with the assertion that in short and in fine the matter is settled, the truth is so and so, and anything else is mere " sophistry " — a password used by plain common sense against cultivated critical reason, hke the phrase " visionary dreaming," by which those ignorant of philosophy sum up its character once for all. Since the man of common sense appeals to his feehng, to an oracle within his breast, he is ready to meet any one who does not agree. He has simply to explain that he has no more to say to any one who Preface 69 does not find and feel the same as himself. In other words, he tramples the roots of humanity under foot. For the nature of hiunanity is to impel men to agree with one another, and its very existence hes simply in the exphcit reahsation of a community of conscious life. What is anti-human, the condition of mere animals, consists in keeping within the sphere of feeling pure and simple, and in being able to communicate only by way of feehng-states.
When a man asks for a royal road to science, no more convenient and comfortable way can be mentioned to him than to put his trust in " healthy common sense "; and in order, besides, to keep abreast of the times and advance with philosophy, let him read reviews of philo- sophical works, and even go the length of reading the prefaces and first paragraphs of the works themselves; for the latter give the general principles on which every- thing turns, while the reviews, besides the historical references, provide over and above the critical judgment and appreciation, which, being a judgment passed on the work, goes farther than the work that is judged. This common way a man can take in his dressing-gown. But spiritual elation in the eternal, the sacred, the in- finite, moves along the highway of truth in the robes of the high priest — a road, that, from the first, is it- self immediate being in its innermost, the inspiration of profound and original ideas and flashes of elevated thought. All the same, those depths do not yet reveal the well-spring of inner reality; nor, again, do these sky-rockets illumine the empyrean. True thoughts and scientific insight can only be won by the labour of the notion. Conceptions alone can produce universahty in the knowing process. This vmiversality is critically 70 Phenomenology of Mind developed and completely finished knowledge, and not the common indefiniteness and inadequacy of ordinary intelligence; nor, again, is it that extraordinary kind of universahty where the powers and potencies of reason are spoiled and ruined by the indolence and vanity of genius; it is truth successfully arrived at its own inherent native form, and capable of being the property of every self-conscious reason.
Since I have taken the self-development of conceptions or notions to be the medium wherein science really exists, and since in those respects to which I have drawn attention as well as in others, current ideas about the nature of truth and the shape it assumes deviate from my view, and indeed are quite opposed to my position, it is not hkely that the consideration of all this will pro- mise well for a favourable reception of an attempt to ex- pound the system of science in this sense. In the mean- time, I may call to mind that while e.g. the supreme merit of Plato's philosophy has sometimes been held to consist in his myths which are scientifically valueless, there have also been times, spoken of even as times of mere sentimentahty and emotion, when the AristoteHan philosophy has been respected on account of its specu- lative depth of insight, and when the Parmenides of Plato — perhaps the greatest hterary product of ancient dialectic — has been taken to be the positive expression of the divine life, the unveiling and disclosing of its inmost truth. I may reflect, too, that notwithstand- ing much cloudy obscurity which was the product of ecstasy, this misunderstood ecstasy was in point of fact meant to be nothing else than the activity of the pure notion; furthermore, that what is best in the philosophy of our time takes its value to lie Preface 71 in its scientific character; and even though others take a difierent view, it is only in virtue of its scientific character that recent philosophy really gets its worth acknowledged and accepted. Thus, then, I too may hope that this attempt to vindicate and claim science for conceptual thought, and systematically to develop and present science in this its own pecuhar medium, will manage to make a way for itself by the inherent truth of the result accomphshed. We may rest assured that it is the nature of truth to force its way to recog- nition when its time comes, and that it only appears when its time has come, and hence never appears too soon, and never finds a public that is not ripe to receive it; and, further, we may be sure that the individual thinker requires this result to take place, in order to give him confidence in regard to what is no more as yet than a matter for himself singly and alone, and in order to find his assurance, which in the first in- stance merely belongs to a particular individual, accepted as something universal. In this connection, however, it is very often necessary to distinguish the public from those who take upon themselves to be its representatives and spokesmen. The pubhc takes up an attitude in many respects quite difierent from the latter, indeed, even opposed to them. Whereas the pubhc good-naturedly and generously will rather take the blame upon itself when a philosophical work is not quite acceptable or intelhgible to it, these " re- presentatives," on the contrary, convinced of their own competence, put all the blame on the authors. The influence of the work on the pubhc is more silent than the action of those " representatives," who are like the dead burying their dead. While the general 72 Phenomenology of Mind level of insight at the present time is in the main more highly cultivated, its curiosity more quickened and alert, and its judgment more swiftly made up and pronomiced, so that the feet of those who will carry you out are already at the door: at the same time we have often to distinguish from all this the slower and more gradual effect which rectifies the direction of attention caught and compelled by im- posing assurances, corrects, too, contemptuous censure, and after a httle provides a contemporary audience for one class, while another after a temporary vogue finds no audience with posterity any longer.
