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

282 Phenomenology of Mind this falls outside the living organic whole. This universal individual, however, in the way it is immediately the individual of the natural embodiments of organic hfe, is not consciousness itself ; its existence qua single organic living individual cannot fall outside that universal if it is to be consciousness. We have, then, here a connected system, where one extreme is the universal hfe qua universal or genus, the other being that same Hfe qua a single whole, or universal individual : the mediating term, however, is a combination of both, the first seeming to fit itself into it as determinate universality or as species, the other as single whole proper or individual singleness. And since this connected system belongs altogether to the aspect of the organic embodiment, it comprehends within it too what is distinguished as inorganic nature. Since, now, the universal Hfe qua the simple essence of the genus develops from its side the distinctions of the notion, and has to exhibit them in the form of a series of simple determining characteristics, this series is a system of distinctions set up indifferently, or is a numerical series. Whereas formerly the organic in the form of something individual and single was placed in opposition to this non-essential distinction [of quantity], a distinction which neither expresses nor contains its living nature ; and while precisely the same has to be stated as regards the inorganic, taking into account its entire existence developed in the pluraHty of its properties, — it is now the universal individual which is not merely to be looked on as free from every articulation of the genus, but also as the power and might inherent in the genus. The genus disperses into species after the manner of the uni-

Observation of Organic Nature 283 versality characteristic of number, or again it may adopt as its principle of division particular characteristics of its existence like figure, colour, etc. While prosecuting this aim, the genus meets with violence at the hands of the universal individual, the earth,* which in the role of universal negativity establishes the distinctions as they exist within itself, — the nature of which, owing to the substance they belong to, is different from the nature of that genus, — and makes good these distinctions as against the process of generic systematisation. This action on the part of the genus comes to be quite a restricted business, which it can only carry on inside those mighty elements, and which is left with gaps and arrested and interrupted at all points through their unbridled violence. It follows from all this that in the embodied organic existence observation can only meet with reason in the sense of hf e in general, which, however, in its differentiating process involves really no rational sequence and articulation, and is not a thoroughly grounded system of shapes and forms. If in the process of connecting the moments which organic embodiment involves, the mediating term, which contains the species and its reahsation in the form of a single individuality, had within it the two extremes of inner universahty and universal individuahty, then this middle term would have, in the movement of its reahty, the expression and the nature of universality, and would be seK-systematising development. It is thus that consciousness takes as the middle term between universal spirit and its in-

* Cp. Logik, WAV., V. p. 153: "The earth as a concrete whole is at once a universal nature or genus as well as an individual. Cp. also Naturphilosophie, §§ 337, 338. 284 Phenomenology of Mind dividuation or sense-consciousness, the system of shapes assumed by consciousness, as an orderly self-constituted whole of the life of spirit,— the system of forms of conscious hfe which is dealt with in this treatise, and which finds its objective existential expression as the history of the world. But organic nature has no history ; it drops from its universal life immediately into the indi^dduation of existence ; and the moments of simple determinateness and individual Hving activity which are united in this reahsation bring about the process of change merely as a contingent movement wherein each plays its own part, and the whole is preserved. But the energy thus exerted is restricted, so far as itself is concerned, merely to its own focus, because the whole is not present in it ; and the whole is not there because the whole is not as such here for itself. Besides the fact, then, that reason in observing organic nature only comes to see itself as universal life in general, it comes to see the development and reahsation of this life merely by way of systems distinguished quite generally, in the determination of which the essential reahty hes not in the organic fact as such, but in the universal individual [the earthj ; and among these distinctions of earth [it comes to see that development and reahsation] in the form of sequences which the genus attempts to estabhsh.

Since, then, in its reahsation, the universahty found in organic hfe lets itself drop directly into the extreme of individuation, without any true self-referring process of mediation, the thing before the observing mind is merely a would-be " meaning " ; and if reason can be at the trouble to observe what is thus ' meant ' here, it is confined to describing and recording nature's Observation of Organic Nature 285 '' meanings " and incidental suggestions. This irrational freedom of ''fancying" and ''thinking" doubtless will produce on all sides beginnings of laws, traces of necessity, hints and allusions to order and sequence, ingenious and specious relations of all kinds. But in relating the organic to the different facts of the inorganic, elements, zones, climates, so far as regards law and necessary connection, observation never gets further than the idea of a ''great influence." So too on the other side, where individuahty has not the significance of the earth, but of the oneness immanent in organic hfe, this, in immediate unity with the universal, no doubt constitutes the genus, but its simple unity is just for that reason determined merely as a number, and hence lets go the quahtative appearance ; here observation cannot get further than making clever remarks, bringing out interesting points of connection, making friendly advances to the notion. But clever remarks do not amount to a knowledge of necessity ; interesting points of connection stop short at being simply of interest, while the interest is still nothing but arbitrary " opinion " about the rational ; and the friendliness of the individual in making allusion to a notion is a childlike friendliness which is childish if as it stands it is to be or wants to be worth anything.

Observation of Selp-Consciousness in its pure FORM AND IN ITS RELATION TO EXTERNAL EeALITY — Logical and Psychological Laws [Observation can be directed upon the self-conscious process ot mind in two waj'S : it may consider tbe mind's thinking relation to reality, and it may consider the mind's active or biotic relation to reality. The result of observation here, as in the foregoing cases, finds expression in a number of laws, which it " frames." The " laws " in the first case are " laws of thought" or connected logical laws: in the latter case we have laws of psychic events, " psychological " laws. The analysis in this section shows the inadequacy of observation as such to deal with its material in both cases. It fails in the first case because (1) "laws of thought" have no meaning apart from the reality with which thought is necessarily concerned ; laws of thought are laws of " thinking," and thinking is both form and content : (2) observation gives each law an absolute being of its own, as if it were detached from the unity of self-consciousness, whereas this unity is the fundamental principle of each and all the laws, which only exist in and by the single process of that unity. Hence a type of logic confined to "observing" laws of thought is necessarily untrue. Observation again fails in the second case because it is impossible to separate mind from its total environment. Observational or empirical psychology therefore is incapable of giving an adequate account of mind : the constitution of the environment enters into and in part determines the constitution of the psychic events, and the latter cannot be explained even as events without interpreting the former at the same time.]

Observation op Self-Consciousness in its pure form and in its relation to external reality — Logical and Psychological Laws Observation of nature finds the notion realised in inorganic nature ; laws whose moments are things, which at the same time are in the position of abstractions. But this notion is not a unity reflected into self. The hfe of organic nature, on the other hand, is just this condition of self -reflected simpHcity. The opposition within itself, in the sense of the opposition of universal and individual, does not make its appearance in the essential nature of hfe itself with one factor apart from the other ; the essential reahty is not the genus, self-sundered and self-moved in its undifierentiated element, and remaining at the same time for itself undifierentiated in its opposition. Observation finds this free notion, whose universahty has just as absolutely within it developed individuahty, only in the notion which itself exists as notion, i.e. in self-consciousness. Since observation now turns in upon itself and directs itself on the concrete notion as a free notion, it finds, to begin with, the Laws of Thought. This kind of individuahty, which thought is in itself, is the abstract movement of the negative, a movement returned entirely to the* condition of abstract simpHcity ; and the laws are outside reahty.

To say "they have no reality" means ordinarily nothing else than that they are without any truth, 288 Phenomenology of Mind They are intended to be, too, not indeed entire truth, but still formal truth. But what is purely formal without reahty is an ens intellectus, or empty abstraction without the internal distinction which would be nothing else but the content. On the other hand, however, since they are laws of pure thought, while the latter is the inherently universal, and thus a kind of knowledge, which immediately contains being and therein all reahty, these laws are absolute notions and are in one and the same sense the essential principles of form as well as of things. Since self-directing, self-moving universahty is the simple notion in a state of diremption, this notion has in this manner a content in itself, and one which is all content, though not sensuous, not a being of sense. It is a content, which is neither in contradiction with the form nor altogether separated from it ; rather it is essentially the form itself ; for the latter is nothing but the universal dividing itself into its pure moments. In the way in which this form or content, however, comes before observation qua observation, it gets the character of a content that is found, given, i.e. one which merely is. It becomes a passively existing centre of relations, a multitude of detached necessities, which as a definitely fixed content are to have truth just as they stand with their specific characteristic, and thus, ia point of fact, are withdrawn from the form.

This absolute truth of fixed characteristics, or of a plurahty of different laws, contradicts, however, the unity of self-consciousness, contradicts the unity of thought and form in general. What is declared to be a fixed and inherently constant law can be merely a Observation of Self-cmisciousness 289 moment of the self-referring, self-reflecting unity, can come on the scene merely as a vanishing element. When rescued, however, by the process of considering them, from the movement imposing this continuous connection, and when reinstated individually and separately, it is not the content that they lack, for they have a specific content ; they lack rather the form, which is their essential nature. In point of fact it is not for the reason that they have to be merely formal and are not to have any content, that these laws are not the truth of thought; it is rather for the opposite reason. It is because in their specific condition, simply as a content with the form removed, they want to pass for something absolute. In their true nature, as vanishing moments in the unity of thought, they would have to be taken as knowledge or as thinking process, but not as laws of knowledge. Observing, however, neither is nor knows that knowledge itself ; observation transforms its nature into the shape of an objective being, i.e. apprehends its negative character merely as laws of knowledge.

It is sufficient for our purpose here to have demonstrated the invahdity of the so-called laws of thought from the general nature of the case. It falls to speculative philosophy to go more intimately and fully into the matter, and there they show themselves to be what in truth they are, single vanishing moments, whose truth is simply the whole oiE the thinking process, the process of knowledge itself. This negative unity of thought exists for its own sake, or rather it is just that condition of being for itself and on its own account, the principle of individuahty, and in its reality it is an acting function of consciousness. 290 Phenomenology of Mind Consequently the mental attitude of observation will by the nature of the case be led on towards this as being the reahty of those laws of thought. Since this connection is not a fact for observation, the latter supposes that thought with its laws remains standing separately on one side, and that, on the other side, it obtains another objective being in what is now the object observed, viz. that acting consciousness, which exists for itself in such a way as to cancel otherness and find its reahty in this direct awareness of itself as the negative.

In the active practical reahty of consciousness, observation thus finds opened up before it a new field. Psychology contams the collection of laws in virtue of which the mind takes up different attitudes towards the different forms of its reality given and presented to it in a condition of otherness. The mind adopts these various attitudes partly with a view to receiving these modes of its reahty into itself, and conforming to the habits, customs, and ways of thinking it thus comes across, as being that wherein mind is reahty and as such object to itself ; partly with a view to knowing its own spontaneous activity in opposition to them, to follow the bent of its own inclinations, affections, and emotions, and carry off thence what is merely of particular and special moment for itself, and thus make what is objective conform to itself. In the former it behaves negatively towards itself as single and individual mind, in the latter negatively towards itself as the universal being. In the former a,spect independence [or self-dependence] gives what is met with merely the form of conscious tadividuahty in general, and as regards Observation of Self-consciousness 291 the content remains within the general reality given ; in the second aspect, however, it gives the reahty at least a certain special modification, which does not contradict its essential content, or even a modification by which the individual qua particular reahty and pecuhar content sets itself against the general reahty. This opposition becomes a form of wrongdoing when the individual cancels that reality in a merely particular manner, or when it does so in a manner that is general and thus for all, when it puts another world, another right, law, and custom in place of those aheady there.

Observational psychology, which in the first instance states what observation finds regarding the general forms brought to its notice in the active functioning consciousness, discovers all sorts of faculties, inclinations, and passions ; and since, while narrating what this collection contains, the remembrance of the unity of self-consciousness is not to be suppressed, observational psychology is bound to get the length at least of wonderment that such a lot and such a miscellany of things can happen to be somehow alongside one another in the mind as in a kind of bag, more especially when they are seen to be not hfeless inert things, but restless active processes. In telling over these various faculties observation keeps to the universal aspect : the unity of these multifarious capacities is the opposite aspect to this universahty, is the actual concrete individuahty. To take up again the different concrete individuahties, and to describe how one man has more inclination for this, the other for that, how one has more intelhgence than the other— all this is, however, something much 292 Phenomenology of Mhid more uninteresting than even to reckon up the species of insects, mosses, and so on. For these latter give observation the right to take them thus individually and disconnectedly (begrifflos) , because they belong essentially to the sphere of fortuitous detailed particulars. To take conscious individuahty, on the other hand, as a particular phenomenal entity, and treat it in so wooden a fashion, is self-contradictory, because the essential nature of individuality Ues in the universal element of mind. Since, however, the process of apprehending it causes it at the same time to pass into the form of universahty, to apprehend it is to find its law, and seems in this way to have a rational purpose in view, and a necessary function to fulfil.

