Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Revealed Beligion 771 abstraction, which is pure thought and hence the pure singleness of self, and immediacy or objective being, on account of its pure simphcity. What is called sense-consciousness is also just this pure abstraction ; it is this kind of thought for which being is the immediate. The lowest is thus at the same time the highest ; the revelation which has appeared entirely on the surface is just therein the deepest that can be made.

That the Supreme Being is seen, heard, etc., as an existent self-consciousness, — this is, in very truth, the cuhnination and consummation of its notion. And through this consummation, the Divine Being is given to sense, exists immediately, in its character as Divine Being. This immediate existence is at the same time not solely and simply immediate consciousness ; it is religious consciousness.

This immediacy means not only an existent self-consciousness, but also the purely thought-constituted or Absolute Being; and these meanings are inseparable. What we [the philosophers] are conscious of in our conception, — that objective ^rsx, being is ultimate essence, — is the same as what the rehgious consciousness is aware of.

This unity of being and essence, of thought which is immediately existence, is immediate knowledge on the part of this rehgious consciousness just as it is the inner thought or the mediated reflective knowledge of this consciousness. For this unity of being and thought is self-consciousness and actually exists; in other words, the thought-constituted unity has at the same time this concrete shape and form of what it is.

God, then, is here revealed, as He is ; He actually exists as He is in Himself ; He is real as Spirit. God is attainable in pure speculative know-

772 Phenomenology of Mind ledge alone, and only is in that knowledge, and is merely that knowledge itself, for He is spirit ; and this speculative knowledge is the knowledge furnished by revealed religion. That knowledge knows God to be thought, or pure Essence ; and knows this thought as actual being and as real existence, and existence as the negativity, the reflexion, of itself, hence as Self, a particular " this," and a universal self.

It is just this that revealed rehgion knows. The hopes and expectations of preceding ages pressed forward to, and were solely directed towards this revelation, the vision of what Absolute Being is, and the discovery of themselves therein. This joy, the joy of seeing itself in Absolute Benig, becomes reahsed in self-consciousness, and seizes the whole world.

For the Absolute is Spirit, it is the simple movement of those pure abstract moments, which expresses just this — that Ultimate Reahty is then eo ipso known as Spirit when it is seen and beheld as immediate self-consciousness. This conception of spirit knowing itself to be spirit, is still the immediate notion ; it is not yet developed. The ultimate Being is spirit ; in other words, it has appeared, it is revealed.

This first revelation is itself immediate ; but the immediacy is likewise thought, or pure mediation, and must therefore exhibit and set forth this moment in the sphere of immediacy as such. Looking at this more precisely, spirit, when selfconsciousness is immediate, is a particular '' this '' ; it is an individual self-consciousness set up in contrast to the universal self-consciousness.

It is a one, a repelHng and excluding unit, which appears to that consciousness, for which it exists, in the impervious form of a sensuous other, an unreduced opposite in the sphere of sense.

Revealed Religion 773 This other does not yet know spirit to be its own ; in other words, spirit, in its form as an individual self, does not yet exist as equally universal self, as all self. Or again, the shape it assumes has not as yet the form of the notion, i.e. of the universal self, of the self which in its immediate actual reahty is at once transcended, is thought, universahty, without losing its reahty in this universahty.

The prehminary and similarly immediate form of this universahty is, however, not at once the form of thought itself, of the notion as notion ; it is the universahty of actual reahty, it is the " allness," the collective totahty, of the selves, and is the elevation of existence into the sphere of presentative or figurative thought {Vorstellung) ; just as in general, to take a concrete example, the " this " of sense, when transcended, is first of all the "thing" of "perception," and is not yet the "universal" of ''miderstanding.

This individual human being, then, which Absolute Being is revealed to be, goes through in its own case as an individual the process found in sense existence. He is the immediately present God ; in consequence His being passes over into His having been. Consciousness, for which God is thus sensuously present, ceases to see Him, to hear Him : it has seen Him, it has heard Him.

And it is by the mere fact that it has seen and heard Him, that it first becomes itself spiritual consciousness* ; or, in other words. He has now arisen in the hfe of Spirit, as He formerly rose before consciousness as an object existing in the sphere of sense. For, a consciousness which sees and hears Him by sense, is one which is * cp. " He that has seen me has seen the Father " (John xiv.). " If I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you " {ibid. xvi.).