For the rest, at a time when the universal nature of spiritual life has become so very much emphasised and strengthened, and the mere individual aspect has become, as it should be, correspondingly a matter of indiilerence, when, too, that universal aspect holds, by the entire range of its substance, the full measure of the wealth it has built up, and lays claim to it all, the share in the total work of mind that falls to the activity of any particular individual can only be very small. Because this is so, the individual must all the more forget him- self, as in fact the very nature of science implies and requires that he should; and he must, moreover, become and do what he can. But all the less must be demanded of him, just as he must expect the less from himself, and ask the less for himself.
INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION IT is natural to suppose that, before philosopliy enters upon its subject proper — namely, the actual knowledge of what truly is — it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it. The precaution seems legitimate, partly because there are various kinds of knowledge, among which one might be better adapted than another for the attainment of our purpose, — and thus a wrong choice is possible: partly, again, because knowing is a faculty of a definite kind and with a determinate range, without the more precise deter- mination of its nature and limits we might take hold on clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth.
This apprehensiveness is sure to pass even into the conviction that the whole enterprise which sets out to secure for consciousness by means of knowledge what exists fer se, is in its very nature absurd; and that between knowledge and the Absolute there lies a boundary which completely cuts o£E the one from the other. For if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absolute Reahty, the sug- gestion immediately occurs that the application of an instrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails in the process and has in 73 74 Phenomenology of Mind view a moulding and alteration of it. Or, again, if knowledge is not an instrument wliich we actively employ, but a kind of passive medium through wliich the light of the truth reaches us, then here, too, we do not receive it as it is in itself, but as it is through and in this medium. In either case we employ a means which immediately brings about the very opposite of its own end; or, rather, the absurdity lies in making use of any means at all. It seems indeed open to us to find in the knowledge of the way in which the instru- ment operates, a remedy for this parlous state; for thereby it becomes possible to remove from the result the part which, in our idea of the Absolute received through that instrument, belongs to the instrument, and thus to get the truth in its purity. But this im- provement would, as a matter of fact, only bring us back to the point where we were before. If we take away again from a definitely formed thing that which the instrument has done in the shaping of it, then the thing (in this case the Absolute) stands before us once more just as it was previous to all this trouble, which, as we now see, was superfluous. If the Absolute were only to be brought on the whole nearer to us by this agency, without any change being wrought in it, hke a bird caught by a limestick, it would certainly scorn a trick of that sort, if it were not in its very nature, and did it not wish to be, beside us from the start. For a trick is what knowledge in such a case would be, since by all its busy toil and trouble it gives itself the air of doing something quite different from bringing about a relation that is merely immediate, and so a waste of time to estabhsh. Or, again, if the examina- tion of knowledge, which we represent as a medium, Introduction 75 makes us acquainted with tke law of its refraction, it is likewise useless to eliminate tkis examination from tke result. For knowledge is not tke divergence of tke ray, but tke ray itself by wkick tke trutk comes in contact witk us; and if tkis be removed, tke bare direction or tke empty place would alone be indicated.
Meanwkile, if tke fear of falkng into error introduces an element of distrust into science, wkick witkout any scruples of tkat sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand wky, conversely, a distrust skould not be placed in tkis very distrust, and wky we skould not take care lest tke fear of error is not just tke initial error. As a matter of fact, tkis fear presupposes sometking, indeed a great deal, as trutk, and supports its scruples and consequences on wkat skould itself be examined beforekand to see wketker it is trutk. It starts witk ideas of Imow- ledge as an instrument, and as a medium; and pre- supposes a distinction of ourselves from tkis know- ledge. More especially it takes for granted tkat tke Absolute stands on one side, and tkat knowledge on tke otker side, by itself and cut off from tke Absolute, is still sometking real; in otker words, tkat knowledge, wkick, by being outside tke Absolute, is certainly also outside trutk, is nevertkeless true — a position wkick, wkile calkng itself fear of error, makes itself known ratker as fear of tke trutk.
Tkis conclusion comes from tke fact tkat tke Absolute alone is true or tkat tke True is alone ab- solute. It may be set aside by making tke distinction tkat a knowledge wkick does not indeed know tke Absolute as science wants to do, is none tke less true too; and tkat knowledge in general, tkougk it may 76 Phenomenology of Mind possibly be incapable of grasping the Absolute, can still be capable of truth of another kind. But we shall see as we proceed that random talk like this leads in the long run to a confused distinction between an absolute truth and a truth of some other sort, and that " absolute," " knowledge," and so on, are words which presuppose a meaning that has first to be got at. With suchlike useless ideas and expressions about knowledge, as an instrument to take hold of the Absolute, or as a medium through which we have a ghmpse of truth, and so on (external relations to which all these ideas of a knowledge which is divided from the Absolute and an Absolute divided from knowledge m the last resort lead), we need not concern ourselves. Nor need we trouble about the evasive pretexts which create the incapacity of science out of the presuppo- sition of such relations, in order at once to be rid of the toil of science, and to assume the air of serious and zealous effort about it. Instead of being troubled with giving answers to all these, they may be straight- way rejected as adventitious and arbitrary ideas; and the use which is here made of words like " absolute," "knowledge," as also "objective" and "subjective," and innumerable others, whose meaning is assumed to be famihar to everyone, might well be regarded as so much deception. For to give out that their significance is universally familiar, and that every one indeed possesses their notion, rather looks like an attempt to dispense with the only important matter, which is just to give this notion. With better right, on the contrary, we might spare ourselves the trouble of taking any notice at all of such ideas and ways of talking which would have the effect of warding off science altogether; Introduction 77 for they make a mere empty show of knowledge which at once vanishes when science comes on the scene.
