Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

780 Phenomenology of Mind not recognise the nature of pure self -consciousness.

In so far as the form of presentative thinking and that way of thinking by means of relationships derived from nature have to be transcended, and especially the method of taking the moments of the process, in which the hfe of Spirit consists, as isolated fixed immovable substances or subjects, instead of transient moments — this transcendence is to be looked at as a compulsion on the part of the notion, in the way we formerly pointed out when deahng with another aspect.* But since it is only an instinct, it mistakes its own real character, rejects the content along with the form, and, what comes to the same thing, degrades the content into a historical imaginative idea and an heirloom handed down by tradition.

In this way there is retained and preserved only what is purely external to the sphere of behef, and hence a Hfeless entity devoid of knowledge ; while the inner element in belief has passed away, because this would be the notion knowing itself as notion.

The Absolute Spirit, ideally presented in pure ultimate Being, is indeed not the abstract pure Being ; rather, just by the fact that this is merely a moment in the Hfe of Spirit, it is lowered to the level of constituent element. The representation of Spirit in this element, however, has inherently the same defect, as regards form, which ultimate Being as such has.

Ultimate Being is abstraction, and, therefore, the negative of its simpHcity, is an other : in the same way, Spirit in the element of ultimate Being is the form of simple imity, which, on that account, is essentially and at the same time a process of turning to otherness. Or, what is the same thing, the relation of the eternal * V. p. 775.

Revealed Religion 781 Being to its self -existence, its objective existence for Itself, is that of pure thought, a directly simple relation. In this simple beholding of itself in the Other, otherness is not as such set up independently ; it is distinction in the way distinction, in pure thought, is immediately no distinction — a recognition of Love, where lover and beloved are not in their very being opposed to each other at all.

Spirit, which is expressed in the element of pure thought, is essentially just this : not to be merely in that element, but to be concrete, actual ; for otherness, i.e. cancelhng and superseding pure conception, thoughtconstituted conception, hes in the very notion of Spirit.

The element of pure thought, because it is an abstract element, is itself rather the other of its own simphcity, and hence passes over into ideal presentation proper — the element where the moments of the pure notion at once preserve a substantial existence in opposition to each other and are subjects as well, which do not exist for a third thing in indifference towards each other, but being reflected into themselves, break away from one another, and stand confronting each other.

Merely eternal, or abstract Spirit, then, becomes an other to itself : it enters existence, and, in the first instance, enters immediate existence. It creates a World.

This "Creation"' is the word which pictorial presentative thought uses to convey the absolute movement which the notion itself goes through ; or to express the fact that the absolutely simple or pure thought, because it is abstract thought, is really the negative, and hence opposed to itself, the other of itself ; or because, to state the same in another way, what is put forward as ultimate Being is simple immediacy, bare objective existence, but qua immediacy or existence, is without

782 Phenomenology of Mind Self, and, lacking thus inwardness, is passive, or has a relative existence, exists for another. This relative existence is at the same time a world. Spirit, in the character of existing for another, is the midisturbed separate subsistence of those moments formerly enclosed within pure thought, is, therefore, the dissolution of their simple universaHty, and their dispersion into their own particularity.

The world, however, is not merely Spirit thus thrown ■^"** out and scattered in all its plenitude with an external order imposed on it ; for since Spirit is essentially simple Self, this self is Hkewise present therein. It is objectively existent spirit which is individual self, that has consciousness and distinguishes itself as other, as world, from itself.

In the way this individual self is thus immediately estabhshed at first, it is not yet conscious of being Spirit ; it thus does not exist as Spirit ; it may be called " innocent," but not strictly " good. In order that in fact it may be self and Spirit, it has first to become objectively an other to itself, in the same way that the Eternal being manifests itself as the process of being self-identical in its otherness.

Since this spirit is determined as only immediately existing, or dispersed in the diverse multiphcity of its conscious life, its becoming "other" means that knowledge is centred on itself, concentrates itself upon its subjective content.

Immediate existence turns into thought, or merely sense-consciousness turns round into consciousness of thought; and, moreover, because that thought has come from immediacy or is conditioned thought, it is not pure knowledge, but thought which contains otherness, and is, thus, the self-opposed thought of good and evil. Man is pictorially represented by the rehgious