But this silent steady working of the loom of spirit in the inner region of its substance,! its own action * Rameau's Neffe. t In the life of "feeling" ami "emotion."
554 Phenomenology of Mind hidden from itself, is merely one side of the realising of pure insight. Its expansion does not only consist in like going along with like; and its realisation is not merely an unresisted expansion. The action of the principle of negation is at the same time essentially a developed process of self-distinction, which, being a conscious action, must set forth its moments in a definitely manifested expression, and must make its appearance in the form of sheer noise, and a violent struggle with an opposite as such.
We have, therefore, to see how pure insight and pure intention maintains its negative attitude towards that other which it finds standing opposed to it.
Pure insight and intention, operating negatively, can only be, — since its very principle is all essentiality and there is nothing outside it — the negative of itself. As insight, therefore, it passes into the negative of pure insight, it becomes untruth and unreason; and as inten- tion it passes into the negative of pure intention, becomes a lie and sordid impurity of purpose.
It involves itself in this contradiction by the fact that it engages in a strife and thinks to do battle with some alien external other. It merely imagines this, for its nature as absolute negativity lies in having that otherness within its own self. The absolute notion is the category; it is the principle that knowledge and the object of knowledge are the same. In consequence, what pure insight expresses as its other, what it pro- nounces to be an error or a lie, can be nothing else than its own self; it can only condemn what itself is. What is not rational has no truth, or what is not comprehended through a notion, conceptually determined, is not. When reason thus speaks of some other than itself is, it The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 555 in fact speaks merely of itself; it does not therein go beyond itself.
This struggle with the opposite, therefore, combines in its meaning the significance of being its own actualisa- tion. This consists just in the process of unfolding its moments and taking them back into itself. One part of this process is the making of the distinction in which the insight of reason opposes itself as object to itself; so long as it remains in this condition, it is at variance with itself. Qua pure insight it is without any content; the process of its realisation consists in itself becoming content to itself; for no other can be made its content, because it is the category become self-conscious. But since this insight in the first instance thinks of the content as in its opposite, and knows the content merely as a content, and does not as yet think of it as its own self, pure insight misconceives itself in it. The complete attainment of insight, therefore, has the sense of a process of coming to know that content as its own, which was to begin with opposed to itself. Its result, however, will be thereby neither the re- establishment of the errors it has fought, nor merely its original notion, but an insight which knows the absolute negation of itself to be its own proper reality, to be its self, or an insight which is its self-understanding notion.
This feature of the struggle of enlightenment with errors, — that of fighting itself in them, and of condemn- ing that in them which it asserts, — this is something for us who observe the process, or is what enlightenment and its struggle are in themselves implicitly. The first aspect of this struggle, however, — the contamination and defilement of enlightenment through its pure self- 556 Phenomenology of Mind identity accepting the attitude and function of destruc- tive negation — this is how belief looks upon it; belief finds it simply lying unreason and malicious intent, just as enlightenment in the same way regards belief as error and prejudice.
As regards its content, it is in the first instance empty insight, whose content appears an external other to it. It meets this content, consequently, in the shape of something not yet its own, as some- thing that exists quite independent of it, and is found in belief.
Enlightenment, then, conceives its object in the first instance and generally in such a way as to take it as pure insight, and failing to recognise itself there, interprets it as error. In insight as such consciousness apprehends an object in such a manner that it becomes the inner being of conscious life, or becomes an object which consciousness permeates, in which consciousness maintains itself, keeps within itself, and is present to itself, and, by its thus being the process of that object, brings the object into being. It is precisely this which enlightenment rightly declares belief to be, when enlightenment says that the Absolute Reality professed by belief is a being that comes from belief's own consciousness, is its own thought, something produced from and by consciousness.* Enlightenment, consequently, interprets and declares it to be error, to be a made-up invention about the very same thing as enlightenment itself is.
Enlightenment that seeks to teach belief this new wisdom does not, in doing so, tell it anything new.
