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

cooperation witli Cornell University Libraries, 2007. You may use and print this copy in limited quantity for your personal purposes, but may not distribute or provide access to it (or modified or partial versions of it) for revenue-generating or other commercial purposes. The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the The library OF PHILOSOPHY is in the first instance a contribution to the History of Thought. Wliile much has been done in England in tracing the course of evolution in nature, history, religion and moralit}^ comparatively httle has been done in tracing the development of Thought upon these and kindred subjects, and yet " the evolution of opinion is part of the whole evolution." This Library wiU deal mainly with Modem Philosophy, partly because Ancient Philosophy has already had a fair share of attention in this country through the labours of Grote, Ferrier, Benn and others, and through translations from ZeUer ; partly because the Library does not profess to give a complete history of thought.

By the co-operation of different writers in carrying out this plan, it is hoped that a completeness and thoroughness of treatment otherwise unattainable will be secured. It is believed, also, that from writers mainly English and American fuller consideration of English Philosophy than it has hitherto received from the great German Histories of Philosophy may be looked for. In the departments of Ethics, Economics and Politics, for instance, the contributions of English writers to the common stock of theoretic discussion have been especially valuable, and these subjects will accordingly have special prominence in this undertaking. Another feature in the plan of the Library is its arrangement according to subjects rather than authors and dates, enabling the writers to follow out and exhibit in a way hitherto unattempted the results of the logical development of particular lines of thought. The historical portion of the Library is divided into two sections, of which the first contains works upon the development of particular schools of Philosophy, while the second exhibits the history of theory in particular departments. To these have been added, by way of Introduction to the whole Library, (i) an Enghsh translation of Erdmann's History of Philosophy, long since recognised in Germany as the best ; (2) translations of standard foreign works upon Philosophy.

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" A SPLENDID monument of patient labour, critical acumen and admirab methodical treatment. ... It is not too much to predict that, for the librat of the savant, for the academical student, whose business it is to be primed i the wisdom of the ages, and for the literary dilettante, who is nothing if n( well up in ' things that everybody ought to know,' these volumes will at om become a necessity for purposes, at least, of reference, if not of actual study. . . We possess nothing that can bear any comparison with it in point of complet ness." — Pall Mall Gazette. " It is not necessary to speak of the great merits of Erdmann's History Philosophy. Its remarkable clearness and comprehensiveness are well known. . . The translation is a good, faithful rendering, and in some parts even reaches high hterary level." — Professor John Watson, in The Week, of Canada. " It is matter of real congratulation, in the dearth still of original English i American work over the whole field of historical philosophy, that by the side the one important German compend af this generation, the other, so well fittf to serve as its complement, is now made accessible to the English-speakir student." — Mind.

" It has been long known, highly esteemed, and in its successive editio has sought to make itself more worthy of the success it has justly achieve Erdmann's work is excellent. His history of mediajval philosophy especial deserves attention and praise for its comparative fulness and its admiral scholarship. . . It must prove a valuable and much needed addition to o philosophical works." — Scotsman. " The combination of quaUties necessary to produce a work of the sco and grade of Erdmann's is rare. Industry, accuracy, and a fair degree of phil sophic understanding may give us a. work like Ueberweg's ; but Erdmanr history, while in no way superseding Ueberweg's as a handbook for genei use, yet occupies a different position. Erdmann wrote his book, not as a refc ence book, to give in brief compass a digest of the writings of various authors, b as a genuine history of philosophy, tracing in a genetic way the developme of thought in its treatment of philosophic problems. Its purpose is to develi philosophic intelligence rather than to furnish information. When we add th; to the successful execution of this intention, Erdmann unites a minute aj exhaustive knowledge of philosophic sources at first hand, equalled over t entire field of philosophy probably by no other one man, we are in a conditii to form some idea of the value of the book. To the student who wishes, n simply a general idea of the course of philosophy, nor a summary of what tl and that man has said, but a somewhat detailed knowledge of the evoluti' of thought, and of what this and the other writer have contributed to it, Ei mann is indispensable ; there is no substitute." — Professor John Dewey, The Andover Review.

" It is a work that is at once compact enough for the ordinary student, a; full enough for the reader of literature. ... At once systematic and intere: ing." — Journal of Education. " The translation into English of Erdmann's History of Philosophy is important event in itself, and in the fact that it is the first instalment of an undi taking of great significance for the study of philosophy in this country. Apa however, from its relation to the Library to which it is to serve as an introc'.r tion, the translation of Erdmann's History of Philosophy is something for win the English student ought to be thankful. ... A History of past endeavou achievements and failures cannot but be of great use to the student. Such History, able, competent, trustworthy, we have now in our hands, adequatf and worthily rendered into our mother-tongue." — Spectator. Kal Tovro ^pyov iari^ rb TvoiTjaat. ck tC}v o-vri^ yi^ojpLfiojT^po}i' ra Trj if/vjreL yvwpt^a aur(xi yfwptfia, Kal t^ffTLp ri vl)Ti<n^ j'O^o'ews vb-qaiz, LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO, Limited THE work here translated and offered to the English philosophical reader has long been recognised as an unique product of Teutonic genius, and as, on the whole, perhaps the most remarkable treatise in the history of modern philosophy. Alike in its style of thinking, its manner of expression, the comprehensiveness of its survey, and the wealth of its material, it can hardly be said to have a parallel. Tracts of experience, which have each formed from time to time the subject of separate discussion, and have engaged the undivided interest of different thinkers, are here treated as but fragments of a single system. Movements of human history which have marked epochs in the development of the human race are looked upon as but typical or prominent embodiments of principles at work in the spirit of man, and are discussed in shadowy, schematic form, through which the historical reality referred to is only dimly visible. Acknowledged truths of science are stripped of their apparent seif-containedness and independence, and are reduced to phases of the necessary movement of human intelligence. The supreme importance assigned by mankind to religion is not allowed to obscure the fact that reUgion is but one act in the drama of spiritual existence. Even to the work of philosophy there is assigned but a relative, though necessary, place. Man in his lifetime must needs play many parts, and one of

these is to be a philosopher ; and all philosophies are here regarded as but phases of a single mood. The imposing array of philosophical positions, constituting the History of Philosophy, are abbreviated into central principles, which together evolve a single comprehensive truth controlling the minds of the individual philosophers, though all unknown to themselves. So exhaustive an analysis of the life-history of the human spirit, so sustained an effort to reduce its complex and involved harmonies to their simple, elemental, leading motives, and to express these controlhng ideas in an orderly, connected system, has certainly never been compressed within the compass of a single treatise. The courage which made such an effort possible was, no doubt, in large measure due to the state of the intellectual atmosphere at the time when the book was written, an atmosphere surcharged with grand and grandiose ideas, which were capable of stimulating and sustaining philosophical enthusiasm, or of exciting and intoxicating speculative ambition. Inspired by the promise and potency of the Kantian philosophy, Kant's immediate successors made bold to set sail on speculative seas unknown, with a fraction of their master's scientific knowledge and none of his philosophical prudence. Influenced as Hegel undoubtedly was by the confident daring of these earlier intellectual adventurers, it was not long before a mind so concrete as his, and with so reverent a regard for scientific truth and practical fact, saw the necessity for chaining speculative imagination to the solid ground of tried and verifiable experience. It might be possible to dispense with " things in themselves," but it was not possible to dispense with "things," if the new philosophy was to make any claim to be a con-

nected system of ideas, appealing to and satisfying the common reason of mankind. The wealth of familiar and accessible truth in science, history, and ordinary experience, must be at our disposal before philosophy can take with assurance the high road of comprehensive, systematic knowledge. The constant, if cryptic, reference throughout the whole of the following treatise to facts of nature, human nature, and human history, amply testifies at any rate to the seriousness with which Hegel endeavloured to meet this demand of all true philosophy. In this sense, the work before us is in large measure a reaction against the soaring insubstantiality, the ingenious manipulation of principles in abstracto, and the wearisome, unmethodical constructions of the works which intervened between the Kantian analysis of experience and the appearance of the Phenomenology in 1807. It is, therefore, small surprise that, though the appearance of the book was hailed with great expectation, the work was received with coldness and dissatisfaction by those who had, up to this point, been HegeFs teachers and friends. But while an enormous wealth of representative material lies behind the treatise, partly illuminating the argument, partly determining the course of its development, it need not be supposed that the author could possibly lay claim to omniscience. From first to last it is apparent that the author was limited by the information available at his time, by the scientific views prevalent during his day, and by his own selective interest in the material presented before him. Only in one department was his knowledge sufficiently adequate to reduce this limitation to a neghgible characteristic. This was the department of History, and more especially the History

of Philosophy.* But here, it may well be said, the material was regarded as primarily representative, and typical of movements of the human spirit, so that errors of fact or of delail are, for the purpose of this treatise!, insignificant. Even so, his selection of such materia' is governed both by his interest in the problem oi the Phenomenology, and also by the intellectual attitudt;; and bias of his time. A selection under such conditions imposes restrictions on the character of the argument of the treatise. Such limitations as those indicated ard doubtless inevitable, and they help us to explain many ot the more singular peculiarities, or even obvious defects, of the work. Subjects are treated in the book with a fullness, and even diffuseness of analysis, which must now seem utterly out of proportion to the value of what is discussed. For example, Hegel devotes much labour to demonstrating the hollow pretentiousness of the pseudo-sciences of " Phrenology " and " Physiognomy,"! and endeavours to bring to light the truth which they had misconstrued, f The explanation is that in his day these twin scientific impostures had great success, and won much favour from learned and unlearned alike. The scientific function of " Observation/' again, is dealt with at an inordinate length, doubtless because of the success which attended the scientific investigation of nature towards the end of the eighteenth century. I So, too, the constantly recurring reference to states of spiritual fife which were familiar features of the Romantic movement, is only to be ex-

* In 1805 he lectured at Jena on the History of Philosopliy ; and the lectures then delivered are substantially the same as those which were afterwards published in his collected works. t 'ITiis truth finds ample recognition not merely in ordinary experience but in the recent work of scientific investigators such as Lomhroso. J Vide -p. 221. plained by the outstanding historical importance of this movement at the time the book was written. But the omissions from the treatise are as remarkable as the exaggerated attention devoted to some aspects of experience relatively to others. In a work ostensibly dealing with the whole range of human experience, it seems surprising to find no specific discussion of our knowledge of space or of number, or of the sphere of lact dealt with by chemistry ; or again, to take another domain of experience remote from these, there is no mention at all of important fine arts, like music or painting. Such omissions are all the more striking when we bear in mind Hegel's keen appreciation of the value of both pure science and fine art, and when we remember that, in his later works, a full and elaborate treatment is given to the subjects just mentioned. It is not enough to plead in excuse that he is deahng in this work with the main types of experience, and that what is not expHcitly discussed is imphed in the analyses of the types selected ; for it seems obvious that the kinds of knowledge and of art above referred to play a unique part in experience, and are not simply specific forms of more general types of experience.

Looking at the plan of the treatise as a whole and the method of treatment assigned to the forms of experience brought under review, an impartial critic is bound to admit that the scheme of the work is unbalanced and out of proportion. The discussion of some parts is foreshortened ; in other cases, subjects are treated with an elaborateness of detail in which the main idea is overborne by the sheer mass of the material used to elucidate it. At times, indeed, the writer seems to have become so absorbed with the particular subject in hand, that for the time being he seems to have lost, sight of the ^^lan and purpose of the argmnent of the whole treatise. In such cases, the author's description of his work as his " voyage of discovery " has a literalness of application which is more accurate than complimentary to the author. For the business of a writer is to determine the chart of his argument before he sets out on his literary expedition, and not to draw it afterwards in order to discover what coasts of truth he has visited. Hegel himself felt that in many parts, the argument had been overweighted,* and expressed the hope, in a letter to his friend Niethammer, that he might be able, in a second edition, to ' unload some of the ballast, and get the ship to float more easily.'! The last part of the work is especially unsatisfactory. To the discussion of " Religion " and " Absolute Knowledge," one would naturally have expected the author to have devoted the greatest care and the best of his energies. For it was one of the main objects of his task to explain and justify the place of Philosophical Knowledge in the plan of human experience. Yet the analysis of "Religion" is condensed, fragmentary, and inadequate to the theme ; while the statement of " Absolute Knowledge " is brief and eUiptical to' the verge of obscurity. This is disappointing, more particularly after the long and carefully-wrought argument dealing with the sphere of moral and social experience which immediately precedes the section on Rehgion. The defect certainly demands some explanation, and this is to be found in the circum-

* Briefe, I, p. 80. See also the letter to Schelling, Briefe, \, p. 102. + It was a quarter of a century before the wish had the prospect' of being fulfilled, and then, unfortunately, the author died before he had ' revised many pages. stances under which this last part of the treatise was written. In a letter to Schelling, in which Hegel promises to send him a copy of the book,* Hegel asks indulgence for the unsatisfactory character of the last parts of the work, and says, as if by way of explanation, that the " composition of the book was concluded at midnight before the battle of Jena." This sounds a Uttle hollow and melodramatic. For one naturally asks what the roar of Napoleon's cannon had to do with the philosophical delineation of the Absolute. The Absolute, as well as his expositor, could surely afford to wait till the smoke of such temporalities had cleared. In any case, " on the night before the battle " there could have been no serious cannonade to disturb Hegel's meditations. In point of fact, the Prussian General himself did not expect Napoleon to attack on the 14th of October (the day of the battle) ; and it is extremely unlikely that Hegel could have been so certain of Napoleon's plans as to feel constrained to hurry on the completion of his book in case of eventuahties. No doubt, after the battle, kfiffairs in Jena were uncomfortable, and sufficiently funcertain to induce Hegel to carry about in his pocket the MS. finished on the night of the 13th, and to defer till the 20th, when things had quieted down, the despatch of his MS. to Bamberg.

