that yet), but on account simply of the nature of the case, because in the void there is nothing known, or, putting it from the point of view of the other side, because its very characteristic lies in being beyond consciousness. The result is, of course, the same if you place a bhnd man amid the wealth of the supersensible world (if it has a wealth, whether this be a content peculiarly its own, or whether consciousness itself be this content), and if you place one with sight in absolute darkness, or, if you like, in pure light, supposing the supersensible world to be this. The seeing man sees in that pure light as little as in absolute darkness, and just as much as the blind man in the ample fulness which lay before him. If there were really nothing further ado with the inner sphere and with our being bound up along with it by means of the world of appearance, then there would be nothing left but to stop at the phenomenal world, i.e. take something for truth about which we know that it is not true. Or in order that there may be something in this empty void — which, while it originally came about as a state devoid of objective things, has, however, since it is emptiness pure and simple, to be taken to be also devoid of all mental relations and distinctions of consciousness qua consciousness — in order that in this complete vacuity, which is even called the holy of hohes, the inner sanctuary, there may yet be something, we should be driven to fill it up with dreamings, appearances, produced by consciousness itself. It

140 Phenomenology of Mind would have to be content with being treated so badly, for it would not deserve anything better, since even dreams are something better than its own barren emptiness. The inner world, or the supersensible beyond, has, however, arisen : it comes to us out of the sphere of appearance, and the latter is its mediating agency : in other words, appearance is its essential nature and, in point of fact, its filhng. The supersensible is the estabhshed truth of the sensible and perceptual. The truth of the sensible and the perceptual lies, however, in being appearance. The supersensible is then appearance qua appearance. We distort the proper meanmg of this, if we take it to mean that the supersensible is therefore the sensible world, or the world as it is for immediate sense-certainty and perception. For, on the contrary, appearance is just not the world of sense-knowledge and perception as positively being, but this world as superseded or established in truth as an inner world. It is often said that the supersensible is not appearance ; but by appearance is thereby meant not appearance, but rather the sensible world taken as itself real actuality. Understanding, which is our object here, finds itself in this position, that, for it, the inner world has come about, to begin with, only as the imphcit inherent being, universal and still without a filling. The play of forces has simply and solely this negative significance of not being something j^er se; and its only positive significance is that of being the mediating agency, but outside understanding. The relation of understanding to the inner world through mediation is, however, its own process, by which the inner world will be found to receive fullness of content.

The play of forces is what understanding has directly to do with ; but the real truth for it is the inner world bare and simple. The movement of force is consequently the truth only by being in like manner something simple. Regarding this play of forces, however, we saw that its pecuharity lay in this, that the force which is awakened into activity by another force is just on that account the inciting agency for this other force, which thereby itself only then becomes an inciting force. We have here in this way merely direct and immediate interchange or complete exchange of the characteristic which constitutes the sole content of what comes before us, viz. the fact of being either universal medium or negative unity. It ceases immediately on its entrance in determinate form to be what it was on entering: it awakens or incites, by its appearance in determinate shape, the other side, which thereby gives itself expression, i.e. the latter is now directly what the first was to be. Each of these two sides, the relation of inciting and the relation of the opposed determinate content, is on its own account an absolute process of permutation and transposition. But these two relations are again themselves one and the same, and the formal distinction of being incited and of inciting to activity, is the same as the distinction of content, i.e. the distinction between the incited factor as such, viz. the passive medium, on the one side, and the inciting factor, viz. the active medium, the negative unity, or the "one" on the other side. In this way there disappears all distinction of contrasted and opposed particular forces, which were meant to be present in this process ; for they rested solely on the above distinctions. And, along with both those distinctions, the distinction between

142 Phenomenology of Mind the forces collapses likewise into merely one. There is thus neither force nor inciting and being incited to action, nor the characteristic of being a stable medium and a unity reflected into self, there is neither a particular which is something on its own account, nor are there diverse opposites. What is found in this flux of thoroughgoing change is merely difference as universal difference, or difference into which the various opposites have been resolved. This difference as universal, consequently, is what constitutes the ultimate simple element in that play of forces, and is the resultant truth of that process. It is the Law of Force.* The absolute flux of the world of appearance passes into bare and simple difference through its relation to the simplicity of the inner being, the simplicity apprehended by understanding. The inner being is in the first instance merely the implicit universal. This implicit simple universal, however, is essentially absolute universal dift'erence as well ; for it is the outcome of the change itself, or change is its very nature. But change, when planted in the inner reality as it [change] truly is, forthwith is taken up into that reality as equally absolute universal difference at peace with itself, and remaining at one with itself. In other words, negation is an essential moment of the universal ; and negation, or mediation in the universal, is universal difference. This difference is expressed in the law, which is the stable presentment or

* Cp. Helmholtz, "It is precisely in the purest form of the expression of force — viz. in mechanical force which acts on a mass-point — that we find most clearly brought out that force is merely the objectified law of action." — Lectures and Addresses, v., Eng. trans.. Vol. I., p. 326. picture of unstable appearance. The supersensible world is in this way a quiescent " kingdom of laws," no doubt beyond the world of perception — for this exhibits the law only through incessant change — but likewise present in it, and its direct immovable copy or image. This kingdom of laws is indeed the truth for understanding ; and that truth finds its content in the distinction which lies in the law. At the same time, however, this kingdom of laws is only the prehminary truth, and does not give all the fullness of the world of appearance. The law is present therein, but is not all the appearance present; under ever- varying circumstances the law has an ever-varying actual existence. Thereby appearance continues to keep one aspect which is not in the inner world; i.e. appearance is not yet in very truth established as appearance, as that whose independent being has been done away with. This defect in the law has to be brought out in the law itself. What seems defective in it is that while it no doubt has difference within it, it contains this in a merely universal indeterminate way. So far, however, as it is not law in general, but a law, it has determinateness within it ; and as a result there are found an indeterminate plurahty of laws. But this pluiahty is rather itself a defect ; it contradicts the principle of understanding, for which, since it is consciousness of the simple inner being, truth is the inherently universal unity. It must, therefore, let the many laws coalesce into a single law, just as, e.g., the law by which a stone falls, and that by which the heavenly bodies move have been conceived as one law. When the laws thus coincide, however, they lose their specific character.

144 Phenomenology of Mind The law becomes more and more abstract and superficial, and in consequence we find as a fact, not the unity of these various determinate laws, but a law which leaves out their specific character; just as the one law, which combines in itself the laws of falhng terrestrial bodies, and of the movements of celestial bodies, does not, in point of fact, express both kinds of laws. The unification of all laws in universal attraction expresses no fiu'ther content than just the bare concept of the law itself, a concept which is therein set doAvn as existing. Universal attraction says merely that everything has a constant distinction for anything else. Understanding pretends by that to have found a universal law which gives expression to universal reality as such ; but, in point of fact, it has merely found the conception of law itself, although in such a way that it at the same time thereby declares all reality to be in its very nature conformed to law. The idea of universal attraction has, therefore, to this extent great importance, that it is directed against that unthinking way of representing reality, to which everything appears in the shape of accident and chance, and for which determinateness, specificity, takes the form of sensuous independence.

In contrast, then, with determmate laws stands universal attraction, or the bare conception of law. In so far as this pure conception is looked on as the essentially real, or as the true inner being, the determinateness characterising the specific law itself belongs still to the sphere of appearance, or rather to sensible existence. But the pure conception of law transcends not merely the law, which, being itself a determinate law, stands contrasted with other determinate laws, but also transcends law as such. The determinateness, of which we spoke, is itself strictly a mere vanishing moment, which can no longer come forward here as an essential entity {Wesenheit), for it is only the law which is the truth here : but the conception of law is turned against the law itself. That is to say, in the law distinction itself is immediately apprehended and taken up into the universal, thereby, however, making the moments, whose relation it expresses, subsist as mutually indifferent and inherently real entities. These parts of the distinction found in the law are, however, at the same time themselves determinate aspects. The pure concept of law, as universal attraction, must, to get its true significance, be so apprehended that in it, as the absolutely single and simple, the distinctions which are present in law as such, return again themselves into the inner being, qua bare and simple unity. This unity is the inner " necessity " of the law.

The law is thereby present in a twofold form. In one case it is there as law in which the differences are expressed as independent moments ; in the other it is in the form of a simple withdrawal into itself, which agaia can be called Force, but in the sense not of repressed force [spoken of above], but force in general, or the concept of force, an abstraction which absorbs the distinctions involved in what attracts and is attracted. In this sense, e.g., simple electricity is force ; the expression of difference falls, however, within the law ; this difference is positive and negative electricity. In the case of the motion of falhng bodies force is the simple element, gravity, which has the law that the magnitudes of the different factors in the motion, the time spent, and the space traversed, are 146 Phenomenology of Mind to one another in the relation of root and square. Electricity itself is not difference fer se, is not in its essential natui'e a twofold entity consisting of positive and negative electricity ; hence it is often said it has the law of being so and so in the way indicated, or again, that it has the property of expressing itself in this fashion. This property is doubtless the essential and pecuhar property of this force, i.e. it belongs to it necessarily. But necessity is here an empty phrase ; force must, just because it must, duphcate itself in this manner. Of course, if positive electricity is given, negative electricity is inherently necessary ; for the positive element only is by being related to a negative ; in other words, the positive element in its very self involves difference from itself, just in the same way as the negative does. But that electricity as such should break itself up into parts in this way — this is not in itself a necessity. Electricity qua simple force is indifferent to its law — to be in the form of positive and negative; and if we call the former its notion and the latter its being, then its notion is indifferent to its being ; it merely has this as a property, which just means that this is not per se necessary to it. This indifference takes another form when it is said that to be positive and negative is involved in the definition of electricity, or that this is neither more nor less than its notion and its essence. Its being in that case would mean its existence in general. But in that definition the necessity of its existence is not contained ; it exists either because we find it, i.e. its existence is not necessary at all, or else it exists through other forces, i.e. the necessity of its existence is an external necessity. But in that

the determinateness of being through another is what the necessity consists in, we are back again to the plurahty of determinate laws, which we have just left in order to consider law as law. It is only with the latter that we can compare its notion as notion, or its necessity. This necessity, however, has in all these forms shown itself to be just an empty phrase. • There is still another way than that just indicated in which the indifference of law and force, or of notion and being, is found. In the law of motion, e.g., it is necessary for motion to be broken up into the elements time and space, or again, into distance and velocity. Since motion is merely the relation of these factors, motion, the universal, has in this way certainly distinct parts in its own self. But now these parts, time and space, or distance and velocity, do not express in themselves this origination from a single unity. They are indifferent the one to the other. Space is thought of as able to be without time, time without space, and distance at least without velocity — just as their magnitudes are indifferent the one to the other, since they are not related like positive and negative, and consequently do not refer to one another by their very nature. The necessity of partition into distinct factors, then, we certainly do have here ; but not the necessity of the parts as such for one another. On that account, however, that first necessity too is itself a merely delusory false necessity. For motion is not itself thought of as something simple or as bare essence, but as, from the first, divided into elements ; time and space are in themselves its independent parts or its real elements : in other words, distance and velocity are modes of being, or ways of thinking, each of which