The moments constituting the content of the law are on the one hand individuality itself, on the other its universal inorganic nature, viz. the given circumstances, situation, habits, customs, rehgion, and so forth ; from these the determinate individuahty is to be understood and comprehended. They contain something specific, determinate, as well as universal, and are at the same time something lying at hand, which furnishes material for observation and on the other side expresses itself in the form of individuahty. The law of this relation of the two sides has now to contain and express the sort of effect and influence these determinate circumstances exert on individuahty. This individuahty, however, just consists both in being the universal, and hence in passively and directly assimilating and blending with the given universals, the customs, habits, etc., thus becoming conformed to them, as also in taking up an attitude of opposition towards them and thus transforming and transmuting Observation of Self-consciousness 293 them ; and again in behaving towards them in its individual character with complete indifference, neither allowing them to exert an influence over it, nor setting itself actively against them. On that account what is to have an influence on individuahty, the sort of influence it is to have — which, properly speaking, means the same thing — depends entirely on individuahty itself. Consequently, to say that this individuahty has become this specifically determinate individuahty means nothing else than saying it has been this all along. Circumstances, situation, customs, and so on, which show themselves on one side as something given, and on the other as within this specific individuahty, reveal merely their own indeterminate nature, which is not the point under consideration. If these circumstances, style of thought, customs, the whole state of the world, in short, had not been, then assuredly the individual would not be what he is ; for all the individuals that find a place in this state of the world go to constitute this universal substance what it is.

The way in which the condition of the world becomes particularised in any given individual, however — and such an individual has to be understood and comprehended— could have been no other than the way in which it particularises itself as a determinate universal, and in this determinate form alone could it have operated on the individual as it does. Only so could it have made the individual the specific particular individual he is. If the external element is so constituted in and for itself as it appears in individuahty, the latter would be comprehended from the nature of the former. We should have a double gallery of pictures, one of which would be the reflection of the other : the one 294 Pfienonienotogy of Mind the gallery of external circumstance completely en' compassing, circumscribing, and determining the individual, the other the same gallery translated into the form in which those circumstances are in the conscious individual : the former the spherical surface, the latter the centre reflectively representing that surface within it. But the spherical surface, the world for the individual, carries on the face of it this double meaning : it is in and for itself the actual world and situation, and it is the world of the individual. It is the world of the individual either in so far as this individual could be merely fused and blended with it, had let that world, just as it is, pass into its own nature, and had taken up towards it merely the attitude of a formal consciousness ; or, on the other hand, it is the world of the individual in the sense in which the given has been transformed and transmuted by that individual.

Since reahty is capable of haviag this twofold meaning on account of this freedom of the individual, the world of the individual is only to be understood from the individual himself ; and the influence of reahty upon the individual, a reality which is represented as having a being all its own {an und fiir sich), receives through this individual absolutely the opposite significance — the individual either lets the stream of reahty flowing in upon it have its way, or breaks off and diverts the current of its influence. In consequence of this, however, " psychological necessity "' becomes an empty phrase, so empty that there is the absolute possibihty that what should have had this influence could equally well not have had it. Herewith drops out of account that existence which was to be something aU by itself, and was meant to con- Observation of Self-consciousness ^95 Stitute one aspect, and that the universal aspect, of a law. Individuality is what its world, in the sense of its own world, is. Individuality itself is the cycle of its own action, in which it has presented and estabhshed itself as reahty, and is simply and solely a unity of what is given and what is constructed — a unity whose aspects do not fall apart, as in the idea of psychological law, into a world given per se and an individuahty existing for itself. Or if those aspects are thus considered each by itself, there is no necessity to be found between them, and no law of their relation to one another.

Obseevation of the relation oe Sele-Consciousness TO ITS immediate ACTUALITY — PHYSIOGNOMY AND [In the previous section observation was directed upon the relation of mind to external reality — the natural environment of individuality. The relation of mind to its own physical embodiment furnishes a further object for observation to take up. How observation operates in dealing with this relation forms the subject of the analysis in the present section. Up to and at the time at which Hegel wrote, the discussion of this relation took the form of what are now looked upon either as spurious sciences or at best as falling within the scope of physiology or psychophysics. Those pseudo-sciences were Physiognomy and Phrenology or Cranioscopy. Both had in one form or another engaged the attention of reflective minds from the earliest times. But about the latter half of the eighteenth century, they gained unusual public prominence, in Germany, France and England, through the eloquence and conviction of their exponents ; so much so that in Germany a law was passed forbidding the promulgation of phrenology as being dangerous to religion, and in England a law of George II re-enacted a statute of Elizabeth imposing the severest penalties on physiognomists. The chief exponents and propagandists of these studies of the human individual were Lavater (17411801), in physiognomy, and Gall (1758-1828) along with his pupil Spurzheim, in phrenology. The personal character and influence of the first, combined with his rhetorical eloquence, compelled the attention not only of the popular mind but of men of outstanding intelligence ; while Gall lectured publicly and went from one University to another expounding the generalisations discovered or made.

It was impossible therefore for any philosopher who attempted to discuss comprehensively the methods and procedure of observational science to ignore the claims made by these pseudo-sciences or to refuse to examine the validity of the laws they proposed to formulate. This was all the more necessary because the object they dealt with — the relation of mind to its physical embodiment — was and is unquestionably an important fact of experience and presents a serious problem to philo- Physiognomy and Phrenology 297 sopty, especially to idealism. Hence we have in tlie following section an elaborate analysis of the observational " sciences " of physiognomy and phrenology — an analysis the length of which can only be explained and justified by the historical circumstances above indicated. The ruthless criticism, the bitterness of the attack upon and the contempt for the claims of these sciences, displayed throughout Hegel's analysis are only explicable in view of the scientific and philosophical pretentions of the expounders of these sciences.] Observation op the relation of Self-Consciousness to its immediate actuality — physiognomy and Phrenology * Psychological observation discovers no law for the relation of self-consciousness to actuality or the world over against it ; and owing to their mutual indifference and independence it is forced to fall back on the peculiar determinate characteristic of real individuality, which has a being in and for itself or contains the opposition of subjective self-existence {Filrsicliseyn) and objective inherent existence (Ansichseyn) dissolved and extinguished within its own process of absolute mediation. Individuahty alone is now the object for observation, or the object to which observation now passes.

The individual exists in himself and for himself. He is for himself, or is a free activity ; he is, however, also in hunself, or has himself an original determinate being of his own — a characteristic which is in principle the same as what psychology sought to find outside him. Opposition thus breaks out in his own self ; it has this twofold nature, it is a process or movement of consciousness, and it is the fixed being of a reality with a phenomenal character, a reality which in it is directly its own. This being, the " body " of the determinate individuahty, is its ultimate and original source or condition, that in the making of which it has had nothing to do. But since the individual at the same time merely * Cp. with Hegel's analysis Erdmann's Psychologische Briefe, Br. 9. Self-consciousness in relation with, its Actuality 299 is what he has done, his body is also an " expression " of himself which he has brought about ; a sign and indication as well, which has not remained a bare immediate fact, but only points to and lets us see what is meant by his setting his original nature to work.

If we consider the moments we have here in relation to the view previously indicated, we find a general human shape and form, or at least the general character of a chmate, of a portion of the world, of a people, just as formerly we found in the same way general customs and culture. In addition, too, the particular circumstances and situation come within the universal reahty ; here this particular reahty is a particular formation of the shape and mould of the individual. On the other side, just as the free activity of the individual and reahty in the sense of his own reahty were formerly placed in contrast and opposition to reahty as given, here the shape assumed by the individual stands as an expression of his own actuahsation estabhshed by the individual himself, it bears the hneaments and forms of his spontaneously active being. But the universal as well as particular reality, which observation formerly met with outside the individual, is here the reahty of the individual, his co-nate body, and within this very body the expression due to his own action appears. From the psychological point of view objective reahty in and for itself and determinate individuahty had to be brought into relation to one another ; here, however, it is the whole determinate individuahty that is the object for observation, and each aspect of the opposition it entails is itself this whole. ThuSj to the outer whole belongs not merely

300 Phenomenology of Mind the original primordial being, the co-nate body, but the formation of the body as well, which is due to activity from the iimer side ; the body is a unity of unformed and formed existence, and is the reahty of the individual pervaded and permeated by his reference to self. This whole embraces the definite and specific parts fixed originally and from the first, and also the lines or lineaments which only arise as the result of action ; this whole so formed is, and this being is an expression of what is inner and within, of the individual constituted as a consciousness and as a process. This inner is, too, no longer formal, spontaneous activity without any content or determinateness of its own, an activity with its content and specific nature, as in the former case, lying in external circumstances ; it is an origiaal inherently determinate Character, whose form is just the activity. What, then, we have to consider here is the relation subsisting between the two sides ; the point to observe is how this relation is determined, and what is to be understood by the inner finding expression in the outer. This outer, in the first place, does not act as an organ making the inner visible, or, in general terms, a being for another ; for the inner, so far as it is in the organ, is the activity itself. The mouth that speaks, the hand that works, with the bones too, if we care to add them, are the operative organs effecting the actual reahsation, and they contain the action qua action, or the inner as such ; the externality, however, which the inner obtains by their means is the deed, the act, in the sense of a reality separated and cut off from the individual. Language and labour are outer expressions in which the individual no longer retains

Self-consciousness in relation with its Actuality 301 possession of himself fer se, but lets the inner get right outside him, and puts it in the hands of another. For that reason we might just as truly say that these outer expressions express the irmer too much as that they do so too httle : too much — because the iuner itself breaks out in them, and there remains no opposition between them and it ; they not merely give an expression of the inner, they give the inner itself directly and immediately : too httle — because in speech and action the inner turns itself into something else, into an other, and thereby puts itself at the mercy of change and alteration, which transmute and distort the spoken word and the accomphshed act, and make something else out of them than they are in and for themselves as actions of a particular determinate individual. Not only do the products of actions, owing to this externahty, lose by the influence of others the character of being something constant as regards other individuahties ; but by their assuming towards the inner which they contain, the attitude of something external, separate, independent, and indifferent, they can, through the individual himself, be qua inner something other than they seem. Either the individual intentionally makes them to all appearance something else than they are in truth, or he is too incompetent to give himself the outer aspect he really wanted, and to give them such fixity and permanence that the product of his action cannot become transformed and distorted by others. The action, then, in the form of a completed product has the double and opposite significance of being either the inner individuaUty and not its expression, or qua external a reality detached from the inner, a reahty which is something quite different from the former.

302 Phenomenology of Mind On account of this twofold meaning, we must look about for the inner as it still is within the individual himself, but in a visible or external form. In the organ, however, it exists merely as immediate activity as such, which attains its externalisation in the act or deed, that either does or again does not represent the inner. The organ, in the light of this opposition, thus does not afiord the expression which is sought. If now the external shape and form were able to express the inner individuahty only in so far as that shape is neither an organ nor action, hence only in so far as it is an inert passive whole, it would then play the role of a persisting or subsistent thing, which received undisturbed the inner as an alien element into its own passive being, and thereby became the sign and symbol of it — an external contingent expression, whose actual concrete aspect has no meaning of its own — ■ a language whose accents and combinations are not the real fact itself, but are arbitrarily and capriciously connected with it and a mere accident so far as it is concerned.

Such a capricious association of factors that are external for one another does not give a law. Physiognomy, however, would claim distinction from other spurious arts and unwholesome studies on the ground that in dealing with determinate individuality it considers the necessary opposition of an inner and an outer, of character as a conscious nature and character as a definitely embodied organic shape, and relates these moments to one another in the way they are related to one another by their very conception, and hence must constitute the content of a law. In astrology, on the other hand, in palmistry and such like kinds of knowledge, there appears merely external element related to external element, anything whatsoever to an element alien to it. A given constellation at birth, and, when the external element is brought closer to the body itself, certaia given lines on the hand, are external factors making for long or short hfe, and the fate in general of the particular person. Being externalities they are indifferent towards one another, and have none of the necessity for one another which ought to he in the relation of what is outer to what is inner. The hand, to be sure, does not seem to be such a very external thing for fate ; it seems rather to stand to it as something inner. For fate again is also merely the phenomenal manifestation of what the specifically determinate individuahty inherently is as having an inner determinate constitution originally and from the start. Now to find out what this individuality is in itself, the palmist, as well as the physiognomist, takes a shorter cut than, e.g., Solon, who thought he could only know this from and after the course of the whole hfe : the latter looked at the phenomenal exphcit reahty, while the former considers the imphcit nature {das Ansich). That the hand, however, must exhibit and reveal the inherent nature of individuahty as regards its fate, is easily seen from the fact that after the organ of speech it is the hand most of all by which a man actuahses and manifests himself. It is the hvely artificer of his fortune : we may say of the hand it is what a man does, for in it as the effective organ of his self-fulfilment he is there present as the animating soul ; and since he is ultimately and originally his own fate, the hand will thus express this innate inherent nature.

