Now in actual reality the knowing substance is arrived at earlier than its form, earlier than the form of the notion. For the substance is the undeveloped inherent nature, the fundamental notion in its inert simplicity, the state of inwardness or the self of spirit not yet objectivified. What is there, what does exist, is in the shape of unexpressed simplicity, the un- developed immediate, or the object of presentative consciousness in general. Because knowledge (Erkennen) is a spiritual state of consciousness, which is only aware of what implicitly and inherently is so far as this is a being for the self and a being of the self or a notion- knowledge has on this account merely a barren object to begin with, in contrast to which the substance and the consciousness of this substance are richer in content. Revelation in such a case is, in fact, concealment; for the substance is here still self-less existence and nothing but certainty of self is manifest or revealed to it. To begin with, therefore, it is only the abstract moments that fall to self-consciousness when dealing with the substance. But since these moments are pure activities and must move forward by their very nature, self- consciousness enriches itself till it has torn from consciousness the entire substance, and absorbed into itself the entire structure of the substance with all its constituent elements. Since this negative attitude towards objectivity is positive as well, establishes and fixes the content, it goes on till it has produced these elements out of itself and thereby reinstated them once more as objects of consciousness. In the notion, knowing itself as notion, the moments thus make their appearance prior to the whole in its complete fulfilment; the movement of these moments is the process by which Absolute Knowledge 813 the whole comes into being. In consciousness, on the other hand, the whole — but not as comprehended con- ceptually— is prior to the moments.
Time is just the notion definitely existent, and pre- sented to consciousness in the form of empty pure intuition. Hence spirit necessarily appears in time, and it appears in time so long as it does not grasp its pure notion, i.e. so long as it does not annul time. Time is the pure self in external form, apprehended in intuition, and not grasped and understood by the self, it is the notion directly apprehended through intuition. When this notion grasps itself, it supersedes the time character, conceptually comprehends intuition, and is intuition comprehended and comprehending through conceptions. Time therefore appears as spirit's destiny and necessity, where spirit is not yet complete within itself; it is the necessity compelling spirit to increase and enrich the share self-consciousness has in consciousness, to put into motion the immediacy of the inherent nature (which is the form in which the substance is present in consciousness); or, conversely, to realise and make manifest what is inherent, regarded as inward and immanent, to make manifest that which is at first within — i.e. to vindicate and secure for it the certainty of self.
For this reason it must be said that nothing is con- sciously known which does not fall within experience, or (as it is also expressed) which is not felt to be true, which is not given as an inwardly revealed eternal verity, as a sacred object of belief, or whatever other expressions we care to employ. For experience just consists in this, that the content — and the content is spirit — in its inherent nature is substance and so object • 814 Phenomenology of Mind of consciousness. But this substance in which spirit consists, is the development of itself explicitly to what it is inherently and implicitly; and only by this process of reflecting itself into itself is it then essentially and in truth spirit. It is inherently the movement which constitutes the process of knowledge — the transforming of that implicit inherent nature into explicitness and objectivity, of Substance into Subject, of the object of consciousness into the object of self-consciousness, i.e. into an object that is at the same time superseded and transcended — in other words, into the notion. This transforming process is a cycle that returns into itself, a cycle that presupposes its beginning, and reaches its beginning only at the end. So far as spirit, then, is of necessity this process of self-distinction, it appears as a single whole, intuitively apprehended, over against its simple self-consciousness. And since that whole is the aspect distinguished, it is distinguished into the intuitively apprehended pure notion, Time, and the content, the inherent implicit nature. Substance, qua subject, involves the necessity, at first an inner necessity, to set forth in itself what it inherently is, to show itself to be spirit. The completed systematic expression in objective form becomes, then, at the same time the re- flection of substance, the development of it into a self or subject. Consequently, until and unless spirit is inherently completed, completed as a world-spirit, it cannot reach its completion as self-conscious spirit. The content of religion therefore expresses earlier in time than speculative science what spirit is; but science alone is the perfect form in which