148 Phenomenology of Mind can very well be without the other ; and motion is consequently no more than their superficial relation, not their true nature. If it is represented as simple essence or as force, motion is no doubt gravity ; but this does not, properly spealdng, contain these distinctions. The distinction is, then, in both cases no distinction of an inherent or essential kind. Either the universal, force, is indifferent to the division into parts, which is found in the law, or else the distinctions, the parts of the law, are indifferent to one another. Understanding, however, does have the notion of this distinction per se, just by the fact that law is in part the inner being, the inherent nature, but is in it at the same time distinguished. That this distinction is in this way mner distinction is shown by the fact that law is bare and simple force, or is the notion of that distinction, and thus is a distinction of the notion. But still this inner distinction falls to begin with only within understanding, and is not yet estabhshed in the fact itself. It is thus only its own necessity to which un.derstanding gives expression — the distinction, that is to say, is one which it makes only so as at the same time to express that the distinction is not to be a distinction in the nature of the fact itself. This necessity, which is merely verbal, is thus a rehearsal of the moments which make up the cycle of necessity. They are no doubt distinct, but their distinction is at the same time explicitly stated to be not a distinction of the fact itself, and consequently is itself again straightway cancelled and transcended. This process is called Explanation. A law is expressed ; from this its inherently universal element, or the ground in the sense

of force, is distinguished ; but, regarding this distinction, it is asserted that it is no distinction, rather that the ground has entirely the same constitutive nature as the law. For example, the particular occurrence of hghtning is apprehended as universal, and this universal is expressed as the law of electricity ; the explanation thereupon merges the law in force as the essence of the law. This force is, then, so constituted that, when it finds expression, opposite electrical discharges appear, and these again disappear into one another. In other words, force has exactly the same constitutive character as law ; both are thus declared to be in no way distiuct. The distinctions are pure universal expression or law and pure force ; but both have the same content, the same constitutive character ; thus the distinction between them qua distinction of content, i.e. of fact, is also again withdrawn. In this tautological process understandiug, as the above shows, holds fast to the changeless unity of its object, and the process takes effect solely within understanding itself, not in the object. It is an explanation that not only explains nothing, but is so plain that, while it makes as if it would say something different from what is already said, it really says nothing at all, but merely repeats the same thing over again. So far as the fact itself goes, this process gives rise to nothing new ; the process is only of account as a process of understanding. In it, however, we now get acquainted with just what we missed in the case of the law — absolute change itself ; for this process, when looked at more narrowly, is directly the opposite of itself. It sets up, that is, a distinction which is not only for us no distinction, but which it itself cancels

150 . Phenomenology of Mind as distinction. This is the same process of change which was formerly manifested as the play of forces. In the latter we found the distinction of inciting and incited force, or force expressing itself, and force withdrawn into itself ; but these were distinctions which in reality were no distinctions, and therefore were also immediately cancelled again. We have here not merely the naked unity, so that no distinction could be set up at all ; the process we have is rather this, that a distinction is certainly made, but because it is no distinction, it is again superseded. Thus, then, with the process of explaining, we see the ebb and flow of change, which was formerly characteristic of the sphere of appearance, and lay outside the inner world, finding its way into the region of the supersensible itself. Our consciousness, however, has passed from the inner being as an object over to understanding on the other side, and finds the changing process there. The change is in this way not yet a process of the fact itself, but rather presents itself before us as pure change, just by the content of the moments of change remaining the same. Since, however, the notion qua notion of understanding is the same as the inner nature of things, this change becomes for understanding the law of the inner world. Understanding thus learns that it is a law in the sphere of appearance for distinctions to come about which are no distinctions. In other words, it learns that what is selfsame is self-repulsive, and, similarly, that the distinctions are only such as in reality are none and cancel one another, or that what is not selfsame is self-attractive. Here we have a second law, whose content is the opposite of

what formerly was called law, viz. the invariable and unchanging self-identical distinction ; for this new law expresses rather the process of Hke becoming unUke, and unhke becoming hke. The notion demands of the unreflective mind to bring both laws together, and become conscious of their opposition. Of course the second is also a law, an inner self-identical bemg ; but it is rather a selfsameness of the unlike, a constancy of inconstancy. In the play of forces this law turned out to be just this absolute transition and pure change ; the selfsame, force, spht into an opposition, that in the first instance appeared as a substantial independent distinction, which, however, in point of fact proved to be none. For it is the selfsame which repels itself from itself, and this element repelled is in consequence essentially self-attracted, for it is the same ; the distinction made, since it is none, thus cancels itself again. The distinction is hence set forth as a distinction on the part of the fact itself, or as an absolute (objective) distinction ; and this distinction on the part of the fact is thus nothing but the selfsame, that which has repelled itself from itself, and consequently only set up an opposition which is none.

By means of this principle, the first supersensible world, the changeless kingdom of laws, the immediate ectype and copy of the world of perception, has turned round into its opposite. The law was in general, hke its differences, self-identical ; now, however, it is established that each side is, on the contrary, the opposite of itself. The self-identical repels itself from itself, and the self-discordant sets up to be selfsame. In truth, with a characteristic of this kind, distinction is only inner distinction, or immanent distinction, 152 Phenomenology of Mind since the like is unlike itself, and the unlike like itself. This second supersensible world is in this way the inverted world {verkehrte Welt), and, moreover, since one aspect is abeady present in the first supersensible world, the inverted form of this first. The inner being is, thereby, in its character of appearance, completed. For the first supersensible world was only the immediate raising of the world of perception into the element of universahty. It had its necessary counterpart in this world of perception, which still retains as its own the principle of change and alteration. The first kingdom of laws dispenses with this principle, but preserves it in the form of an inverted world.

By the law of this inverted world, then, the selfsame in the first world is the unhke of itself, and the unhke in the first is equally unlike . to itself, or it becomes like itself. Expressed in determinate moments, this will assume the form that what by the law of the first is sweet, is, in this inner, inverted reality, sour ; what is there black is here white. What, by the law of the first, was north pole in the case of the magnet, is, in its other supersensible inner world (viz. in the earth), south pole ; while what was there south pole is here north pole. Similarly, what by the first law is in the case of electricity the oxygen pole becomes in its other supersensible reahty hydrogen pole ; and conversely, what is there the pole of hydrogen, becomes here the pole of oxygen. To take another sphere of experience : revenge on an enemy is, according to the primitive immediate law, the supreme satisfaction of injured individuality. This law, however — that of standing up against one who does not treat me as a substantial self, letting him see that I am a substantial being, and even doing away with him as a reahty— this law is converted, by the principle of the other world, into the very opposite, viz., into the reinstatement of myself as the true reality through the removal of the alien hostile being in self-destruction.* If now this inversion, which is brought out in the punishment of crime, is made into a law, it also is again only the law of a world which has an inverted supersensuous world standing in antithesis to itself, where that which is despised in the former comes to honour, and that which in the former is honoured meets with contempt. The punishment which, by the law of the former, disgraces a man and annihilates him, turns round in its inverted world into the pardoning grace which preserves his being and brings him to honour.

Looked at on the surface, this inverted world is the antithesis of the first in the sense that it has the latter outside itself, and repels that world from itself as an inverted reahty ; that the one is the sphere of appearance, while the other is the inherent being ; that the one is the world as it is for an other, the other again the world as it is for itself. In this way, to use the previous examples, what tastes sweet is properly, or inwardly in the thing, sour ; or what is north pole in the case of the actual magnet belonging to the sphere of appearance, would be, in the inner or essential being, south pole. What is shown to be oxygen pole * The primitive procedure of individual vengeance finds its inner meaning revealed in the ethically justifiable ^jrocedure of punishment. But ethical punishment is really self-punishment (cp. Plato's Gorgias). Punishment, however, Hegel goes on to say, has an inner meaning of its own too. 154 Phenomenology of Mind in electricity as a phenomenon, would be hydrogen pole in the case of electricity not falhng within the sphere of appearance. Or again, an act which m appearance is a crime would m its inner nature be capable of being really good — a bad act may have a good intention ; punishment is only in appearance punishment ; in itself or in another world it might well be, for the criminal, a benefit. But such oppositions of inner and outer, appearance and supersensible, in the sense of two sorts of reahty, are no longer to be found here. The differences repelled are not divided anew and assigned to two substances such as would support them and lend them a separate subsistence, the result of which would be that understandiag would leave the iuner region, and fall back again on its previous position. The one aspect or substance would be once more the world of perception, where the one of those two laws would carry on its existence, and in opposition to it an inner world, just such a sensible world as the first, but in the sphere of ideas ; one that could not be indicated, seen, heard, and tasted as a sensible world, and yet would be thought of as such a sensible world. But in point of fact, if the one element set up is a perceived reahty, and its inherent being, as its inverted form, is at the same time a sensuously represented element, then sour, which would be the inherent nature of the sweet thing, is a real thing just as much as the latter would be a sour thing ; black, which would be the inherent nature of white, is the actual black ; the north pole, which is the true reahty of the south pole, is the north pole present in the same magnet ; the oxygen pole, the inherent nature of the pole of hydrogen, is the given oxygen pole of the same voltaic pile. The actual

