V was the very first-born Son of Light [Lucifer] who, by becoming self-centred, fell, but that in his place another was at once created. Such a form of expression as " fallen," belonging merely to figurative thought, and not to the notion, just like the term " Son," once more transmutes and lowers the moments of the notion to the level of imaginative thought, or, in other words, drags pictures and presentations into the realm of thought.
784 Phenomenology of Mind In the same way, it is matter of indifference to co- ordinate a multiplicity of other angelic shapes and forms with the simple thought of otherness in the Being of the Eternal, and transfer to them that condition of self- centredness. This co-ordination must, all the same, win approval, for the reason that, through it, this moment of otherness does express diversity, as it should do: not indeed as plurality in general, but as determinate diversity, so that one part is the Son, that which is simple and knows itself to be ultimate Being, while the other part involves the abandonment, the emptying, of self -existence, and merely lives to praise that Being. To this part may then also be assigned the resumption once again of the self-existence relinquished, and that " self-centredness " characteristic of evil. In so far as this condition of otherness falls into two parts, Spirit might, as regards its moments, be more exactly expressed numerically as a Quaternity, a four in one, or (because the multiplicity breaks up itself again into two parts, viz. one part which has remained good, the other which has become evil), might be expressed as a Quinity.
Counting the moments, however, can be regarded as altogether useless, since, for one thing, what is dis- tinguished is itself just as truly one and single — viz. the thought of distinction which is only one thought — as the thought is this element distinguished, the second over against the first. For another thing it is use- less to count, because the thought which grasps the many in one has to be dissolved out of its universality and must be distinguished into more than three or four distinct components. This universality appears, in contrast to the absolute determinateness of the abstract Revealed Religion 785 unit — the principle of number — as indeterminateness in relation to number as such; so that we can only speak in this connexion of numbers in general, i.e. not of a specific number of distinctions. Hence, in general, it is here quite superfluous to think of number and counting, just as, in other connexions, the bare difference of magnitude and multitude says nothing at all and falls outside conceptual thought.
Good and Evil were the specific distinctions of thought which we found. Since their opposition is not yet broken down, and they are represented as essential realities of thought, each of them independent by itself, man is the self with no essential reality of his own and the mere ground which keeps them together, and on which they exist and war with one another. But these universal powers of good and evil belong all the same to the self, or the self is their actualising principle. From this point of view it thus comes about that, as evil is nothing else than the natural existence of spirit be- coming self-absorbed and self-centred, conversely, good enters into actual reality and appears as an objectively existing self-consciousness. The idea of the transition of the Divine Being into otherness is in general merely indicated and hinted at when Spirit is interpreted in terms of pure thought; for figurative thinking this idea here comes nearer its realisation: the realisation is taken to consist in the Divine Being " humbling " It- self, and renouncing its abstract nature and unreality. The other aspect, that of evil, is taken by imagination as an event extraneous and alien to the Divine Being: to grasp evil in the Divine Being as the wrath of God — that is the supreme effort, the severest strain, of which figurative thought, wrestling with its own limita- 786 Phenomenology of Mind tions, is capable, an effort which, since it dispenses with the notion, remains a fruitless struggle.
The alienation of the Divine Nature is thus set up in its double- sided form: the self of Spirit, and its simple thought, are the two moments whose absolute unity is Spirit itself. Its alienation with itself consists in the two falling apart from each other, and in the one having an unequal value as against the other. This disparateness is, therefore, twofold in character, and two connections arise, which have in common the moments just given. In the one, the Divine Being stands for what is essential, while natural existence and the self are unessential and are to be cancelled. In the other, on the contrary, it is self-existence which passes for what is essential and the Divine pure and simple for unessential. Their mediating, though empty ground is existence in general, the bare community of their two moments.