The real explanation was much more commonplace. Hegel had made an unfortunate arrangement with his publisher. Instead of waiting till the MS. of the work was actually finished before sending it to the publisher, Hegel arranged to let the publisher have it in instalments. The publisher was to pay so much a sheet, the * Briefe, I, p. 102. first payment to be made when half the entire MS. was: in his hands. Printing began in February, 1806. Any pubhsher could easily make sure of getting the best of. such a bargain ; in this case the publisher was printer, publisher, and bookseller all in one — a singularly dangerous person for an impecunious man of letters to deal with. When Hegel had sent what he took to be half the MS. of the book, and demanded payment accordingly, the publisher declared himself unable to feel satisfied that this really was half the MS. Payment was therefore refused, and further, the edition of one thousand copies, originally agreed upon, was altered now to one of seven hundred and fifty, with a corresponding diminution of payment to the author. Hegel, being much in need of the money, appealed in despair to his friend Niethammer, then living in Bamberg (the place of publication), and asked his good offices to urge the publisher to forward the money. The publisher was; obdurate. Finally, Niethammer made a new contract with the pubhsher, whereby Niethammer agreed to pay the pubhsher so much should Hegel fail to senc the last of the MS. by the 18th October, 1806. This new^ contract was made on 29th September. By great effort,! ■ Hegel managed to send off large instalments on the 8th' and on 10th of October, promising faithfully to send the last remaining instalment by the 13th. Meantime, Napoleon appeared on the scene, and hostilities with Prussia were definitely declared from Bamberg on the 7th October. The proximity of this " Weltseele " on horseback added to Hegel's anxieties and difficulties ;• for there could be no certainty that postal arrangementsi would be efficiently carried out and the MS. safely^ reach its destination, either in due time or at all. Hegel |

was in agony, for the loss of time would be serious to his friend, and the loss of the MS. irreparable to himself. It was in these circumstances that the last part of the Phenomenology was composed. With his mental energies strained to keep pace with the flight of time, his personal honour at stake, with the roll of war in his ears, and a pitiless publisher master of his financial resources — even Hegel could hardly be expected to be in the appropriate frame of mind necessary to compose the dialectic hymn of Absolute Knowledge. There is thus some excuse, and at any rate sufficient explanation, for the curtailed analysis, the hurried argument, the condensed utterance, which characterise these last stages of the work. But the result, as it now appears, must be taken as it stands. Valuable as it is, it is not a fully elaborated development of one of the richest and most important parts of the whole range of experience : it is not an ample and measured survey of the domain of the Absolute ; it is speculative steeplechasing. But these defects, avoidable and unavoidable, to which reference has been made, do not seriously impair the monumental greatness of the work. No man can escape from the limitations of his own individuality, any more than he can avoid the restrictions imposed upon him by the circumstances of his time. The very attempt to rise above them requires their assistance to support the effort. We cannot, therefore, expect that the work before us, which, as we shall see, is so closely concerned with history, should be unaffected by the conditions imder which historical phenomena exist.

The translator has endeavoured throughout the book to indicate the train of thought connecting the successive stages in the analysis. It will suffice here to indicate the general character and purpose of the work, and to draw out the main thread.* In general terms, the Phenomenology of Mind is a comprehensive and systematic survey of the ways in which experience appears. This explains the meaning of the term " phenomenology " — a term employed by Lambert in his work, The New Organon (1764), and later by Kant, who uses the word to cover the metaphysical interpretation of the idea of motion, which forms the concluding section of his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). The survey seeks to accom- ' plish a threefold result : (1) to shew that the various ■ forms of experience constitute a continuous and con- J nected series of stages of mind, that the life of mind as ■ a whole is thus a single continuous movement : (2) to ; vindicate for each typical form of experience a necessary i place in the plan of the whole : (3) to prove that : the self-comprehension of Spirit, " Absolute Knowled<^e," is the necessary demand, the inevitable outcome, and the final consummation of the entire process of experience. These three aspects of the argument essentially involve one another. Without some single principle present throughout the series of forms, they could not be connected together ; Spirit is this principle : without some single end dominating the movement from first to last the movement could not be continuous ; " Absolute Knowledge " is this end. Unless each stage had a definite positive value of its own, no connection could be established between them ; the moments of

* Tlie history of Hegel's development up to the time of the appearance of the Phciiomenologij (1 807) need not be repeated here. Information on this point will he found in a volume bv the translator on the Origin of experience would be illusory, and experience as a whole rtieaningless ; a series of negations would not even be a series, and certainly could not give us a system of truth. The source of this positive significance of each step is again " Absolute Knowledge." And, finally unless " Absolute Knowledge " were the outcome of the whole process, either there would be no Absolute at all, and the process would be endless, and so uninteUigible, or else the Absolute would simply appear as " shot out of a pistol," and hence would be itself unintelligible ; the process of experience is as necessary to the meaning Cj)f the Absolute, as the Absolute is necessary to give ijneaning to the process. ! There seems no reason to doubt that all three aspects of the result were present in the author's mind before he proceeded to work out the argument of the treatise. This seems obvious in itself, and a perusal of his " Introduction " conclusively shows this to have been the case. The ways in which he varies the description of the character of the treatise, arise from laying emphasis on one or other of the features of the argument. The t(3rm " phenomenology of mind " has in view the fact that we are here deahng with the procession of the modes of mind, and the forms in which its experience appears. The term " Science of the Experience of Consciousness," by which he described it on the title page of the first edition (a designation omitted, apparently, by Hegel and his editors in the subsequent edition), lays stress on the second aspect above noted — the constructive interpretation of the positive value of each phase of experience. " The development of Science," or again, the " development of the natural consciousness up to the level of science," by which he designates

xvi Translator's Introduction \ the work, refers to the relation of the movement of experience to its final outcome and end — a relation iix virtue of which he also speaks of the work as a " firs'o part " of a " System of Science," and as an " introl duction " to Speculative Science in general. I To interpret experience in the manner above indicated, it is necessary to find at the outset a conception of experience which will apply both to experience as a whole and to every form in which experience appears. The term " experience " is indefinite, and hence has been used by different thinkers for different puxposes'i. Accepting the result of Kant's analysis, Hegel regard^? experience as constituted by an interrelation of subjecfc and object. The interrelation takes the form of conscious awareness of an object. The moments are distinct, and the unity of these factors is simply the mental process of holding them together in a single mental situation and distinguishing them from each other within that state. The moments are inseparable, and have neither existence nor significance except in conscious relation to each other. Till the distinction arises there is no experience, after it disappears there is equally no experience. Kant held that the relation disappeared if a particular kind of object (a sense-object) disappeared or could not be produced. From this followed his view of things per se, " apart from experience," and of " ideas of reason " beyond the bounds of experience. Both notions are connected together. Accepting, contemporary criticism of Kant, Hegel rejected both notions, and hence rejected Kant's restriction of 'experience' to sense-phenomena. The subject-object relation was still maintained as the essential nature of experience, but whereas, in virtue of the above restric-

tion, Kant admitted a subject-object relation to hold where there was no experience (e.g. in the sphere of 'I reason "), Hegel extended the term ' experience ' to each and every consciouf relation of subject and object. In this way Hegel was in closer touch with fact and common usage, and carried to its legitimate conclusion the fuuitful principle established by Kant. This extension of Kant's principle both removed its limitations and deepened its meaning. What Kant meant by insisting that sense-objects were necessary for experience, was that in all experience there must be a given or immediate element. But Kant identified the given, or immediate, with sense-objects. Here, no doubt, givermess seems very prominent and very obvious. This givenness, which is so obvious a feature of sense-facts, is, however,largely due to the striking mental contrast between ' thought ' and ' sense.' In truth, the immediate is found in many other forms besides that of sensibility ; and, on Kant's own showing, even the givenness of sense involves an operation of the subject before emtering ' experience.' Kant confounded the ' immediacy ' which is essential to the relation of subject and object with a particular kind of immediacy found in a particular kind of relation of subject to object, viz. sense-experience, or consciousness of sense-objects. In other words, he identified a formal character of all experience with the peculiar content of one kind of experience. Hegel saw that the very nature of the conscious relation of subject and object implied that subject and object were in all cases immediately related to one another.

But this is only the first step in the relationship, the formal condition of there being any relationship at all. The relation is not static ; it is a process or conscious movement, in the constitution of which the two terms are distinct and distinguishable factors, the movcf ment being simply the process of uniting the two in a single and complete mental situation. This process, as contrasted with immediacy, is described as the condition of ' mediation.' It is as essential to the total state a« immediacy, and in the nature of the case is absolutely inseparable from immediacy. Kant had been at pains to estabhsh the necessity of such a mediating process in the constitution of experience ; but had again interpreted this in a one-sided way. For Kant, the mediation was introduced in the form of an intellectual operation, manipulating the ' material of sense,' which somehow the mind appropriated externally.. Just as there was one kind of immediacy — that of "sense," — so there was only one kind of mediation — that of " understanding.'" The error in the interpretation of the former has it^; counterpart in the interpretation of the latter. The; correction of the error takes the same line in both cases.; Sense-immediacy is only one way in which immediacy appears in the general relation of subject and object ; intellectual mediation through ' understanding ' is but one of the many ways in which the mediation of subject through object and object through subject takes place.. There are, in short, as many forms of mediation as there: are forms of immediacy, for both are required and found; in every possible relation of subject and object.

But the transformation of Kant's result is not yet| complete; another step is required, equally necessary^ and equally important. Immediacy and mediation are formal conditions of every possible relation of subject and object ; but the form is inseparable from, and in every case relative to, content. This principle, the full significance of which Hegel seems to have found through the study of Aristotle, was indirectly confirmed by the very confusions and ambiguities which characterised Kant's attempt to keep them apart in his three Critiques. The concrete embodiment of the principle was typically represented first of all in the fact of a living organism, and more clearly still in the actual process of the moral life of man. The reality of the principle in those spheres indicated to Hegel, as to Aristotle, how the principle was to be interpreted in other spheres. Kant's doctrine of the " primacy of the practical reason " now received a new and supremely important meaning. The moral life provided the clue to the solution of the relation of matter and form in experience as a whole, and in experience of every kind. For there the essential union of man's rational activity with nature was the very condition of the experience ; and yet the form and the matter of the experience were, as Kant had held, distinct. If, as Kant maintained, the reason at work in moral experience was one and the same with the reason which operated in Knowledge, then the reason, which was practically, i.e. actually, established as an operative principle of unity of subject and object in morality, must be equally the operative principle of unity of subject and object in Knowledge. If, as Hegel interpreted the position, self-conscious reason (or Spirit) actually controlled and permeated the entire range of its material (Nature) in the moral hfe, where the separation of subject and object was greatest, and the union of the two the very purpose of their relation, then in this experience we have at once a supreme manifestation of the principle of the unity of form and

content, and a key to interpret all other ways in which that unity may appear in experience.* Thus, then, we get the fundamental features of experience with which the Phenomenology starts. Experience, wherever found, is constituted by (1) subject and object, (2) in immediate conscious relation, (3) mediating that relation in a process of reciprocal involution, the one with the other, (4) within the limits, and under the control, of an underlying unity or universal, which (5) is implicitly or explicitly determined bj self-conscious reason or Spirit. We next ask, how are the forms of experience to be found ? Whose experience is under consideration ? What determines the selection of the types to be considered ? The answer lies in the nature of system which the treatise seeks to furnish. The system of experience has a logical and an historical aspect. On the one hand it seeks to be a coherently ordered body of truth : as such, it must work with universals, for the coherence which every scientific system requires can only be obtataed by connecting universals. On the other hand, its facts are the manifestations in time of the content and processes of conscious individual experience : as such, they are historical phenomena, for history is precisely the co-existence and succession in time of the appearances of a living individuality. But it is transparent that the ' system of experience ' does not appear qua system,, for historical experience is a discontinuous disarray of events and occurrences. It is equally clear that every individual does not as a fact take on, either successively or otherwise, each and all

* In this connexion the reader should examine the analysis of Spirit ill pp. 430 ff. (Vol. II.) This passage is in a sense the key to the whole work. of the forms which the human spirit historically assumes. For the purposes of a system of experience we must therefore combine those two aspects in a single working conception. The science requires generality, the experience requires individuality ; the generahty of science must be individuahsed, the individuahty of experience must be generalised. The generality of science is satisfied if it is allowed to abstract a form of experience from a given historical or individual situation, and treat this form as a typical moment of experience ; the individuality of experience is satisfied if at any time, or in any individual situation, the typical form can be, has been, or is, actually realised ; both are satisfied at once if the experience considered by this system is treated as the experience of a generahsed individual. The series of forms of experience, analysed and connected in the Phenomenology, constitute the experience of such a typified individual. This working conception enables us to treat experience as a whole, and at the same time to embrace the various modes of experience as these appear discretely in history. Without it, we should either have mere history, which is inexhaustible and so cannot be a whole, or mere connection of abstract ideas, which cannot as such be experience.