crime, however, finds its inversion, and its inherent nature qua possibihty, in the intention as such, but not in a good intention ; for the truth of intention is simply the deed itself. The crime, so far as its content goes, recoils upon itself, finds its inversion in actual punishment ; this is the reconcihation of the law with the reality set up against it in crime. Finally, the actual punishment carries its inverted reality with it, in such a way that it is a kind of realisation of the law, whereby the activity, which the law exercises in the form of punishment, is cancelled in the process, a manner of realisation through which the law, from being actively operative, becomes again quiescent and authoritative, and the conflict of individuality with it, and of it with individuality, is extinguished. From the idea, then, of inversion which constitutes the essential nature of one aspect of the supersensible world, we must dissociate the sensuous idea of keeping distinctions substantively fixed in a difierent element that sustains them ; and this absolute notion of distinction must be set forth and apprehended purely as inner distinction, self-repulsion of the selfsame as selfsame, and likeness of the unhke as unlike. We have to think pure flux, opposition within opposition itself, or Contradiction. For in the distinction, which is an internal distinction, the opposite is not only one of two factors — if so, it would not be an opposite, but a bare existent — it is the opposite of an opposite, or the other is itself directly and immediately present within it. No doubt I put the opposite here and the other, of which it is the opposite, there ; that is, I place the opposite on one side, taking it by itself

156 Phenomenology of Mind without the other. Just on that account, howev ?, since I have here the opposite all by itself, it is the opposite of its own self, that is, it has in point of fact the other immediately within itself. Thus the supersensible world, which is the inverted world, has at the same time reached out beyond the other world and has in itself that other ; it is to itself conscious of being inverted {fiir sick verhelirte), i.e. it is the inverted form of itself ; it is that world itself and its opposite in a single unity. Only thus is it distinction as internal distinction, or distinction fer se ; in other words, only thus is it in the form of Infinity. By means of infinity we see law attaining the form of inherent necessity, and so reahsing its complete nature ; and all moments of the sphere of appearance are thereby taken up into the inner realm. That the simple and ultimate nature of law is necessity means, according to the foregoing analysis, (a) that it is a self-identical element, which, however, is inherently distinction ; or that it is selfsameness which repels itself from itself, breaks asunder into two factors. What was called simple force duplicates itself, and through its infinity is law. It means (6) that what is thus sundered, constituting as it does the parts which are thought of as in the law, puts itself forward as subsisting, as stable ; and, if the parts are considered without the conception of internal distinction, then space and time, or distance and velocity, which appear as moments of gravity, are just as much indifferent and without necessary relation to one another as to gravity itself, or again as this bare gravity is indifferent to them, or as simple electricity is indifferent to positive and negative. But (c) by this conception of internal distinction, this unUke

and indifierent factor, space and time, etc., becomes a distinction, which is no distinction, or merely a distinction of what is selfsame, and whose essence lies in tinity. They are reciprocally awakened into activity as positive and negative by each other, and their being lies rather in their setting themselves up as not-being, and cancelhng themselves in the common unity. Both the factors distinguished subsist ; they are per se, and they are fer se as opposites, that is, are the oppositea of themselves ; they have their antithesis withia. them, and are merely one single unity. This bare and simple infinity, or the absolute notion, may be called the ultimate nature of hfe, the soul of the world, the universal hfe-blood, which courses everywhere, and whose flow is neither disturbed nor checked by any obstructing distinction, but is itself every distinction that arises, as well as that into which all distinctions are dissolved ; pulsating within itself, but ever motionless, shaken to its depths, but still at rest. It is self -identical, for the distinctions are tautological ; they are distinctions that are none. This self-identical reahty stands, therefore, in relation solely to itself. To itself ; which means this is an other, to which the relation points ; and relation to itself is, more strictly, breaking asunder ; in other words, that very self-identity is internal distinction. These sundered factors have, hence, each a separate being of their own ; each is an opposite— of an other ; and thus with each the other is therein if so facto expressly given ; or it is not the opposite of an other, but only the pure opposite ; and thus each is, therefore, in itself the opposite of itself. Or, agam, each is not an opposite at all, but exists purely for itself, a pure self-identical reahty, with no distinction

158 Phenomenology of Mind in it. This being so, we do not need to ash, still less to treat anxiety over such a question as philosophy, — or even regard this as a question philosophy cannot answer, — ' how distinction or otherness is to come out of this pure essence, how these are to be really got out of it/ For the process of disruption has already taken place ; distinction has been excluded from the selfidentical entity, and put on one side so far as it is concerned ; what should have been taken as the selfidentical is thus already one of the sundered elements, instead of being the absolute essential reality. That the self-identical breaks asunder means, therefore, juSt as truly that it supersedes itself as already sundered, that it cancels itself qua otherness. The unity which people usually have in mind when they say distinction cannot come out of unity, is, in poiut of fact, itself merely one moment of the process of disruption ; it is the abstraction of simpHcity, which stands in contrast with distinction. But in that it is abstraction, is merely one of the two opposed elements, the statement thus already imphes that the unity is the process of breaking asunder; for if the imity is a negative element, an opposite, then it is put forward precisely as that which contains opposition withiu it. The different aspects of diremption and of becoming self-identical are therefore hkewise merely this process of self- cancelling. For since the self-identical element, which should first divide itself asunder or pass into its opposite, is an abstraction, i.e. is already itself a sundered element, its diremption is eo if so a cancelUng of what it is, and thus the cancelhng of its being srmdered. The process of becoming selfidentical is likewise a process of diremption ; what becomes identical with itself thereby opposes itself to

disruption, that is, itself thereby puts itself on one side ; in other words, it becomes really something sundered. Infinitude, this absolute unrest of pure self-movement, such that whatever is determined in any way, e.g., as being, is really the opposite of this determinateness — has from the start been no doubt the very soul of all that has gone before ; but it is in the inner world that it has first come out exphcitly and definitely. The world of appearance, or the play of forces, aheady shows its operation ; but it is in the first instance as Explanation that it comes openly forward. And since it is at length an object for consciousness, and consciousness is aware of it as what it is, consciousness is in this way Self -consciousness. Understanding's function of explaining furnishes in the first instance merely the description of what self-consciousness is. Understanding cancels the distinctions present in Law, distinctions which have aheady become pure distinctions but are still indifferent, and puts them inside a single unity. Force. To bring about this identification, however, is at the same time and immediately a process of diremption ; for understanding removes the distinctions and sets up the oneness of force only by the fact that it creates a new distinction of force and law, which at the same time, however, is no distinction. And in spite of the fact that this distinction is at the same time no distinction, it goes on to deal with it and to cancel this distinction again, since it lets force have just the same constitutive character as law. This process or necessity is, however, in this form, still a necessity and a process of imderstanding, or the process as such is not the 'object of understanding ; instead,

160 Phenmnenology of Miiid understanding has as its objects in that process positive and negative electricity, distance, velocity, force of attraction, and a thousand other things — objects which make up the content of the moments of the process. It is just for that reason that there is so much satisfaction in explanation, because consciousness being there, if we may use such an expression, in direct conununion with itself, enjoys itself only. No doubt it there seems to be occupied with something else, but in point of fact it is busied all the while merely with itself. In the opposite law, as the inversion of the first law, or in internal distinction, infinitude doubtless becomes itself object of understanding. But once more understanding fails to do justice to infinity as such, since understanding assigns again to two worlds, or to two substantial elements, that which is distinction per se, — the self-repulsion of the selfsame, and the self-attraction of unhke factors. To understanding the process, as it is found in experience, is here an event that happens, and the selfsame and the unhke are predicates, whose reality is an underlying substratum. What is for understanding an object in a covering veil of sense, now comes before us in its essential form as a pure notion. This apprehension of distinction as it truly is, the apprehension of infinitude as such, is something for us [observing the course of the process], or is implicit, immanent. The exposition of its notion belongs to science. Consciousness, however, in the way it immediately has this notion, again appears as a peculiar form or new attitude of consciousness, which does not recognise its own essential nature in what has gone before, but looks upon it as something quite different.

Understanding 1 6 1 In that this notion of infinitude is its object, it is thus a consciousness of the distinction as one which at the same time is at once cancelled. Consciousness is for itself and on its own account, it is a distinguishiag of what is undistinguished, it is Self-consciousness. I distinguish myself from myself ; and therein I am immediately aware that this factor distinguished from me is not distinguished. I, the selfsame being, thrust myself away from myself ; but this which is distinguished, which is set up as unlike me, is immediately on its being distinguished no distinction for me. Consciousness of an other, of an object in general, is indeed itself necessarily self-consciousness, reflectedness into self, consciousness of self in its otherness. The necessary advance from the previous attitudes of consciousness, which found their true content to be a thing, something other than themselves, brings to hght this very fact that not merely is consciousness of a thing only possible for a self-consciousness, but that this selfconsciousness alone is the truth of those attitudes. But it is only for us [who trace this process] that this truth is actually present ; it is not yet so for the consciousness immersed in the experience. Self-consciousness has in the first iustance become a specific reahty on its own account {fiir sich), has come into being for itself ; it is not yet in the form of unity with consciousness in general.