The dissolution of this opposition does not take effect through the struggle between the two elements, which are represented as separate and independent Beings. Just in virtue of their independence each must inherently, through its own notion, dissolve itself in itself. The struggle takes place first in that quarter where both cease to be this mixture of thought and independent existence, and confront each other merely as thoughts. For in that case, being determinate notions, they essentially exist merely in the relation of opposi- tion; qua independent, on the other hand, they have their essential nature outside opposition; their move- ment is thus free, self-determined, and peculiar to themselves. Just as the movement, then, of both is inherently movement because it has to be regarded in themselves, it is set going only by that element of Revealed Religion 787 the two which has the character of being inherently essential as contrasted with the other. This is repre- sented as a spontaneous action; but the necessity for its self-abandonment lies in the notion that what is inherently essential, and gets this specific character merely through opposition, has just on that account no real independent subsistence. Therefore that ele- ment which has for its essence, not independent self- existence, but simple being, is what empties and abandons itself, gives itself unto death, and so reconciles Absolute Being with its own self. For in this process it manifests itself as spirit: the abstract Being is estranged from itself, it has natural existence and actual individual reality. This its otherness, or its being sensuously present, is taken back again by the second process of self-abandonment, of becoming " other," and is affirmed as superseded, as universal. Thereby the Divine Being has come to itself in the sphere of the sensu- ous present; the immediate existence of actual reality has ceased to be something alien or external to the Divine, by being sublated, by its becoming universal: this death of immediacy is therefore its rising anew as Spirit. When the self-conscious Being cancels and transcends its immediate present, it is universal selfconsciousness. This notion of the transcended in- dividual self which is Absolute Being, immediately expresses therefore the establishment of a communion which, while hitherto having its abode in the sphere of pictorial presentation, now returns into itself as the Self: and Spirit thus passes from the second element consti- tuting it, — figurative presentation — and goes over to the third — self-consciousness as such.
If we further consider the kind of procedure that pre- 788 Phenomenology of Mind sentative thinking adopts as it goes along, we find in the first place the expression that the Divine Being " puts on " human nature. Here it is eo ipso asserted that implicitly and inherently the two are not separate: just as in the statement, that the Divine Being from the beginning empties Itself of Itself, that its objective existence is self-absorbed, centres in Itself and becomes evil, it is not asserted but implied that per se this evil existence is not something alien to the Divine nature. Absolute Being would be merely an empty name if in very truth there were any other being external to it, if there were an absolute " fall " from it. The aspect of self-centredness, self-absorption, really constitutes the essential moment of the self of Spirit.
That this self-centredness, whence primarily comes its reality, belongs to the Divine Being — while this is for us a notion, and so as far as it is a notion, — appears to presentative thinking as an inconceivable historical fact. The inherent and essential nature assumes for figurative thought the form of a bare objective fact external and indifferent to God. The thought, however, that those apparently mutually repugnant moments, absolute Being and self-existent Self, are not inseparable, comes also before this figurative way of thinking (since it does possess the real content), but that thought appears afterwards, in the form that the Divine Being empties Itself of Itself and is made flesh. This figurative idea, which in this way is still immediate and hence not spiritual, i.e. it takes the human form assumed by the Divine to be merely in the first instance a particular form, not yet a universal form — becomes spiritual for this consciousness in the process whereby God, who has assumed shape and form, surrenders again His external, His immediate Revealed Religion 789 existence, and returns to His inner Being. The Divine Being is then Spirit when it is reflected into itself.
The reconciliation of the Divine Being with its antithesis as a whole, and, specifically, with the thought of this other — evil — is thus presented here in a figurative way. When this reconciliation is expressed conceptu- ally, by saying it consists in the fact that evil is inherently the same as what goodness is, or again that the Divine Being is the same as nature in its entire extent, just as nature separated from God is simply nothingness, — then this must be looked at as an un- spiritual mode of expression which is bound to give rise to misunderstandings. When evil is the same as goodness, then evil is just not evil nor goodness good; on the contrary, both are really done away with — evil in general, self-centred self-existence, and goodness, self- less simple abstraction. Since in this way they are both expressed in terms of their notion, the unity of the two is at once apparent; for self-centred self-existence is simple knowledge; and what is self-less simple abstrac- tion is as much pure self-existence centred within itself. Hence, if it must be said that good and evil in their conception, i.e., so far as they are not good and evil, are the same, just as certainly it must be said that they are not the same, but absolutely different; for simple selfexistence, or again pure knowledge, is equally pure negativity or per se absolute distinction. It is only these two propositions that make the whole com- plete; and when the first is asserted and asseverated, it must be met and opposed by insisting on the other with immovable obstinacy. Since both are equally right, they are both equally wrong, and their wrong consists in taking such abstract forms as " the same " 790 Phenomenology of Mind and " not the same," " identity " and " non-identity/' to be something true, fixed, real, and in resting on them. Neither the one nor the other has truth; their truth is just their movement, the process in which simple sameness is abstraction and thus absolute distinction, while this again, being distinction per se, is distinguished from itself and so is self-identity. Precisely this is what we have in the case of the sameness of the Divine Being and Nature in general and human nature in particular: the former is Nature so far as it is not essen- tially Being; Nature is divine in its essential Being. But it is in Spirit that we find both abstract aspects affirmed as they truly are, viz. as cancelled and pre- served at once: and this way of affirming them cannot be expressed by the judgment, by the soulless word " is," the copula of the judgment. In the same way Nature is nothing outside its essential Being [God]; but this nothing itself is all the same; it is absolute abstrac- tion, pure thought or self-centredness, and with its moment of opposition to spiritual unity it is the principle of Evil. The difficulty people find in these conceptions is due solely to sticking to the term "is," and forgetting the character of thought, where the moments as much are as they are not, — are the process which is Spirit. It is this spiritual unity, — unity where the distinctions are merely in the form of moments, or are transcended and maintained — which became known to presentative thinking in that atoning reconciliation spoken of above. And since this unity is the universality of self-consciousness, self-consciousness has ceased to be figurative or pictorial in its thinking; the process has turned back into it.
Spirit thus takes up its position in the third element, Revealed Religion 791 in universal self-consciousness: Spirit is its own com- munity. The movement of this community being that of self-consciousness, which distinguishes itself from its figurative idea, consists in explicitly bringing out what has implicitly become established. The dead Divine Man, or Human God, is implicitly universal self- consciousness; he has to become explicitly so for this self - consciousness. Or, since this self - consciousness constitutes one side of the opposition involved in ideal presentation, viz. the side of evil, which takes natural existence and individual self-existence to be the essential reality — this aspect, which is presented as independent, and not yet as a moment, has, on account of its independence, to raise itself in and for itself, to the level of Spirit; it has to reveal the process of Spirit in this aspect.
This particular self-consciousness is Spirit in natural form, natural spirit: self has to withdraw from this natural existence and enter into itself, become self- centred; that means, it has to become evil. But this aspect is already per se evil: entering into itself consists, therefore, in persuading itself that natural existence is what is evil. By presentational picture- thinking the world is supposed actually to become evil and be evil as an actual fact, and the atoning reconcilement of the Absolute Being is viewed as an actual existent phenomenon. By self-consciousness as such, however, this figurative presentation of the truth, as regards its form, is considered to be merely a moment that is already superseded and transcended; for the self is the principle of negation, and hence knowledge — a knowledge which is a pure act of con- sciousness within itself. This moment of the nega- 792 Phenomenology of Mind tive must in like manner find expression as regards the content. Since, that is to say, the Absolute Being is inherently and from the start reconciled with itself and is a spiritual unity, in which the parts constituting the presentation are sublated, are moments, what we find is that each element of the presentation receives here the opposite significance to that which it had before. By this means each meaning finds its completion in the other, and the content is then and thereby a spiritual content. Since the specific determinateness of each is just as much its opposite, unity in otherness — spiritual reality — is achieved and completed: just as formerly we saw opposite meanings combined and united objectively, or in themselves, and even the abstract forms of " the same " and " not- the- same," " identity " and " non- identity " cancelled one another and were transcended. If, then, from the point of view of figurative thought, the natural self-consciousness rooted and fixed in itself was the real evil, that process of becoming fixed in itself is in the sphere of self-consciousness, the knowledge of evil as something that per se belongs to existence. This knowledge is certainly a process of becoming evil, but merely of the thought of evil, and is therefore recognised as the first moment of reconciliation. For, being a return into self out of the immediacy of nature which is specifically the principle of evil, it is a forsaking of that immediacy, and a dying to sin. It is not natural exist- ence as such that consciousness forsakes, but natural existence that is at the same time known to be evil. The immediate process of fixing itself within itself, of becoming self-centred, is just as much a mediate process: it presupposes itself, i.e. is its own ground and principle: the reason for fixing itself in self is Revealed Religion 793 because nature has per se already done so. On account of evil man must be turned back into himself, but evil is itself the process of doing so, of "fixing himself in self." This first movement is just on that account itself merely immediate, is its bare and simple notion, because it is the same as what its ground or reason is. The movement, or the process of passing into otherness, must therefore come out afterwards in its own more peculiar form.
Beside this immediacy, then, the mediation of ideal presentation is necessary. Implicitly and essentially, the knowledge of nature as the untrue inadequate ex- pression of spirit's existence, and this universality of self which has thereby arisen within the life of the self —these constitute the reconciliation of spirit with itself. This implicit state is apprehended by the self-conscious- ness that does not think conceptually, in the form of an objective existence, and as something presented to it figuratively. Conceptual comprehension (Begreiferi), therefore, does not mean for it a grasping (Ergreifen) of this conception (Begriff) which knows natural existence when cancelled and transcended to be universal and thus reconciled with itself; but rather a laying hold of that ideal presentation, the imaginative idea ( Vorstellung) that the Divine Being is reconciled with its existence through an event, — the event of God's emptying Himself of Him- self, relinquishing His Divine Being, through His factual Incarnation and His Death. The laying hold of this idea now expresses more specifically what was formerly called in figurative thinking spiritual resurrection, or the process by which God's individual self - consciousness * becomes the universal, becomes the religious communion.
