Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

734 Phenomenology of Mind Being ; and this lias been revealed partly as the process of passing out of its dark night of concealment up to the level of consciousness, to be there its silently nurturing substance ; partly, however, as the process of losing itself again in nether darkness, in the self, and of waiting above merely with the silent yearning of motherhood.

The more conspicuous moving impulse, however, is the variously named " Light '' of the East and its tumult of heaving hfe, which, having hkewise desisted r-, ^ from its abstract state of being, has first embodied itself in objective existence in the fruits of the earth,* and then, surrendering itself to self-consciousness,| attained there to its proper reahsation ; and now it curvets and careers about in the guise of a crowd of excited, fervid women, the unrestrained revel of nature in self-conscious form.J Still, however, it is only Absolute Spirit in the sense of this simple abstract Being, not as spirit fer se, that is discovered to consciousness : i.e. it is merely immediate spirit, the spirit of nature.

Its self-conscious life is therefore merely the mystery of the Bread and the Wine, of Ceres and Bacchus, not of the other, the strictly higher, gods [of Olympus], whose individuahty includes, as an essential moment, self-consciousness as such. Spirit has not yet qua self-conscious spirit offered itself up to it, and the mystery of bread and wine is not yet the mystery of flesh and blood.

This unstable divine revel must come to rest as an object, and the enthusiasm, which did not reach consciousness, must produce a work which confronts * As found in the mysteries of Demeter. t As found in the mysteries of Bacchus and Dionysus. I Tlie Maenads ; cp. Euripides, Bacchae.

The Living Work of Art 735 it as the statue stands over against the enthusiasm of the artist in the previous case, — a work too that is equally complete and finished, yet not as an inherently lifeless but as a hving self.

Such a cult is the Festival which man makes in his own honour, though not imparting to a cult of that kind the significance of the Absolute Being; for it is the ultimate Being that is first revealed to him, not yet Spirit — not such a Being as essentially takes on human form. But this cult provides the basis for this revelation, and lays out its moments individually and separately.

Thus we here get the abstract moment of the living embodiment of ultimate Being, just as formerly we had the unity of both in the state of unconstrained emotional fervency. In the place of the statue man thus puts himself as the form elaborated and moulded for perfectly free movement, just as the statue is the perfectly free state of quiescence.

If every individual knows how to play the part at least of a torchbearer, one of them comes prominently forward who is the very embodiment of the movement, the smooth elaboration, the fluent energy and force of all the members.

He is a Hvely and hving work of art, which matches strength with its beauty ; and to him is given, as a reward for his force and energy, the adornment, with which the statue was decorated [in the former type of religion], and the honour of being, amongst his own nation, instead of a god in stone, the highest bodily representation of what the essential Being of the nation is.

In both the representations, which have just come before us, there is present the unity of self-consciousness and spiritual Being ; but they still lack their due balance

736 Phenomenology of Mind and equilibrium. In the case of the bacchic * revelhng enthusiasm the self is beside itself ; in bodily beauty of form it is spiritual Being that is outside itself. The gloominess of consciousness in the one case and its Avild stammering utterance, must be taken up into the transparent existence of the latter ; and the clear but spiritless form of the latter, into the emotional inwardness of the former.

The perfect element in which the inwardness is as external as the externality is inward, is once again Language. But it is neither the language of the oracle, entirely contingent in its content and altogether individual in character ; nor is it the 'emotional hymn sung in praise of a merely individual god ; nor is it the meaningless stammer of delirious bacchantic revelry. It has attained to its clear and universal content and meaning.

Its content is clear, for the artificer has passed out of the previous state of entirely insubstantial enthusiasm, and worked himself into a definite shape, which is his own proper existence, permeated through all its movements by self-conscious soul, and is that of his contemporaries.

Its content is universal, for in this festival, which is to the honour of man, there vanishes the onesidedness pecuhar to figures represented in statues, which merely contain a national spirit, a determinate character of the godhead.

The finely built warrior is indeed the honour and glory of his particular nation; but he is a physical or corporeal individuality in which are sunk out of sight the expanse and depth of meaning, the seriousness of significance, and the inner character of the spirit which underhes the particular mode of fife, the cravings, the needs and the customs of his nation. In re- * As distinct from the worship of Apollo.