Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

750 Phenomenology of Mind gods of the chorus is hmited and restricted by the acting individuaUty. The one is the substance, the power presiding over the hearth and home and the spirit worshipped by the family, as well as the universal power dominating state and government.

Since this distinction belongs to the substance as such, it is, when ideally presented, not individualised as two distinct forms [of the substance], but has in actual reaUty the two persons of its characters. On the other hand, the distinction between knowing and not knowing falls within each of the actual self-consciousnesses ; and only in abstraction, in the element of universahty, does it get divided into two individual shapes.

For the self of the hero only exists as a whole consciousness, and hence includes essentially the whole of the distinction belonging to the form; but its substance is determinate, and only one side of the content distinguished belongs to him.

Hence both sides of consciousness, which have in concrete reahty no separate individuality pecuharly their own, receive, when ideally represented, each its own particular form : the one that of the god revealed, the other that of the Furies keeping themselves concealed. In part both enjoy equal honour, while again, the form assumed by the substance, Zeus, is the necessity of the relation of the two to one another.

The substance is the relation [1] that knowledge is for itself, but finds its truth in what is simple; [2] that the distinction, through and in which actual consciousness exists, has its basis in that inner being which destroys it; [3] that the clear conscious assurance of certainty has its confirmation in forgetfulness. Consciousness disclosed this opposition by action, through doing something. Acting in accordance with

The Spiritual Work of Art 751 the knowledge revealed, it finds out the deceptiveness of that knowledge, and being committed, in view of the inner meaning, to one of the attributes of substance, it did violence to the other and thereby gave the latter right as against itself.

When following that god who knows and reveals himself, it really seized hold of what is not revealed, and repents of having trusted the knowledge, whose equivocal character (since this is its ^"sjy very nature) had to come also before it, and admonition thereanent to be found.

The frenzy of the priestess, the inhuman shape of the witches, the voices of trees and birds, dreams, and so on, are not ways in which truth appears; they are admonitory signs of deception, of want of discernment, of the individual and accidental character of knowledge.

Or, what comes to the same thing, the opposite power, which consciousness has violated, is present as express law and authentic right, whether law of the family or law of the state ; while consciousness, on the other hand, pursued its own proper knowledge, and hid from itself what was revealed.

The truth, however, of the opposing powers of content and consciousness is the final result, that both are equally right, and, hence, in their opposition (which comes about through action) are equally wrong. The process of action proves their imity in the mutual overthrow of both powers and the self-conscious characters.

The reconcihation of the opposition with itself is the Lethe of the netherworld in the form of Death — or the Lethe of the upper world in the form of absolution, not from guilt (for consciousness cannot deny its guilt, because the act was done), but from the crime, and of the atoning consolation and peace of soul which absolution gives. Both are forgetfulness, the disappearance of the

752 Phenomenology of Mind reality and action of the powers of the substance, its component individuahties, and of the powers of the abstract thought of good and evil.

For none of them by itself is the real essence ; this consists in the undisturbed calm of the whole within itself, the immovable unity of Fate, the quiescent existence and hence want of activity and vitahty in the family and government, and the equal honour and consequent indifferent unreality of Apollo and the Furies, and the return of their spiritual life and activity into Zeus solely and simply.

This destiny completes the depopulation of Heaven — of that imthinking mixture of individuality and ultimate Being — a blending whereby the action of this absolute Being appears as something incoherent, 5' 3 , inconsistent, contingent, unworthy of itself ; for individuahty, when attaching in a merely superficial way to absolute Being, is unessential.

The expulsion of such unreal insubstantial ideas, which was demanded by the philosophers of antiquity, thus already has its beginning in tragedy in general, through the fact that the division of the substance is controlled by the notion, and hence individuality is the essential individuahty, and the specific determinations are absolute characters.

The self-consciousness represented in tragedy knows and acknowledges on that account only one highest power, Zeus.

This Zeus is known and acknowledged only as the power of the state or of the hearth and home, and, in the opposition falhng inside knowledge, merely as the Father of the particular knowledge assuming a definite shape ; he is the Zeus acknowledged in the taking of oaths, the Zeus of the Furies, the Zeus of what is universal, of the inner being dwelhng in concealment. The further moments taken from the