But science, in the very fact that it comes on the scene, is itself a phenomenon; its " coming on the scene " is not yet itself carried out in all the length and breadth of its truth. In this regard, it is a matter of indifference whether we consider that it (science) is the phenomenon because it makes its appearance alongside another kind of knowledge, or call that other untrue knowledge its process of appearing. Science, however, must Kberate itself from this phenomenality, and it can only do so by turning against it. For, science cannot simply reject a form of knowledge which is not true, and treat this as a common view of things, and then assure us that itself is an entirely different kind of knowledge, and holds the other to be of no accoimt at all; nor can it appeal to the fact that in this other there are presages of a better. By giviag that assur- ance it would declare its force and value to he in its bare existence; but the untrue knowledge appeals hkewise to the fact that it is, and assures us that to it science is nothing. One barren assurance, how- ever, is of just as much value as another. Still less can science appeal to the presages of a better, which are to be found present in untrue knowledge and are there pointing the way towards science; for it would, on the one hand, be appealing again in the same way to a merely existent fact; and, on the other, it would be appealing to itself, to the way in which it exists in untrue knowledge, i.e. to a bad form of its own existence, to its appearance, rather than to its real and true nature {an und fur sich). For this 78 Phenomenology of Mind reason we shall here undertake the exposition of knowledge as a phenomenon.
Now because this exposition has for its object only phenomenal knowledge, the exposition itself seems not to be science, free, self-moving in the shape proper to itself, but may, from this point of view, be taken as the pathway of the natural consciousness which is pressing forward to true knowledge. Or it can be regarded as the path of the soul, which is traversing the series of its own forms of embodiment, hke stages appointed for it by its own nature, that it may possess the clearness of spiritual hfe when, through the com- plete experience of its own self, it arrives at the know- ledge of what it is in itself.
Natural consciousness will prove itself to be only knowledge in principle or not real knowledge. Since, however, it immediately takes itself to be the real and genuine knowledge, this pathway has a negative significance for it; what is a reahsation of the notion of knowledge means for it rather the ruin and over- throw of itself; for on this road it loses its own truth. Because of that, the road can be looked on as the path of doubt, or more properly a highway of despair. For what happens there is not what is usually imderstood by doubting, a jostling against this or that supposed truth, the outcome of which is again a disappearance in due course of the doubt and a return to the former truth, so that at the end the matter is taken as it was before. On the contrary, that pathway is the conscious insight into the untruth of the phenomenal knowledge, for which that is the most real which is after all only the unreaUsed notion. On that account, too, this thoroughgoing scepticism is not what doubt- Introduction 79 Introduction 79 less earnest zeal for truth and science fancies it tas equipped itself with in order to be ready to deal with them, — viz.: the resolve, in science, not to dehver itself over to the thoughts of others on their mere authority, but to examine everything for itself, and only follow its own conviction, or, still better, to produce everything itself and hold only its own act for true.
The series of shapes, which consciousness traverses on this road, is rather the detailed history of the process of training and educating consciousness itself up to the level of science. That resolve presents this mental development, (Bildung) in the simple form of an intended purpose, as immediately finished and com- plete, as having taken place; this pathway, on the other hand, is, as opposed to this abstract in- tention, or untruth, the actual carrying out of that process of development. To follow one's own con- viction is certainly more than to hand oneself over to authority; but by the conversion of opinion held on authority into opinion held out of personal con- viction, the content of what is held is not necessarily altered, and truth has not thereby taken the place of error. If we stick to a system of opinion and prejudice resting on the authority of others, or upon personal conviction, the one differs from the other merely in the conceit which animates the latter. Scepticism, directed to the whole compass of phenomenal con- sciousness, on the contrary, makes mind for the first time quahfied to test what truth is; since it brings about a despair regarding what are called natural views, thoughts, and opinions, which it is matter of indifference to call personal or belonging to others, and with which the consciousness, that proceeds straight 80 Phencnnenology of Mind away to criticise and test, is still filled and hampered, thus being, as a matter of fact, incapable of what it wants to undertake.