spirit truly knows itself. ;The process of carrying forward this form of know- Absolute Knowledge 815 ledge of itself constitutes the task which spirit accom- plishes in the concrete actual shape of History. The religious communion, in so far as it is at the outset the substance of Absolute Spirit, is the crude form of con- sciousness, which has an existence all the harsher and more barbaric the deeper is its inner spirit; and its inarticulate stolid self has all the harder task in dealing with its essence, the unconceived content alien to its consciousness. Not till it has surrendered the hope of cancelling that foreignness by an external, i.e. alien method, does it turn to itself, to its own peculiar world in the actual present. It turns thither because to supersede that alien method means returning into self-consciousness. It thus discovers this world in the living present to be its own property; and so has taken the first step to descend from the ideal in- telligible world, the world of the intellect, or rather to endue the abstract element of the intellect with concrete self-hood. Through " observation/' on the one hand, it finds existence in the shape of thought, and comprehends existence; and, conversely, it finds in its thought existence.* When, in the first in- stance, it has thus itself expressed in an abstract way the immediate unity of thought and existence, of abstract Being and Self; and when it has expressed the primal principle of "Light" in a purer form, viz. as unity of extension and existence — for " existence " is an ultimate simple term more akin to thought than " Light " - and in this way has revived again in thought the Substance of the Orient, f the Absolute Substance of Eastern Religions; thereupon spirit at once recoils in horror from this abstract unity, from this * Descartes. t Spinoza.
816 Phenomenology of Mind self-less substance, and maintains as against it the principle of subjective Individuality.* But after spirit has relinquished this principle and brought it under the ordeal of culture, has thereby made it an objective existence and established it throughout the whole of existence, has arrived at the idea of "Utility"! and in the sphere of absolute freedom has found the key to existence to be Individual Will,J — after these stages spirit then brings to light the thought that lies in its inmost depths, and expresses ultimate Reality in the form Ego = Ego.§ This "Ego identical with Ego" is, however, an inward, self-reflecting process; for since this identity qua absolute negativity is absolute distinction, the self- identity of the Ego stands in contrast to this absolute distinction, which — being pure distinction and at the same time objective to the self that knows itself— has to be expressed as Time. In this way, just as formerly ultimate Eeality was expressed as unity of thought and extension, it would here be interpreted as unity of thought and time. But distinction left to itself, unresting, unhalting time, really collapses upon itself; it is the objective quiescence, the stable continuity of extension; while this latter is pure identity with self — is Ego.
Again, Ego is not merely self, it is identity of self with itself. This identity, however, is complete and im- mediate unity with self; in other words this Subject is just as much Substance. Substance by itself alone would be void and empty Intuition (Anschaueri), or the intuition of a content which qua specific would * Leibnitz. t The principle of the (C Aufklurung.3' I Kant. § Fichte.
Absolute Knowledge 817 have merely a contingent character and would be devoid of necessity. Substance would only stand for the Absolute in so far as Substance was thought of or " intuited " as absolute unity; and all content would, as regards its diversity, have to fall outside the Sub- stance and be due to reflection, a process which does not belong to Substance, because Substance would not be Subject, would not be conceived as Spirit, as re- flecting about self and reflecting itself into self. If, nevertheless, a content were to be spoken of, then on the one hand, it would only exist in order to be thrown into the empty abysm of the Absolute, while on the other it would be picked up in external fashion from sense perception. Knowledge would appear to have come by things, by what is distinct from knowledge itself, and to have got at the distinctions between the endless variety of things, without any one understanding how or where all this came from.* Spirit, however, has shown itself to be neither the mere withdrawal of self-consciousness into its pure inwardness, nor the mere absorption of self-conscious- ness into blank Substance devoid of all distinctions. Spirit is the movement of the self which empties itself of self and sinks itself within its own substance, and qua subject, both goes out of that substance into itself, making its substance an object and a content, and also supersedes this distinction of objectivity and content. That first reflection out of immediacy is the subject's distinction of self from its substance, the notion in a state of self-diremption, the subjectification of the self, and the coming of the pure ego into being. Since this distinction is the action pure and simple of Ego = Ego, * Schelling'.