* Cp. the view of God held by Fichte: also Feuerbach: — Wesen der Religion.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 557 For the object of belief itself is just this too, viz. a pure essential reality of its own peculiar consciousness; so that this consciousness does not put itself down for lost and negated in that object, but rather puts trust in it; and this just means that it finds itself there as this par- ticular consciousness, finds itself therein to be self-con- sciousness. If I put my trust in any one, his certitude of himself is for me the certitude of myself; I know my self-existence in him, I know that he acknow- ledges it, and that it is for him both his purpose and his real nature. Trust, however, is belief, because its consciousness has a direct relation to its object, and thus sees at once that it is one with the object, and in the object.
Further, since what is object for me is something in which I know myself, I am at the same time in that object really in the form of another self -consciousness, i.e. one which has become in that object alienated from its own particular individuation, from its natural and contingent existence, but which partly continues therein to be self-consciousness, and partly is there an essential consciousness just like pure insight.
In the notion of insight there lies not merely this, that consciousness knows itself in the object it looks at, and finds itself directly there, without first quitting the thought element and then returning into itself; the notion implies as well that consciousness is aware of itself as being also the mediating process, aware of itself as active, as the agency of production. Through this it gets the thought of this unity of self as self and object.
This very consciousness is also belief. Obedience and action make a necessary moment, through which the 558 Phenomenology of Mind certainty of existence in Absolute Keality comes about. This action of belief does not indeed make it appear as if Absolute Reality is itself produced thereby. But the Absolute Reality for belief is essentially not the abstract reality that lies beyond the believing consciousness; it is the spirit of the religious communion, it is the unity of that abstract reality and self-consciousness. The action of the communion is an essential moment in bringing about that it is this spirit of the communion. That spirit is what it is by the productive activity of consciousness, or rather it does not exist without being produced by consciousness. For essential as this process of production is, it is as truly not the only basis of Absolute Reality; it is merely a moment. The Absolute Reality is at the same time self-complete and self-contained (an und fur sick selbst).
From the other side the notion of pure insight is seen to be something else than its own object; for just this negative character constitutes the object. Thus from the other side it also expresses the ultimate Reality of belief as something foreign to self-consciousness, something that is not bone of its bone, but is surreptitiously foisted on it like a changeling child. But here enlightenment is entirely foolish; belief discovers it to be a way of speaking which does not know what it is saying, and does not understand the facts of the case when it talks about priestly deception, and deluding the people. It speaks about this as if by means of some hocus-pocus of con- juring priestcraft there were foisted on consciousness as true Reality something that is absolutely foreign, and absolutely alien to it; and yet says all the while that this is an essential reality for consciousness, that The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 559 consciousness believes in it, trusts in it, and seeks to make it favourably disposed towards itself; i.e. that consciousness therein sees its pure ultimate Being just as much as its own particular and universal individuality, and creates by its own action this unity of itself with its essential reality. In other words, it directly de- clares that to be the very inmost nature of conscious- ness which it declares to be something alien to con- sciousness.
How, then, can it possibly speak about deception and delusion? By the fact that it directly expresses about belief the very opposite of what it asserts of belief, it ipso facto really reveals itself to be the transparent lie. How are deception and delusion to take place, where consciousness in its very truth has directly and immediately the certitude of itself, where it possesses itself in its object, since it just as much finds as produces itself there? The distinction no longer exists, even in words.
When the general question has been raised, whether it is permissible to delude a people, the answer, as a fact, had to be that the question is pointless, be- cause it is impossible to deceive a people in this matter. Brass in place of gold, counterfeit instead of genuine coin may doubtless have been disposed of in many an instance; many a one has stuck to it that a battle lost was a battle won; and lies of all sorts about things of sense and particular events have been credited for a time; but in the knowledge of that inmost reality where consciousness finds the direct certainty of its own self, the idea of delusion is entirely baseless.