304 Phenomenology of Mind From this peculiarity, that the organ of activity is at once a form of being and the operation effected within it, or again that the inner inherent being is itself exphcitly present in it and has a being for others, we come upon a further aspect of it different from the preceding. For if the organs in general proved to be incapable of being taken as expressions of the inner for the reason that in them the operation is present as a process, while the operation as a deed or act is merely external, and inner and outer in this way fall apart and are or can be alien to one another, the organ must, in view of the pecuharity now considered, be again taken as also a middle term for both, since this very fact, that the operation takes place and is present in it, constitutes eo ipso an external attribute of it, and indeed one that is different from the deed or act ; for the former holds by the individual and remains with him. This mediating term uniting inner and outer is in the first place itseK external too. But then this externahty is at the same time taken up into the inner ; it stands in the form of simple unbroken externaUty opposed to dispersed and disintegrated externality, which either is a single performance or condition contingent for the individuality as a whole, or else, in the form of a total externality, is fate or destiny, split up into a plurality of performances and conditions. The mere lines of the hand, then, the ring and compass of the voice, as also the individual pecuharity of the language used : or again this idiosyncracy of language, as expressed where the hand gives it more durable existence than the voice can do, viz. : in writing, especially in the particular style of " handwriting " — all this is an expression of the inner,

so that, as against tlie multifarious externality of action and fate, this expression again stands in the position of simple mere externahty, plays the part of an inner in relation to the externahty of action and fate. Thus, then, if at first the specific nature and innate peculiarity of the iadividual along with what these become as the result of cultivation and development, are regarded as the inner reahty, as the essence of action and of fate, this inner being gets its appearance in external fashion to begin with from the mouth, hand, voice, handwriting, and the other organs and their permanent characteristics. Thereafter and not till then does it give itself further outward expression, when reahsed in the world. Now because this middle term assumes the nature of an outer expression, which is at the same time taken back into the inner, its existence is not confined to the immediate organ carrying out the action ; this middle term is rather the movement and form of countenance and figure in general which perform no outward act. These lineaments and their movements on this principle are the checked and restrained action that stops at the individual and, as regards his relation to what he actually does, constitute his own personal inspection and observation of the action — expression in the sense of reflection upon the actual expression.

The individual is therefore not a mute and silent spectator on the occasion of his external action, since he is there reflected into himself at the same time, and gives articulate expression to this selfreflection. This theoretical activity, the individual's conversing with himself on the matter, is also perceptible to others, for his speaking is itself an outer expression. 306 Phenomenology of Mind la this inner, then, which, in being expressed remains an inner, observation finds the individual reflected out of Ms actual reality ; and we have to see how the case stands with this necessity involved in the unity here. His being thus reflected is to begin with different from the act itself, and therefore can he, and be taken for something other than tlie deed is. We look at a man's face and see whether he is in earnest with, what he says or does. Conversely, however, wkat is here intended to be an expression of the inner is at the same time an existent objective expression, and hence itself falls to the level of mere existence, which is absolutely contingent for the self-conscious individual. It is therefore no doubt an expression, but at tlie same time only in the sense of a sign or symbol, so that to the content expressed the peculiar nature of that by which it is expressed is completely indifferent. The inner in thus appearing is doubtless an invisible made visible, but without being itself attached to this appearance. It can just as weU make use of some other appearance as another inner can adopt the same kind of appearance. Lichtenberg,* therefore, is right in saying : " Suppose the physiognomist ever did have a man in his grasp, it would merely require a courageous resolution on the man's part to make himself again incomprehensible for centuries."

In the previous case f the immediately given circumstances formed a sphere of existence from which individuahty selected what it could or what it wanted, either submitting to or transmuting this given existence, * A critic of physiognomy in Uber Physiognomik, 2 Auf. Gdttingen, 1778, p. 35. t i.e., the relation of self-consciousijess to external reality. for which reason this did not contain the necessity and inner nature of individuaUty. Similarly here the immediate being in which individuality clothes its appearance is one which either expresses the fact of its being reflected back out of reahty and existing within itself, or which is for it merely a sign indifferent to what is signified, and therefore signifying in reahty nothing ; it is as much its countenance as its mask, which can be put off when it likes. Individuality permeates its own shape, moves, speaks in the shape assumed ; but this entire mode of existence equally well passes over into a state of being indifferent to the will and the act. Individuahty effaces from it the significance it formerly had — of being that wherein individuahty is reflected into itself, or has its true nature — and instead puts its real nature rather in the will and the deed.

Individuahty abandons that condition of being reflected into self which finds expression in lines and lineaments, and places its real nature in the performance, the work done. Herein it contradicts the relationship which the instinct of reason, engaged in observing self-conscious individuahty, establishes in regard to what its inner and outer should be. This point of view brings us to the special idea at the basis of the science of physiognomy — if we care to call it so. The opposition this form of observation comes upon is in form the opposition of practical and theoretical, both falling inside the practical aspect itself — the opposition of individuahty, making itself real in action (in the most general sense of action), and individuahty as being in this action at the same time reflected thence into self, and taking the action for its object. Observation apprehends and accepts this opposition in the 308 Phenomenology of Mind same inverted form in whicb. it is when it makes its appearance. To observation, tlie deed itself and the performance, whether it be that of speech or a more sohd reahty, stand for the contingent, nonessential outer while the individuality's existence within itself passes for the essential inner. Of the two aspects which the practical mind involves, intention and act, (the pondering over the action and the action itself,) observation selects the former as the true inner ; the latter is to have its more or less unessential esternahsation in the act, its true outer expression, however, is to be had in the form in which the individual is embodied. This latter expression is the sensuous immediate presence of the individual self-conscious agent : the inwardness which is to be the true and internal aspect, is the personal pecuharity of the intention, and the individual singleness of his self-existence— both together the mind as subjectively " meant." Thus, what observation takes for its object is an existence that is " meant " ; and there it looks for laws. The primary way of thinking about and giving the " meaning " of the '' presmnptive " presence of mind, is that of natural physiognomy, hasty judgment formed at a glance regarding the inner nature and the character of its form and shape. The object of this kind of guesswork thinking is so constituted that its very nature involves its being in truth something other than merely sensuous and immediate. Certainly what is really present is just this condition of being in sensuous form reflected out of sense into self ; it is the visible as a sensuous presentment of the invisible, which constitutes the object of observation. But this very sensuous immediate presence is an actuality of mind only as it

is for subjective conjecture (Meinung) ; and observation from tbis point of view occupies itself with its " presumed " (gemeint) existence^ with physiognomy, handwriting, sound of voice, etc. This sort of existence refers to just such a supposed or presumed (gemeintes) inner. It is not the murderer, the thief that is to be known ; it is the capacity to be a murderer, a thief. The definitely marked abstract attribute is thereby lost in the particular individual's concrete infinite characteristic nature, which now demands more skilful delineations than the former qualifications supply. Such skilful dehneations no doubt say more than the qualification, "murderer,'' "thief," or "good-hearted," "unspoiled," and so on; but are a long way short of their aim, which is to express the existence that is " meant," the single individuahty, as far short as the dehneations of the form and shape, which go further than a ' ' flat brow, " a " long nose, " etc. For the individual shape and form, hke the individual self-consciousness, is, qua "presmned " existence, inexpressible. The " science of knowing men " * which takes to do with a supposititious human being, hke the science of physiognomy, which deals with its presumptive reahty and seeks to raise to the level of demonstrable knowledge those uncritical assertions of natural physiognomy, is therefore something with neither foundation nor finahty ; it cannot manage to say what it "means" because it merely "means" or "presumes," and its content is merely what is " presumed " or " meant."

The so-called " laws," this kind of science sets out to * This refers to the claims put forward by Lavater, whose work was entitled Fhysiognomische Fragmente zur Bejorderung der Menschenkenntniss und Menschenliehe. Liepzig, 1776-8. 310 Phenomenology of Mind fizid, are relations holding between these two presumed or supposed aspects, and hence can amount to no more than an empty ''fancying." Again, too, since this pretence at knowledge, which takes upon itself to deal with the reahty of mind, finds its object to be just the fact that mind is reflected from sense existence back into self, and determinate existence is an indifferent accident for it, it is bound to be aware at once that by the so-called " laws " discovered it really means nothing at all, but that, strictly speaking, all this is mere chatter, or merely a " fancy " or " opinion " of its own, — an expression which brings out the truth that to state one's " opinion," one's " fancy," and not to convey thereby the fact itself, but merely a " fancy of one's own," are one and the same thing. In content, however, such observations cannot differ from these: "It always rains at our annual fair," says the dealer; "And every time, too," says the housewife, " when I am drying my washing."

Lichtenberg, who characterises physiognomic observation in this way, makes this remark : "If any one says, ' You act, certainly, like an honest man, but I can see from your figure you are forcing yourself to do so, and are a rogue at heart,' without a doubt every brave fellow to the end of time when accosted in that fashion will retort with a box in the ear." This retort is very striking, for the reason that it refutes the fundamental assumption of such a guesswork method of " conjecture " {meinen), viz. that the reality of a man is his face, etc. The true being of a man is rather his act ; individuality is real ia the deed, and a deed it is which cancels both the aspects of what is "meant" or "pre- sumed'^ to be. In tlie one aspect wiiere wliat is " presumed " or " imagined " takes the form of a passive bodily being, individuality puts itself forward in action as tlie negative essence whicb only is so far as it cancels being. Then furthermore the act does away with the inexpressibleness of what self-conscious individuality really " means " ; in regard to such " meaning," this individuahty is endlessly determined and determinable. This false infinite, this endless determining, is abolished in the performance of the act. The act is something simply determinate, universal, to be grasped as an abstract, distinctive whole ; it is murder, theft, a benefit, a deed of bravery, and so on, and what it is can be said of it. It is such and such, and its being is not merely a symbol, it is the fact itself. It is this, and the individual human being is what the act is. In the bare simphcity of this being, the individual has for others a definite essential nature of a certain general kind, and ceases to be merely something that is " meant " or " presumed " to be this or that. No doubt he is not there put forward in the form of mind ; but when it is a question of his being qua being, and the twofold being of bodily shape and act are pitted against one another, each claiming to be his true reahty, the deed alone is to be affirmed as his genuine being — not his figure or shape, which would express what he " means " to convey by his acts, or what any one might "conjecture" he merely could do. In the same way again when his performance and his inner possibfiity, capacity, or intention are opposed, the former alone is to be regarded as his true reahty, even if he finds things turn out different from what he expected, and " fancies," when

ol2 Phenomenology of Mind he turns from the act to what is in his " mind," that he is something else in his " inner mind " than what he is in the act. Individuahty which commits itself to the objective element, when it sets out to do something, no doubt puts itself at the mercy of that element, to be altered and perverted as the latter decides. But what settles the character of the act is just this, — whether the deed is a real thing that holds together, or whether it is merely a pretended or "supposed" performance, which is in itself null and void and passes away. Objectification does not alter the act itseK, it merely shows what the deed is, i.e. whether it is or whether it is nothing. The breaking up of this being into intentions, and subtleties of that sort, by which the real man, i.e. his deed, is to be reduced again to, and explained in terms of, his "conjectured" being, as even the individual himself may produce particular intentions to explain his own reahty, — all this must be left to idle " fancying " and " presuming " to furnish at its leisure. If this idle thinking will set its ineffective wisdom to work, and will deny the agent the character of reason, and use him so badly as to want to declare his figure and his Hneaments to be his real being instead of his act, then it may expect to get the retort above spoken of, a retort which shows that figure is not the inherent being, but is at any rate an object that can be pretty roughly handled.

If we look now at the range of relations as a whole in which self-conscious individuahty can be observed standing towards its outer aspect, there will be one left which has still to come before observation as an object. In psychology it is the external reahty of things wtiich in the life of mind is to have its counterpart conscious of itself and make the mind inteihgible. In physiognomy, on the other hand, mind or spirit is to be known in its own proper outer (physical) aspect, a form of being which may be called the language or utterance of mind — the visible invisibihty of its inner nature. There is still left the further character of the aspect of reahty, — that individuahty expresses its nature in its immediate actuahty, an actuahty that is definitely fixed and purely existent. This last relation [of mind to its reahty] is distinguished from the physiognomic by the fact that this is the speaking presence of the individual, who in his practical active outer expression brings to hght and manifests at the same time the expression wherein he reflects himself into himself and contemplates himself, an expression which is itself a movement, passive lineaments which are themselves essentially a mediated form of existence. In the feature still to be considered, however, the outer phase is in the end an entirely inactive objectivity, which is not in itself a speaking sign, but presents itself on its own account, separate from the self-conscious process, and has the form of a bare thing.

In the first place in regard to the relation of the inner to this its outer, it is clear that that relation seems boimd to be understood in the sense of a causal connection, since the relation of one immanent and inherent entity to another, qua a necessary relation, is causal connection. Now, for spiritual individuahty to have an elfect on the body, it must qua cause be itself corporeal. The corporeal aspect, however, wherein it acts as a 314 Phenomenology of Mind cause, is the organ, not the organ of action on external reahty, but of the action of the self-conscious being within itself, operating outward only on its own body. It is at the same time not easy to see what these organs can be. If we merely think of organs in general, the organ for work and toil would at once occur to us, so, too, the organ of sex, and so on. But organs of that sort are to be considered as instruments or parts which mind qua one extreme possesses as a means for dealing with the other extreme, which is an outer object. In the present case, however, an organ is to be rmderstood to be one wherein the self-conscious individual, as an extreme, maintains himself on his own account and for himself against his own proper actuahty which is opposed to him, the individual not being at the same time turned upon the outer world, but reflected in his own action, and where, further, his aspect of existence is not an existence objective for some other individual. In the case of physiognomy, too, the organ is no doubt considered as an existence reflected into seK and criticising the action. But in this case the existence is objective in character, and the outcome of the physiognomical treatment is that self-consciousness treats its own reahty as something to which it can be indifierent. This indifference disappears in the fact that this very state of being reflected into self is directly active : thereby that existence occupies and maintains a necessary relation to it. But to operate effectually on that existence it must itself have a being, though not properly speaking an objective being, and it must be shown to be an organ in this sense.

In ordinary hfe, anger, e.g. as an internal action of that sort, is located in the hver. Plato * even * Timaus, 71, 72. assigns the liver something still higher, something which to many is even the highest function of all, viz. prophecying, or the gift of uttering in an irrational manner things sacred and eternal. But the process which goes on in the individual's hver, heart, and so on, cannot be regarded as one wholly internal to the individual, wholly reflected into his self ; rather it is there in such a form that his Body is from the first smitten with it, and the process assumes a physical existence, becomes an animal force, reacting on and directed towards external reahty. The nervous system, on the other hand, is the immediate stability of the organism in its process of movement. The nerves themselves, no doubt, are again organs of that consciousness which from the fu'st is immersed in its outward impulses. Brain and spinal cord, however, may be looked at as the immediate presence of self-consciousness, a presence self-contained, not an object and also not transient. In so far as the moment of being, which this organ has, is a being for another, is an objective existence, it is a being that is dead, and is no longer the presence of self-consciousness. This self-contained existence, however, is by its very nature a fluent stream, wherein the circles that are made in it immediately break up and dissolve, and where no distinction is expressed as permanent, or real. Meanwhile, as mind itself is not an abstractly simple entity, but a system of processes, wherein it distinguishes itself into moments, but in the very act of distinguishing remains free and detached; and as mind articulates its body as a whole into a variety of functions, and designates one particular part of the body for only one function : — so too one can

316 Phenomenology of Mind represent to oneself the fluent state of its internal existence [its existence within itself] as something that is articulated into parts. Moreover, it seems bound to be thought of in this way, because the self-reflected being of mind in the brain itself is again merely a middle term between its pure essential nature and its bodily articulation, an intermediate link, which thereby forms the nature of both, and thus from the side of the latter, must also again have in it the actual articulation. The psycho-organic being has at the same time the necessary aspect of a stable subsistent existence. The former must retire, qua extreme of self-existence, and have this latter as the other extreme over against it, an extreme which is then the object on which the former acts as a cause. If now brain and spinal cord are that bodily self-existence of miad, the' skull and vertebral column form the other extreme separated of!, viz. the sohd fixed stable thing. When, however, any one thinks of the proper place where mind exists, it is not the back that occurs to him, but merely the head. Since this is so, we can, in examining a form of knowledge hke what we are at present deahng with, content ourselves with this reason, — not a very bad one in the present case, — in order to confine the existence of mind to the skuU. Should it strike any one to take the vertebral column for the seat of mind, in so far as by it too knowledge and action doubtless are sometimes partly induced and partly educed, this would prove nothing in defence of the view that the spinal cord must be taken as well for the indwelling seat of mind, and the vertebral column for the existential counterpart, because this proves too much. For we may bear in mind that there are

also other approved external ways for succouring tlie activity of mind in order to stimulate or inhibit its activity. The vertebral column, then, drops — "rightly," if we hke — out of account; and our "construing" that the skull alone does not in fact contain the "organs" of mind is just as good as many other doctrines " construed " by "philosophy of nature." For this was previously excluded from the notion of this relation, and on that account the skull was adopted as the aspect of existence; or, if we may not recall what the state of the case essentially and in principle involves, even experience teaches us clearly that, as we do not see with the eye qua organ, so it is not with the skull that we commit murder, steal, write poetry, etc. We must on that account refrain too from using the expression " organ " when speaking of that significance of the skull which we have still to mention. For although it is a common thing to hear people say, that to reasonable men it is not words but facts that really matter, yet that does not give us permission to describe a thing in terms not appropriate to it. For this is at once stupidity and deceit, pretending merely not to have the right "word," and hiding from itself that in reahty it has not got hold of the fact itself, the notion. If the latter were there, it would soon find the right word.

What has been here determined is, in the first instance, merely that just as the brain is the cafut vivum, the skull is the cafut mortuum. It is in this ens mortuum, then, that the mental processes and specific functions of the brain would have to find their external reality manifested and 318 Phenomenology of Mind set forth, a reality which is none the less in the individual himself. For the relation of those processes and functions to what, being an ens mortuum, does not contam mind indwelling within it, there is offered, m the first instance, the external and mechanical factor, the fixed solid element above mentioned, so that the organs proper— and these are in the brain— here press the skull out round, there make it broad, or force it flat, or in whatever way we care to state the effect thus exerted. Being itself a part of the organism, it must be supposed to have in it too, as is the case in every bone, an active, Uving, formative influence, so that, from this point of view, it really, from its side, presses the bram, and fixes its external boundary, — which it is the better able to do being the harder. In that shape, however, the relation of the activity of the one to the other would always maintain the same character ; for whether the skull is the determining factor or the factor determined, this would effect no alteration in the general causal connection, only that the skull would then be made the immediate organ of self-consciousness, because its aspect of existence-for-self would find expression in its causal function. But, since self-existence in the sense of organic living activity belongs to both in the same manner, the causal connection between them in point of fact drops altogether.

This development of the two, however, would be inwardly connected, and would be an organic preestabhshed harmony, which leaves the two interrelated aspects free as regards one another, each with its own proper form and shape, without this shape needing to correspond to that of the other ; and still more so as regards the relation of the shape and the quality — just as the form of the grape and the taste of wine are mutually independent of one another. Since, however, the character of self-existence turns on the brain, while that of existence turns on the feature of skull, there is also a causal connection to be set up between them inside the organic unity — a necessary relation between them as external for one another, i.e. a relation itself external, whereby their form and shape is determined the one through the other. As regards the characteristic, however, in virtue of which the organ of self-consciousness would operate causally on the opposite aspect, all sorts of statements can be made. For the question concerns the pecuharity of a cause which is considered in regard to what for it is indifferent, its formal shape and quantity, a cause whose inner nature and self-existence are to be precisely what leave quite imaffected the immediately existing aspect. The organic self-formation of the skull is, to begin with, indifferent to the mechanical influence exerted, and the relationship in which these two processes stand, since the former consists in relating itself to itself, is just this very indeterm in ateness and boundlessness. Furthermore, even though the brain accepted the distinctions of mind, and took them into itself as existential distinctions, and were a plurahty of inner organs occupying each a different space, it would be left undecided whether a mental element would, according as it was originally stronger or weaker, either be bound to possess in the first case a more expanded brain-organ, or in the latter case a more contracted brain - organ, or just the other way about, But it is contradictory to nature for the

320 Phenomenology of Mind brain to be such a plurality of internal organs ; for nature gives the moments of the notion an existence of their own, and hence puts the fluent simphcity of organic hfe clear on one side, and its articulation and division with its distinctions on the other, so that, in the way they have to be taken here, they assume the form of particular anatomical facts. The same holds good in regard to the question whether the improvement of the brain would enlarge or diminish the organ, whether it would make it coarser and thicker or finer. By the fact that it remains imdetermined how the cause is constituted, it is left in the same way undecided how the effect exerted on the skull comes about, whether it is a widening or a narrowing and shrinking of it. Suppose this effect is named in perhaps more distinguished phrase a " solicitation," we cannot say whether this takes place by swelling, hke the action of a cantharides-plaster, or by shrivelling hke the action of vinegar. In defence of all views of that kind plausible reasons can be adduced ; for the organic relation, which quite as much exerts its influence, finds one fit as well as another, and is indifferent to all this wit of mere understanding.

It is, however, not the interest of observation to seek to determine this relation. For it is in any case not the brain in the sense of a physical part which takes its stand on one side, but brain in the sense of the existential form of self-conscious individuahty. This individuahty qua abiding character, and selfmoving conscious activity exists for itself and within itself. Opposed to this existence within itself and on its own account, stand its reality and its existence for another. Its own peculiar existence is the essential nature, and is subject, having a being in the brain ; this being is subsumed under it, and gets its value and worth merely through its inherent and indwelling significance. The other aspect of self-conscious individuahty, however, that of its existence, is being qua independent and subject, or qua a thing, viz. a bone : the real existence of man is his skull-bone. This is the relationship and the sense which the two aspects of this relation have when the mind adopts the attitude of observation. Observation has now to deal with the more specific and determinate relation of these aspects. The skullbone doubtless in general has the significance of being the immediate reahty of mind. But the many-sidedness of mind gives its existence a corresponding variety of meanings. What we have to find out is the specific meaning of the particular regions into which this existence is divided ; and we have to see how the reference to mind is denoted in them.

The skull-bone is not an organ of activity, nor even a process of utterance. We neither commit theft, murder, etc., with the skull-bone, nor does it ia the least contort the face to suit the deed in such cases, so that the skull should express the meaning in the language of gesture. Nor does this existential form possess the value even of a sign and symbol. Look and gesture, tone, even a pillar or a post, stuck up on a desert island, proclaim at once that they stand for something else than what they merely are at first sight. They forthwith profess to be signs, since they have in them a characteristic which points to something else by the fact that it does not belong pecuharly to them. Doubtless, too, in the case of a skull there is many an 322 Phenomenology of Mind idea that may occur to us, like those of Hamlet over Yorick's sJoill ; but the skull-bone by itself is such an indifferent object, such a harmless thing, that there is nothing else to be seen in it or to be thought about it directly as it is, except simply the fact of its being a skull. It no doubt reminds us of the brain and its specific nature, and skulls with other formations, but it does not recall a conscious process, since there is impressed on it neither a look or gesture, nor anything which would show traces of derivation from a conscious activity. For it is that form of reahty which in the case of individuahty is intended to set forth and make manifest another aspect of a kind that would no longer be an existence reflecting itself into itself, but bare immediate existence.

While, further, the skull does not itself feel, there seems still a possibihty of providing it with a more determinate significance in the fact that specific feelings or sensations might enable us, through their being contiguous or in proximity to it, to find out what the skull may mean to convey ; and since a conscious mode of mind has its feehng in a specific region of the skull, it may be thought perhaps that this localisation on the shape of the skull may indicate what that mode is and what its pecuhar nature. Just as, e.g., many people complain of feeling a paiuful tension somewhere in the head when thinking intensely, or even when thinking at all, so it might be that steahng, committing murder, writing poetry, and so on, could each be accompanied with its own proper feehng, which would over and above be bound to have its pecuhar localisation. This locahty of the brain, which WQuld in this manner be more disturbed and exercised, would also most likely modify further the contiguous locality of the bone of the skull ; or again this latter locality would, from sympathy or conformity, not be inert, but would enlarge or diminish or in some other way assume a corresponding form.