This typified individual is no doubt another expression for the Kantian conception of " consciousness in general " ; and in any case the idea of such an individual is directly analogous to what we find in any science which seeks to deal with hving individuahty. No physiologist supposes that what he says of the functional operations of the individual organism will be found precisely to hold of any chance individual whom he may examine at a moment's notice ; for the chance individual may happen at the time to be below the level of ' normal health/ or may have had his organic functions affected by an endless variety of circumstances, prejudicial or otherwise. Yet the physiologist does not consider that these variations make a science of the functions of the organism impossible. He deals with ' averages ; ' the ' average individual ' is the basis of his science. In a similar way the generalised individual is the working basis for the construction of the ' system of experience.' Such a conception determines the principle on which the forms of experience are selected, and the manner in which historical phenomena are treated in the argument. Those selected are, in the main, the constant or recurrent forms of experience. We do not find every possible form of experience discussed, but only such forms as serve the main idea of the discussion. Idiosyncrasy and eccentricity are no doubt of interest in human experience, but they have a significance for purposes of biography or autobiography ; they are off the main track of common experience, and do not play a necessary part in the development of the essential substance of the human spirit. Nor do we find all the forms of experience that might have been expected to have a place in the general plan of experience. This restriction in the selection of the forms of experience is largely accounted for by the hmitations under which the author worked.* Again, historical phenomena are throughout the argument invariably treated as individual instances of a type of experience, not as mere historical fact. This accounts for one of the most perplexing difficulties in following the discussion at certain points. Concrete

* V. ante, p. vii. fF. historical facts are before the mind of the author, inspiring and suggesting the course of his analysis ; but hardly a single hint is given of the particular facts in question. It would seem as if history were treated as a mere illustrative footnote to a typical movement of experience, instead of being, as it is, the substance of the movement analysed. The particular time at which the historical facts appeared is a matter of indifference to the type of experience ; still more so the thousand and one details which fitted them into one historical epoch as distinct from another. Hence, at some stages of the argument, currents of history similar or identical in general character, but far removed in point of time, may operate simultaneously in determining the nature of the discussion, and elements may be drawn, now from one, and now from another, regardless of historicity. The reason, and the justification, for such procedure is that while history may not repeat itself, types of experience do, as we see, e.g., from the simple facts of language, custom, and tradition. And, indeed, it may be said that only when a form of experience has been repeatedly insc]?ibed upon time's pahmpsest so as to produce a composite impression, are we in a position to regard it as a type, and thus an essential factor in the unfolding of the complete meaning of human experience. That type and historical fact should thus be indissolubly blended in the argument of the Phenomenology is a necessary characteristic and condition of such a system of experience. Whether the author has successfully interW(5ven the two in his analysis may well be questioned. It may be said that sometimes he mistakes a side-track for the high road, sometimes takes an incident for a t^^pe, sometimes takes aspects of a type for the whole

type, sometimes repeats types at different stages of the development of the whole. But at any rate there need be no doubt regarding his intention and aim. The last general question of importance concerns the nature of the method of constructing such a system. This is determined by what has been already said. The method, in a word, is that of development. There was nothing novel in such a method. It had been used with success by Aristotle, and in modern, philosophy by Leibniz. The application of it for the construction of a system of experience had been suggested, and even attempted, by Schelling in his Transcendentl^il Idealism (1800), where he sought to exhibit all ' parts of philosophy in a continuous succession of stages ' ,,or ' epochs ' in the ' history of self-consciousness.'* Wh.at was new in Hegel's use of the method was due to the clearness of his conception of what he meant by development, and the rigorous, inflexible persistence with which he sought to work it out. In his view, the principle of the method is involved in the very nature of every type of experience, as well as in the whole of experience. For the method is neither more nor less than the operation of the form of experience itself ; and the form 'of experience, as we have seen, is inseparable from the content. Indeed, it may be said, the presence of the method is a test of whether or not any apparent case of experience is or is not typical and worthy of consideration. The general character of the method is that of the unification of opposites by a process which reveals their inherent necessity to one another in virtue of their participation in a common principle, and conversely. The specific procedure of the method is that of (1 ) starting

* V. Preface and conclusion to Trunscendentaler Idealismus. from the prima facie or " immediate " relation of the terms opposed as subject and object, (2) showing how they mutually involve and determine or " mediate " one another, and thereby (3) evolving the inner unity of principle which both estabhshes and contains their im|mediate relation, and makes possible and necessary thifeir mediation. This procedure is one and the same in I its operation in every type of experience and in ! experience as a whole ; for one and the same prijiciple controls and pervades all experience (viz. sel'f-conscious reason or Spirit), and the various types of exiperience are to the whole of experience as the factors in' a given experience (subject and object) are to the type in question. The same method thus spontaneously determines the various chief divisions of the whole argument, and the particular stages in the evolution of the meaning of a given type of experience. The author fully explains in his '' Preface " and '' Introduction" the significance of the various phases of the method, and his statements need not be repeated here. Enough has been said to indicate the general nature of the method as apphed throughout.

But while the system is constructed dehberately by thi« method, it need not be supposed that the successful use of the method was an unique and mysterious secret of the author of the treatise, who carried out his scheme in the private laboratory of his own mind, without suggestion or assistance from any other source whatsoever. As a matter of fact, the author's claim is that his own particular inspiration is quite unnecessary, and is even irrelevant : and so far from dispensing with assistance in the construction of the argument, he maintains that this method really operates, though unconsciously, in all muids and in all experience. And there can be no doubt that in the working out of the method the author was guided to a very large extelnt by results achieved by others, and by facts and sifggestions drawn from familiar sources. For one thiijig, it is clear that before commencing his argument he must have had as definite an idea of where his argument was to terminate as of the stage of experience fr(;)m which to begin. And it is not difficult to trace the profound influence of Greek thought in determin;[ng the analysis of both the beginning and the conclusijon of his system of experience. The discussion of " senbecertainty " in the first stage of the Plienomenology seems little more than a fresh restatement of the analysis and criticism of the nature of aladtjo-i?, foiind in Greek philosophy, especially in Plato and Aristotle.* The conception of "Absolute Knowledge" with wliich the Phenomenology concludes is a reproduction of Aristotle's interpretation of pure thought. " Pure thought thinks that which is the most divine and most precious, and it does not change. . . . Since it is the most excellent thing, it thinli;s itself, and its thinking is the thinking on thitiking. ... In productive activity, apart fi'om the matter, the substance or formal essence is the object, and in theoretical activity the object is the concept or function of thinking. Therefore thought and the object of thought, not being different in the cases where there is no matter, will be the same, and thinking will be one with the object of thought. ... As human thought holds in a certain period of time ... so the divine

* This has been well brought out by Purpus in his pamphlet. Die Dialekiik der Sinnlichen Gewissheit bei Hegel, NQrnberg, 1905. tliought, the thought which thinks itself, holds throughout all eternity." * Again, the order in which the various forms of experience are placed between the upper and lower Limits of experience was also suggested, to a large extent, by the mental development of the individual, and the historical development of mankind. This was inevitable, for the very nature of experience, as we have seen, involves process in time, and this occurs in a definite oi'der. If that order coincides with the necessary order re.quired by a logically constructed system, the coincidence may be a chance, but it facilitates and gives vividness to the analysis. Moreover, it is of the essence of the argument to look upon historical process, whether in the individual unit, or in the larger area of spiritual life found in society, as the condition by which the particular and universal elements of experience become concretely identified and harmonised. Thus, e.g., the " psychological " process of mental development provides the suggestion for the ' dialectical ' process of m'nd from sense-knowledge to perception, or again, from consciousness to self-consciousness ; the historical evolution of Greek and Roman society suggests the " dialectical " transition from the custom-constituted to the law-constituted order of society; the historical connexion between the individualism of the eighteenth century and the ethical philosophy of Kant and Fichte suggests the " dialectical " connexion between the atomistic freedom of a revolutionary epoch and the inner freedom of conscience.

Such, then, is the principle and method of this Philosophy of Experience. When systematically developed, * Metaphysics, 1074i, 15-1 075a, 10. every essential mode of experience must find its due position and validity guaranteed ; for the guarantee of the value of every form is the ultimate transparent unity of subject and object in Absolute Knowledge, and every essential form is required as a stage in the realisation of this spiritual idea. The only truth about the whole of esperience is thus the comprehensive system of all the forms in which truth is attained throughout experience. Every essential form makes it own peculiar contribution; and none can be absolutely false, for an absolutely false relation of subject and object is either meaningless or a contradiction in terms. i We may describe this system as a " critique of experience," but only in the sense that such a criticism is the self-criticism of experience ; for beyond experience we cannot possibly find anything, still less a standard to criticise experience. We cannot arbitrarily break up experience into separate parts, and elaborate independently a "critique of knowledge," a "critique of morahty," and a "critique of beauty"; for all these are but forms of one experience : experience is tjhe common denominator of all, and must be construed as a whole. In short, a true critique of experience can only be a connected system of the whole of experience.

It is manifest that such a system is no more than an orderly arrangement of the ways in which experience appears. It does not expound all the truth that the various modes of experience themselves contain. Each mode forms a nucleus of a sphere of truth all its own, the elaboration of which is a separate undertaking by itself. The substance of the truth which each contains is only relevant to the argument, and is only introduced, so far as is necessary to bring out the peculiar nature of the kind of experience each mode embodies. Again, the Phenomenology is distinct from empirical psychology on the one hand, and the concrete Ufe of individual experience on the other. The growth in mental life of the distinction between subject and object is presupposed before experience can be said to exist, a;ad the growth of that distinction in time it is part of the work of psychology to trace. On the other hand, relatively to the living agent in concrete experience, the phenomenological observer is like the historian or the dramatist who perceives and understands the play of the forces controlling the living agent, and traces the connexion of the moving principles that operate unseen, and certainly unforeseen, in the production of the result.

It is equally clear from what has been said that the Phenomenology is not a complete system of philosophy. It is at most a part, and, as the author insisted, the introductory part to a comprehensive philosophical system. The exhaustive elaboration of " Absolute Knowledge " would alone be a complete system of philosophy. All that is done in the Phenomenology towards such a system is to show that " Absolute Knowledge " as a mode of spiritual life has its roots in experience, and is the consummation and final cause of the whole process of experience. The author endeavoured in his other works to construct the entire system of " Absolute Knowledge," but the success or incompleteness of this achievement does not affect the value of the argument of the Phenomenology, which justifies the standpoint of " Absolute Knowledge." * * On the relation of the Phenomevology to Hegel's other works, the reiader may consult the Origin of Hegel's Logic, above mentioned, p. xiv. note But, though the Phenomenology is not a complete system of philosophical knowledge, it is itself a philosophical systematisation of the modes of experience. For only a philosophical argument could justify the validity of the philosophical point of view ; and th..s Hegel does by showing that every mode of experience in the long run derives its vahdity as an avenue to truth from the fact that it implies the essential principle of philosophical knowledge. The argument of the Phenomenology is undertaken to prove that the interes fcs of all forms of knowledge are bound up with the validity of philosophical knowledge. The Phenotnenology enables us to determine the position of Absolute Truth, and the parallax of the Absolute can only be found if we take f.s our base-line the diameter of the orbit of human experience.