Let us see further how belief finds enlightenment in the case of the different moments of its own con- 560 Phenomenology of Mind scious experience, to which the view just noted referred in the first instance only in a general way. These moments are pure thought, or, qua object, absolute Being per se (an und fur sick); then its relation, as a form of knowledge, to absolute Being, the ulti- mate basis of its belief; and finally its relation to abso- lute Being in its acts, i.e. its and " worship " service.* Just as pure insight has misconceived itself in belief as a whole and denied its own nature, we shall find it taking up in these moments, too, an attitude similarly perverted and distorted.
Pure insight assumes towards the absolute Reality of the believing mind a negative attitude. This Being is pure thought, and pure thought is established within itself as object or as the true Being; in the believing consciousness this immanent and essential reality of thought preserves at the same time for the self-existent consciousness the form of objectivity, but merely the empty form; it exists in the character of something consciously "presented." To pure insight, however, since it is pure consciousness in its aspect of self existing for itself, this other appears as something negative of self-consciousness. This might, again, be taken either as the pure essential reality of thought, or even as the being found in sense-experience, the object of sense-certainty. But since it is at the same time for the self, and this self, qua self which has an object, is an actual consciousness, for insight the peculiar object as such is an ordinary existing thing of sense. This its object appears before it when it examines the ideas found in belief. It condemns these ideas * Enlightenment attacks the object and the txi&is of belief, and the mode of worship.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 561 and in doing so condemns its own proper object. It really commits a wrong, however, against belief in so apprehending the object of belief as if it were its own ob j ec t. According to this account it states regarding belief that its absolute Being is a piece of stone, a block of wood, having eyes and seeing not, or again some bread-paste, which is obtained from gram grown on the field and transformed by men and set aside for that purpose; or in whatever other ways belief anthro- morphoses absolute Being, making it objective and representable.
Enlightenment, proclaiming itself as the pure and true, here turns what is held to be eternal life and holy spirit into a concrete passing thing of sense, and contami- nates it with the inherent nothingness of sense-experi- ence— with an aspect and point of view which is not to be found at all in the worshipping attitude of belief, so that enlightenment simply calumniates it by speak- ing of such an aspect. What belief reveres is for belief assuredly neither stone nor wood, nor bread-dough, nor any other sort of thing of time and sense. If enlighten- ment thinks it worth while to say its object all the same is this as well) or even that belief is this in its inherent nature and in truth, then belief also knows that some- thing which it is " as well," but for it this something lies outside its worship; on the other hand, however, belief does not in general look on such things as stones, etc., as having an inherent and essential being at all, the Absolute Reality of pure thought is for it alone something inherent.
The second moment is the relation of belief as a form of knowing consciousness to this ultimate Reality. As pure thinking consciousness belief has this Reality VOL. II.— L,, 562 Phenomenology of Mind immediately within itself. But pure consciousness is just as much a mediate relation of conscious certainty to truth, a relation constituting the basis of belief. For enlightenment this ground comes at the same time to be regarded as a chance knowledge of chance occur- rences. The ground of knowledge, however, is the con- scious universal, and in its ultimate meaning is absolute spirit, which in abstract pure consciousness, or thought as such, is merely absolute Being, but qua self-conscious- ness is the knowledge of itself. Pure insight sets up this conscious universal, self-knowing spirit pure and simple, likewise as a negative element for self-consciousness. Doubtless this insight is itself pure mediate thought, i.e. thought mediating itself with itself, it is pure know- ledge; but since it is pure insight, or pure knowledge, which does not yet know itself, i.e. for which as yet there is no awareness that it is this pure process of mediation, this process seems to insight, like everything else consti- tuting it, to be something external, an other. When realising its inherent principle, then, it develops this moment essential to it; but that moment seems to it to belong to belief, and to be, in its character of an external other, a fortuitous knowledge of just such common historical actualities. It thus here charges religious belief with basing its certainty on some par- ticular historical evidence, which, considered as his- torical evidence, would assuredly not even warrant that degree of certainty about the matter which we get regarding any event mentioned in the newspapers. It further makes the imputation that the certainty in the case of religious belief rests on the accidental fact of the preservation of all this evidence: on the preservation of this evidence partly by means of paper, and partly The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 563 through the skill and honesty in transferring what is written from one paper to another, and lastly rests upon the accurate interpretation of the sense of dead words and letters. As a matter of fact, however, it never occurs to belief to make its certainty depend on such evidence and such fortuitous circumstances. Belief in its conscious assurance occupies a naive unsophisticated attitude towards its absolute object, knows it with a purity, which never mixes up letters, paper, or copyists with its consciousness of the Absolute Being, and does not make use of things of that sort to effect its union with the Absolute. On the contrary, this consciousness is the self-mediating, self-relating ground of its know- ledge; it is spirit itself which bears witness of itself both in the inner heart of the individual consciousness, as well as through the presence everywhere and in all men of belief in it. If belief wants to appeal to historical evidences in order to get also that kind of foundation, or at least confirmation, for its content which enlighten- ment speaks of, and is really serious in thinking and acting as if that were an important matter, then it has eo ipso allowed itself to be corrupted and led astray by the insinuations of enlightenment; the efforts it makes to secure a basis or support in this way are merely indications that show how it has been affected and contaminated by enlightenment.
There still remains the third aspect, the active re- lation of consciousness to Absolute Being, its forms of service.* This action consists in cancelling the particu- larity of the individual, or the natural form of its self- existence, whence arises its certainty of being pure self - consciousness, of being, as the result of its * The cult.
564 Phenomenology of Mind action, i.e. as a self-existing conscious individual, one with ultimate Keality.
Since in this action purposiveness and end get dis- tinguished, and pure insight likewise takes up a nega- tive attitude towards this action, and denies itself just as it did in the other moments, it must as regards purposiveness present the appearance of being stupid and unintelligent, since insight united with intention, accordance of end with means, appears to it as an other, as really the opposite of what insight is. As regards the end, however, it has to make badness, enjoyment, and possession, its purpose, and prove itself in consequence to be the impurest kind of intention, since pure intention, qua external, an other, is equally impure intention.
Accordingly we find that, so far as concerns pur- posiveness, enlightenment thinks it foolish when the believing individual seeks to obtain the higher con- sciousness,— where there is no entanglement with natural enjoyment and pleasure, — by positively denying itself natural enjoyment and pleasure, and proving through its acts that it makes no denial of its contempt for them, but rather that the contempt is quite genuine.
In the same way enlightenment finds it foolish for consciousness to absolve itself of its characteristic of being absolutely individual, excluding all others, and possessing property of its own, by itself demitting its own property, for thereby it shows in reality that this isolation is not really serious. It shows rather that itself is something that can rise above the natural necessity of isolating itself and of denying, in this absolute isolation of its own individual existence, that the others are one and the same with itself.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 565 Pure insight finds both purposeless as well as wrong. It is purposeless to renounce a pleasure and give away a possession, in order to show oneself independent of pleasure and possession; hence, in the opposite case, insight will be obliged to proclaim the man a fool, who, in order to eat, employs the expedient of actually eating. Insight again thinks it wrong to deny one- self a meal, and give away butter and eggs not for money, nor money for butter and eggs, but just to give them away and get no return at all; it understands a meal, or the possession of things of that sort, to be a self's proper object, an end of a self, and hence in fact understands itself to be a very impure intention which ascribes essential value to enjoyment and possessions of this kind. As pure insight it further maintains the necessity of rising above the condition of nature, above covetousness and its ways; it only finds it foolish and wrong that this supremacy should have to be demonstrated by action. In other words this pure intention is in reality a deception, which pretends to and demands an inner elevation, but declares that it is superfluous, foolish, and even wrong to be in earnest in the matter, to put this uplifting into concrete expression, into actual shape and form, and demonstrate its truth.
Pure insight thus denies itself both as pure insight, — for it abrogates directly purposive action, and as pure intention, — for it denies the intention of proving its independence of the ends of particular existence.
Thus, then, enlightenment makes belief learn what it means. It takes on this appearance of being bad, because just by the fact of relation to an external other it gives itself a negative reality, it presents itself as the opposite of itself. Pure insight and intention have to 566 Phenomenology of Mind adopt this relational attitude, however, for that is their actualisation.
This realisation appeared, in the first instance, as a negative reality. Perhaps its positive reality is better constituted. Let us see how this stands.
When all prejudice and superstition have been banished, the question arises what next? What is the truth enlightenment has diffused in their stead? It has already given expression to this positive content in its process of exterminating error, for that alienation of itself is equally its positive reality.
In dealing with what for belief is Absolute Spirit, it interprets whatever sort of determination it discovers there as being wood, stone, etc., as particular concrete things of sense. Since in this way it conceives in general every characteristic, i.e. every content and filling, to be a finite fact, to be a human entity and a mental presentation, absolute Being on its view turns out to be a mere vacuum, to which can be attributed no characteristics, no predicates at all. In fact to marry such a vacuity with universal predicates would be essentially reprehensible; and it is just through such a union that the monstrosities of superstition have been produced. Reason, pure insight, is doubt- less not empty itself, since the negative of itself is present consciously to it, and is its content; it is, on the contrary, rich in substance, but only in particu- larity and restrictions. The enlightened function of reason, of pure insight, consists in allowing nothing of that sort to appertain to Absolute Reality, nor attribut- ing anything of that kind to it: this function well knows how to put itself and the wealth of finitude in their place, and deal with the Absolute in a worthy manner.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 567 In contrast with this colourless empty Reality there stands, as a second aspect of the positive truth of enlightenment, the particularity in general of conscious life and of all that is: — a particularity excluded from an absolute Being, and standing by itself as some- thing entirely self-contained. Consciousness, which in its very earliest expression is sense-certainty and mere " opining," here comes back, after the whole course of its experience, to this same point, and is once again a knowledge of what is pure negative of itself, a know- ledge of sense things, i.e. of existent entities which stand in indifference over against its own self-existence. But here it is not an immediate naive consciousness; it has become to itself immediate. While at first the prey to every sort of entanglement, into which it is plunged by its gradually unfolding, and now led back to its first form by pure insight, it has arrived at this first state as the result and outcome of the process. This sense- certainty, resting as it does on an insight into the nothingness of all other forms of consciousness, and hence the nothingness of whatever is beyond sense- experience, — this sense-certainty is no longer a mere " opining," it is rather absolute truth. This nothingness of everything that transcends sense is doubtless merely a negative proof of this truth. But no other is admis- sible or possible, for the positive truth of sense-experi- ence in itself is just the unmediated self-existence of the notion itself qua object and an object in the form of otherness — the positive truth is that it is absolutely certain to every consciousness that it is and that there are other real things outside it, and that in its naive existence it, as well as these things too, are in and for themselves or absolute.
568 Phenomenology of Mind Lastly, the third moment of the truth of enlighten- ment is the relation of the particular entities to Abso- lute Being, is the relation of the first two moments to one another. Insight, qua pure insight of what is identical or unrestricted, also transcends the unlike or diverse, i.e. transcends finite reality, or transcends itself qua mere otherness. The " beyond " of this otherness it takes to be the void, to which it thus relates the facts of sense. In determining this relation both the terms do not enter the relation as its content; for the one is the void, and thus a content is only to be had through the other, through sense reality. The form the relation assumes, however, to the determination of which the aspect of immanent and ultimate being (Ansich) contri- butes, can be shaped just as we please; for the form is something inherently and essentially negative, and therefore something self-opposed, being as well as nothing, inherent and ultimate (Ansich) as well as the opposite; or, what is the same thing, the relation of actuality to an inherent essential being qua something beyond, is as much a negating as a positing of that actuality. Finite actualities can, therefore, properly speaking, be taken just in the way people have need of