We see that in the inner being of the sphere of appearance, understanding gets to know in truth nothing else but appearance itself, not, however, appearance in the shape of a play of forces, but that play of forces in its absolutely universal moments and in the process of those moments; in fact, understanding merely experiences itself. Kaised above perception, con- 162 Phenomenology of Mind sciousness reveals itself •united and bound up with the supersensible world through the mediating agency of the realm of appearance, through which it gazes into this background that hes behind appearance. The two extremes, the one that of the pure inner region, the other that of the inner being gazing into this pure inner region, are now merged together ; and as they have disappeared qua extremes, the middle term, the mediating agency, qua something other than these extremes, has also vanished. This curtain [of appearance], therefore, hanging before the inner world is withdrawn, and we have here the inner being [the ego] gazing into the inner reahn — the vision of the imdistinguished selfsame reahty, which repels itself from itself, affirms itself as a divided and distinguished inner reahty, but as one for which at the same time the two factors have immediately no distinction ; what we have here is Selfconsciousness. It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain, which is to hide the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we ourselves go behind there, as much in order that we may thereby see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen. But it is clear at the same time that we cannot without more ado go straightway behind there. For this knowledge of what is the truth of the idea of the realm of appearance and of its inner being, is itself only a result arrived at after a long and devious process, in the course of which the modes of consciousness, " meaning," " perception," and " understanding " disappear. And it will be equally evident that to get acquainted with what consciousness knows when it is knowing itself, requires us to fetch a still wider compass. What follows will set this forth at length.

[The analysis of experience up to this point has been occupied with the relation of consciousness to an object admittedly different in nature from the mind aware of it. This external opposition, however, breaks down under analysis, and we are left with the result that consciousness does and must find itself in unity with its object, a unity which implies identity of nature between consciousness and its object : consciousness becomes " certain of itself in its object." This is not merely a result, but the truest expression of the initial relation with which experience starts. It is, therefore, the ground of the possibility of any relation between the terms in question : " consciousness of self " is the basis of the consciousness of anything whatsoever. This is Hegel's re-interpretation of the Kantian analysis of experience. But this result is, again, really the starting-point for a further analysis of experience, but of experience at a higher level of realisation. Consciousness of self is to begin with a general attitude, a definite type of experience, which requires elucidation. It has its own conditions and forms of manifestation. Self-consciousness, being supreme, must realise itself in relation to nature, to other selves similar to the self, and to the Ultimate Being of the world. These are different kinds of content with which consciousness is to find its oneness, and they furnish different forms in which the same principle is manifested. The argument seeks to show that these forms are also different degrees of realisation of self-consciousness. The outcome of the argument is that self -consciousness is truly realised only when it is universal self-consciousness, when consciousness is certain of itself throughout all reality, and explicitly finds there only itself. This result takes the form, as we shall see, of what is called Reason.

The immediately succeeding section takes up the first stage of the development of self-consciousness — the consciousness of self in relation to * Cp. Propddeutik, p. 84 ff. 163 164 Phenomenology of Mind nature. This takes the shape of Desire, Instinct, Impulse, etc., and involves the category of Life. This relationship, vi'hile undoubtedly implying the sense of self in the object and consciousness of unity with it, is the least satisfying and the least complete of all the modes of selfconsciousness. It points the way, therefore, to the fuller sense of self obtained when the self is aware of itself in relation to another self.] IN the kinds of certainty hitherto considered, the truth for consciousness is something other than consciousness itself. The conception, however, of this truth vanishes in the course of our experience of it. What the object immediately was in itself — whether mere being in sense-certainty, a concrete thing in perception, or force in the case of understanding — it turns out, in truth, not to be this really ; but instead, this inherent nature (AnsicJi) proves to be a way in which it is for an other. The abstract conception of the object gives way before the actual concrete object, or the first immediate idea is cancelled in the course of experience. Mere certainty vanished in favour of the truth. There has now arisen, however, what was not estabhshed in the case of these previous relationships, viz. a certainty which is on a par with its truth, for the certainty is to itself its own object, and consciousness is to itself the truth. Otherness, no doubt, is also found there ; consciousness, that is, makes a distinction ; but what is distinguished is of such a kind that consciousness, at the same time, holds there is no distinction made. If we call the movement of knowledge conception, and knowledge, qua simple unity or Ego, the object, we see that»not only for us [tracing the process], but Hkewise for knowledge itself, the object corresponds to the conception ; or, if we put it in the other form and call conception what the object is in itself, while applying the term object to what the object is qua object oi' for an

Tlie Truth of Self-certainty 165 other, it is clear that being " in-itself " and being " for an other " are here the same. For the inherent being [Ansich) is consciousness ; yet it is still just as much that for which an other (viz. what is " in-itself ") is. And it is for consciousness that the inherent nature {Ansich) of the object, and its " being for an other " are one and the same. Ego is the content of the relation, and itself the process of relating. It is Ego itself which is opposed to an other and, at the same time, reaches out beyond this other, which other is all the same taken to be only itself. With self-consciousness, then, we have now passed into the native land of truth, into that kingdom where it is at home. We have to see how the form or attitude of seK-consciousness in the first instance appears. When we consider this new form and type of knowledge, the knowledge of self, in its relation to that which preceded, namely, the knowledge of an other, we find, indeed, that this latter has vanished, but that its moments have, at the same time, been preserved ; and the loss consists in this, that those moments are here present as they are implicitly, as they are in themselves. The being which " meaning " dealt with, particularity and the universahty of perception opposed to it, as also the empty, inner region of understanding — these are no longer present as substantial elements {Wesen), but as moments of seKconsciousness, i.e. as abstractions or differences, which are, at the same time, of no account for consciousness itself, or are not differences at all, and are purely vanishing entities (Wesen).

What seems to have been lost, then, is only the principal moment, viz. the simple fact of having 166 Phenomenology of Mind independent subsistence for consciousness. But, in reality, self-consciousness is reflexion out of the bare being that belongs to the world of sense and perception, and is essentially the return out of otherness. As selfconsciousness, it is movement ; but since it is only its self as such which it distinguishes from itself, the difference is straightway taken to be superseded qua otherness. The distiuction is not, and self-consciousness is only the hfeless tautology. Ego is Ego, I am I : since for self-consciousness the distinction does not also have the shape of being, it is not self-consciousness. For self-consciousness, then, otherness is a fact, it does exist as a distinct moment ; but the unity of itself with this difference is also a fact for selfconsciousness, and is a second distinct moment. With that first moment, self-consciousness occupies the position of consciousness, and the whole expanse of the world of sense is conserved as its object, but at the same time only as related to the second moment, the unity of self-consciousness with itself. And, consequently, the sensible world is regarded by self-consciousness as having a subsistence which is, however, only appearance, or forms a distinction from selfconsciousness that per se has no being. This opposition of its appearance and its truth finds its real essence, however, only in the truth — in the unity of selfconsciousness with itself. This unity must become essential to self-consciousness, i.e. self -consciousness is the state of Desire in general. Consciousness has, qua self-consciousness, henceforth a twofold object — the one immediate, the object of sense-certainty and of perception, which, however, is here found to be marked by the character of negation ; the second, viz. itself, which is

The Truth of Self-certainty 167 the true essence, and is found in the first instance only in the opposition of the first object to it. Self -consciousness presents itself here as the process in which this opposition is removed, and oneness or identity with itself estabhshed. For us or impUcitly, the object, which is the negative element for self-consciousness, has on its side returned into itself, just as on the other side consciousness has done. Through this reflexion into self, the object has become Life. What self -consciousness distinguishes as having a being distinct from itself, has in it too, so far as it is affirmed to he, not merely the aspect of sense-certainty and perception ; it is a being reflected into itself, and the object of immediate desire is something hving. For the inherent reahty (Atisich), the general result of the relation of the understanding to the inner nature of things, is the distinguishing of what cannot be distinguished, or is the unity of what is distinguished. This vmity, however, is, as we saw, just as much its recoil from itself; and this conception breaks asunder into the opposition of self-consciousness and fife : the former is the unity for which the absolute unity of differences exists, the latter, however, is only this unity itself, so that the unity is not at the same time for itself. Thus, according to the independence possessed by consciousness, is the independence which its object in itself possesses. Self-consciousness, which is absolutely for itself, and characterises its object directly as negative, or is primarily desire, will really, therefore, find through experience this object's independence.

The determination of the principle of Mfe,* as * Cp. Hegel's Logik, T. II, Absch. 3. Kap. i.— "das Leben," 168 Phenomenology of Mind obtained from the conception or general result with which we enter this new sphere, is sufficient to characterise it, without its nature being evolved further out of that notion. Its circuit is conapleted in the following moments. The essential element (Wesen) is infinitude as the supersession of all distinctions, the pure rotation on its own axis, itself at rest while being absolutely restless infinitude, the very self-dependence in which the differences brought out in the process are all dissolved, the simple reahty of time, which in this self-identity has the sohd form and shape of space. The differences aU the same hold as differences in this simple universal medium ; for this universal flux exercises its negative activity merely when it is the sublation of them ; but it could not transcend them unless they had a subsistence of their own. Precisely this flux is itself, as self-identical independence, their subsistence or their substance, in which they accordingly are distinct members, parts which have being in their own right. Being no longer has the significance of mere abstract being, nor has their naked essence the meaning of abstract universality : their being now is just that simple fluent substance of the pure movement within itself. The difference, however, of these members inter se consists, in general, in no other characteristic than that of the moments of infinitude, or of the mere movement itself.