What, however, makes such a hypothesis improbable is this : feehng in general is something indeterminate, and that feehng in the head as the centre might well be the general feehng that accompanies all suffering ; so that mixed up with the thief's, murderer's, poet's tickling or pain in the head there would be other feelings too, and they would permit of being distinguished from one another, or from those we may call bodily feelings, as httle as an illness can be determined from the symptom of headache, if we restrict its meaning merely to the bodily element. In point of fact, from whatever side we look at the matter, all necessary reciprocal relation between them ceases to be of any account ; and so too any intimation the one might give of the other, in virtue of such a relation. If the relation is still to hold, what is left to form a sort of necessary relation is a pre-estabhshed harmony of the corresponding features of ,the two sides, a harmony which leaves the factors in question quite detached and rests on no inherent principle ; for one of the aspects has to be a non-mental reahty, a bare thing.

Thus then, on one side we have a number of passive regions of the skull, on the other a number of mental properties, the variety and character of which will depend on the condition of psychological investigation. The poorer the idea we have of mind, the easier the matter becomes in this respect ; for, in part, the fewer 324 Phenomenology of Mind become tke mental properties, and, in part, the more detaciied, fixed, and ossified, and consequently more akin to features of the bone and more comparable with them. But, while much is doubtless made easier by this miserable representation of the mind, there still remains a very great deal to be found on both sides : there remains for observation to deal with the entire contingency of their relation. When every faculty of the soul, every passion and (for this, too, must be considered here) the various shades of characters, which hyper-subtle psychology and '' knowledge of mankind " are accustomed to talk about, are each and aU assigned their place on the sl^l, and their contour on the skull-bone, the arbitrariness and artificiality of this procedure are just as glaring as if the children of Israel, who had been likened to " the sand by the seashore for multitude,'' had each assigned and taken to himself his own symbohc grain of sand !

The skull of a murderer has — not this organ or sign — but this " bump. " But this murderer has in addition a lot of other properties, and other bumps too, and along with the bumps hollows as well. Bumps and hollows, there is room for selection ! And again his murderous propensity can be referred to some bump or hollow or another, and this in turn to some mental quahty or another ; for the murderer is neither this abstract of a murderer, nor does he have merely one protuberance and one depression. The observations offered on this point must therefore sound just about as sensible as those of the dealer about the rain at the annual fair, and of the housewife at her washing time. Dealer and housewife might as well make the observation that it always rains when some neighbour passes by, or when they liave roast pork. From the point of view of observation a given determinate characteristic of mind is just as indifferent to and independent of a given specific formation of the skull as the rain in regard to circumstances hke these. For of the two objects thus under observation, the one is an arid entity esisting on its own account, an ossified quahty of mind, as the other is an arid entity inherently existing in itself. Such an ossified entity, as they both are, is completely indifferent to everything else. It is just as much a matter of indifference to a high bump whether a murderer is in close proximity, as to the murderer whether flatness is near him.

There is, of course, no getting over the 'possibility that still remains, that a bump at a certain place is connected with a certain property, passion, etc. We can think of the murderer with a high bump here at this place on the skull, the thief with one there. From this point of view phrenology is capable of much greater extension than it has yet had. For in the first instance it seems to be restricted merely to the connection of a bump with a property in one and the same individual, in the sense that this individual possesses both. But phrenology fer naturam — for there must be such a subject as well as a physiognomy fer naturam — goes a long way beyond this restriction. It does not merely affirm that a cunning fellow has a bump like a fist lying behind the ear, but also puts forward the view that not the unfaithful wife herself, but the other party to this conjugal transaction has a bump on the brow. In the same way one may too " imagine " and " conjecture " the man hving under the same roof with the murderer, or even one's own neighbour, or, going still

326 Phenomenology of Mind further afield, " conjecture " one's fellow-citizens, etc., with high bumps on some part of the skull, just as well as one may picture to oneself the flying cow, that was caressed by the crab riding on a donkey, and afterwards, etc. etc. But if possibihty is taken not in the sense of a possibility of " imagining " and " conjecturing " and " picturing," but in the sense of inner possibihty or possibility of conceiving, then the object is a reahty of the kind which is a mere thing and is, and should be, deprived of the significance of reahty, and can thus only have the sense of it for imaginative or figurative thinking. The observer may, in spite of the indifference of the two sides to one another, set to work to determine correlations, supported partly by the general rational principle that the outer is the expression of the inner, and partly by the analogy of the skulls of animals — which may doubtless have a simpler character than men, but of which at the same time it becomes just so much the more difficult to say what character they do have, in that it cannot be so easy for any man's imagination to think himself really into the nature of an animal. Should the observer do so, he will find, in giving out for certain the laws he maintains he has discovered, a first-rate means of assistance in a distinction which we too must necessarily take note of at this point.

The being of mind cannot be taken at any rate to be something completely rigid and innnovable. Man is free. It will be admitted that the mind's original primordial being consists merely in dispositions, which mind has to a large extent under its control, or which require favourable circumstances to draw them out; i.e. an original being of mind can be equally well spoken of as a being which does not as such exist at all. Were observations to conflict with what strikes any one as a law, which he is sure of and can give out for certain— should it happen to be fine weather at the annual fair or on the housewife's washing day — then dealer and housewife might say that it, properly speaking, should rain, and the conditions are really all that way. So too in the case of observing the skull, it might be said when those contradictory observations occur, that the given individual ought properly to be what according to the law his skuU proclaims him to be, and that he has an original disposition which, however, has not been brought o'lt and fulfilled : this quality is not reaUy present, but it should be there. The " law " and the " ought-to-be " rest on observation of actual showers of rain, and observation of the actual sense and meaning in the case of the given specific character of the skull ; but if the reality is not present, the empty possibihty is of just as much significance.

This mere possibihty, i.e. the non-actuahty, of the law proposed, and hence the observations conflicting with the law, are bound to come out just for the reason that the freedom of the individual and the circumstances gradually evolved are indifferent towards what merely is, both in the sense of the original umer as well as the external ossiform structure, and also because the individual can be something else than he is in his original internal natiire, and still more than what he is as a skuU-bone. We get, tlen, the possibihty that a given bump or hollow on the skull may denote both something actual as well as a mere disposition, one indeed so httle deter- 328 Phenmnenology of Mind mined in any given direction as to denote something that is not actual at alL We find the excuse made, which comes off badly, as a prevarication always does, that it is itself there for use against what it ought to assist. We see the thinking that merelj^ "means" and "conjectures" brought by the very force of facts to say in unintelhgent fashion the very opposite of what it holds to — to say that there is something indicated and signified by such and such a bone, but also just as truly not indicated at all.

What hovers before this way of "conjecturing " when it makes this shift is the true thought, — a thought, however, which abohshes that way of " conjecturing," — that being as such is not at all the truth of spirit. As the disposition is an original primordial being, having no share in tlie activity of mind, just such a being is the skull-bone on its side. What merely is, without participating in spiritual activity, is for consciousness a thing, and so little is it the essence of mind that it is rather the very opposite of it, and consciousness is only actual and concrete by the negation and abolition of such a being. From this point of view it must be regarded as a thorough denial and flaunting of reason to give out a skull-bone as the actual existence of conscious hfe, and that is what it is given out to be when it is regarded as the outer form of spirit ; for the external shape is just the existent reahty. It is no use to say we merely draw an inference from the outer as to the inner, which is something different, or to say that the outer is not the inner itself but merely its expression. For in the relation of the two to one another the character of self-reflecting and self -reflected reahty falls just on

tlie side of the inner, while the outer has the character of existent reahty. When, therefore, a man is told, " You (your inner being) are so and so, because your skull-bone is so constituted," this means nothiag else than that we regard a bone as the man's reality. To retort upon such a statement with a box in the ear — in the way mentioned above when dealing with physiognomy — brings out primarily the " soft " parts of his head from their apparent state and position, and proves merely that these are no true inherent nature, are not the reahty of mind ; the retort here had better go the length of breaking the skull of the person who makes a statement like that, in order to demonstrate to him quite as palpably as his own wisdom that a bone is nothing of an inherent nature at all for a man, still less his true reahty. The untutored instinct of self-conscious reason will reject without examination a phrenology — this other instinct of self-conscious reason, its instinct for observation, which, having got scarcely within sight of knowledge, has grasped the subject in the soulless form that the outer is an expression of the inner. But the worse the thought, the less sometimes does it strike us where its badness definitely hes, and the more difi&cult is it to put one's finger on it. For a thought is said to be the worse, the barer and emptier the abstraction which thought takes to be the essential truth. But in the antithesis here in question the component parts are individuality conscious of itself, and the abstraction of a bare thing, to which externahty has been reduced — the inner being of mind taken in the sense of a fixed soulless existence and in opposition to that abstract being.

330 Phenomenology of Mind With the attainment of this, however, rational observation seems in fact to have also reached its culminating point, at which it must take leave of itself and turn right about ; for it is only when anything is entirely bad that there is an inherent and immediate necessity in it to wheel round completely into its opposite. Just so it may be said of the Jews that it is precisely because they stand directly before the door of salvation, that they are and have been the most reprobate and abandoned : — what the nation should be in and for itself, this, the true inner nature of its self, it is not conscious of being, but puts away beyond itself. By this process of deprivation and renunciation it creates for itself the possibility of a higher level of existence, if once it could get the object thus renounced back again to itself, than if it had never left its natiiral immediate state of existence, — because spirit is all the greater the greater the opposition out of which it returns into itself ; and such an opposition spirit brings about for itself, by doing away with its immediate unity, and laying aside its self-existence, the possession of a separate hfe of its own. But if such a consciousness does not mediate and reflect itself, the middle position or term where it has a determinate existence is the fatal unholy void, since what should give it substance and filling has been turned into a rigidly fixed extreme. It is thus that this last stage of reason's function of observation is its very worst, and for that reason its complete reversal becomes necessary.

For the survey of the series of relations dealt with up to this point, which constitute the content and object of observation, shows that even in its first form, in observation of the relations of inorganic nature, sensuous being vanished from its ken. The moments of natm-es' condition present themselves as pure abstractions and as bare and simple notions, which should be kept connected with the existence of things, but this gets lost, so that the abstract moment proves to be a pure movement and a universal. This free, self-complete process retains the significance of something objective ; but now appears as a unit. In the process of the inorganic the unit is the inner with no existence. When the process does have existence qua unit, as one and single, it is an organism. The unit qua self-existent or negative entity stands in antithesis to the universal, throws ofi its control, and remains independent by itself, so that the notion, being only reahsed in the condition of absolute dissociation, fails to find in organic existence its genuine expression, in the sense that it is not there in the form of a universal; it remains an "outer," or, what is the same thing, an " inner " of organic nature.

The organic process is merely free imphcitly ; it is not so exphcitly, " for itself." The exphcit phase of its freedom appears in the idea of purpose, has its existence in the form of something else, of a self-directing aim and guidance, that hes outside the mere process. Reason's function of observation thus turns its attention to this aim and guidance, to mind, to the notion actually existuig as universahty, or to the purpose existing in the form of purpose ; and what constitutes its own essential nature is now the object before it. Reason here in the activity of observation is directed first to the pure abstract form of its essential nature. But since reason, in its apprehension of the object thus working and moving amidst its own distinctions takes 332 Phenomenology of Mind this object as something that exists, observation becomes aware of laws of thought, relations of one constant factor to another constant element. The content of these laws being, however, merely moments, they pass away into the single one of self-consciousness. This new object taken in the same way as existent, is the contingent individual self-consciousness. The process of observation, therefore, keeps within the " conjectured" meaning of mind, and within the contingent relation of conscious to unconscious reaUty. Mind alone in itself is the necessity of this relation. Observation, therefore, attacks it at closer quarters, and compares its reahsation through will and action with its reahty when it contemplates and is reflected into itself, a reaUty which is itself objective. This external aspect, although an utterance of the individual which he himself contains, is at the same time, qua symbol, something indifferent to the content which it is intended to denote, just as what finds for itself the symbol is indifferent to this symbol.

For this reason, observation finally passes from this variable form of utterance back to the permanent fixed being, and in principle declares that externality is the outer immediate reahty of mind, not in the sense of an organ, and not like a language or a symbol, but in the sense of a lifeless thing. What the very first form of observation of inorganic nature did away with and superseded, viz. the idea that the notion should appear in the shape of a thing, this last form of observation reinstates so as to turn the reahty of mind itself into a thing, or expressing it the other way about, so as to give hfeless being the significance of mind. Observation has thus reached the point of explicitly expressing what our notion of observation was at the outset, viz. that rational certainty means objectivity of reason, that the certainty of reason seeks itself as an objective reahty. This does not, indeed, mean that mind, which is represented by a skull, is defined as a thing. There shall be no materiahsm, as it is called, in this idea ; mind rather must be something very different from these bones of the skull. But that mind is, means nothing else than that it is a thing. When being as such, or thingness, is predicated of the mind, the true and genuine expression for this is, therefore, that mind is such an entity as a bone is. Hence it must be considered as supremely important that the true expression has been found for the bare statement regarding mind — that it is. When the statement is ever made about mind, that it is, has a being, is a thing, an individual reahty, we do not mean it is something we can see, or knock about, or take in our hands, and so on, but that is what we say, and what the statement really amounts to is consequently conveyed in the expression that the existence of mind is a bone.

This result has now a twofold significance : one is its true meaning, in so far as the result is a completion of the outcome of the preceding movement of selfconsciousness. The unhappy self-consciousness renounced its self-sufficiency, its independence, and wrung out its distinctive self- existence into the shape of a thing. By doing so, it left the level of selfconsciousness and reverted to the condition of mere consciousness, i.e. to that phase of conscious life for which the object is an existent, a thing. But what is " thing " in this case is self-consciousness; "thing" here is the 334 Phenomenology of Mind unity of ego and being — -the Category. Wlien tlie object before consciousness is determined thus, consciousness possesses reason. Consciousness, as well as self-consciousness, is in itself properly reason in an implicit form ; but only that consciousness can be said to liave reason whose object has the character of being the category. From this, however, the knowledge of what is reason is still distinct. The category, which is the immediate unity of being and self {Seyn und Seinen), must traverse both forms, and the conscious attitude of observation is just where the category is set forth in the form of being. In its result, consciousness expresses that, whose unconscious implicit certainty it is, in the shape of a proposition — ■ the proposition which lies in the very notion of reason. This proposition is the infinite judgment that the self is a thing — a judgment that cancels and transcends itself.

Through this result, then, the category gets the added characteristic of being this self-cancelhng opposition. The "pure" category, which is present to consciousness in the form of being or immediacy, is still an unmediated, a merely given object, and the attitude of consciousness is also direct, has no mediation in it. That infinite judgment is the moment which brings about the transition of immediacy into mediation or negativity. The given present object is therefore characterised as a negative object, while consciousness in its relation towards it assumes the form of se?/-consciousness ; or the category, which traversed the form of being in the process of observation, is now set up in the form of self-existence, has now a distinctive being for its own sake. Consciousness no longer seeks to find itself immediately, but to produce itself by its own activity. Consciousness itself is the purpose and end of its own action, as in the process of observation it has to do merely with things. The other meaning of the result is the one already considered, that of unsystematic (begrifflos) observation. This has no other way of understanding and expressing what it is about than by declaring the reahty of selfconsciousness to consist in the skull-bone, just as it appears in the form of a thing of sense, stiU retaining its character as an object for consciousness. In stating this, however, it has no clear consciousness as to what the statement involves, and does not grasp the determinate character of the subject and predicate in the proposition and of their relation to one another, still less does it grasp the proposition in the sense of a selfresolving infinite judgment and a notion. Rather, in virtue of a deeper lying self-consciousness of mind, which has the appearance here of being an innate sincerity and honesty of nature, the ignominiousness of such an irrational crude thought as that of taking a bone for the reahty of self-consciousness, is concealed ; and the very senselessness of introducing all sorts of relations of cause and effect, "symbol,"' "organ," etc., which are perfectly meaningless here, and of hiding away the glaring folly of the proposition behind distinctions derived from them — all this puts a gloss on that thought and whitewashes its naked absurdity.

Brain-fibres and the hke, looked at as forms of the being of mind, are from the first an imagined, a merely hjrpothetical actuahty — not an existent reahty, not felt, seen, in short not true reality. If they do exist, if they are seen, they are hfeless objects, and then nq 336 Phenomenology of Mind, longer pass for the being of mind. But objectivity proper must take an immediate, a sensuous form, so that in this objectivity qua hfeless — for the bone is Kfeless so far as it is in the hving being itself — mind is definitely established as real, as actual. The principle involved in this idea is that reason claims to be all thinghood, even thinghood of a purely objective kind. It is this, however, in conceptu: only the notion is its truth ; and the purer the notion itself is, the more silly an idea does it become, if its content does not take the shape of a notion (Begriff), but of a mere presentation or idea {Vorstellung) — if the selfsuperseding judgment is not taken with the consciousness of its infinity, but is taken as a stable and permanent proposition, the subject and predicate of which hold good each on its own account, self fixed as self, thing as thing, while one has to be the other all the same.

Reason, essentially the notion, is immediately parted asunder into itself and its opposite, an opposition which just for that reason is immediately again superseded. But by presenting itself in this way as both itself and its opposite, and when held fast in the entirely particular moment of this disintegration, reason is apprehended in an irrational form ; and the purer the moments of this opposition are, the more glaring is the appearance of this content, which is either solely a content for consciousness, or solely expressed by consciousness in a naive form. The " depth " which mind brings out from within, but carries no further than to make it a presentation (Vorstellung), and let it remain at this level — and the " ignorance " on the part of this consciousness as to what it really says, are the same kind of connection of higher and lower which, in the case of the hving being, nature naively expresses when it combines the organ of its highest fulfilment, the organ of generation, with the organ of urination. The infinite judgment qua infinite would correspond to the fulfilment of hfe that comprehends itself, while the consciousness of life that remains at the level of presentation would correspond to urination.

The Realisation of Eational Self-Consciousness Through Its Own Activity [In this section we have the second form in which rational experience is realised. In " observation " mind is directly aware of itself aa in conscious unity with its object : it makes no effort of its own to realise this unity : it finds the unity by looking on, so to say. But it may have the same experience by creating through its own effort an object constituted and determined solely by its self. Here it does not find the unitj' of itself and its object ; it makes the object at one with itself by moulding the character and content of the object after its own nature. As contrasted with observation, which may be called the operation of " theoretical " reason, this new way of having a rational experience may be called the operation of " practical " reason. In the first we have reason in the form of rational knowledge and science, in the second, reason is the sense of rational action and practice. It is this second way of establishing the experience of reason which is analysed in the following sections. The immediately succeeding section describes the experience in its general features. We have here the sphere of conscious purpose and the foundation of moral and social life.]

The EEAiiisATioN of Rational Self-consciousness THROUGH ITS OWN ACTIVITY Self-consciousness found the " thing " in the form of itself, and itself in the form of a thing ; that is to say, self-consciousness is exphcitly aware of being in itself the objective realitj^. It is no longer the immediate certainty of being all reality ; it is rather that certainty for which the immediate in general assumes the form of something sublated, so that the objectivity of the immediate is regarded now as merely something superficial, whose inner core and essence is self-consciousness. The object, therefore, to which seK-consciousness is positively related, is a self-consciousness. The object has the form and character of a thing, i.e. is independent : but self-consciousness has the conviction that this independent object is not ahen to itself ; it knows straightway that itself is inherently and essentially recognised by the object. Self-consciousness is mind, which has the assm-ance of having, in the duplication of its self-consciousness and in the independence of both, its unity with its own self. This certainty has to be brought out now in all its truth ; what self-consciousness holds as a fact, viz. that implicitly in itself and in its inner certainty it is, has to enter into full consciousness and become explicit for it.

What the general stages of this actuaHsation will be can be indicated in a general way by reference to the road thus far traversed. Just as reason, when exercised 340 Phenomenology of Mind in observation, repeated in the medium of categories tKe movement of " consciousness " as such, namely, sensecertainty,* perception,! and understanding,]; the course of reason here, too, will again traverse the double movement of " self-consciousness," and from independence pass over into its freedom. To begin with this active reason is aware of itself merely as "an individual,'' and must, being such, demand and bring forth its reahty in an " other. " Thereupon, however, its consciousness being hfted into universahty, it becomes universal reason, and is consciously aware of itself as reason, as something already recognised in and for itself, which within its mere consciousness unites all self-consciousness. It is, again, the simple ultimate spiritual reality (Wesen), which, by coming at the same time to consciousness, is the real substance, into which preceding forms return and in wliich they find their ground, so that they are, with reference to the latter, merely particular moments of its process of coming into being, moments which indeed break loose and appear as forms on their own account, but have in fact only existence and actuahty when borne and supported by it, and only retain their truth in so far as they are and remain in it.

If we take this final result of the process as it is when really accomplished — this end, which is the notion that has just come before us, viz. recognised self-consciousness, which has the certainty of itself in the other free self-consciousness, and finds its truth precisely there ; in other words, if we bring this merely inward and unevolved mind to light as the substance that has de- * viz : in descriptive observation of nature as such. t viz : in observation of living nature. I viz ; in observation of nature as the external reality of mind, Realisation of Rational Self-Consciousness 341 veloped into its concrete existence, — we shall find that in this notion there is opened up before us the realm of the Social Order, the Ethical World (SittlichJceit). For this latter is nothing else than the absolute spiritual unity of the essential substance (Wesen) of individuals in their independent realisation of themselves as individuals ; it is an inherently universal self-consciousness, which is aware of being so concrete and real in an other consciousness, that this latter has complete independence, is looked on as a " thing," and the universal selfconsciousness is aware precisely therein of its unity with that " thing,'" and is only then self-consciousness, when thus in unity with this objective being (Wesen). This ethical substance when taken in its abstract universality is only the conception of law, thought-constituted law ; but even so it is immediately actual self-consciousness, it is Custom (Sitte). The single individual, conversely, is only a " this," a given existent unit, since he is aware of the universal consciousness as his own being in his own particular individuahty, seeing that his action and existence are the universal custom.

In point of fact the notion of the realisation of self-conscious reason — of having a sense of complete unity with another in his independence : of having for my object an other in the form of a " thing," found detached and apart from me, and the negative of myself, and of taking this as my self-existence {Fur michseyn) — finds its actual fulfilment in the Hfe of a nation^ Reason appears here as the fluent universal substance, as unchangeable simple " thingness," which at the same time breaks up into many entirely independent beings, just as hght bursts asunder into stars as innumerable luminous points, each giving light on its 342 Phenomenology of Mind own account, and whose absolute self-existence {Fiirsichseyn) is dissolved, not merely implicitly {an sich), but explicitly for themselves {fiir sich), within the simple independent substance. They are conscious within themselves of being these individual independent beings through the fact that they surrender and sacrifice their particular individuality, and that this universal substance is their soul and essence : — as this universal again is the action of themselves as individuals, and is the work and product of their own activity. The purely particular activity and business of the individual refer to needs and wants, which he has as a part of nature, i.e. as a mere existent particular. That even these, its commonest functions, do not come to nothing, but have reality, is brought about by the universal sustaining medium, the might of the entire nation.

It is not merely, however, this form of subsistence for his activity in general that the individual gets in the universal substance, but likewise also his content ; what he does is what all are capable of doing, is the custom all follow. This content, in so far as it is completely particiiiarised, is, in its concrete reahty, not confined to the single individual, but involves and embraces the activity of all. The labour of the individual for his own wants and necessities is just as much a satisfaction of those of others as of himself, and the satisfaction of his own he attains only by the labour of others. As the individual in his own. particular work if so facto accomplishes unconsciously a universal work so again he also performs the universal task as his conscious object. The whole becomes in its entirety his work, for Realisation of Rational Self-Consciousness 34S which he sacrifices himself, and precisely by that means receives back his own self from it. There is nothing here which could not be reciprocal, nothing in regard to which the independence of the individual might not, in dissipating its existence on its own account {Fursicliseyn), in negating itself, give itself its positive significance of existing for itself. This unity of existing for another, or making self a " thing," and of existence for self, this universal substance, utters its universal language in the customs and laws of a nation. But this existent unchangeable nature (Wesen) is nothing else than the expression of the particular individuality which seems opposed to it : the laws give expression to that which each individual is and does ; the individual knows them not merely to be what constitutes his universal objective nature as a " thing," but knows himself, too, in that form, or knows it to be particularised in his own individuahty and in each of his feUow-citizens. In the universal mind, there- . fore, each is certain of himself only because he finds in the actual reaUty nothing but himself ; he is as certain of the others as of himself. I apprehend and see in all of, them that they are in their own eyes (filr sick sdhst) only these independent beings just as I am. I see in their case the free unity with others in such wise that just as this unity exists through me, so it exists through the others too — I see them as myself, myself as them.

In a free nation, therefore, reason is in truth reahsed. ] It is a present hving mind, where the individual not only finds his determinate nature, i.e. his universal and particular being, expressed and given to him in the form ; of a " thing," but himself is this real being, and has ; also attained his constitutive character and position. 344 Phenomenology of Mind The wisest men of antiquity for that reason declared that wisdom and virtue consist in living in accordance with the customs of one's own nation. From this happy state, however, of having attained its determinate nature, and of living in it, the selfconsciousness, which in the first instance is only immediately and in principle mind, has broken away ; or perhaps it has not yet attained it : for both can be said with equal truth. Reason must pass out of and leave this happy condition. For only imphcitly or immediately is the hfe of a free nation real ob j ective ethical order {SittUchJceit) . In other words, the latter is a merely existent social order, and in consequence this universal mind is also something particular. The totality of customs and laws is a specifically determinate ethical substance, which casts off this restricted Limitation only when it reaches the higher moment, namely, when it becomes conscious regarding its own nature ; only with this knowledge does it get its absolute truth, and not as it is immediately in its bare existence. In this latter form it is partly restricted and circumscribed, partly the absolute limitation consists just in this that mind is there in the form of existence.

Hence, further, the individual, as he immediately finds his existence in the actual objective social order, in the life of his nation, has a soKd imperturbable confidence ; the universal mind has not here resolved itself into its abstract moments, and thus, too, he does not think of himself as existing in singleness and independence. When however he has once arrived at this knowledge, as indeed he must, this immediate unity with mind, this undifferentiated existence in the substance Realisation of Rational Self-Consciousness 345 of mind, his sense of naive confidence, is lost. Isolated by himself he is himself now the central essential reality — no longer universal mind. The element of this singleness of self-consciousness is no doubt in universal mind itself, but merely as a vanishing quantity, which, as it appears with an existence of its own, is straightway resolved within the universal, and only becomes consciously felt in the form of that sense of confidence. When the individual gets fixity in the form of singleness (and every moment, being a moment of the essential reality, must manage to reveal itself as essential), the individual has thereby set himself in opposition to the laws and customs. These latter are looked on as merely a thought without absolutely essential significance, an abstract theory without reality ; while he qua this particular ego is in his own view the Hving truth.

Or, again [we can say, as above stated, that] self- ' consciousness has not yet attained this happy state of being ethical substance, the mind of a nation. For, ' after leaving the process of rational Observation, mind, at first, is not yet as such actually realised through itself ; it is merely afiirmed as inner nature and essence, or as abstraction. In other words, mind is first immediate. As immediately existing, however, it is particular. It is practical consciousness, which steps into the world it finds lying ready-made with the intention of duplicating itself in the determinate form of an individual, of producing itself as this particular individual, and creating this its own existential counterpart, and thus becoming conscious of this unity of its own actual reahty with the objective world. Self-consciousness possesses the certainty of this unity ; it holds that the unity is implicitly {an sich) already 346 Phenomenology of Mind present, or that this union and agreement between itself and " thinghood" (objective existence) is akeady a fait accom'pli, and has only to become expressly so through its own agency ; or that its making that unity is at the same time and as much its finding the unity. Since this unity means happiness, the individual is thus sent forth into the world by his own spirit to seek his happiness.

If, then, we for our part find the truth of this rational self-consciousness to be ethical substance, that selfconsciousness on its part finds here the beginning of its moral experience of the world. Looking at it as not having yet had such experience, this process drives it in that direction, and what is cancelled in the process are the particular moments which self-consciousness takes as valid in isolation. They have the form of an immediate will-process, or impulse of nature, which attains its satisfaction, this satisfaction itself being the content of a new impulse. Looking at self-consciousness, however, as having lost the happiness of being in the substance, these natural impulses are bound up with a consciousness that their purpose is the true vocation and essential nature of self-consciousness. Ethical substance has sunk to the level of a floating selfless adjective, whose hving subjects are individuals, which have to fill up their universality through themselves, and to provide for their vocation out of the same source. Taken in the former sense, then, those forms and modes are the process by which the ethical substance comes to be, and precede this substance : in the latter they succeed it, and disclose for self-consciousness what its vocation is. In the former aspect the immediacy or raw brute impulses get lost in the process of finding out what their truth is, and their content

Realisation of Rational Self-Consciousness 347 passes over to a higher. In the latter aspect, however, the false idea of consciousness, which puts its vocation in that immediacy, passes to a higher idea. In the former case the goal which they attain is the immediate ethical substance ; while, in the latter, the end is the consciousness of that substance, such a consciousness as knows the substance to be its own essential being ; and to that extent this process would be the development of morahty {Moralitdt), a higher state or attitude than the former (SittlichJceit). But these modes at the same time constitute only one side of the development of morality, that, namely, which belongs to selfexistence, or in which consciousness cancels its purposes ; they do not constitute the side where morahty arises out of the substance itself. Since these moments cannot yet have the signification of being made into purposes in opposition to the lost social order {Sittlichheit), they hold here no doubt in their simple uncriticised content, and the end towards which they work is the ethical substance : but since with our time is more directly associated that form of these moments in which they appear after consciousness has lost its ethical custom-constituted {sittliches) hfe, and in the search for it repeats those forms, they may be represented more after this latter manner of expression. • >,,]

Self-consciousness, which is merely at first the notion of mind, takes this path with the specific characteristic of being to itself the essential reahty qua individual mind, and its purpose, therefore, is to give itself actualisation as individual, and to enjoy itself, qua individual, in so doing. In existing for itself it is aware of itself as the essentially real. In this character it is the negativity of the 348 Phenomenology of Mind other. There arises, therefore, within its consciousness an opposition between itself qua positive and something which no doubt exists, but for it not in the sense of existing substantially. Consciousness appears sundered into this objective reality found lying at its hand, and the purpose, which it carries out by the process of cancelling that objectivity, and which it makes the actual fact instead of the given object. Its primary purpose, however, is its immediate abstract existence for itself, its seeing itself as this particular individual in another, or in looking upon another selfconsciousness as itself. The experience of what the truth of this purpose is, places self-consciousness on a higher plane, and henceforth it is to itself purpose, in so far as it is at once universal, and has the law immediately within it. In carrying out this law of its heart, however, it learns that here the individual cannot preserve himself, but rather the good can only be performed through the sacrifice of the individual : and so it passes into Virtue. The experience which virtue goes through can be no other than that of finding that its purpose is already implicitly {an sicli) carried out, that happiness Ues immediately in action itself, and action is just the good. The principle and notion of this entire sphere of experience — viz. that "thinghood" is the independent self-existence of mind — becomes in the course of this experience an objective fact for selfconsciousness. When self-consciousness has foimd this principle it is aware of itself as reahty in the sense of directly self-expressing Individuality, which no longer finds any resistance in a reahty opposed to it, and whose object and purpose are merely this function of selfexpression.

a Pleasure and Necessity [The succeeding three sections discuss the procedure of one-sided subjective individualism, — the attempt to realise the individual and j'ct not transcend the particular individuality. The first thought of self-consciousness vi'hen it seeks to realise or objectify itself as a mere individual is to make the objective element return directly to itself and bring a sense of increase of its own individual being or private Pleasure. This is all its interest in the practical realisation of its purposes. But the realisation of purposes is an expression of the life of reason, and reason means universality and systematic connection of the content realised. Hence to seek solely private satisfaction or pleasure by a process which is inherently universal is a contradiction in terms. This contradiction the individual discovers in the shape of a sharp and painful contrast between its private feeling of individuation on the one hand and a network of uni^'ersal connections on the other — the contrast between " pleasure " and "necessity." Both fall within the individual's experience as a rational agent, and hence this necessity is his own necessity as much as the pleasure is his own pleasure. In the opposition between these factors there is no question as to which must triumph, and which must surrender.

This is the type of experience analysed in the following section. It is an experience that constantly recurs in the life-history of most if not all human beings at one stage or another in their development. The analysis contained in this section is indirectly a searching criticism of Hedonism in all its forms.] Self-consciousness, which, is aware of being the reahty, has its object within itself, but an object which, at first, is merely its own {fur sicli), and is not yet in actual existence. Existence stands opposed to it as a reality other than its own ; and the aim of self-consciousness consists in carrying out what it is "for itself" so as to see itself as another independent being. This first purpose is to become conscious, in that other selfconsciousness, of itself as an individual, to turn this other into its own self. It has the assurance that this other already is essentially itself. In so far as it has risen above the substance of ethical life and the quiescent state of thought, and attained its conscious independence, it has left behind the law of custom and of substantial existence, the kinds of knowledge acquired through observation, and the sphere of theory ; these lie behind it as a gray shadow that is just vanishing. For this latter is rather a knowledge of something, the independent existence [Fursichseyn) and actuality of which are other than those of selfconsciousness. Instead of being the seemingly heavenborn spirit of universality in knowledge and action, wherein the feeling and enjoyment of being an individual are stilled, the earth-born spirit has made its way to this new level of seLf-consciousness, and holds that being alone as true reality which is the reality of individual consciousness.

Pleasure and Necessity 351 Intellect and science are despised, Those highest gifts possessed by men — The devil will now its master be, And it must be o'erthrown.* It plunges into life, and carries to its completion the pure individuality in which it appears. It does not so much make its own happiness as take it directly and enjoy it. The gray shades of science, laws and principles, which alone stand between it and its own reality, vanish like a lifeless mist that cannot support the living certainty of its reahty. It takes to itself life much as a ripe fruit is plucked, which comes to meet the hand that takes it. f Its action is only in one respect an act of Desire ; it does not proceed to abolish the objective fact in its entirety, but merely concerns itself with the form of its otherness or objectivity, which is an unreal appearance ; for it holds this to be inherently and imphcitly the same reahty as its own self. The sphere in which desire and its object subsist independently and indifferent towards each other is that of living existence ; the enjoyment of desire cancels this existence, so far as concerns its being object of desire. But here this element, which gives to both separate and distinct actuality, is rather the category, a form of being which has essentially the character of a presentation. It is therefore the consciousness of independence — it may be natural consciousness, or the consciousness developed into a system of laws — which preserves individuals each for himself. This separation does not, in itself, hold for self-consciousness, which knows the other as its own proper self-hood. It attains therefore to the

* Faust, t Cp. Spenser's Faerie Quecno, Bk. 2 ; Canto 12, .54. 352 Phenomenology of Mind enjoyment of Pleasure, to the consciousness of its actualisation in a consciousness which appears as independent, or to the intuition of the unity of both independent self-consciousnesses. It succeeds in its purpose, but only to learn there what the truth of that purpose is. It conceives itself as this individual self-existent {Fursich-seyn) being ; but the actuahsation of this purpose is just the cancelling of the purpose. For it comes consciously to be, not object in the sense of a given particular individual, but rather as unity of its self and the other self-consciousness, consequently as cancelled and transcended individual, i.e. as imiversal. The pleasure enjoyed has, indeed, the positive significance that the self has become aware of itself as objective self-consciousness : but the negative import is there as well — that of having cancelled itself. And since it took its reahsation in the former sense only, its experience comes consciously before it as contradiction, in which the acquired reahty of its individual existence finds itself destroyed by the negative element, which stands without reahty and without content over against the former, and yet is the force which consumes it. This negative element is nothing else than the notion of what this individuality inherently is. This individuality is, however, as yet the poorest form of self-reahsing mind ; for it is still simply the abstraction of reason, or is the merely immediate unity of being-for-self and being-in-self {Fur-sich und Ansich-seyns) , of expUcit and imphcit self. Its essential nature is only that of the abstract category. Still it has no longer the form of immediate simple heing as in the case of Observation, where it is abstract being, or, when affirmed as something ahen, is thinghood in general. Here in the case before

Pleasure and Necessity 353 us there has entered into this thinghood self-existence {Fursichseyn) and mediation. It comes on the scene here, therefore, in the form of a circular process, whose content is the developed pure relation of simple ultimate elements. The actuahsation attained in the case of this individuahty consists, therefore, in nothing else than its having turned out this cycle of abstractions from the restricted confines of simple self-consciousness, and put them into the sphere and condition of selfexistence, where they appear spread out in detail as distinct objects. The sort of object, then, that self-consciousness in its pleasurable enjoyment takes to be its true reahty, is the detailed expansion of those bare essential elements — of pure unity, of bare difference, and of their relation. Further than this the object, which individuahty finds to be its true nature, has no content. It is what is called Necessity. For Necessity, Fate, or the like, is just that about which we are unable to say what it is doing, what its definite laws and its positive content actually are, because it is the absolute pure notion itself, viewed as being, relation bare and simple, but imperturbable, irresistible, and immovable, whose work is merely the nothingness of individual existence. It is this firm unbending connexion, because the connecting factor consists in pure essentiahties or empty abstractions. Unity, Difference, and Relation are categories, each of which is nothing as it stands by itself, but only in its relation to its opposite, and they therefore cannot come apart from one another. They are by their own notion related to each other, for they are the pure notions themselves ; and this absolute relation and bare abstract process constitute Necessity. The merely

354 Phenomenology of Mind particular individuality, which has ia the first instance only the pure notion of reason for its content, instead of having escaped from dead theory and plunged into actual life, has thus only precipitated itself into consciousness of its own lifelessness, and finds its lot to be merely naked and alien necessity, lifeless actuahty. The transition takes place from the form of oneness to that of universahty, from one absolute abstraction into the other ; it proceeds from that purpose of pure exphcit existence-for-self, which has cast off fellowship and communion with others, into the sheer opposite — i.e. into equally abstract imphcit immanent existence — into mere being-in-itself. This appears consequently in such form that the individual is simply reduced to naught, and the utter atomicity of separate individual existence is pulverised on the equally hard but continuous actuahty. Since it is qua consciousness the xmity of itself and its opposite, this transition is still a fact for it. Its purpose and its realisation as well as the contradiction of what constituted its essential nature, and what inherently that nature is — all this it is consciously aware of. It learns the double meaning which lies in what it does, when it sought to "take" and possess its life: it "took" hfe, but thereby rather laid hold on death.