818 Phenomenology of Mind the notion is the necessity for and the uprising of existence, which has the substance for its essential nature and subsists on its own account. But this subsisting of existence for itself is the notion established and realised in determinate form, and is thereby the notion's own inherent movement — that of descending into the bare and simple substance, which is only sub- ject by being this negativity and going through this process.
Ego has not to take its stand on the form of self- consciousness in opposition to the form of substantiality and objectivity, as if it were afraid of emptying itself and becoming objective. The power of spirit lies rather in remaining one with itself when giving up itself, and, because it is self-contained and self-subsistent, in establishing as mere moments its explicit self-existence as well as its implicit inherent nature. Nor again is Ego a tertium quid which casts distinctions back into the abysm of the Absolute, and declares them all to mean the same there. On the contrary, true knowledge lies rather in the seeming inactivity which merely watches and considers how the element distinguished proceeds, how it is self-moved by its very nature and returns again into its own unity.
With absolute knowledge, then, Spirit has wound up the process of its various forms and modes, so far as in assuming these various shapes and forms it is affected with the insurmountable distinction which consciousness implies [i.e. the distinction of consciousness from its object or content]. Spirit has attained the pure element of its existence, the notion. The content is, in view of the freedom of its own existence, the self that empties and gives up itself to objectivity; in other words, that Absolute Knowledge 819 content is the immediate unity of self-knowledge. The pure process of thus relinquishing itself to externality constitutes — when we consider this process in its bearing on the content — the necessity of this content. The diversity of content is, qua determinate and specific, due to relation, and is not inherent; it is its restless activity of cancelling and superseding itself, or its negativity. Thus the necessity or diversity, like its free existence, is the self too; and in this self-form, in which existence is immediately thought, the content is a notion. Seeing, then, that Spirit has attained the notion, it unfolds its existence and develops its processes in this ether of its life and is Systematic Science. The moments of its process are set forth in Science no longer as determinate modes or forms of consciousness, but — since the distinction, which con- sciousness implies, has reverted to and has become a distinction within the self — as determinate notions, and as the organic self-explaining and self-constituted process of these conceptions. While in the Phenomen- ology of Mind each moment is the distinction of know- ledge and truth, and the process in which that distinction is cancelled and transcended, on the other hand System- atic Science does not contain this distinction and supersession of distinction. Rather, since each moment has the form of the notion, it unites the objective form of truth and the knowing self in an immediate unity. In Science the individual moment does not appear as the process of passing back and forward from consciousness or presentation to self-consciousness and conversely: there the pure form, liberated from the condition of being an appearance in mere consciousness, — the pure notion with its further development, depends solely and purely 820 Phenomenology of Mind on its characteristic and specific nature. Conversely, again, there corresponds to every abstract moment of absolute Science a form or mode in which mind as a whole makes it appearance. As the mind that actually exists and historically appears is not richer than Science, so, too, mind in its actual content is not poorer. To know the pure notions of Science in the form in which they are modes or types of consciousness — this consti- tutes the aspect of their reality, in which its essential element, the notion, appearing there in its simple mediating activity as thinking, breaks up and separ- ates the moments of this mediation, and exhibits its content by reference to the internal and immanent opposition of its elements.
Science contains within itself this necessity of re- linquishing and divesting itself of the form of the pure notion, and necessarily involves the transition of the notion into consciousness. For Spirit that knows itself is, just for the reason that it grasps its own notion, immediate identity with itself; and this, in the distinc- tion it implies, is the certainty of what is immediate or is sense-consciousness — the beginning from which we started. This process of releasing itself from the form of its self is the highest freedom and security of its know- ledge of itself.