The independent members exist for themselves. To be thus for themselves, however, is really as much their reflexion directly into the unity, as this unity is the breaking asunder into independent forms. The imity is sundered because it is absolutely negative or infinite unity!; and because it is subsistence, difference likewise The Truth of Self-certainty 169 has independence only in it. This independence of form, for the form is a sundered element, appears as a determinate entity, as what is for another, and the sublation of diremption takes effect so far-through another. But this sublation lies just as much in the actual form itself. For just that flux is the substance of the independent forms. This substance, however, is infinite, and hence the form itself in its very subsistence involves diremption, or sublation of its existence for itself. If we distinguish more exactly the moments contained here, we see that we have as first moment the subsistence of the independent forms, or the suppression of what distinction inherently involves, viz. that the forms have no being per se, and no subsistence. The second moment, however, is the subjection of that subsistence to the infinitude of distinction. In the fiist moment there is the subsisting, persisting mode or form ; by its being in its own right, or by its being in its determinate shape an infinite substance, it comes forward in opposition to the universal substance, disowns this fluent continuity with that substance, and insists that it is not dissolved in this universal element, but rather on the contrary preserves itself by and through its separation from this its inorganic nature, and by the fact that it consumes this inorganic nature. Life in the universal fluid medium, quietly, silently shaping and moulding and distributing the forms in all their manifold detail, becomes by that very activity the movement of those forms, or passes into hfe qua Process. The mere universal flux is here the inherent being; the outer being, the *' other," is the distinction of the forms assumed. But

170 ■ Phenomenology of Mind this flux, this fluent condition, becomes itself the other in virtue of this very distinction, because now it exists " for " or in relation to that distinction, which is selfconditioned and self-contained {an und fur sich), and consequently is the endless, infinite movement by which that stable mediimi is consumed^s life as a living process. This inversion of character, however, is on that account again invertedness in itself as such. Wliat is consumed is the essential reahty : the IndividuaUty, which preserves itself at the expense of the universal and gives itself the feeling of its unity with itseH, precisely thereby cancels its contrast with the other, by means of which it exists for itself. The unity with self, which it gives itself, is just the fluent continuity of difierences, or universal dissolution. But, conversely, the cancelling of individual subsistence at the same time produces the subsistence. For since the essence of the individual form — universal Hfe — and the self-existent entity in itself are simple substance, each cancels this its own simplicity or its essence by putting the other within itself, i.e. it sunders that simplicity, and this disruption of fluent undifferentiated continuity is just the setting up, the affirmation, of individuahty. The simple substance of life, therefore, is the diremption of itself into shapes and forms, and at the same time the dissolution of these substantial differences ; and the resolution of this diremption is just as much a process of diremption, a dismemberment. Thus both the sides of the entire movement which were before distinguished, viz., the setting up of individual forms lying apart and imdisturbed in the universal medium of independent existence, and the process of

The Truth of Self-certainty 171 life — collapse into one another. The latter is just as much a formation of independent individual shapes, as it is a way of cancelhng a shape assumed ; and the former, the setting up of individual forms, is as much a cancelling as an articulation of them. The fluent, continuous element is itself only abstraction of the real essence, or is actual only as a definite shape or form ; and that it articulates itself is once more a breaking up of the articulated form, or a dissolution of it. The entire circuit of this activity constitutes Life. It is neither what is expressed to begin with, the immediate continuity and concrete sohdity of its essential nature ; nor the stable, subsisting form, the discrete individual which exists on its own account ; nor the bare process of this form ; nor again is it the simple combination of all these moments. It is none of these ; it is the whole which develops itself, resolves its own development, and in this movement simply preserves itself. Since we started from the first immediate unity, and returned through the moments of form-determination, and of process, to the unity of both these moments, and thus again back to the first simple substance, we see that this reflected unity is other than the first. As opposed to that immediate unity, the unity expressed as a mode of being, this second is the universal unity, which holds all these moments sublated within itself. It is the simple genus, which in the movement of hfe itself does not exist in this simpUcity for itself ; but in this result points hfe towards what is other than itself, namely, towards Consciousness for which hfe exists as this unity or as genus.

This other life, however, for which the genus as such 172 Phenomenology of Mini exists and which is geniis for itseK, namely, self-consciousness, exists in the first instance only in the form of this simple, essential reahty, and has for object itself qua pure Ego. In the course of its experience, which we are now to consider, this abstract object will grow in richness, and will be unfolded in the way we have seen in the case of hfe. The simple ego is this genus, or the bare universal, for which the differences are insubstantial, only by its being the negative essence of the moments which have assumed a definite and independent form. And self-consciousness is thus only assured of itself through sublating this other, which is presented to self-consciousness as an independent hfe ; self-consciousness is Desire. Convinced of the nothingness of this other, it definitely affirms this nothingness to be for itself the truth of this other, negates the independent object, and thereby acquires the certainty of its own self, as true certainty, a certainty which it has become aware of in objective form. In this state of satisfaction, however, it has experience of the independence of its object. Desire and the certainty of its self obtained in the gratification of desire, are conditioned by the object ; for the certainty exists through cancelHng this other ; in order that this cancelling may be effected, there must be this other. Self-consciousness is thus unable by its negative relation to the object to abohsh it ; because of that relation it rather produces it again, as well as the desire. The object desired is, in fact, something other than self-consciousness, the essence of desire ; and through this experience this truth has become reaHsed. At the same time, however, self-consciousness is Hkewise

The Truth of Self-certainty 173 absolutely for itself, exists on its own account ; and it is so only by sublation of tlie object ; and it must come to feel its satisfaction, for it is the truth. On account of tbe independence of the object, therefore, it can only attain satisfaction when this object itself efiectually brings about negation within itself. The object must fer se effect this negation of itself, for it is inherently {an sich) something negative, and must be for the other what it is. Since the object is in its very self negation, and in being so is at the same time independent, it is Consciousness. In the case of hfe, which is the object of desire, the negation either lies in an other, namely, in desire, or takes the form of determinateness standing in opposition to an other external individuum indifferent to it, or appears as its inorganic general nature. The above general iudependent nature, however, in the case of which negation takes the form of absolute negation, is the genus as such, or as self-consciousness. Self-consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness. It is in these three moments that the notion of seKconsciousness first gets completed : (a) pure undifferentiated ego is its first inmaediate object. (&) This immediacy is itself, however, thoroughgoing mediation ; it has its being only by cancelling the independent object, in other words it is Desire. The satisfaction of desire is indeed the reflexion of self-consciousness into itself, is the certainty which has passed into objective truth. But (c) the truth of this certainty is reaUy twofold reflexion, the reduphcation of self-consciousness. Consciousness has an object which impUcates its own otherness or affirms distinction as a void distinction, and therein is independent. The individual form dis-

174 Phenomenology of Mind tinguislied, which is only a hving form, certainly cancels its independence also in the process of life itself ; but it ceases along with its distinctive difference to be what it is. The object of self-consciousness, however, is still independent in this negativity of itself ; and thus it is for itself genus, universal flux or continuity in the very distinctiveness of its own separate existence ; it is a living self-consciousness. A self-consciousness has before it a self- consciousness. Only so and only then is it self-consciousness in actual fact ; for here first of all it comes to have the unity of itself in its otherness. Ego, which is the object of its notion, is in point of fact not " object." The object of desire, however, is only independent, for it is the universal, ineradicable substance, the fluent self-identical essential reality. When a self-consciousness is the object, the object is just as much ego as object. With this we already have before us the notion of Mind or Spirit. What consciousness has further to become aware of, is the experience of what mind is, this absolute substance, which is the unity of the different self-related and self-existent self-consciousnesses, in the perfect freedom and independence of their opposition as component elements of that substance : Ego that is " we," a plurality of Egos, and " we " that is a single Ego. Consciousness first finds in self-consciousness — the notion of mind^ts turningpoint, where it leaves the parti-coloured show of the sensuous immediate, passes from the dark void of the transcendent and remote super-sensuous, and : .^eps into the spiritual daylight of the present.

[The selves conscious of self in another self are, of course, distinct and separate from each other. The difference is, in the first instance, a question of degree of self-assertion and self -maintenance : one is stronger, higher, more independent than another, and capable of asserting this at the expense of the other. Still, even this distinction of primary and secondary rests ultimately on their identity of constitution ; and the course of the analysis here gradually brings out this essential identity as the true fact. The equality of the selves is the truth, or completer realisation, of self in another self ; the affinity is higher and more ultimate than the disparity. Still, the struggle and conflict of selves must be gone through in order to bring out this result. Hence the present section. The background of Hegel's thought is the remarkable human phenomenon of the subordination of one self to another which we have in all forms of servitude — whether slavery, serfdom, or voluntary service. Servitude is not only a phase of human history, it is in principle a condition of the development and maintenance of the consciousness of self as a fact of experience.] Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness ; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or "recognised." The conception of this its unity in its duphcation, of infinitude reahsing itself in self-consciousness, has many sides to it and encloses within it elements of varied significance. Thus its moments must on the one hand be strictly kept apart in detailed distinctiveness, and, on the other, in this distinction must, at the same time, also be taken as not

176 Phenomenology of Mind distinguished, or must always be accepted and understood in their opposite sense. This double meaning of what is distinguished lies in the nature of selfconsciousness : — of its being infinite, or directly the opposite of the determinateness in which it is fixed. The detailed exposition of the notion of this spiritual unity in its duplication will bring before us the process of Recognition. Self-consciousness has before it another self-consciousness ; it has come outside itself. This has a double significance. First it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as an other being ; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for it does not regard the other as essentially real, but sees its own self in the other. It must cancel this its other. To do so is the sublation of that first double meaning, and is therefore a second double meaning. First, it must set itself to sublate the other independent being, in order thereby to become certain of itself as true being, secondly, it thereupon proceeds to sublate its own self, for this other is itself. This sublation in a double sense of its otherness in a double sense is at the same time a return in a double sense into its self. For, firstly, through sublation, it gets back itself, because it becomes one with itself again through the cancelhng of its otherness ; but secondly, it likewise gives otherness back again to the other selfconsciousness, for it was aware of being in the other, it cancels this its own being in the other and thus lets the other again go free.

This process of self-consciousness in relation to another self-consciousness has in this manner been represented as the action of one alone. But this action Independence of Self-Consciousness 111 on the part of the one has its'ilf the double significance of being at once its own actir-n and the action of that other as well. For the other is likewise independent, shut up within itself, and there is nothing in it which is not there through itself. The first does not have the object before it in the way that object primarily exists for desire, but as an object existing independently for itself, over which therefore it has no power to do anything for its own behoof, if that object does not per se do what the first does to it. The process then is absolutely the double process of both selfconsciousnesses. Each sees the other do the same as itself ; each itself does what it demands on the part of the other, and for that reason does what it does, only so far as the other does the same. Action from one side only would be useless, because what is to happen can only be brought about by means of both.

