Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

The Spiritual Work of Art 747 alities — heroes who put their conscious hfe into one of these powers, find therein determinateness of character, and procure their effective activity and reahty.

This universal individuahsation descends again, as will be remembered, to the immediate reahty of existence proper, and is presented before a crowd of spectators, who find in the chorus their image and counterpart, or rather their own thought giving itself expression. The content and movement of spirit, which is object CSj:, to itself here, have been already considered as the nature and reahsation of the substance of ethical life.

In its form of rehgion spirit attains to consciousness about itself, or reveals itself to its consciousness in its purer form and its simpler mode of embodiment.

If, then, the ethical substance by its very principle broke up, as regards its content, into two powers — which were defined as divine and human law, law of the nether world and law of the upper world, the one the family, the other state sovereignty, the first bearing the impress and character of woman, the other that of man — in the same way, the previously multiform circle of gods, with its wavering and unsteady characteristics, confines itself to these powers, which owing to this feature are brought closer to individuality proper.

For the previous dispersion of the whole into manifold abstract forces, which appear hypostatised, is the dissolution of the subject which comprehends them merely as moments in its self ; and individuality is therefore only the superficial form of those entities. Conversely, a further distinction of characters than that just named is to be imputed to contingent and inherently external personahty. At the same time, the essential nature [in the case of

748 Phenomenology of Mind ethical substance] gets divided in its form, i.e. with respect to knowledge. Spirit when acting, appears, qua consciousness, over against the object on which its activity is directed, and which, in consequence, is determined as the negative of the knowing agent. The agent finds himself thereby in the opposition of knowing and not knowing.

He takes his purpose from his own character, and knows it to be essential ethical fact ; but owing to the determinateness of his character, he knows merely the one power of substance ; the other remains for him concealed and out of sight. The objectively present reality, therefore, is one thing in itself, and another for consciousness.

The higher and lower right come to signify in this connection the power that knows and reveals itself to consciousness, and the power conceahng itself and lurking in the background. The one is the aspect of light, the god of the Oracle, who as regards ir i S" its natural aspect [Light] has sprung from the allilluminating Sun, knows all and reveals all, Phoebus and Zeus, who is his Father.

But the commands of this truth-speaking god, and his proclamations of what is, are really deceptive and fallacious. For this knowledge is, in its very principle, directly not knowledge, because consciousness in acting is inherently this opposition. He,* who had the power to unlock the riddle of the sphinx, and he too who trusted with childlike confidence,! are, therefore, both sent to destruction through what the god reveals to them.

The priestess, through whose mouth the gracious god speaks, J is in nothing different from the equivocal sisters of fate,§ who drive their victim to crime by * Oedipus. t Oi'este.s. X lu the Delphic Oracle. ^ The witches in '^ Macbeth."

The Spiritual Work of Art 749 their promises, and who, by the double-tongued, equivocal character of what they give out as a certainty, deceive the King when he rehes upon the manifest and obvious meaning of what they say. There is a type of consciousness that is purer than the latter* which believes in witches, and more discriminating, more thorough and more solid than the former which puts its trust in the priestess and the gracious god.

This type of consciousness, t therefore, lets his revenge tarry for the revelation which the spirit of his father makes regarding the crime that did him to death, and institutes other proofs in addition — for the reason that the spirit giving the revelation might possibly be the devil.

This mistrust has good grounds, because the knowing consciousness takes its stand on the opposition between certainty of itself on the one hand, and the objective essential reahty on the other. Ethical rightness, which insists that actuaHty is nothing "per se in opposition to absolute law, finds out that its knowledge is onesided, its law merely a law of its own character, and that it has laid hold of merely one of the powers of the substance.

The act itself is this inversion of what is subjectively known into its opposite, into objective existence, turns round what is right from the point of view of character and knowledge into the right of the very opposite with which the former is bound up in the essential nature of the substance — turns it into the " Furies " who embody the right of the other power and character awakened into hostility.

The lower right sits with Zeus enthroned, and enjoys equal respect and homage with the god revealed and known. To these three supernatural Beings the world of the * Macbeth. t Hamlet.