It is not necessary here, even if it were in place, to defend the argument of the Phenomenology from possible lines of attack and criticism. Least of all need it be asserted that we have in this work the last word of philosophy regarding the nature and meaning of experience. The discussions of philosophy are not to be reduced to the level of a brawl in the market-place, and no serious philosopher ever made a merit of having the ' last word.'' But so much may be said : — if, ''n principle aim and result, the argument of this work is untenable, idealism, whether as a creed or a systeri, may be once for all abandoned — and indeed any attempt to put a spiritual interpretation upon the facts of human life. In a sense, the present work contains little that is ne\ir beyond the method by which the forms of experience are wrought into a connected system. In a manner, it is but an elaborate exposition of the doctrine expressed in the well-known lines : — How exquisitely the individual Mind (And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external World Is fitted : — and how exquisitely too

The external World is fitted to the Mind.* That experience must in the long run obtain its explanation and justification from itself, may be regarded as a truism. And again, that the Absolute embodies itself in all modes of experience, that it requires every form of truth to constitute the whole truth, that only in the entire extent of our human experience can we read the full meaning of the Absolute Spirit in which we live and move and have our being — these are propositions acceptable in every age, and recurring as regularly as the days of the human calendar. We might even say, in the words of the unsbphisticated child of nature, Ungefahr sagt das der Pfarrer auch, Nur mit ein bischen anderen Worten.f But the familiarity of much of the substance under discussion will not lessen the value of the argument in the eyes of those to whom a comprehensive conspectus of experience is an intellectual need. That they will find both Hght and leading in this remarkable book there can be no doubt. To these the book may be safely commended, and those whose need is greatest will find the most. 'The best edition of the text is that of Georg Lasson, Pastor of St. Bartolemaus Church in Berlin. This

* \Vordswortli, Preface to the Excursion. t Faust. appeared in 1907, and is a most carefully collated recension of the work. The translator was fortunate in being able to make use of this edition in the final revision of the translation, which was begun long bef^)re Lasson's edition appeared. Another competent studcint of Hegel, Professor Bolland of Leyden, also produced an edition of the work in 1907 ; but this is merely a reproduction of the second edition of 1843, beautifully printed on beautiful paper. All the footnotes accompanying the text of the translation have been appended by the translator. For sojTie of these he is indebted to the editions of Lasson and Bolland. The editions of 1807 and of 1843 (Hegel's Werke II) contain no notes. In addition to the fo(3tnotes the translator has also written short introductory paragraphs for most of the sections and sub-sections into which the work is divided. These paragraphs will be found in small type within brackets, at the beginning of the respective sections. They are intended partly to be explanatory, partly to be a guide to the argument, and partly to indicate the background of historical fact to which the analysis refers. In default of a fuller commentary,* which, it is to be hoped, vdaj some day appear, these paragraphs may be found useful to the student of the book.

In translating the work there has been no attempt to do more than give a rendering of the original which * Beyond the work of Purpus, Die Dialcktik der sinnlicken GewLtsheit hei Heyel (1905), and Ziir Diakktik des Bewusstseins nach Hegel (1908), no attempt has been made to furnish a commentary on the work. Thure are some suggestive hints in the introductions of Lasson and Bolland^to their respective editions ; and the same is true of Brunstad's introduction to the Reclam edition of Hegel's Philosophic der Geschichte. Rosenkrant's Hegel (lis Deutsche.!- National Philosoph contains a valuable and interestifag chapter ; Galiler's Kritik des Beimissiscins \vill be found very useful : and Haym's Hegel und seine Zcit is still of much interest. would be as faithful to the meaning and as close to the style of the text as was consistent with clearness and intelligibihty. There seems no doubt that the work was written with less regard than usual to literary effect, and with more regard to the logical coherence of the result than is common in works of philosophy. The appalling struggle of the author to carry out his self-imposed task of arranging the crass material of experience into an organically connected plan of necessary thought, and of satisfying his demands for philosophical system, overwhelm all other considerations whatsoever. It is impossible, as it is unfair, to expect any one who is staggering under the weight of absolute truth to move to the graceful measures of a literary minuet. He is content to get his meaning expressed in the way that comes readiest to his hand and offers the least impediment to the movement of his thought. The consequence is that the style throughout the work is severely formal, and only relieved at times by the crudest and homehest metaphors. It is no part of a translator's task to improve his author ; and when the thought of the original is clad in wincey, it is not the translator's business to drape it in satin. The translator has therefore refrained in the present case from attempting to make the reproduction more attractive from the Uterary point of view than the original. He can only hope it will not be found to be less so.

In the task of revising and correcting the proofs, the translator has been placed under deep obhgations to those who have kindly assisted him with suggestions and criticisms. The whole of the proof has been read by the general editor for this series. Professor Muirhead, and by Mr. R. M. Maclver, Lecturer in Philosophy, would be as faithful to the meaning and as close to the style of the text as was consistent with clearness and intelHgibility. There seems no doubt that the work was written with less regard than usual to literary effect, and with more regard to the logical coherence of the result than is common in works of philosophy. The appalling struggle of the author to carry out his self-imposed task of arranging the crass material of experience into an organically connected plan of necessary thought, and of satisfying his demands for philosophical system, overwhelm all other considerations whatsoever. It is impossible, as it is unfair, to expect any one who is staggering imder the weight of absolute truth to move to the graceful measures of a literary minuet. He is content to get his meaning expressed in the way that comes readiest to his hand and ofiers the least impediment to the movement of his thought. The consequence is that the style throughout the work is severely formal, and only relieved at times by the crudest and homeliest metaphors. It is no part of a translator's task to improve his author ; and when the thought of the original is clad in wincey, it is not the translator's business to drape it in satin. The translator has therefore refrained in the present case from attempting to make the reproduction more attractive from the literary point of view than the original. He can only hope it will not be found to be less so.

In the task of revising and correcting the proofs, the translator has been placed under deep obhgations to those who have kindly assisted him with suggestions and criticisms. The whole of the proof has been read by the general editor for this series. Professor Muirhead, and by Mr. R. M. Maclver, Lecturer in Philosophy, would be as faithful to the meaning and as close to the style of the text as was consistent with clearness and intelligibility. There seems no doubt that the work was written with less regard than usual to literary effect, and with more regard to the logical coherence of the result than is common in works of philosophy. The appalling struggle of the author to carry out his self-imposed task of arranging the crass material of experience into an organically connected plan of necessary thought, and of satisfying his demands for philosophical system, overwhelm all other considerations whatsoever. It is impossible, as it is unfair, to expect any one who is staggering under the weight of absolute truth to move to the graceful measures of a literary minuet. He is content to get his meaning expressed in the way that comes readiest to his hand and offers the least impediment to the movement of his thought. The consequence is that the style throughout the work is severely formal, and only reUeved at times by the crudest and homeliest metaphors. It is no part of a translator's task to improve his author ; and when the thought of the original is clad in wincey, it is not the translator's business to drape it in satin. The translator has therefore refrained in the present case from attempting to make the reproduction more attractive from the literary point of view than the original. He can only hope it will not be found to be less so.

In the task of revising and correcting the proofs, the translator has been placed under deep obligations to those who have kindly assisted him with suggestions and criticisms. The whole of the proof has been read by the general editor for this series. Professor Muirhead, and by Mr. R. M. Maclver, Lecturer in Philosophy, Aberdeen University. Georg Lasson, pastor in Berlin, has also given invaluable help with all the translation. The early part of the translation has been greatly improved by the suggestions of Professor Pringle-Pattison of Edinburgh. Whatever merit the translation of the middle portion of the work may possess is in large measure due to the careful criticism of Mr. H. H. Joachim, of Merton College, Oxford. The Eight Honble. R. B. Haldane, M.P., has read in proof a considerable part of the work, and the translator is also indebted to Miss Haldane for criticisms on one of the most difficult sections of the argument. [In the following table of contents the matter within square brackets is inserted by the translator.] Translator's Introduction .... v-xxxiv On Scientific Knowledge in General . . 1-72 The element in which truth is found is the notion ; its true embodiment is a scientifically constructed system. The position and point of view of spiritual culture at the present time. A principle of Knowledge is not the completion of Knowledge : objections to formalism.

The Absolute is Subject : the meaning of this statement. The sphere and element of systematic Knowledge : the course by which consciousness rises to this stage constitutes the Phenomenology of Mind. The transformation of figurative presentations and familiar ideas ii>to thoughts ; and these again into notions. To what extent is the Phenomenology of Miiid negative, or how far does it contain falsity? Historical and Mathematical truth. Nature of philosophical truth, and its Method : objections to schematising fornialisiti. Eequisite for the study of philosophy. The negative procedure of ratiocination : its positive procedure : its subject. Philosophising by the light of the nature : healthy common-sense : the inspiration of genius. Conclusion : the relation of the author to his public. [Intention and Method of the argument of the Phenomenology] I. Sense-certainty, or the this and " meaning " [1. The object of sense-certainty. 2. The subject of sense-certainty. 3. The concrete experience of sense-certainty]. II. Perception : or things and the deceptive- [1. The notion of a " thing." 2. The contradictoruiess of the perception of 3. The transition to unconditioned universality and the sphere of Understanding]. III. Force and Understanding ; Appearance and [1. Force and the play of forces. 2. The inner realm.

(a) The supersensible world. (1) The inner ; appearance ; understanding. (2) The supersensible as an app'-arance. (3) Law as the true nature of appearance. (6) Law as distinction and sameni;ss. (1) Specific laws and genera'J law. (2) Law and force. (3) Explanation, (c) The law of pure distinction : the inverted IV. The true nature of self-cektainty . 163- L74 [1. Consciousness in itself. 3. The Ego and Desire.] A. Independence and Dependence of Self -con- sciousness : Lordship and Bondage . 175-188 [1. Duplicated self -consciousness. 2. The conflict of self-consciousness in self- 3. Lord and bondsman. (a) Lordship. (c) The formative process of self-'^afranchisement]. B. Freedom of Self -consciousness : Stoicism, Scepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness .... 189-219 [Preliminary : the stage of consciousness reached at this point : Thinking. 3. The unhappy consciousness : sulijective piety, (a) The changeable consciousness. (6) The form of the Unchangeable, (c) The union of the actual and self-consciousness. (1) The pure consciousness : the life of emotion : devotion. (2) The individual and actuality. The deeds of the pious consciousness. (.>) Self - coneciousness passing into Keason. Self-mortification]. V. Certainty and Tedth of Eeason 3. Empty or subjective Idealism : its Know-

A. Observation as a mode of Eeason . a. Observation of Nature [1. Observation of things of Nature] . [(«.)] Description in general, [(i)] Descriptive marks, [(c)] Lavi's. [(1) Notion and experience of law. [2] Observation of organic existence (a) Relation of the organic to inorganic elements. (6) Organic teleology, (c) Iinier and outer. li. The inner : the general moments of the inner aspect of organic life, Sensibihty, Irritahility, and Reproduction : the laws of these moments: the relation of the inner aspect to its outer expression. /J. The inner and the outer as constituting an organic individual form. y. The outei- as at ouce inner and outer. no o on f-7 [3. Observation of nature, as an organic whole] . 274-285 [(a)] The idea of organisation applied to the inorganic : [specific weight, cohesion, number]. [(6)] The organisation of organic nature : genus, species, and individuality. [(c) Life as reason in contingent form] h. Observation of self-consciousness purely as self-cousciousness, and as standing in relation to external reality. Logical and Psychological laws . . . 28/ -295 [1. Laws of thought. 3. The law of individuality]. c. Observation of the relation of self-consciousness to its immediate actuality. Physiognomy and Phrenology . . . 298-337 [1. The physiognomic significance of organs.

2. This significance is manifold and diverse. (a) The cranium interpreted as an external actualisation of mind. (6) Relation of cranial formation to individuality. (c) Mental disposition and actuality. Conclusion. The identity of thinghood and reason.] B. Eealisafcion of rational self-consciousness through itself .... 339-380 [1. The immediate direction of the movement of self-oonsciousness : the sphere of the Ethical Order. 2. The converse process involved in this movement : the essential nature of Morahty] . 339-348 a. Pleasure and Necessity . . . 350-355 h. The law of the heart, and the frenzy of selfconceit .... 357-367 c. Virtue and the course of the world . 3G9-380 C. Individuality, which takes itself to be real in and for itself .... 382-427 a. Society as a herd of individuals : deception : actual fact . . . 387-409 [1. The notion of individuality as real. 2. Actual fact and individuality. 3. Mutual deception and sj)iritual substance]. h. Reason as lawgiver . . . 411—417 c. Reason as test of laws . . . 418—427 VI. Spirit ...... 430-435 A. Objective Spirit : the ethical order . 436-485 a. The ethical world : law divine and human : man and woman . . 440-458

[1. Nation and family, (a) Human la\y. (i) Divine law. (c) The claims of the individual. 2. The process involved in these two laws. (a) Government as positive power, war a3 negative. (6) The ethical relation of man and woman as brother and sister. (c) The interfusion of the two laws. 3. The ethical world as infinitude or selfcomplete totality.] l>. Ethical action : knowledge human and Divine : guilt and Destiny . . 460-477 [1. Contradiction of individuality with its essence. 2. Opposite characteristics of ethical action. 3. Dissolution of the ethical being.] c. Legal status .... 479-485 2. Contingencj' of the person. 3. The lord of the world ; the absolute person.] B. Spirit in self-estrangement : the discipline of cultitre and civilisation . . 486-605 I. The world of spirit in self-estrangement . 493-545 a. Culture and its sphere of reality . 494-533 [(1) Culture as the estrangement of natural existence, (a) Goodness and badness : state-power and wealth. (fc) The cleavage of self-consciousness : nobility and baseness. (c) Service and advice. (2) Language as the actuality of culture. (6) The language of distraction. (c) The vanity of culture.] b. Belief and pure insight . . 534-545 [(1) The idea of belief.

(2) The object of belief. (3) The rationality of pure insight,] a. The struggle of enlightenment with superstition [(1) The negative attitude of insight towards belief. (2) The doctrine of enlightenment. (3) The rights of enlightenment,] J). The truth of enlightenment [(1) Pure thought and pure matter. (2) The sphere of utility. III. Absolute freedom and terror [The awakening of free sul)jectivity.] C. Spirit certain of itself : Morality . a. The moral view of the world [(1) The postulated harmony of duty and reality. (2) The divine lawgiver and the imperfect (3) The moral world as a presented idea.] [(1) The contradictions in the moral view of the world. (2) The resolution of morality into its opposite. (3) The truth of moral self-consciousness. c. Conscience : the " beautiful soul " : EvU and the forgiveness of it . [(1) Conscience as the freedom of the self within itself. The reality of duty : conviction. (2) The universality of conscience. (3) Evil and forgiveness.] VII. Eeligion in General . . 685-696 A. Natural Eeligion . .698-711 a. God as Light. b. Plants and animals as religious objects. B. Eeligion in the form of Art . 712-758 a. The abstract work of art.

[(1) The representation of the gods. b. The living work of art : the human form as c. The spiritual work of art : art expressive of C. Eevealed Eeligion .... 759-799 [1. The presuppositions requisite for the notion of revealed religion 2. The ultimate content of revealed religion : the reality of the incarnation of God (a) in an individual, (6) in a religious communion. 3. Development of the notion of revealed religion. The Absolute as a trinity : the Absolute as externalised in the world : the Absolute as, fulfilled in a spiritual kingdom.! VIIL Absolute Knowledge . . . 800-823 [L The ultimate content of the Self which knows itself as all existence. ^ 2. Systematic Science as the self-comprehension of Spirit. 3. The return of Spirit so comprehended to immediate existence.] IN the case of a philosophical work it seems not onlysuperfluous, but, in view of the nature of the subject, even inappropriate and inexpedient to begin, as writers usually do, with a preface explaining the end the author had in mind, the circumstances which gave rise to the work, and the relation in which the writer takes it to stand to other treatises on the same subject, written by his predecessors or his contemporaries. For whatever it might be smtable to state about philosophy in a preface — say, an historical sketch of the main drift and point of view, the general content and results, a string of desultory assertions and assurances about truth — this cannot be accepted as the form and manner in which to expound philosophical truth.

Moreover, because philosophy has its being essentially in the element of universality, which encloses the particular within it, the end or final result seems, in the case of philosophy more than in that of other sciences, to have absolutely expressed the complete fact itself in its very nature, for which the mere process of bringing it to light would seem, properly speaking, to have no essential significance. On the other hand, in the general idea of e.g. anatomy — the knowledge of the 2 Phenomenology of Mind parts of the body regarded as lifeless — we are quite sure we do not possess the objective concrete fact, the actual content of the science, but must, over and above, be concerned with particulars. Further, in the case of such a collection of items of knowledge, which has no real right to the name of science, any talk about purpose and such-like generalities is not commonly very different in manner from the descriptive and superficial way in which the contents of the science — these nerves and muscles, etc. — are themselves spoken of. In philosophy, on the other hand, it would at once be felt incongruous were such a method made use of and yet shown by philosophy itself to be incapable of grasping the truth.

In the same way too by determining the relation which a philosophical work professes to have to other treatises on the same subject, an extraneous interest is introduced, and obscurity is thrown over the point at issue in the knowledge of the truth. The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see the one or the other in any explanation about such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth ; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter ; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated ; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other ; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes from the outset the Hfe of the whole. But contradiction in the case of a philosophical system is not usually conceived in this way ; and again, the mind perceiving the contradiction does not commonly know how to reheve it or keep it free of onesidedness, or to recognise in what seems conflicting and inherently antagonistic the presence of mutually necessary moments.

The demand for such explanations, as also the attempts to satisfy this demand, very easily pass for the essential business philosophy has to undertake. Where could the inmost truth of a philosophical work be found better expressed than in its purposes and results ? and in what way could these be more definitely known than through their distinction from what is produced during the same period by others working in the same field ? If, however, such procedure is to pass for more than the beginning of knowledge, if it is to pass for actually knowing what a philosophical system is, then we must, in point of fact, look on it as a device for avoiding the real business at issue, an attempt to combine the appearance of being in earnest and taking trouble about the subject with an actual neglect of the subject altogether. For the real subject-matter is not exhausted in its purpose, but in working the matter out ; nor is the mere result attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with the process 4 Phenomenology of Mind of arriving at it. The purpose by itself is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a bare activity in a certain direction, which is still without its concrete realisation ; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency behind it. Similarly, the distinctive difference of anything is rather the boundary, the limit, of the subject ; it is found at that point where the matter stops, or it is what the matter is not. To trouble oneself in this fashion with the purpose and results, or again with the differences, the positions taken up and judgments passed by one thinker and another, is therefore an easier task than perhaps it seems. For instead of laying hold of the matter itself, a procedure of that kind is all the while away from the subject altogether. Instead of dwelling within it and becoming absorbed by it, knowledge of that sort is always grasping at something else ; such knowledge, instead of keeping to the subject-matter and giving itself up to it, never gets away from itself. The easiest thing of all is to pass judgments on what has a sohd substantial content ; it is more difficult to grasp it, and most of all difficult to do both together and produce the systematic exposition of it.

The beginning of culture and of the struggle to get out of the imbroken immediacy of naive psychical Hfe has always to be made by acquiring knowledge of universal principles and points of view, by striving, 'J'in the first instance, to work up simply to the thought of the subject-matter in general, not forgetting at the same time to give reasons for supporting it or refuting it, to apprehend the concrete riches and fullness contained in its various determinate qualities, and to know how to furnish a coherent, orderly account of it and , a responsible judgment upon it. This beginning of mental cultivation will, however, very soon make way for the earnestness of actual life in all its fullness, which leads to a living experience of the subject-matter itself ; and when, in addition, conceptual thought strenuously penetrates to the very depths of its meaning, such knowledge and style of judgment will be relegated to their due place in everyday thought and conversation. The systematic development of truth in scientific form can alone be the true shape in which truth exists. To help to bring philosophy nearer to the form of science — that goal where it can lay aside the name of love of knowledge and be actual knowledge — that is what I have set before me. The inner necessity that knowledge should be science Lies in its very nature ; and the adequate and sufficient reason for this is simply and solely the systematic exposition of philosophy itself. The external necessity, however, so far as this is apprehended in a universal way, and apart from the accident of the personal element and the particular occasioning influences affecting the individual, is the same as the internal : it lies in the form and shape in which the process of time presents the existence of its moments. To show that the time has come to raise philosophy to the level of scientific system would, therefore, be the only true justification of the attempts which aim at proving that philosophy must assume this character ; because the temporal process would thus bring out and lay bare the necessity of it, nay, more, would at the same time be carrying out that very aim itself.

6 Phenomenology of MmA When we state the true form of truth to be its scientific character — or, what is the same thing, when it is maintained that truth finds the medium of its existence in notions or conceptions alone — I know that this seems to contradict an idea with all its consequences which makes great pretensions and has gained widespread acceptance and conviction at the present time. A word of explanation concerning this contradiction seems, therefore, not out of place, even though at this stage it can amount to no more than a dogmatic assurance exactly like the view we are opposing. If, that is to say, truth exists merely in what, or rather exists merely as what, is called at one time intuition, at another immediate knowledge of the Absolute, religion, Being — not being in the centre of divine love, but the very Being of this centre, of the Absolute itself — from that point of view it is rather the opposite of the notional or conceptual form which would be required for systematic philosophical exposition. The Absolute would not be grasped in conceptual form, but felt, intuited ; it is not its conception, but the feeling of it and intuition of it that are to have the say and find expression.

If we consider the appearance of a claim hke this in its more general setting, and look at it from the level which the self-conscious mind at present occupies, we shall find that self-consciousness has got beyond the substantial fullness of life, which it used to carry on in the element of thought — beyond this naive immediacy of belief, beyond the satisfaction and security arising from the sense of certainty which conscious life possessed regarding its reconciliation with ultimate reality wherever present, whether inner or outer. Self-cPn- scious mind has not merely passed beyond that to the opposite extreme of insubstantial reflection of self into self, but beyond this too. It has not merely lost its essential and concrete hfe, it is also conscious of this loss and of the transitory finitude characteristic of its content. Turning away from the husks it has to feed on, and confessing that it lies in wickedness and sin, it reviles itself for so doing, and now desires from philosophy not so much to bring it to a knowledge of what it is, as to obtain once again through philosophy the restoration of that comfortably solid and substantial mode of existence it has lost. Philosophy is thus expected not so much to meet this want by opening up the compact solidity of substantial existence, and bringing this to the hght and level of self-consciousness — is not so much to get chaotic conscious life brought back to the orderly ways of thought, and the simple unity of the concept, as to run together what thought has divided asunder, suppress the notion with its distinctions, and restore the feeling of existence. What it wants from philosophy is not so much insight as edification. The beautiful, the holy, the eternal, religion, love — these are the bait required to awaken the desire to bite : not the notion, but ecstasy, not the march of cold necessity in the subject-matter, but ferment and enthusiasm— these are to be the ways by which the wealth of the concrete substance is to be stored and spread out to view.

With this demand there goes the strenuous effort, altnost perfervidly zealous in its activity, to rescue mankind from being sunken in what is sensuous, vulgar, and of fleeting importance, and to raise men's eyes to the stars ; as if men had quite forgotten the 8 Phenomenology of Mind divine, and were on the verge of finding satisfaction, like worms, in mud and water. Time was when man had a heaven, decked and fitted out with endless wealth of thoughts and pictures. The significance of all that is, lay in the thread of light by which it was attached to heaven ; instead of dwelhng in the present as it is here and now, the eye ghded away over the present to the Divine, away, so to say, to a present that lies beyond. The mind's gaze had to be directed under compulsion to what is earthly, and kept fixed there ; and it has needed a long time to introduce that clearness, which only celestial reahties had, into the crassness and confusion shrouding the sense of things earthly, and to make attention to the immediate present as such, which was called Experience, of interest and of value. Now we have apparently the need for the opposite of all this ; man's mind and interest are so deeply rooted in the earthly that we require a like poAver to get them raised above that level. His spirit shows such poverty of nature that it seems to long for the mere pitiful feeling of the divine in the abstract, and to get refreshment from that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for the merest mouthful of water. By the little vsrhich can thus satisfy the needs of the human spirit we can measure the extent of its loss.

This easy contentment in receiving, or stinginess in giving, does not suit the character of science. The man who only seeks edification, who wants to envelop in mist the manifold diversity of his earthly existence and thought, and craves after the vague enjoyment of this vague and indeterminate Divinity — he may look where he likes to find this : he will easily find for himself the means to get something he can rave over and puff himself up with. But philosophy must beware of the wish to be edifying. ' Still less must this kind of contentment, which holds sfcience in contempt, take upon itself to claim that raving obscurantism of this sort is something higher than science. These apocalyptic utterances pretend to occupy the very centre and the deepest depths ; they look askance at all definiteness and preciseness {opo<;) of meaning ; and they deliberately hold back from conceptual thinking and the constraining necessities of thought, as being the sort of reflection which, they say, can only feel at home in the sphere of finitude. But just as there is a breadth which is emptiness, there is a depth which is empty too : as we may have an extension of substance which overflows into finite multiplicity without the power of keeping the manifold together, in the same way we may have an insubstantial intensity which, keeping itself in as mere force without actual expression, is no better than superficiality. The force of mind is only as great as its expression ; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself when spending and giving out its substance. Moreover, when this unreflective emotional knowledge makes a pretext of having immersed its own very self in the depths of the absolute Being, and of philosophising in all hohness and truth, it hides from itself the fact that instead of devotion to God, it rather, by this contempt for aU measurable precision and definiteness, simply confirms in its own case the fortuitous character of its content, and on the other endows God with its own caprice. When such minds commit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of sheer emotion, they think that, by putting ■oil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all

10 Pkenowcnology of Mind understanding, they are thus God's beloved ones to whom He gives His wisdom in sleep. This is the reason, too, that in point of fact what they do conceive and bring forth in sleep is dreams. For the rest it is not difficult to see that our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition. The spirit of the age has broken with the world as it has hitherto existed, and with the old ways of thinking, and is in the mind to let them all sink into the depths of the past and to set about its own transformation. It is indeed never at rest, but carried along the stream of progress ever onward. But it is here as in the case of the birth of a child ; after a long period of nutrition in silence, the continuity of the gradual growth in size, of quantitative change, is suddenly cut short by the first breath drawn — there is a break in the process, a quahtative change — and the child is born. In like manner the spirit of the time, growing slowly and quietly ripe for the new form it is to assume, loosens one fragment after another of the structure of its previous world. That it is tottering to its fall is indicated only by symptoms here and there. Frivohty and again ennui, which are spreading in the established order of things, the undefined foreboding of something unknown — all these are hints foretelling that there is sometliing else approaching. This gradual crumbling to pieces, v/hicli did not alter the general look and aspect of the whole, is interrupted by the sunrise, which, in a flash and at a single stroke, brings to view the form and structure of the new world.

But this new world is perfectly realised just as little as the new-born child ; and it is essential to bear this in mind. It comes on the stage to begin with in its immediacy, in its bare generality. A building is not finished when its foundation is laid ; and just as little is the attainment of a general notion of a whole the whole itself. When we want to see an oak with all its vigour of trunk, its spreading branches, and mass of foliage, we are not satisfied to be shown an acorn instead. In the same way science, the crowning glory of a spiritual world, is not found complete in its initial stages. The beginning of the new spirit is the outcome of an extensive transformation of manifold forms of spiritual culture ; it is the reward which comes after a chequered and devious course of development, and after much struggle and effort. It is a whole which, after running its course and laying bare all its content," returns again to itself ; it is the resultant abstract notion of the whole. But the actual reahsation of this abstract whole is only found when those previous shapes and forms, which are now reduced to ideal moments of the whole, are developed anew again, but developed and shaped within this new medium, and with the meaning they have thereby acquired.

While the new world makes its first appearance merely in general outline, merely as a whole lying concealed and hidden within a bare abstraction, the wealth of the bygone life, on the other hand, is still consciously present in recollection. Consciousness misses in the new form the detailed expanse of content ; but still more the developed expression of form by which distinctions are definitely determined and arranged in their precise relations. Without this last feature science has no general intelligibihty, and has the appearance of being an esoteric possession of a few individuals — an esoteric possession, because in the 12 Phenomenology of Mind first instance it is only the essential principle or notion of science, only its inner nature that is to be found ; and a possession of few individuals, because, at its first appearance, its content is not elaborated and expanded in detail, and thus its existence is turned into something particular. Only what is perfectly determinate in form is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody. Intelhgibility is the form in which science is offered to everyone, and is the open road to it made plain for all. To reach rational knowledge by our intelhgence is the just demand of the mind which comes to science. For intelligence, understanding (Ver stand), is thinking, pure activity of the self in general ; and what is intelligible ( Verstdndige) is something from the first familiar and common to the scientific and unscientific mind alike, enabling the unscientific mind to enter the domain of science.

Science, at its commencement, when as yet it has neither got as far as detailed completeness nor perfection of form, is exposed to blame on that account. But to suppose this blame to attach to its essential nature would be as unjust, as it is inadmissible not to be ready to recognise the demand for that further development in fuller detail. In the contrast and opposition between these two aspects (the initial and the developed stages of science) seems to He the critical knot which scientific cultiixe at present struggles to loosen, and about which it is so far not very clear. One side parades the wealth of its material and the intelligibiUty of its ideas ; the other pours contempt at any rate on the latter, and makes a parade of the immediate intuitive rationality and divine quality of its content. Although the first is reduced to silence, perhaps by the inner force of truth alone, perhaps, too, by the noisy bluster of the other side, and though having regard to the reason and nature of the case it did feel overborne, yet it does not therefore feel satisfied as regards those demands for greater development ; for those demands are just, but still unfulfilled. Its silence is due only in part to the victory of the other side ; it is half due to that weariness and indifference which are usually the consequence when expectations are being constantly awakened by promises which are not followed up by performance.

The other side * no doubt at times makes an easy enough matter of getting a vast expanse of content. They haul in a lot of material — already famihar and arranged in order ; and since they are concerned more especially about what is exceptional, strange, and curious, they seem all the more to be in possession of the rest, which knowledge in its own way was finished and done with, as well as to have control over what was unregulated and disorderly. Hence everything appears brought within the compass of the Absolute Idea, which seems thus to be recognised in everything, and to have succeeded in becoming a system in extenso of scientific knowledge. But if we look more closely at this expanded system we find that it has not been reached by one and the same principle taking shape in diverse ways ; it is the shapeless repetition of one and the same idea, which is apphed in an external fashion to different material, the wearisome reiteration of it keeping up the semblance of diversity. The Idea, which by itself is no doubt the truth, really never gets * Schelling and his school. 14 PJienomenology of Mind

any farther than just where it began, as long as the development of it consists in nothing else than such a repetition of the same formula. If the knowing subject carries round everywhere the one inert abstract form, taking up in external fashion whatever material comes his way, and dipping it into this element, then this comes about as near to fulfilhng what is wanted — viz. a selforigination of the wealth of detail, and a self- determining distinction of shapes and forms — as any chance fancies about the content in question. It is rather a monotonous formalism, which only comes by distinction in the matter it has to deal with, because this is already prepared and well known. This monotonousness and abstract universality are maintained to be the Absolute. This formalism insists that to be dissatisfied therewith argues an incapacity to grasp the standpoint of the Absolute, and keep a firm hold on it. If it was once the case that the bare possibihty of thinking of something in some other fashion was sufficient to refute a given idea, and the naked possibihty, the bare general thought, possessed and passed for the entire substantive value of actual knowledge ; we find here similarly all the value ascribed to the general idea in this bare form without concrete reahsation ; and we see here, too, the style and method of speculative contemplation identified with dissipating and resolving what is determinate and distinct, or rather with hurling it down, without more ado and without any justification, into the abyss of vacuity. To consider any specific fact as it is in the Absolute, consists here in nothing else than saying about it that, while it is now doubtless spoken of as something specific, yet in the Absolute, in the abstract

identity A==A, there is no such thing at all, for everything is there all one. To pit this single assertion, that " in the Absolute all is one," against the organised whole of determinate and complete knowledge, or of knowledge which at least aims at and demands complete development — to give out its Absolute as the night in which, as we say, all cows are black — that is the very naivete of vacuous knowledge. The formahsm which has been deprecated and despised by recent philosophy, and which has arisen once more in philosophy itself, will not disappear from science, even though its inadequacy is known and felt, till the knowledge of absolute reality has become quite clear as to what its own true nature consists in. Having in mind that the general idea of what is to be done, if it precedes the attempt to carry it out, faciUtates the comprehension of this process, it is worth while to indicate here some rough idea of it, with the hope at the same time that this will give us the opportunity to set aside certain forms whose habitual presence is a hindrance in the way of speculative knowledge. In my view — a view which the developed exposition of the system itself can alone justify — everything depends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but as Subject as well. At the same time we must note that concrete substantiahty implicates and involves the universal or the immediacy of knowledge itself, as well as the immediacy which is being, or immediacy qua object for knowledge. If the generation which heard God spoken of as the One Substance* was shocked and revolted by such a characterisation of his nature, the reason lay partly in the

16 Phenomenology of Mind instinctive feeling that in such a conception selfconsciousness was simply submerged, and not preserved. But partly, again, the opposite position, which maintains thinking to be merely subjective thinking, abstract universality as such, is exactly the same bare uniformity, is undifferentiated, unmoved substantiality.* And even if, in the third place, thought combines with itself the being of substance, and conceives immediacy or intuition (AnscJiauung) as thinking, it is still a question whether this intellectual intuition does not fall back into that inert, abstract simphcity, and exhibit and expound reality itself in an unreal manner.f The Hving substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly reahsed and actual [wirhlicli) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or position to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of spUtting up what is simple and undifferentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the negation of this indifferent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reahty is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of reflecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an immediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end or its purpose, and has its end for its beginning ; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.

The Ufe of God and divine intelhgence, then, can, * Kant and Fichte. t Schelling. if we like, be spoken of as love disporting witli itself ; but this idea falls into edification, and even sinks into insipidity, if it lacks the seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labour of the negative. Per se the divine hfe is no doubt undisturbed identity and oneness with itself, which feels no anxiety over otherness and estrangement, and none over the surmounting of this estrangement. But this " per se " is abstract generality, where we abstract from its real nature, which consists in its being objective to itself, conscious of itself on its own account {fiir sich zu sein) ; and where consequently we neglect altogether the self-movement which is the formal character of its activity. If the form is declared to correspond to the essence, it is just for that reason a misunderstanding to suppose that knowledge can be content with the " per se," the essence, but can do without the form, that the absolute principle, or absolute intuition, makes the carrying out of the former, or the development of the latter, needless. Precisely because the form is as necessary to the essence as the essence to it, absolute reality must not be conceived of and expressed as essence alone, i.e. as immediate substance, or as pure self-intuition of the Divine, but as form also, and with the entire wealth of the developed form. Only then is it grasped and expressed as really actual.

The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, th?.t only at the end is it what it is in very truth ; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, aubject, or self -becoming, self-development. Should 18 Phenomenology oj Mind it appear contradictory to say that the Absolute has to be conceived essentially as a result, a little consideration wiU set this appearance of contradiction in its true hght. The. beginning, the principle, or the Absolute, as at first or immediately expressed, is merely the universal. If we say " all animals," that does not pass for zoology ; for the same reason we see at once that the words absolute, divine, eternal, and so on do not express what is imphed in them ; and only mere words hke these, in point of fact, express intuition as the immediate. Whatever is more than a word hke that, even the mere transition to a proposition, is a form of mediation, contains a process towards another state from which we must return once more. It is this process of mediation, however, that is rejected with horror, as if absolute knowledge were being surrendered when more is made of mediation than merely the assertion that it is nothing absolute, and does not exist in the Absolute.

This horrified rejection of mediation, however, arises as a fact from want of acquaintance with its nature, and with the nature of absolute knowledge itself. For mediating is nothing but self-identity working itself out through an active self-directed process ; or, in other words, it is reflection into self, the aspect in which the ego is for itself, objective to itself. It is pure negativity, or, reduced to its utmost abstraction, the process of bare and simple becoming. The ego, or becoming in general, this process of mediating is, because of its being simple, just immediacy coming to be, and is immediacy itself. We misconceive therefore the nature of reason if we exclude reflection or meditation from ultimate truth, and do not take it to be a positive moment of tlie Absolute. It is reflection svhich constitutes truth the final result, and yet at bhe same time does away with the contrast between result and the process of arriving at it. For this process is hkewise simple, and therefore not distinct from the form of truth, which consists in appearing as simple in the result ; it is indeed just this restoration and return to simplicity. While the embryo is certainly, in itself, implicitly a human being, it is not so exphcitly, it does not take itself to be a human being [fUr sich) ; it is only the latter in the form of developed and cultivated reason, which has made itself to be what it is implicitly. Its actual reality is first fomid here. But this result arrived at is itself simple immediacy ; for it is self-conscious freedom, which is at one with itself, and has not set aside the opposition it involves and left it there, but has made its account with it and become reconciled to it.

What has been said may also be expressed by saying that reason is purposive activity. Extolling so-called nature at the expense of thought misunderstood, and more especially the rejection of external purposiveness, have brought the idea of purpose in general into disrepute. AU the same, in the sense in which Aristotle, too, characterises nature as purposive activity, purpose is the inunediate, the midisturbed, the unmoved which is self-moving ; as such it is subject. Its power of moving, taken abstractly, is its existence for itself, or pure negativity. The result is the same as the beginning solely because the beginning is purpose. Stated otherwise, what is actual and concrete is the same as its inner principle or notion simply because the immediate qua purpose contains within it the self , or 20 Phenomenology of Mind pure actuality. The realised purpose, or concrete actuality, is movement and process of development. But this very unrest is the self ; and it is one and the same with that immediacy and simphcity characteristic of the beginning just for the reason thai it is the result, and has returned upon itself — while this latter again is just the self, and the self is self-referring and self-relating identity and simphcity.

When thinking of the Absolute as subject, men have made use of statements Uke ' God is the eternal,' the ' moral order of the world,' or ' love,' etc. In such propositions ultimate truth is just barely stated to be Subject, but not set forth as the process of reflectively mediating itself within itself. In a proposition of that kind we begin with the word God. By itself this is a meaningless sound, a mere name ; the predicate says afterwards wliat it is, gives it content and meaning : the empty beginning becomes real knowledge only when we thus get to the end of the statement. So far as that goes, why not speak alone of the eternal, of the moral order of the world, etc., or, Hke the ancients, of pure conceptions such as being, the one, etc., i.e. of what gives the meaning without adding the meaningless sound at all ? But this word just indicates that it is not a being or essence or universal in general that is put forward, but something reflected into self, a subject. Yet at the same time this acceptance of the Absolute as Subject is merely anticipated, not really affirmed. The subject is taken to be a fixed point, and to it as their support the predicates are attached, by a process falhng within the individual knowing about it, but not looked upon as belonging to the point of atta,chment itself ; only by such a process, however,

could the content be presented as subject. Constituted as it is, tbis process cannot belong to tbe subject ; but when that point of support is fixed to start wdth, this process cannot be otherwise constituted, it can only be external. The anticipation that the Absolute is subject is therefore not merely not the realisation of this conception ; it even makes reahsation impossible. For it makes out the notion to be a static point, while its actual reahty is self-movement, self-activity. «^ Among the many consequences that follow from what has been said, it is of importance to emphasise this, that knowledge is only real and can only be set forth fully in the form of science, in the form of system ; and further, that a so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, even if it is true, is yet none the less false just because and in so far as it is merely a fundamental proposition, merely a first principle. It is for that reason easily refuted. The refutation consists in bringing out its defective character ; and it is defective because it is merely the universal^ merely a principle, the beginning. If the refutation is complete and thorough, it is derived and developed from the nature of the principle itself, and not accomplished by bringing in from elsewhere other coimter assurances and chance fancies. It would be strictly the development of the principle, and thus the completion of its deficiency, were it not that it misunderstands its own purport by taking account solely of the negative aspect of what it seeks to do, and is not conscious of the positive character of its process and result. The really positive working out of the beginning is at the same time just as much the very reverse, it is a negative attitude towards the principle we start from, negative, that is to

22 PJienomenology of Mind say, of its one-sided form, which consists in being primarily immediate, a mere purpose. It may therefore be regarded as a refutation of what constitutes the basis of the system ; but more correctly it should be looked at as a demonstration that the basis or principle of the system is in point of fact merely its beginning. " ^ That the truth is only realised in the form of system, that substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the idea which represents the Absolute as Spirit (Geist) — the grandest conception of all, and one which is due to modern times and its religion. Spirit is the only Reality. It is the inner being of the world, that which essentially is, and is per se ; it assumes objective, determinate form, and enters into relations with itself — it is externahty (otherness), and exists for self ; yet, in this determination, and in its otherness, it is still one with itself — it is self-contained and self-complete, in itself and for itself at once. This self-containedness, however, is first something known by us, it is imphcit in its nature {an sicli) ; it is Substance spiritual. It has to become self-contained for itself, on its own account ; it must get knowledge of spirit, and must be consciousness of itself as spirit. This means, it must be presented to itself as an object, but at the same time straightway annul and transcend this objective form ; it must be its own object in which it finds itself reflected. So far as its spiritual content is produced by its own activity, it is only we [the thinkers] who know spirit to be for itself, to be objective to itself ; but in so far as spirit laiows itself to be for itself, then this selfproduction, the pure notion, is the sphere and element in which its objectification takes effect, and where it

gets its existential form. In tliis way it is in its existence aware of itself as an object in which, its own self is reflected. Mind, which, when thus developed, knows itself to be mind, is science. Science is its realisation, and the kingdom it sets up for itself in its own native element. - A self having knowledge purely of itself in the absplute antithesis of itself, this pure ether as such, is the very soil where science flourishes, is knowledge in universal form. The beginning of philosophy presupposes or demands from consciousness that it should feel at home in this element. But this element only attains its perfect meaning and acquires transparency through the process of gradually developing it. It is pure spirituality as the universal which assumes the shape of simple immediacy ; and this simple element, existing as such, is the soil of science, is thinking, and can be only in mind. Because this medium, this immediacy of mind, is the mind's substantial nature in general, it is the transfigured essence, reflection which itself is simple, which is aware of itself as immediacy ; it is being, which is reflection into itself. Science on its side requires the individual self-consciousness to have risen into this high ether, in order to be able to Hve with science, and in science, and really to feel ahve there. Conversely the individual has the right to demand that science shall hold the ladder to help him to get at least as far as this position, shall show him that he has in himself this ground to stand on. His right rests on his absolute independence, which he knows he possesses in every type and phase of knowledge ; for in every phase, whether recognised by science or not, and whatever be the content, his right as an

24 Phenomenology of Mind individual is the absolute and final form, i.e. lie is the immediate certainty of self, and thereby is unconditioned being, were this expression preferred. If the position taken up by consciousness, that of knowing about objective things as opposed to itself, and about itself as opposed to them, is held by science to be the very opposite of this position : if, when in knowing it keeps within itself and never gets beyond itself, science holds this state to be rather the loss of mind altogether — on the other hand the element in which science consists is looked at by consciousness as a remote and distant region, in which consciousness is no longer in possession of itself. Each of these two sides takes the other to be the perversion of the truth. For the naive consciousness to give itself up completely and straight away to science is to make an attempt, induced by some unkno-wm influence, all at once to walk on its head. The compulsion to take up this attitude and move about in this position, is a constraining force it is urged to fall in with, without ever being prepared for it and with no apparent necessity for doing so. Let science be fcr se what it likes, in its relation to naive immediate self-conscious life it presents the appearance of being a reversal of the latter ; or, again, because naive self-consciousness finds the principle of its reahty in the certainty of itself, science bears the character of unreality, since consciousness ' for itself ' is a state quite outside of science. Science has for that reason to combine that other element of self-certainty with its own, or rather to show that the other element belongs to itself, and how it does so. When devoid of that sort of reality, science is merely the content of mind qua something imphcit or potential {an sich) ;

purpose whicli at the start is no more than something internal ; not spirit, but at first merely spiritual substance. This impHcit moment (AnsicJi) has to find external expression, and become objective on its own account. This means nothing else than that this moment has to establish self-consciousness as one with itself. It is this process by which science in general comes about, this gradual development of knowing, that is set forth here in the Phenomenology of Mind.* Knowing, as it is found at the start, mind in its immediate and primitive stage, is without the essential nature of mind, is^ sense-consciousness. To get the length of genuine knowledge, or produce the element where science is found — the pure conception of science itself — a long and laborious journey must be undertaken. This process towards science, as regards the content it will bring to light and the forms it will assume in the course of its progress, will not be what is primarily imagined by leading the unscientific consciousness up to the level of science : it will be something different, too, from establishing and laying the foundations of science ; and anyway something else than the sort of ecstatic enthusiasm which starts straight of! with absolute knowledge, as if shot out of a pistol, and makes short work of other points of view simply by explaining that it is to take no notice of them.

The task of conducting the individual mind from its unscientific standpoint to that of science had to be taken in its general sense ; we had to contemplate the formative development (Bildung) of the universal * " Being the first part of the System of Science " (first edition ; omitted in later edition). 26 Phenomenology of Mind [or general] individual, of self-conscious spirit. As to the relation between these two [the particular and general individual], every moment, as it gains concrete form and its own proper shape and appearance, finds a place in the life of the universal individual. The particular individual is incomplete mind, a concrete shape in whose existence, taken as a whole, one determinate characteristic predominates, while the others are found only in blurred outline. In that mind which stands higher than another the lower concrete form of existence has sunk into an obscure moment ; what was once substantial objective fact {die Sache selhst) is now only a single trace : its definite shape has been veiled, and become simply a piece of shading. The individual, whose substance is mind at the higher level, passes through these past forms, much in the way that one who takes up a higher science goes through those preparatory forms of Imowledge, which he has long made his own, in order to call up their content before him ; he brings back the recollection of them without stopping to fix his interest upon them. The particular individual, so far as content is concerned, has also to go through the stages through which the general mind has passed, but as shapes once assumed by mind and now laid aside, as stages of a road which has been worked over and levelled out. Hence it is that, in the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children ; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture deUneated in faint outhne. This bygone mode of existence has already become an acquired

possession of the general mind, wliicli constitutes the substance of the individual, and, by thus appearing externally to him, furnishes his inorganic nature. In this respect culture or development of mind (Bildung), regarded from the side of the individual, consists in his acquiring what hes at his hand ready for him, in making its inorganic nature organic to himself, and taking possession of it for himself. Looked at, how- -ever, from the side of universal mind qua general spiritual substance, culture means nothing else than that this substance gives itself its own self -consciousness, brings about its own taherent process and its own reflection into self. Science lays before us the morphogenetic process of this cultural development in all its detailed fullness and necessity, and at the same time shows it to be something that has already sunk into the mind as a moment of its being and become a possession of mind. The goal to be reached is the mind's insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary ; and again we must halt at every stage, for each is itself a complete individual form, and is fully and finally considered only so far as its determinate character is taken and dealt with as a rounded and concrete whole, or only so far as the whole is looked at in the light of the special and pecuhar character which this determination gives it. Because the substance of individual mind, nay, more, because the universal mind at work in the world (Weltgeist), has had the patience to go through these forms in the long stretch of time's extent, and to take upon itself the

28 Phenomenology of Mind prodigious labour of the world's history, where it bodied forth in each form the entire content of itself, which each is capable of grasping ; and because by nothing less could that all-pervading mind ever manage to become conscious of what itself is — for that reason, the individual mind, in the nature of the case, cannot expect by less toil to grasp what its own substance contains. All the same, its task has meanwhile been made much hghter, because this has historically been imphcitly {an sicli) accomphshed, the content is one where reality has already given place to spiritual possibihties, where immediacy has been overcome and brought under the control of reflection, the various forms and shapes have been already reduced to their intellectual abbreviations, to determinations of thought (GedanJcenbestinimung) pure and simple. Being now a thought, the content is the possession of the substance of mind ; existence has no more to be changed into the form of what is inherent and impKcit (Ansichseins), but only the imphcit — no longer merely something primitive, nor lying hidden within existence, but already present as a recollection — into the form of what is exphcit, of what is objective to self [Filrsichseins).