The action has then a double entente not only in the sense that it is an act done to itself as well as to the other, but also inasmuch as it is in its undivided entirety the act of the one as well as of the other. In this movement we see the process repeated which came before us as the play of forces ; in the present case, however, it is found in consciousness. What in the former had effect only for us [contemplating experience], holds here for the terms themselves. The middle term is self-consciousness which breaks itself up into the extremes ; and each extreme is this interchange of its own determinateness, and complete transition into the opposite. While qua consciousness, it no doubt comes outside itself, still, in being outside itself it is at the same time restrained within itself, it exists for itself, and its self-externahsation is for consciousness. 178 Phenomenology of Mind Consciousness finds that it immediately is and is not another consciousness, as also that this other is for itself only when it cancels itself as existing for itself, and has self-existence only in the self-existence of the other. Each is the mediating term to the other, through which each mediates and unites itself with itself ; and each is to itself and to the other an immediate selfexisting reahty, which, at the same time, exists thus for itself only through this mediation. They recognise themselves as mutually recognising one another.

This pure conception of recognition, of duplication of self- consciousness within its unity, we must now consider in the way its process appears for self-consciousness. It will, in the first place, present the aspect of the disparity of the two, or the break-up of the middle term into the extremes, which, qua extremes, are opposed to one another, and of which one is merely recognised, while the other only recognises. Self-consciousness is primarily simple existence for self, self-identity by exclusion of every other from itself. It takes its essential nature and absolute object to be Ego ; and in this immediacy, in this bare fact of its self- existence, it is individual. That which for it is other stands as unessential object, as object with the impress and character of negation. But the other is also a self - consciousness ; an individual makes its appearance in antithesis to an individual. Appearing thus in their immediacy, they are for each other in the manner of ordinary objects. They are independent individual forms, modes of consciousness that have not risen above the bare level of life (for the existent object here has been determined as life). They are, moreover, forms of consciousness which have not yet

Independence of Self-Consciousness 179 accomplished for one another the process of absolute abstraction, of uprooting all immediate existence, and of being merely the bare, negative fact of self-identical consciousness ; or, in other words, have not yet revealed themselves to each, other as existing purely for themselves, i.e. as self-C)Onsciousness. Each is indeed certain of its own self, but not of the other, and hence its own certainty of itself is still without truth. For its truth would be merely that its own individual existence for itself would bts shown to it to be an independent object, or, which is the same thing, that the object would be exhibited as this pure certainty of itself. By the notion of recognition^ however, this is not possible, except in the form that s^s the other is for it, so it is for the other ; each in its self through its own action and again through the action of the other achieves this pure abstraction of existence for; self. The presentjjition of itself, however, as pure abstraction of self-conscio|usness consists in showing itself as a pure negation of itsi objective form, or in showing that it is fettered to no\ determinate existence, that it is not bound at all hj\ the particularity everywhere characteristic of existence as such, and is not tied up with life. The process of bringing all this out involves a twofold action— laction on the part of the other, and action on the par*t of itself. In so far as it is the other's action, each aimsl at the destruction and death of the other. But in thri's there is imphcated also the second kind of action, «(|'lf-activity ; for each imphes that it risks its own hfe.. The relation of both self-consciousnesses is in this way so constituted that they prove themselves and each other through a hfe-and-death struggle. They ixlust enter into this struggle, for they

180 Phenomenology of Mind must bring their certainty of f,hemselves, the certainty of being for themselves, to the level of objective truth, and make this a fact both in the case of the other and in their ovm case as well. And it is solely by risking life, that freedom is obtained ; only thus is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it at first makes its appearance, is not its mere absorption in the expanse of hfe. Rather it is thereby guaranteed that there is nothing present but what might be taken as a vanishiing moment — that self-consciousness is merely pure se^f -existence, being-for-self. The individual, who ha.s not staked his 'ife, may, no doubt, be recognised as 'a Person; but he Jias not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. In the same way each must aim at the death of the other, as it risks its own life thereby; for that other is to it of no more worth than itself ; the other's reality is presented to the former as an external other, as outside itself; it must cancel that externality. The other is a purely' existent consciousness and entangled in manifold \vays ; it must regard its otherness as pure existence for itself or as absolute negation.

This trying and testing, however, by a struggle to the death, cancels both the truth which was to result from it, and therewith the certainty of self altogether. For just as Ufe is the natural " position " of consciousness, independence without absolute negativity, so death is the natural " negation " of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the requisite significance of actual recognition. Through death, doubtless, there has arisen Independence of Self -Consciousness 181 the certainty that both did stake their hfe, and held it hghtly both in their own case and in the case of the other ; but that is not for those who underwent this struggle. They cancel their consciousness which had its place in this ahen element of natural existence ; in other words, they cancel themselves and are sublated, as terms or extremes seeking to have existence on their own account. But along with this there vanishes from the play of change, the essential moment, viz. that of breaking up into extremes with opposite characteristics ; and the middle term collapses into a hfeless unity which is broken up into hfeless extremes, merely existent and not opposed. And the two do not mutually give and receive one another back from each other through consciousness ; they let one another go quite indifferently, hke things. Their act is abstract negation, not the negation characteristic of consciousness, which cancels in such a way that it preserves and maintains what is sublated, and thereby survives its being sublated.

In this experience self-consciousness becomes aware that life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness. Tn immediate self-consciousness the simple ego is absolute object, which, however, is for us or in itself absolute mediation, and has as its essential moment substantial and sohd independence. The dissolution of that simple unity is the result of the first experience ; through this there is posited a pure self-consciousness, and a consciousness which is not purely for itself, but for another, i.e. as an existent consciousness, consciousness in the form and shape of thinghood. Both moments are essential, since, in the first instance, they are unlike and opposed, and their reflexion into 182 Phenomenology of Mind unity has not yet come to light, they stand as two opposed forms or modes of consciousness. The one is independent whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is dependent whose essence is hfe or existence for another. The former is the Master, or Lord, the latter the Bondsman. The master is the consciousness that exists for itself ; but no longer merely the general notion of existence for self. Rather, it is consciousness which, while existing on its own account, is mediated with itself through an other consciousness, viz. bound up with an independent being or with thinghood in general. The master brings himself into relation to both these moments, to a thing as such, the object of desire, and to the consciousness whose essential character is thinghood, and since the master, qua notion of self-consciousness, is (o) an immediate relation of self-existence, but is now moreover at the same time (6) mediation, or a being-for-self which is for itself only through an other — he [the master] stands in relation (a) immediately to both (&) mediately to each through the other. The master relates himself to the bondsman mediately through independent existence, for that is precisely what keeps the bondsman in thrall ; it is his chain, from which he could not in the struggle get away, and for that reason he proves himself dependent, shows that his independence consists in being a thing. The master, however, is the power controlling this state of existence, for he has shown in the struggle that he holds existence to be merely something negative. Since he is the power dominating the negative nature of existence, while this existence again is the power controlling the other [the bondsman], the master holds, far consequence,

Lordship and Bondage 183 :his other in subordination. In the same way the naster relates himself to the thing mediately through :he bondsman. The bondsman being a self-consciousaess in the broad sense, also takes up a negative attitude to things and cancels them ; but the thing is, at the same time, independent for him, and, in consequence, he cannot, with all his negating, get so far as to annihilate it outright and be done with it ; that is to say, he merely works on it. To the master, on the other hand, by means of this mediatiag process, belongs the immediate relation, in the sense of the pure negation of it, in other words he gets the enjoyment. What mere desire did not attain, he now succeeds in attaining, viz. to have done with the thing, and find satisfaction in enjoyment. Desire alone did not get the length of this, because of the independence of the thing. The master, however, who has interposed the bondsman between it and himself, thereby relates himself merely to the dependence of the thing, and enjoys it without quahfication and without reserve. The aspect of its independence he leaves to the bondsman, who labours upon it.

In these two moments, the master gets his recognition through an other consciousness, for in them the latter aiSrms itself as unessential, both by working upon the thing, and, on the other hand, by the fact of being dependent on a determinate existence ; in neither case can this other get the mastery over existence, and succeed in absolutely negating it. We have thus here this moment of recognition, viz. that the other consciousness cancels itself as self-existent, and, ipso facto, itself does what the first does to it. In the same way we have the other moment, that this action on the part of the second is the action proper of the first ; for what 184 Phenomenology of Mind is done by the bondsman is properly an action on tlie part of the master. The latter exists only for himself, that is his essential nature ; he is the negative power without quahfication, a power to which the thing is naught, and his is thus the absolutely essential action in this situation, while the bondsman's is not so, his is an unessential activity. But for recognition proper there is needed the moment that what the master does to the other he should also do to himself, and what the bondsman does to himself, he should do to the other also. On that accomit a form of recognition has arisen that is one-sided and unequal.

In all this, the unessential consciousness is, for the master, the object which embodies the truth of his certainty of himself. But it is evident that this object does not correspond to its notion ; for, just where the master has effectively achieved lordship, he really finds that something has come about quite different from an independent consciousness. It is not an independent, but rather a dependent consciousness that he has achieved. He is thus not assured of seK-existence as his truth ; he finds that his truth is rather the unessential consciousness, and the fortuitous unessential action of that consciousness. The truth of the independent consciousness is accordingly the consciousness of the bondsman. This doubtless appears in the first instance outside it, and not as the truth of self-consciousness. But just as lordship showed its essential nature to be the reverse of what it wants to be, so, too, bondage will, when completed, pass into the opposite of what it immediately is : being a consciousness repressed within itself, it will enter into itself, and change round into real and true independence. Lordship and Bondage 185 We have seen what bondage is only in relation to lordship. But it is a self-consciousness, and we have now to consider what it is, in this regard, in and for itself. In the first instance, the master is taken to be the essential reahty for the state of bondage ; hence, for it, the truth is the independent consciousness existing for itself, although this truth is not yet taken as inherent in bondage itself. Still, it does in fact contain within itself this truth of pure negativity and self-existence, because it has experienced this reahty within it. For this self-consciousness was not in peril and fear for this element or that, nor for this or that moment of time, it was afraid for its entire being ; it felt the fear of death, it was in mortal terror of its sovereign master. It has been in that experience melted to its inmost soul, has trembled throughout its every fibre, the stable foundations of its whole being have quaked within it. This complete perturbation of its entire substance, this absolute dissolution of all its stabihty into fluent continuity, is, however, the simple, ultimate nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure self-referrent existence, which consequently is involved in this type of consciousness. This moment of pure self-existence is moreover a fact for it; for in the master this moment is consciously his object. Further, this bondsman's consciousness is not only this total dissolution in a general way; in serving and toiling, the bondsman actually carries this out. By serving he cancels in every particular moment his dependence on and attachment to natural existence, and by his work removes this existence away. The feeling of absolute power, however, reahsed both in general and in the particular form of service, is

186 Phenomenology of Mind only dissolution implicitly, and albeit the fear of his lord is the beginning of wisdom, consciousness is not therein aware of being self-existent. Through work and labour, however, this consciousness of the bondsman comes to itself. In the moment which corresponds to desire in the case of the master's consciousness, the aspect of the non-essential relation to the thing seemed to fall to the lot of the servant, since the thing there retained its independence. Desire has reserved to itself the pure negating of the object and thereby unalloyed feehng of self. This satisfaction, however, just for that reason is itself only a state of evanescence, for it lacks objectivity or subsistence. Labour, on the other hand, is desire restrained and checked, evanescence delayed and postponed; in other words, labour shapes and fashions the thing. The negative relation to the object passes into the form of the object, into something that is permanent and remains ; because it is just for the labourer that the object has independence. This negative mediating agency, this activity giving shape and form, is at the same time the individual existence, the pure self-existence of that consciousness, which now in the work it does is externahsed and passes into the condition of permanence. The consciousness that toils and serves accordingly comes by this means to view that independent being as its self.

But again, shaping or forming the object has not only the positive significance that the bondsman becomes thereby aware of himself as factually and objectively self-existent ; this type of consciousness has also a negative import, in contrast with its first moment, the element of fear. For in shaping the thing it only becomes aware of its own proper negativity, its Lordship and Bondage 187 existence on its own account, as an object, tkrough. the fact that it cancels the actual form confronting it. But this objective negative element is precisely the alien, external reahty, before which it trembled. Now, however, it destroys this extraneous alien negative, affirms and sets itself up as a negative in the element of permanence, and thereby becomes aware of being objectively for itself. In the master, this self-existence is felt to be an other, is only external ; in fear, the self- existence is present implicitly ; in fashioning the thing, self-existence comes to be felt explicitly as its own proper being, and it attains the consciousness that itself exists in its own right and on its own account {an und fur sich). By the fact that the form is objectified, it does not become something other than the consciousness moulding the thing through work ; for just that form is his pure selfexistence, which therein becomes truly reahsed. Thus precisely in labour where there seemed to be merely some outsider's mind and ideas involved, the bondsman becomes aware, through this re-discovery of himself by himself, of having and being a " mind of his own."

For this reflexion of self into self the two moments, fear and service in general, as also that of formative activityTare necessary : and at the same time both must "exist in a universal manner. Without the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains formal and does not spread over the whole known reahty of existence. Without the formative activity shaping the thing, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become objective for itself. Should consciousness shape and form the thing without the initial state of absolute fear, then it has merely a vain and futile 188 Phenomenology of Mind " mind of its own " ; for its form or negativity is not negativity perse, and hence its formative activity cannot furnish the consciousness of itself as essentially real. If it has endured not absolute fear, but merely some slight anxiety, the negative reahty has remained external to it, its substance has not been through and through infected thereby. Since the entire content of its natural consciousness has not tottered and shaken, it is still inherently a determinate mode of being ; having a " mind of its own " {der eigen Sinn) is simply stubbornness (Eigensinn), a type of freedom which does not get beyond the attitude of bondage. The less the pure form can become its essential nature, the less is that form, as overspreading and controlling particulars, a universal formative activity, an absolute notion ; it is rather a piece of cleverness which has mastery within a certain range, but does not wield imiversal power and dominate the entire objective reality.

[The previous section has established the self as ultimately a free self. But even this is abstract at first, and hence the attempt to maintain it must pass through different stages. These attempts have taken historical expression in European civilisation, but these are merely instances of an experience that is strictly found in all mankind. Hegel, however, selects the forms assumed in European history, and has these in mind throughout the succeeding analysis. The terms Stoicism and Scepticism refer primarily to the forms which these assumed in Greece and Rome. The last stage of independent and free self-hood he names, faute de mieux, the "unhappy consciousness." The background of historical material for this type of mind is found in the religious life of the Middle Ages and the mental attitude assumed under the dominion of the Roman Catholic Church and the Peudal Hierarchy. The social and political dissolution of the Roman Empire has its counterpart in the mental chaos and dissolution of Scepticism ; the craving of free mind for absolute stability and constancy amid change and uncertainty found expression in an organised attempt on the part of the Church to establish permanent connection between man's mental insecurity and an Immutable Reality. The two poles of the antithesis were far removed from each other, and the method or methods adopted to bring about the union reflect the profound contrast of the opposing elements. It is the inner process of free mind in this realm of abstract subjective piety which Hegel analyses in the part termed the ' unhappy consciousness ' — ' unhappy ' because craving complete consciousness of self and never at this stage attaining it.

The end of this movement, and therefore the disappearance of all the onesidedness of abstract individual freedom of self, is found when, through the above struggle, there dawns on the self the consciousness of its complete and explicit unity with reality in every shape and form. This is the beginning of the absolute sovereignty of Mind — the Consciousness of Reason as supreme. The change to this new condition found historical expression in the Reformation and the Renaissance]. 190 Phenomenology of Mind Independent self-consciousness partly finds its essential reality in the bare abstraction of Ego. On the other hand, when this abstract ego develops further and forms distinctions of its own, this differentiation does not become an objective inherently real content for that self-consciousness. Hence this self-consciousness does not become an ego which truly difierentiates itself in its abstract simpHcity, or one which remains identical with itself in this absolute differentiation. The repressed and subordinated type of consciousness, on the other hand, becomes, in the formative activity of work, an object to itself, in the sense that the form, given to the thing when shaped and moulded, is his object ; he sees in the master, at the same time, self-existence as a real mode of consciousness. But the subservient consciousness as such finds these two moments fall apart — the moment of itself as independent object, and the moment of this object as a mode of consciousness, and so its own proper reality. Since, however, the form and the self -existence are for us, or objectively in themselves, one and the same, and since in the notion of independent consciousness the inherent reality is consciousness, the phase of inherent existence {Ansichsein) or thinghood, which received its shape and form through labour, is no other substance than consciousness. In this way, we have a new attitude or mode of consciousness brought about. We have now a consciousness, which takes itself to be infinitude, or one whose essential nature is pure process of consciousness. It is one which thinhs or is free self-consciousness. For thinking does not consist in being an abstract ego, but in being an ego which has, at the same time, the significance of inherently existing in itself ; or which

relates itself to objective reality in sucli a way that this signifies the self-existence of that consciousness for which it is an object. The object does not for thinking proceed by way of presentations or figures, but of notions, conceptions, i.e. of a differentiated reality or essence, which, being an immediate content of consciousness, is nothing distinct from it. What is presented, shaped and constructed, and existent as such, has the form of being something other than consciousness. A notion, however, is at the same time an existent, and this distinction, so far as it falls in consciousness itself, is its determinate content. But in that this content is, at the same time, a conceptually constituted, a comprehended {hegriffener) content, consciousness remains immediately aware within itself of its unity with this determinate existent so distinguished ; not as in the case of a presentation, where consciousness from the first has to take special note that this is the idea of the object ; on the contrary, the notion is for me eo ipso and at once my notion. In thinking I am free, because I am not in an other, but remain simply and solely in touch with myself ; and the object which for me is my essential reality, is in undivided unity my self-existence ; and my procedure in dealing with notions is a process within myself.

It is essential, however, in this determination of the above attitude of self-consciousness to keep hold of the fact that this attitude is thinking consciousness in general, that its object is immediate unity of the self's imphcit, inherent existence, and of its existence explicitly for self. The self-same consciousness which repels itself from itself, becomes aware of being an element existing in itself. But to itself it is this element to begin with 192 Phenomenology of Mind only as universal reality ia general, and not as this essential reality appears when developed in all the manifold details it contains, when the process of its being brings out all its fullness of content. This freedom of self-consciousness, as is well known, has been called Stoicism, in so far as it has appeared as a phenomenon conscious of itself in the course of the history of man's spirit. Its principle is that consciousness is essentially that which thinks, is a thinking reahty, and that anything is really essential for consciousness, or is true and good, only when consciousness in dealing with it adopts the attitude of a thinking being. The manifold, self-difierentiating expanse of hfe, with all its individuahsation and comphcation, is the object upon which desire and labour operate. This varied activity has now contracted itself into the simple distinction which is found in the pure process of thought. What has still essential reahty is not a distinction in the sense of a determinate thing, or in the shape of a consciousness of a determinate kind of natural existence, in the shape of a feehng, or again in the form of desire and its specific purpose, whether that purpose be set up by the consciousness desiring or by an extraneous consciousness. What has the more essential significance here is solely that distinction, which is a thought-constituted distinction, or which, when made, is not distinguished from me. This consciousness in consequence takes a negative attitude towards the relation of lordship and bondage. Its action, in the case of the master, results in his not simply having his truth in and through the bondsman ; and, in that of the bondsman, in not finding his truth in the will of his master and in service.