All the same, this relinquishment of self and aban- donment to externality are still incomplete. This process expresses the relation of the certainty of its self to the object, an object which, just by being in relation, has not yet attained its full freedom. Systematic knowledge is aware not only of itself, but also of the negative of itself, or its limit. Knowing its limit means knowing how Absolute Knowledge 821 to sacrifice itself. This sacrifice is the emptying of self, the self-abandonment, in which Spirit sets forth, in the form of free and unconstrained fortuitous con- tingency, its process of becoming Spirit, intuitively apprehending outside it its pure self as Time, and like- wise its existence as Space.* This last form into which Spirit passes, Nature, is its living immediate process of development. Nature — Spirit divested of self and given over to externality — is, in its actual existence, nothing but this eternal process of abandoning its own indepen- dent subsistence, and the movement which reinstates Subject.
The other aspect, however, in which Spirit comes into being, History, is process in terms of knowledge, a con- scious self-mediating process — Spirit given over to and emptied into Time. But this form of abandonment is, similarly, an emptying of itself by itself.; the negative is negative of itself. This way of becoming presents a tardy procession and succession of spiritual shapes and forms, a gallery of pictures, each of which is endowed with the entire wealth of Spirit, and moves so tardily just for the reason that the self has to permeate and assimilate all this wealth of its substance. Since its accomplishment consists in Spirit knowing what it is, in fully comprehending its substance, this knowledge means its subjectification, a state in which Spirit leaves its external existence behind and gives itself over to the attitude of Recollection (Erinnerung). In this subjectifi- cation, Spirit is engulfed in the darkness and night of its own self-consciousness; its vanished existence is, however, conserved therein; and this superseded ex- istence— the previous state, but born anew from the * Cp. Ency. §244; also Nuturphilos., Introd.
822 Phenomenology of Mind womb of knowledge — is the new stage of existence, a new world, and a new type and mode of Spirit. Here it has to begin all over again at its immediacy,* as freshly as before, and thence rise once more to the measure of its stature, as if, for it, all that preceded were lost, and as if it had learned nothing from the experience of the spirits that preceded. But re-collection (Er- innerung) has conserved that experience, and is the inner being, and, in fact, the higher form of the substance. While, then, this phase of Spirit begins all over again its formative development, apparently starting solely from itself, yet at the same time it commences at a higher level. The realm of spirits developed in this way, and assuming definite shape in existence, constitutes a succession, where one detaches and sets loose the other, and each takes over from its predecessor the empire of the spiritual world. The goal of the process is the revelation of the depth of spiritual life, and this is the Absolute Notion. This revelation consequently means superseding its " depth/' is its " extension " or spatial embodiment, the negation of this subjectivity of the ego — a negativity which is its self-relinquishment, its externalisation, or its substance: and this revelation is also its temporal embodiment, in that this external- isation in its very nature relinquishes, externalises itself, and so exists at once in its spatial " extension " as well as in its " depth " or the self. The goal, which is Absolute Knowledge or Spirit knowing itself as Spirit, finds its pathway in the recollection of spiritual forms as they are in themselves and as they accomplish the organisation of their spiritual kingdom. Their conservation, looked * Cp. Aristotle, Metap., 10716, " Movement can neither come into being, nor cease to be; nor can time come into being or cease to be."
Absolute Knowledge 823 at from the side of their free phenomenal existence in the sphere of contingency, is History; looked at from the side of their conceptually comprehended organisation, it is the Science of phenomenal knowledge, of the ways in which knowledge appears.* Both together, or History comprehended conceptually, form at once the recollection and the golgotha of Absolute Spirit, the reality, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without which it were lifeless, solitary, and alone. Only This chalice of God's plenitude Yields foaming His Infinitude, f * "Phenomenology."
t Adaptation of Schiller's Die Freundschaft ad fin.; cp. also Schiller's Philos. Brief e, " Gott."
WILLIAM I1RENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA