Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

756 Phenomenology of Mind is disclosed the contrast between the universal in the sense of an abstract theory, and that with which practice is concerned ; there stands exposed the entire emancipation of the ends and aims of the mere individual from all universal order, and the scorn the mere individual shows for such order.* Rational thinking removes contingency of form and shape from the divine Being ; and, in opposition to the uncritical wisdom of the chorus — a wisdom, giving utterance to all sorts of ethical maxims and stamping with vahdity and authority a multitude of laws and specific conceptions of duty and of right — rational thought lifts these into the simple Ideas of the Beautiful and the Good.

The process of this abstraction is the consciousness of the dialectic involved in these maxims and laws themselves, and hence the consciousness of the disappearance of that absolute validity with which they previously appeared.

Since the contingent character and superficial individuahty which mere presentation lent to the divine Beings, vanish, they are left, as regards their natural aspect, with merely the nakedness of their immediate existence ; they are Clouds, t a passing vapour, like those presentations.

Having passed in accordance with their essential character, as determined by thought, into the simple thoughts of the Beautiful and the Good, these latter submit to being filled with every kind of content. The force of dialectic knowledge % puts determinate laws and maxims of action at the mercy of the pleasure and levity of youth, led astray therewith, and gives weapons * cp. Cleon in Aristophanes, Knights. t cp. Aristophanes, Clouds. X The age of the Sophists.

The Spiritual Work of Art 757 of deception into the hands of sohcitous and apprehensive old age, restricted in its interests to the individual details of Hfe.

The pure thoughts of the Beautiful and the Good thus display a comic spectacle : — through their being set free from opinion, which contains both their determinateness in the sense of content and also their absolute determinateness, the firm hold of consciousness upon them, they become empty, and, on that very account, the sport of the private opinion and caprice of any chance individuahty.

Here, then, the Fate, formerly without consciousness, consisting in mere rest and forgetfulness, and separated from self-consciousness, is united with selfconsciousness. The individual * self is the negative force through which and in which the gods, as also their moments, (nature as existent fact and the thoughts of their determinate characters), pass away and disappear.

At the same time, the individual self is not the mere vacuity of disappearance, but preserves itself in this very nothingness, holds to itself and is the sole and only reahty. The rehgion of art is fulfilled and consummated in it, and is come fuH circle.

Through the fact that it is the individual consciousness in its certainty of self which is shown to be SLf'L this absolute power, this latter has lost the form of something ideally presented {vorgestellt), separated from and ahen to consciousness in general — as were the statue and also the hving embodiment of beauty or the content of the Epic and the powers and persons of Tragedy.

Nor again is the unity the unconscious unity of the cult and the mysteries; rather the self proper of the actor coincides with the part * In comedy.

758 Phenomenology of Mind he impersonates, just as the onlooker is perfectly at home in what is represented before him, and sees himself playing in the drama before him. What this self-consciousness beholds is that that, which assumes the form of essentiality as against self-consciousness, is resolved and dissolved within its thought, its existence and action, and is quite at its mercy.

It is the return of everything universal into certainty of self, a certainty which, in consequence, is this complete loss of fear of everything strange and ahen, and complete loss of substantial reahty on the part of what is ahen and external. Such certainty is a state of spiritual good health and of self-abandonment thereto, on the part of consciousness, in a way that, outside this kind of comedy, is not to be found anywhere.* * Cp. Hegel's Aesthetik, W S\., X., 3, 560.