The essence of this consciousness is to be free, on the throne as well as in fetters, throughout all the dependence that attaches to its individual existence, and to maintain that stohd lifeless unconcern which persistently withdraws from the movement of existence, from effective activity as well as from passive endurance, into the simple essentiahty of thought. Stubbornness is that freedom which makes itself secure in a sohd singleness, and keeps vjithin the sphere of bondage. Stoicism, on the other hand, is the freedom which ever comes directly out of that sphere, and returns back into the pure universahty of thought. It is a freedom which can come on the scene as a general form of the world's spirit only in a time of universal fear and bondage, a time, too, when mental cultivation is universal, and has elevated culture to the level of thought. Now while this self-consciousness finds its essential reahty to be neither something other than itself, nor the pure abstraction of ego, but ego which has within it otherness — otherness in the sense of a thought-constituted distinction — so that this ego in its otherness is turned back directly into itself ; yet this essential nature is, at the same time, only an abstract reahty. The freedom of seK-consciousness is indifferent towards natural existence, and has, therefore, let this latter go and remain free. The reflexion is thus duphcated. Freedom of thought takes only pure thought as its truth, and this lacks the concrete filhng of hfe. It is, therefore, merely the notion of freedom, not living freedom itseK ; for it is, to begin with, only thinking in general that is its essence, the form as such, which has turned away from the independence of things and gone back into itself. Since, however, individuahty when

194 Phenomenology of Mind acting should show itself to be ahve, or when thinking should grasp the hving world as a system of thought, there ought to he in thought itself a content to supply the sphere of the ego, in the former case with what is good, and, in the latter, true, in order that there should throughout be no other ingredient in what consciousness has to deal with, except the notion which is the real essence. But here, by the way in which the notion as an abstraction cuts itself off from the multiplicity of things, the notion has no content in itself ; the content is a datum, is given. Consciousness, no doubt, abohshes the content as an external, a foreign existent, by the fact that it thinks it, but the notion is a determinate notion, and this determinateness of the notion is the ahen element the notion contains within it. Stoicism, therefore, got embarrassed, when, as the expression went, it was asked for the criterion of truth in general, i.e. properly speaking, for a content of thought itself. To the question what is good and true, it responded by giving again the abstract, contentless thought ; the true and good are to consist in reasonableness. But this self-identity of thought is simply once more pure form, in which nothing is determinate. The general terms true and good, wisdom and virtue, with which Stoicism has to stop short, are, therefore, in a general way, doubtless elevating ; but seeing that they cannot actually and in fact reach any expanse of content, they soon begin to get wearisome.

This thinking consciousness, in the way in which it is thus constituted, as abstract freedom, is therefore only incomplete negation of otherness. Withdrawn from existence solely into itself, it has not there fully vindicated itself as the absolute negation of this existence. It holds the content indeed to be only thought, but in doing so also takes thought as a specific determinate thought, and at the same time the general character of the content. Scepticism is the reahsation of that of which Stoicism is merely the notion, and is the actual experience of what freedom of thought is ; it is in itself and essentially the negative, and must so exhibit itself. With the reflexion of self-consciousness into the simple, pure thought of itself, independent existence or permanent determinateness has, in contrast to that reflexion, dropped as a matter of fact out of the infinitude of thought. In Scepticism, the entire unessentiahty and unsubstantiaHty of this " other " becomes a reahty for consciousness. Thought becomes thinking which wholly annihilates the being of the world with its manifold determinateness, and the negativity of free self-consciousness comes to be, in the case of these manifold forms which hfe assumes, real negativity.

It is clear from the foregoing that, just as Stoicism answers to the notion of independent consciousness, which appeared as a relation of lordship and bondage. Scepticism, on its side, corresponds to its realisation, to the negative attitude towards otherness, to desire and labour. But if desire and work could not carry out for self-consciousness the process of negation, this polemical attitude towards the manifold substantiahty of things will, on the other hand, be successful, because it turns against them as a free self-consciousness, and one complete within itself beforehand ; or, expressed more definitely, because it has inherent in itself thought or the principle of infinitude, where the independent elements in their distinction from one another are held to 196 Phenomenology of Mind be merely vanisliing quantities. The differences, which, in the pure thinking of self are only the abstraction of differences, become here the whole of the differences ; and every differentiated existent becomes a difference of self-consciousness. With this we get determined the action of Scepticism in general, as also its mode and nature. It shows the dialectic movement, which is sense-certainty, perception, and understanding. It shows, too, the unessentiahty of that which holds good in the relation of master and servant, and which for abstract thought itself passes as determinate. That relation involves, at the same time, a determinate situation, in which there are found even moral laws, as commands of the sovereign lord. The determinations in abstract thought, however, are scientific notions, into which formal contentless thought expands itself, attaching the notion, as a matter of fact in merely an external fashion, to the existence independent of it, and holding as valid only determinate notions, albeit they are still pure abstractions.

Dialectic as a negative process, taken immediately as it stands, appears to consciousness, in the first instance, as something at the mercy of which it is, and which does not exist through consciousness itself. In Scepticism, on the other hand, this negative process is a moment of self-consciousness, which does not simply find its truth and its reality vanish, without selfconsciousness knowing how, but rather which, in the certainty of its own freedom, itself lets this other, so claiming to be real, vanish. Self-consciousness here allows not only the objective as such to disappear before the negations of Scepticism, but also its own attitude and relation to the object, where the object is held to be objective and rendered 'valid — i.e. its attitude of perception as also its process of securing wliat is in danger of being lost, viz. sophistry with, its self-constituted and self-estabHsbed truth. By means of this self-conscious negation, self-consciousness procures for itself the certainty of its own freedom, brings about the experience of that freedom, and thereby raises it into the truth. What vanishes is what is determinate, the difference which, no matter what its nature or whence it comes, sets up to be fixed and unchangeable. The difference has nothing permanent in it, and must vanish before thought, because to be differentiated just means not to have being in itself, but to have its essential nature solely in an other. Thinking, however, is the insight into this character of what is differentiated ; it is the negative function in its simple, ultimate form.

Sceptical self-consciousness thus discovers, in the flux and alternation of all that would stand secure in its presence, its own freedom, as given by and received from its own self. It is aware of being this arapa^la of self-thinking thought, the unalterable and genuine certainty of its self. This certainty does not arise as a result out of something extraneous and foreign which stowed away inside itself its whole complex development ; a result which would thus leave behind the process by which it came to be. Kather consciousness itself is thoroughgoing dialectical restlessness, this m^lee of presentations derived from sense and thought, whose differences collapse into oneness, and whose identity is similarly again resolved and dissolved — for this identity is itself determinateness as contrasted with non-identity. This consciousness, however, as a matter 198 Phenomenology of Mind of fact, instead of being a self-same consciousness, is here neither more nor less than an absolutely fortuitous embroglio, the giddy whirl of a perpetually self-creating disorder. This is what it takes itself to be ; for itself maintains and produces this self-impelhng confusion. Hence it even confesses the fact ; it owns to being an entirely fortuitous individual consciousness— a consciousness which is empirical, which is directed upon what admittedly has no reahty for it, which obeys what, in its regard, has no essential being, which realises and does what it knows to have no truth. But while it passes in this manner for an individual, isolated, contingent, in fact animal life, and a lost self-consciousness, it also, on the contrary, again turns itself into universal self-sameness ; for it is the negativity of all singleness and all difference. From this self-identity, or rather within its very self, it falls back once more into that contingency and confusion, for this very self-directed process of negation has to do solely with what is single and individual, and is occupied with what is fortuitous. This form of consciousness is, therefore, the aimless fickleness and instabihty of going to and fro, hither and thither, from one extreme of self-same self-consciousness, to the other of contingent, confused and confusing consciousness. It does not itself bring these two thoughts of itself together. It finds its freedom, at one time, in the form of elevation above all the whirling complexity and all the contingency of mere existence, and again, at anot_. time, likewise confesses to falhng back upon what is unessential, and to being taken up with that. It lets the unessential content in its thought vanish ; but in that very act it is the consciousness of some-

thing unessential. It announces absolute disappearance but the announcement is, and this consciousness is the evanescence expressly announced. It announces the nulhty of seeing, hearing, and so on, yet itself sees and hears. It proclaims the nothingness of essential ethical principles, and makes those very truths the sinews of its own conduct. Its deeds and its words behe each other continually ; and itself, too, has the doubly contradictory consciousness of immutabihty and sameness, and of utter contingency and non-identity with itself. But it keeps asunder the poles of this contradiction within itself ; and bears itself towards the contradiction as it does in its purely negative process in general. If sameness is shown to it, it points out unlikeness, non-identity ; and when the latter, which it has expressly mentioned the moment before, is held up to it, it passes on to indicate sameness and identity. Its talk, in fact, is hke a squabble among self-willed children, one of whom says a when the other says B, and again B, when the other says a, and who, through being in contradiction with themselves, procure the joy of remaining in contradiction with one another. In Scepticism consciousness gets, in truth, to know itself as a consciousness containing contradiction within itself. From the experience of this proceeds a new attitude which brings the two thoughts together which Scepticism holds apart. The want of intelhgence which Scepticism manifests regarding itself is bound to vanish, because it is in fact one consciousness which possesses these two modes wjthin it. This new att' , :le consequently is one which is aware of being the double consciousness of itself as self-hberating, unalterable, self-identical, and as utterly self-confounding, self-

200 Phenomenology of Mind perverting ; and this new attitude is the consciousness of this contradiction within itself. In Stoicism, self-consciousness is the bare and simple freedom of itself. In Scepticism, it reaUses itself, negates the other side of determinate existence, but, in so doing, really doubles itself, and is itself now a duaUty. In this way the dupUcation, which previously was divided between two individuals, the lord and the bondsman, is concentrated into one. Thus we have here that duahsing of self-consciousness within itself, which lies essentially in the notion of mind ; but the tmity of the two elements is not yet present. Hence the Unhapfy Consciousness * the AUenated Soul which is the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being. This unhappy consciousness, divided and at variance within itself, must, because this contradiction of its essential nature is felt to be a single consciousness, always have in the one consciousness the other also ; and thus must be straightway driven out of each in turn, when it thinks it has therein attained to the victory and rest of unity. Its true return into itself, or reconciliation with itself, will, however, exhibit the notion of mind endowed with a hfe and existence of its own, because it implicitly involves the fact that, qua single and undivided, it is a double consciousness. It is itself the gazing of one self-consciousness into another, ar itself is both, and the unity of both is p]&<j its owr^