Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

The Ethical World 455 stance qua particular consciousness. Their universal actuality is the nation and the family ; while they get their natural self, and their operative individuaHty, in man and woman. Here in this content of the ethical 333 world, we see attained those purposes which the previous insubstantial modes of conscious hfe set before them.

What Reason apprehended only as an object, has become Self-consciousness, and what self-consciousness merely contained within it is here expHcit true reahty.

What Observation knew, — an object given externally and picked up, and one in the constitution of which the subject knowing had no share, — is here a given ethical condition, a custom f oirnd lying ready at hand, but a reality which is at the same time the deed and the product of the subject finding it.

The individual who seeks the *' pleasure " of enjoying his particular individuaUty, finds it in the family hfe, and the " necessity "* in which that pleasure passes away is his own self-consciousness as a citizen of his nation.

Or, again, it is knowing the ** law of his own heart "f as the law of all hearts, knowing the consciousness of self to be the recognised and universal ordinance of society: it is "virtue," J which enjoys the fruits of its own sacrifice, which brings about what it sets out to do, viz. to bring the essential nature into the light of the actual present, — and its enjoyment lies in this universal hfe.

Finally, consciousness of " fact as such " {der Sache selbst)^ gets satisfaction in the real substance, which contains and maintains in positive form the abstract aspects of that empty category. That substance finds a genuine content in the powers of the ethical order, a content that takes the place of those insubstantial commands which the " healthy * Cp. p. 350 ff. + Cp. p. 357 ff. X Cp. p. 369 £f. § Cp. p. 387 ff.

456 Phenomenology of Mind human reason "* wanted to give and to know : and in consequence thus gets a concrete inherently determinate standard for " testing/' not the laws, but what is done.

The whole is a stable equihbrium of all the parts, and each part a spirit in its native element, a spirit which does not seek its satisfaction beyond itself, but has the satisfaction within itself for the reason that itself is in this balanced equipoise with the whole. This condition of stable equihbrium can, of course, only be Hving by inequahty arising within it, and being brought back again to equipoise by Righteousness and Justice.

Justice, however, is neither an ahen principle {Wesen) holding somewhere remote from the present, nor the reahsation (unworthy of the name of justice) of mutual malice, treachery, ingratitude, etc., which, in the unintelligent way of chance and accident, would fulfil the law by a kind of irrational connection without any controlhng idea, action by commission and omission, without any consciousness of what was involved.

On the contrary, being justice in human law, it brings back to the whole, to the universal hfe of society, what has broken away separately from the harmony and equilibrium of the whole : — the independent classes and individuals.

In this way justice is the government of the nation, and is its all-pervading essential hfe in a consciously present individual form, and is the personal self-conscious will of all. , That justice, however, which restores to equihbrium the universal when getting the mastery over the particular individual, is similarly the simple single spirit of the individual who has suffered wrong ; it is not broken up into the two elements, one who has suffered * Cp. p. 412 tf.

The Ethical World 457 wrong and a far away remote reality (Wesen). The individual himself is the power of the " nether " world, and that reahty is his " fury/' wreaking vengeance upon him.^ For his individuahty, his blood, still Hves in the house, his substance has a lasting actuahty. The wrong, which can be brought upon the individual in the realm of the ethical world, consists merely in this, that a bare something by chance happens to him.

The power which perpetrates on the conscious individual this wrong of making him into a mere thing, is " nature " ; it is the universality not of the commimity, but the abstract universahty of mere existence. And the particular individual, in wiping out the wrong suffered, turns not against the community — for he has not suffered at its hands — but against the latter.

As we saw, those who consciously share the blood of the individual remove this wrong in such a way, that what has happened becomes rather a work of their own doing, and hence bare existence, the last state, gets also to be something willed, and thus an object of gratification. The ethical realm remains in this way permanently a world without blot or stain, a world untainted by any internal dissension.

So, too, its process is an untroubled transition from one of its powers to the other, in such a way that each preserves and produces the other.

We see it no doubt divided into two ultimate elements and their reahsation : but their opposition is rather the confirming and substantiation of one through the other ; ^3 / and where they directly come in contact and afiect each other as actual factors, their mediating common element straightway permeates and suffuses the one with the * 'ITie reference here is to Orestes.