* The Christ.
* The Christ.
794 Phenomenology of Mind The death of the Divine Man, qua death, is abstract negativity, the immediate result of the process which terminates only in the universality belonging to nature. In spiritual self-consciousness death loses its natural significance; it passes into its true principle or con- ception, the conception just mentioned. Death then ceases to signify what it means directly — the non- existence of this particular individual — and becomes transformed and transfigured into the universality of spirit, which lives in its own communion, dies there daily, and daily rises again.
That which belongs to the sphere of pictorial thought — viz., that Absolute Spirit, qua individual or rather qua particular, embodies and presents in its objective exist- ence the nature of spirit — is thus here transferred to self- consciousness itself, to the sphere where knowledge main- tains itself in its otherness, in its opposite. This self-con- sciousness does not therefore really die, as the particular person * is represented to have really died; its particu- larity succumbs and expires in its universality, i.e. in its knowledge, which is true Being reconciling itself with itself. That primary and prior element of presentative thinking is thus here set forth as transcended, has, in other words, returned into the self, into its notion. What was in the former merely an existent entity has come to assume the form of Subject. By that very fact the first element too, pure thought and the spirit eternal therein, are no longer away beyond and outside the mind thinking pictorially nor beyond the self; rather the return of the whole into itself consists just in con- taining all moments within itself. When the death of the mediator is laid hold of by the self, brought * Christ.
Revealed Religion 795 within its grasp, this means the sublation and trans- cendence of his factuality, of his particular independent existence: this particular self-existence has become universal self-consciousness.
On the other side, the universal, just because of this, is self-consciousness, and the pure or abstract unreal Spirit of bare thought has become concrete and actual. The death of the mediator is death not merely of his natural aspect, of his particular self -existence: what dies is not merely the outer encasement, which, being stripped of true Being, is eo ipso dead, but also the abstraction of the Divine Being. For the mediator, as long as his death has not yet accomplished the reconcilia- tion, is something one-sided, which takes as true Being the simple abstract element of thought, not concrete reality. This one-sided extreme of self has not yet equal worth and value with ultimate Being; the self first gets this as Spirit. When the mediator as imaginatively presented dies, his death implies at the same time the death of the mere abstraction of Divine Being, which is not yet affirmed as a self. That death is the bitterness and pain of the " unhappy consciousness," when it feels that God himself is dead. This harsh utterance is the expression of inmost self-knowledge which has self bare and simple for its content; it is the return of con- sciousness into the depth of darkness where Ego is no- thing but bare identity of Ego, a darkness distinguishing and knowing nothing more outside it. This feeling thus means, in point of fact, the loss of the Substance and of its objective existence over against consciousness. But at the same time it is the pure subjectivity of Substance, the pure certainty and inner assurance of itself, which it lacked when it was object or immediacy, pure ultimate 796 Phenomenology of Mind Being. This knowledge is thus the process of spiritualisa- tion, whereby Substance becomes Subject, by which its abstraction and hfelessness have expired, and Substance therefore has become concrete and real, simple universal self-consciousness.
In this way, then, Spirit is Spirit knowing its own self. It knows itself; that, which is for it object, exists, or, in other words, its objectively presented idea is the true absolute content. As we saw, the content expresses just Spirit itself. It is at the same time not merely content of self -consciousness, and not merely object for self-consciousness; it is also concrete actual Spirit. It is this by the fact of its passing through and realising the three elements of its nature: this movement through the content of its whole self in this way con- stitutes its actual reality. What moves itself, that is Spirit; it is the subject of the movement, and it is likewise the moving process itself, or the substance through which the subject makes its way. We saw how the notion of spirit arose when we entered the sphere of religion: it was the process of self-assured spirit, which forgives and pardons evil, and in so doing puts aside its own simplicity of nature and rigid un- changeableness: it was, to state it otherwise, the process, in which what is absolutely in opposition recognises itself as the same as its opposite, and this knowledge breaks out into the " yea, yea " with which one extreme meets the other. The religious consciousness, to which the Absolute Being is revealed, sees this notion, and does away with the distinction of its self from what it beholds; and as it is Subject, so it is also Substance; and is thus itself Spirit just because and in so far as it is this process.