This transition of its living being into hfeless necessity appears to it therefore a perversion which is mediated by no agency at all. The mediating factor would have to be that in which both sides would be one, where consciousness thus knew the one moment in the other, found its purpose and action in Fate, and its fate in its purpose and action, saw its own true nature in this ^Necessity. But, for consciousness the meaning of this unity Pleasure and Necessity 355 here is just pleasure itself, or siraple particular feeling ; and the transition from the moment of this its purpose into the moment of its true nature is for it a mere leap into the opposite. For these moments are not contained and combined in feehng, but only in the bare pure self, which is a universal or thought. Consciousness, therefore, through the experience in which its truth ought to have come to light, has instead become to itself a dark riddle ; the consequences of its deeds are to it not really its own deeds. What happens to it is found to be not the experience of what it inherently is ; the transition is not a mere alteration in form of the same content and essential nature, presented now as content and true reality of consciousness, thereafter as object or intuitively perceived essence of itself. The abstract necessity thus gets the significance of the merely negativing uncomprehended power of universahty, on which individuaUty is broken in pieces.

The appearance of this mode of self-consciousness goes as far as this stage. The last moment of the existence of this mode is the thought of the loss it suffers at the hands of necessity, or the thought of itself as a being (Wesen) entirely ahen to itself. Self-consciousness in itself, however, has survived this loss ; for this necessity or pure imiversahty is its own proper nature (Wesen). This reflection of consciousness into self, the knowledge that itself is necessity, is a new mode or attitude of consciousness. The Law of the Heart, and the Frenzy OF Self-conceit [The following section is an analysis of the mood of moral Sentimentalism. It is a mood of all times and appears in many forms ; but about Hegel's time it became prominent in the Romantic school and was frankly adopted as a practical attitude by certain of its representatives. Perhaps one of the most remarkable historic examples of sentimentalism was Rousseau, to whom so much in the Romantic movement may be traced. In the literature of Hegel's time, and indeed in all literature, no more perfect type of sentimentalism can be found than Goethe's Werther. With such instances as these in our minds the succeeding analysis requires neither explanation nor comment.]

The Law op the Heart, and the Frenzy OP Selp- conceit Necessity is for tMs new mode of consciousness what in truth self-consciousness finds necessity in its own case to be. In its new attitude self-consciousness regards itself as the necessary element. It knows that it has the universal, the law, immediately within itself, a law which, because of this characteristic of being immediately within consciousness as it is for itself, is called the Law of the Heart. This mode or attitude of consciousness is for itself, qua individual, essential reality as the former mode similarly was ; but in the present case it is richer by the characteristic that this self-existence is taken as necessary or universal. The law, therefore, which is primarily the law proper of self-consciousness, or a "heart" which however has in it a law, is the purpose which the self proceeds to reahse. It remains to be seen whether its realisation corresponds to its notion, and whether it will therein come to find this its law to be the essential ultimate fact. Opposed to this " heart " stands a reahty. For in the " heart " the law is in the first place merely for itself ; it is not yet actualised, and thus, too, is something other than what the notion is. This other is thereby characterised as a reahty which is the antithesis of what is to be reahsed, and consequently is the contradiction of the law and the individual. This reahty is thus on the one hand a law by which the particular individuality is

358 Phenomenology of Mind crushed and oppressed, a violent ordinance of the world which contradicts the law of the heart, and, on the other hand, a humanity suffering under that ordinance— a humanity which does not follow the law of the heart, but is subjected to an ahen necessity. This reality, appearing in opposition to the present mode of consciousness, is, as is evident, nothing but the foregoing dixemption of individuality and its truth, a relation of gruesome necessity, under which the former is crushed. We, who trace the process, see the preceding movement, therefore, as in opposition to the new form, because the latter has essentiaUy arisen from it, and the moment whence the new form comes to the present stage is necessary for it. The new mode, however, looks on that moment as something lying at hand, something simply met with, since it has no consciousness of its origin, and takes its real essence to consist rather in being independent, in being for itself, or negatively disposed towards this positive, implicit, immanent content. The aim and object of this individuahty is thus to cancel and transcend this necessity which contradicts the law of the heart, as also to do away with the suffering thereby arising. There is in consequence no longer here the frivohty of the former mode, which merely wanted some particular pleasure ; it is the earnestness of a high purpose, which seeks its pleasure in displaying the excellence of its own true nature, and in bringing about the welfare of mankind. What it realises is itself the law, and its pleasure is at the same time universal, a pleasure which all hearts feel. To it both are inseparable ; its pleasure is what conforms to the law and the realisation of the law of all mankind prepares the

The Law of the Heart 359 way for its particular pleasure. For within its own self individuality and necessity are immediately and directly one ; the law is a law of the heart. Individuahty is not yet removed from its place ; and the unity of both has not been brought about by the process mediating that unity, has not yet been established by discipline. The reahsation of the inxmediate undisciplined nature passes for a display of excellence and for bringing about the well-being of mankind. The law, again, which is opposed to the law of the heart is divided from the heart, and exists on its own account. Mankind, which is bound to it, does not live in the blissful unity of the law with the heart, but either lives in dismal separation and suffering, or at least in deprivation of the enjoyment of itself in obeying the law, and without the consciousness of its own excellence in overstepping it. Because that all-dominating diviae and human ordinance is divided from the heart it is regarded by the latter as a delusion, which ought to lose what it still possesses, namely, power and objectivity. It may, indeed, in its content agree by chance with the law of the heart, and then the latter can acquiesce in it. But, for the heart, it is not the bare conformity to law as such which constitutes the essential fact (Wesen), but the consciousness of itself which the "heart" thereby obtains, the fact that it has therein found satisfaction. Where the content of universal necessity, however, does not agree with the heart, necessity is also, as regards its content, nothing in itself, and must give way before the law of the heart.

The individual, then, fulfils, carries out the law of his heart. This law becomes a universal ordinance, and pleasure becomes a reality which, as it stands, conforms 360 Phenomenology of Mind to law. But in this realisation, the law has, in point of fact, escaped the individual ; and thus there arises immediately only that relation which ought to be cancelled. The law of the heart ceases through its very reaUsation to be a law of the heart. For it thereby takes on the form of actually " being/' and is now universal power, which holds this particular " heart " to be a matter of iadiiierence ; so that the individual, in establishing his own ordinance, no longer finds it to be his own. By reahsing his law he consequently brings about, not his law, but — since the reahsation is inherently and imphcitly his own, but exphcitly ahen and external — merely this : he gets involved and entangled in the actual ordinance, and, indeed, entangled in it, not merely as something ahen to himself but as a hostile, overpowering dominion. By this act he takes his place in, or rather as, the general element of existent actuahty ; and his act is, in his own regard, intended to have the value of a universal ordinance. But thereby he has let himself get detached from his own self ; qua universality he hves, grows on his own account, and gets rid of individuahty. The individual who recognises universahty merely in the form of his own immediate self-subsistence {Fiirsichseyn) does not, therefore, find himself in this liberated and independent universality, while all the same he belongs to it, because the latter is his doing. This doing thus has the reverse significance ; it contradicts the universal ordinance. For the individual's act is intended to be that of his individual heart, and not independent universal reality ; and at the same time he has, in fact, recognised and acknowledged this latter, for the act has the import of setting up his essential

The Law of the Heart 361 nature as free and independent reality, that is to say, of recognising reality to be his own essential being. The individual has, by the very principle of his action, determined the more special manner in which actual universality, to which he has leagued himself, gets turned against him. His act, qua actuahty, belongs to the universal ; its content, however, is his own individuahty, which, being this particular individuahty, wants to preserve itself in opposition to universahty. It is not any specific law whose estabhshment was in question ; on the contrary, the immediate unity of the individual heart with universahty is the idea — raised to the dignity of a law and claiming to be vahd — that every heart must know its own self in what is universal law. But only the heart of this individual has estabhshed its reahty in his act, which, in his view, expresses his self-existence {Fursichseyn) or his pleasure. The act is intended to stand immediately for what is universal ; that is to say, it is in truth something particular, and has merely the form of universahty : its particular content is, as such, to pass for universal. Hence others find in this content not the law of their heart fulfilled, but rather that of some one else ; and even in view of the universal law, that each is to find his own heart in what is law, they turn against that reahty which he set up, just as he on his side turned against theirs. The individual therefore finds, as at first merely the rigid law, so now the hearts of men themselves opposed to his excellent intentions, and detesting them.

Because this type of consciousness finds universahty in the first place merely as immediate, and knows necessity as necessity of the heart, the nature of actuahsation and effective activity is to it unknown. This consciousness 362 Phenomenology of Mind is "unaware that effective realisation involves objective existence, and is in truth the inherently universal in which the particular life of consciousness, which commits itself to it in order to have being in the sense of an immediate individual hfe, is really submerged. Instead of obtaining this particular hfe of its own in that objective existence, it thus becomes estranged from itself. But that in which it does not know itself is no longer dead necessity, but necessity animated by universal individuality. It took this divine and human ordinance, which it discovered in operation, to be a dead reahty, wherein not only its own self — which claims the position of a particular individual, insists on being a particular " heart " with a life of its own and opposed to the universal — but those as well who fall within this reality had no consciousness of themselves. Now, however, it finds that reahty animated by the consciousness of all, and a law for all hearts. It learns through experience that the reahty in question is an ordinance infused and endowed with hfe, and learns this, indeed, just by the fact that it actualises the law of its own heart. For this means nothing else than that individuality becomes its own object in the form of universahty, without however knowing itself therein.

Thus, then, what the experience of this mode of selfconsciousness reveals as the truth, contradicts what this mode takes itself to be. What, however, it takes itself to be has for it the form of absolute universahty; and what is inunediately one with consciousness of self is the law of the heart. At the same time the stable living ordinance is likewise its own true nature and work ; it produces nothing else but that ; the latter is in direct, immediate union with self-consciousness. The Frenzy of Self-conceit 363 In this way self-consciousness here has the characteristic of belonging to a twofold antithetic essence ; it is inherently contradictory and torn to distraction in its inmost being. The law of " this individual heart " is only that wherein self-consciousness knows itself ; but the universal and accepted ordinance has by actualising that law become Likewise its own essential nature and its own reality. What thus contradicts itself within its consciousness has for it in both cases the character of essence, and of being its own reahty. When it gives expression to this moment of conscious destruction, and thereby expresses the result of its experience, it shows itself to be this inner perversion of itself, to be consciousness gone crazy, its own essence being at once not essence, its reahty directly unreality.

The madness here cannot be taken to mean that in general something unessential is regarded as essential, something unreal as real, so that what for one is essential or actual might not be so for another, and thus the consciousness of real and of unreal, or of essential and unessential, would fall apart. If something in point of fact is real and essential for consciousness in general, but for me is not so, then, in being conscious of its nothingness, I have, since I am consciousness in general, at the same time the consciousness of its reahty ; and since they both are fixed and rooted within me, this is a union which is madness in general. In this state, however, there is only one object deranged for consciousness — not consciousness as such within itself and for itself. But in the result of the process of experience, which has here come about, consciousness is in its law aware of its self as this individual reahty ; and at the same time, since precisely this same essential S64 Phenomenology of Mind fact, this same reality, is estranged from it, it is — qua self-consciousness, qua absolute reality — aware of its unreality. In other words, both aspects are held in their contradiction to be directly its essence, which is thus in its inmost being distracted.