We have to state more exactly the way this is done. At the point at which we here take up this movement, we are spared, in connection with the whole, the process of cancelhng and transcending the stage of mere existence. This process has already taken place. "What is still to be done and needs a higher kind of transfor::iation, is to transcend the forms as ideally presented and made familiar to our minds. By that previous negative process, : existence, having been withdrawn into the mind's sub-~ stance, is, in the first instance, transferred to the life- of self only in an immediate way. The possession tlie self has thereby acquired, has still the same character of imcomprehended immediacy, of passive indifference, which existence itself had ; existence has in this way merely passed into the form of an ideal presentation. At the same time, by so doing, it is something famihar to us, something " well-known," something which the existent mind has finished and done with, and hence takes no more to do with and no further interest in. While the activity that is done with the existent is itself merely the process of the particular mind, of mind which is not comprehending itself, on the other hand, hnowledge is directed against this ideal presentation which has hereby arisen, against this " being-familiar " and " well-known " ; it is an action of universal mind, the concern of tliouglit. What we are " famihar with " is not intelhgently known, just for the reason that it is " familiar." When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be famihar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, imderstanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something significant, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and demonstrating consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not,

30 Phenomenology of Mind Analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, did anyhow consist in notMng else ttan doing away with its character of familiarity. To break up an idea into its ultimate elements means returning upon its moments, which at least do not have the form of the idea as picked up, but are the imjnediate property of the self. Doubtless this analysis only arrives at thoughts which are themselves known elements, fixed inert determinations. But what is thus broken up into parts, this imreal entity, is itself an essential moment ; for just because the concrete fact is self-divided, and turns into unxeahty, it is something self-moving, self-active. The action of separating the elements is the exercise of the force of Understanding, the most astonishing and greatest of all powers, or rather the absolute power. The circle, which is self-enclosed and at rest, and, being a substance, holds its own moments, is an immediate condition, the immediate, continuous relation of elements with their unity, and hence arouses no sense of wonderment. But that an accident as such, when cut loose from its containing circmnference, — that what is bound and held by something else and actual only by being connected with it, — should get an existence all its own, gain freedom and independence on its own account — this is the portentous power of the negative ; it is the energy of thought, of pure ego. Death, as we may call that unreality, is the most terrible thing, and to keep and hold fast what is dead demands the greatest force of all. Beauty, powerless and helpless, hates understanding, because the latter exacts from it what it cannot perform.* But the Ufe of mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction;

* This is directed against Novalis and the cult of beauty. it endures its death and in death maintaitis its being. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself in utter desolation. It is this mighty power, not by being a positive which turns away from the negative, as when we say of anything it is nothing or it is false, and, being then done with it, pass off to something else ; on the contrary, mind is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and dwelhng with it. This dwelling beside it is the magic power that converts the negative into being. That power is just what we spoke of above as subject, which by giving determinateness a place in its substance, cancels abstract immediacy, i.e. immediacy which merely is, and, by so doing, becomes the true substance, becomes being or immediacy that does not have mediation outside it, but is this mediation itself. This process of making what is objectively presented a possession of pm:e self-consciousness, of raising it to the level of universahty in general, is merely one aspect of mental development ; spiritual evolution is not yet completed. The manner of study in ancient times is distinct from that of the modern world, in that the former consisted in the cultivation and perfecting of the natural mind. Testing hfe carefully at all points, philosophising about everything it came across, the former created an experience permeated through and through by universals. In modern times, however, an individual finds the abstract form ready made. In straining to grasp it and make it his own, he rather strives to bring forward the inner meaning alone, without any process of mediation ; the production of the universal is abridged, instead of the universal arising out of the manifold detail of concrete existence.

32 Phenomenology of Mind 'Hence nowadays the task before us consists not so mucli in getting the individual clear of the level of sensuous immediacy, and making him a substance that thinks and is grasped in terms of thought, but rather the very opposite : it consists in actuahsing the universal, and giving it spiritual vitality, by the process of breaking down and superseding fixed and determinate thoughts. But it is much more difficult to make fixed and definite thoughts fuse with one another and form a continuous whole than to bring sensuous existence into this state. The reason hes in what was said before. Thought determinations get their substance and the element of their existence from the ego, the power of the negative, or piire reality ; while determinations of sense find this in impotent abstract immediacy, in mere being as such. Thoughts become fluent and interfuse, when thinking pure and simple, this inner immediacy, knows itself as a moment, when pure certainty of self abstracts from itself. It does not " abstract " in the sense of getting away from itself and setting itself on one side, but of surrendering the fixed quaUty of its self-affirmation, and giving up both the fixity of the purely concrete — vifhich is the ego as contrasted with the variety of its content — and the fixity of all those distinctions [the various thought-functions, principles, etc.] which are present in the element of pure thought and share that absoluteness of the ego. In virtue of this process pure thoughts become notions and conceptions, and are then what they are in truth, selfmoving functions, circles, are what their substance consists in, are spiritual entities.

This movement of the spiritual entities constitutes the nature of scientific procedure in general. Looked at as the concatenation of their content, this movement is the necessitated development and expansion of that content into an organic systematic whole. By this movement, too, the road, which leads to the notion of knowledge, becomes itself hkewise a necessary and complete evolving process (Werden). This preparatory stage thus ceases to consist of casual philosophical reflections, referring to objects here and there, to processes and thoughts of the undeveloped mind as chance may direct ; and it does not try to estabhsh the truth by miscellaneous ratiocinations, inferences, and consequences drawn from circimiscribed thoughts. The road to science, by the very movement of the notion itself, will compass the entire objective world of conscious hfe in its rational necessity. Further, a systematic exposition like this constitutes the first part of science,* because the positive existence of mind, qua primary and ultimate, is nothing but the immediate aspect of mind, the beginning ; the beginning, but not yet its return to itself. The characteristic feature distinguishing this part of science [Phenomenology] from the others is the element of positive immediate existence. The mention of this distinction leads us to discuss certain established ideas that usually come to notice in this connection.

The mind's immediate existence, conscious life, has two aspects — cognition and objectivity which is opposed to or negative of the subjective function of knowing. Since it is in the medium of consciousness that mind is developed and brings out its various moments, this opposition between the factors of conscious hfe is found at each stage in the evolution of mind, * V. note p. 25. VOL. I.— D 34 Phenomenology of Mind and all the various moments appear as modes or forms {Gestalten) of consciousness. The scientific statement of the course of this development is a science of the experience through which consciousness passes ; the substance and its process are considered as the object of consciousness. Consciousness knows and comprehends nothing but what falls within its experience ; for what is found in experience is merely spiritual substance, and, moreover, object of its self. Mind, however, becomes object, for it consists in the process of becoming an other to itself, i.e. an object for its ov.rn self, and in transcending this otherness. And experience is called this very process by which the element that is immediate, unexperienced, i.e. abstract — whether it be in the form of sense or of a bare thought — externalises itself, and then comes back to itself from this state of estrangement, and by so doing is at length set forth in its concrete nature and real truth, and becomes too a possession of consciousness.

The dissimilarity which obtains in consciousness between the ego and the substance constituting its object, is their inner distinction, the factor of negativity in general. We may regard it as the defect of both opposites, but it is their very soul, their moving spirit. It was on this accoimt that certain thinkers long ago took the void to be the principle of movement, when they conceived the moving principle to be the negative element, though they had not as yet thought of it as self. While this negative factor appears in the first instance as a dissimilarity, as an inequality, between ego and object, it is just as much the inequality of the substance with itself. What seems to take place outside it, to be an activity directed against it, is its own doing, its own activity ; and substance shows that it is in reahty subject. When it has brought out this completely, mind has made its existence adequate to and one with its essential nature. Mind is object to itself just as it is, and the abstract element of immediacy, of the separation between l-mowing and the truth, is overcome. Being is entirely mediated ; it is a substantial content, that is hkewise directly in the possession of the ego, has the character of self, is notion. With the attainment of this the Phenomenology of Mind concludes. What mind prepares for itself by the argument of the Phenomenology is the element of true knowledge. In this element the moments of mind are now set out in the form of thought pure and simple, which knows its object to be itself. They no longer involve the opposition between being and knowing ; they remain within the imdivided simplicity of the knowing function ; they are the truth in the form of truth, and their diversity is merely diversity of the content of truth. The process by which they are developed into an organically connected whole is Logic and Speculative Philosophy.

Now, because the systematic statement of the mind's experience embraces merely its ways of appearing, it may well seem that the advance from that to the science of ultimate truth in the form of truth is merely negative ; and we might readily be content to dispense with the negative process as something altogether false, and might ask to be taken straight to the truth at once : why meddle with what is false at all ? The point formerly raised, that we should have begun with science at once, may be answered here by considering the character of negativity in general regarded as 36 Phenomenology of Mind something false. The usual ideas on this subject particularly obstruct the approach to the truth. The consideration of this point will give us an opportunity to speak about mathematical knowledge, which the unphilosophical mind looks upon as the ideal Avhicli philosophy ought to try to attain, but has so far striven in vain to reach. Truth and falsehood as commonly understood belong to those sharply defined ideas which claim a completely fixed nature of their own, one standing in sohd isolation on this side, the other on that, without any community between them. Against that view it must be pointed out, that truth is not like stamped coin* that is issued ready from the mint and so can be taken up and used. Nor, again, is there something false, any more than there is something evil. Evil and falsehood are indeed not so bad as the devil, for in the form of the devil they get the length of being particular subjects ; qua false and evil they are merely universals, though they have a nature of their own with reference to one another. Falsity (that is what we are dealing with here) would be otlierness, the negative aspect of the substance, which [substance], qua content of knowledge, is truth. But the substance is itself essentially the negative element, partly as involving distinction and determination of content, partly as being a process of distinguishing pure and simple, i.e. as being self and knowledge in general. Doubtless we can know in a way that is false. To know something falsely means that knowledge is not adequate to, is not on equal terms with, its substance. Yet this very dissimilarity is the process of distinction in general, the essential moment in know-

* C'p. Lessing, Nathan der Weise, IV. 6. ing. It is, in fact, out of this active distinction that its harmonious unity arises, and this identity, when arrived at, is truth. But it is not truth in a sense which would involve the rejection of the discordance, the diversity, hke dross from pure metal ; nor, again, does truth remain detached from diversity, hke a finished article from the instrument that shapes it. Difference itself continues to be an immediate element within truth as such, in the form of the principle of negation, in the form of the activity of Self. All the same, we cannot for that reason say that falsehood is a moment or forms even a constituent part of truth. That " in every case of falsity there is something true " is an expression in which they are taken to be like oil and water, which do not mix and are merely united externally. Just in the interest of their real meaning, precisely because we want to designate the aspect or moment of complete otherness, the terms true and false must no longer be used where their otherness has been cancelled and superseded. Just as the expressions " unity of subject and object," of " finite and infinite," of " being and thought," etc., are absurd if subject and object, etc., are taken to mean what they are outside their unity, and are thus in that miity not meant to be what its very expression conveys. In the same way falsehood is not, qua false, any longer a moment of truth.

Dogmatism as a way of thinking, whether in ordinary knowledge or in the study of philosophy, is nothing else but the view that truth consists in a proposition, which is a fixed and final result, or again which is directly known. To questirms hke, " When was Ceesar born ? ", " How many feet made a furlong ? ", etc., 38 Phenomenology of Mind a straight answer ought to be given ; just as it is absolutely true that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides of a right-angled triangle. But the nature of a socalled truth of that sort is different from the nature of philosophical truth. As regards truth in matters of historical fact — to deal briefly with this subject — so far as we consider the purely historical element, it will be readily granted that they have to do with the sphere of particular existence, with a content in its contingent and arbitrary aspects, features that have no necessity. But even bare truths of the kind, say, like those mentioned, are impossible without the activity of self-consciousness. To get to know any one of them, there has to be a good deal of comparison, books must be consulted, or in some way or other inquiry has to be made. Even in a case of direct perception, only when we know it along with the reasons behind it, is it held to be something of real value ; although it is merely the naked fact itself that we are, properly speaking, supposed to be concerned about. — ' As to mathematical truths, we should be still less inclined to consider anyone a geometer who had got Euchd's theorems by heart (auswendig) without knowing the proofs, without, if we may say so by way of contrast, getting them into his head {inwendig). Similarly, if anyone came to know by measuring many right-angled triangles that their sides are related in the way everybody knows, v/e should regard knowledge so obtained as unsatisfactory. All the same, while proof is essential in the case of mathematical knowledge, it still does not have the .significance and nature of

being a moment in the result itself ; the proof is over when we get the result, and has disappeared. Qua result the theorem is, no doubt, one that is seen to be true. But this eventuality has nothing to do with its content, but only with its relation to the knowing subject. The process of mathematical proof does not belong to the object ; it is a function that takes place outside the matter in hand. Thus, the nature of a right-angled triangle does not break itself up into factors in the manner set forth in the mathematical construction which is required to prove the proposition expressing the relation of its parts. The entire process of producing the result is an affair of knowledge which takes its own way of going about it. In philosophical knowledge, too, the way existence, qua existence, comes about (Werden) is different from that whereby the essence or inner nature of the fact comes into being. But philosophical knowledge, for one thing, contains both, while mathematical knowledge sets forth merely the way an existence comes about, i.e. the way the nature of the fact gets to be in the sphere of knowledge as such. For another thing, too, philosophical knowledge unites both these particular movements. The inward rising into being, the process of substance, is an unbroken transition into outwardness, into existence or being for another ; and conversely, the coming of existence into being is withdrawal into the inner essence. The movement is the twofold process in which the whole comes to be, and is such that each at the same time posits the other, and each on that account has in it both as its two aspects. Together they make the whole, through their resolving each other, and making themselves into moments of the whole.