Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

786 Phenomenology of Mind tions, is capable, an effort which, since it dispenses with the notion, remains a fruitless struggle. The ahenation of the Divine Nature is thus set up in its double- sided form : the self of Spirit, and its simple thought, are the two moments whose absolute unity is V Q, '2 Spirit itself.

Its ahenation with itself consists in the two falhng apart from each other, and in the one having an unequal value as against the other. This disparateness is, therefore, twofold in character, and two connections arise, which have in common the moments just given. In the one, the Divine Being stands for what is essential, while natural existence and the self are unessential and are to be cancelled.

In the other, on the contrary, it is self-existence which passes for what is essential and the Divine pure and simple for unessential. Their mediating, though empty ground is existence in general, the bare community of their two moments. The dissolution of this opposition does not take effect through the struggle between the two elements, which are represented as separate and independent Beings.

Just in virtue of their independence each must inherently, through its own notion, dissolve itself in itself. The struggle takes place first in that quarter where both cease to be this mixture of thought and independent existence, and confront each other merely as thoughts.

For in that case, being determinate notions, they essentially exist merely in the relation of opposition; qua independent, on the other hand, they have their essential nature outside opposition; their movement is thus free, self-determined, and pecuhar to themselves. Just as the movement, then, of both is inherently movement because it has to be regarded in themselves, it is set going only by that element of

Revealed Religion 787 the two which has the character of being inherentlyessential as contrasted with the other. This is represented as a spontaneous action ; but the necessity for its self-abandonment hes in the notion that what is inherently essential, and gets this specific character merely through opposition, has just on that account no real independent subsistence.

Therefore that element which has for its essence, not independent selfexistence, but simple being, is what empties and abandons itself, gives itself unto death, and so reconciles Absolute Being with its own self. For in this process it manifests itself as spirit: the abstract Being is estranged from itself, it has natural existence and actual individual reahty.

This its otherness, or its being sensuously present, is taken back again by the second process of self-abandonment, of becoming "other," and is affirmed as superseded, as universal.

Thereby the Divine Being has come to itself in the sphere of the sensuous present; the immediate existence of actual reahty has ceased to be something ahen or external to the Divine, by being sublated, by its becoming universal : this death of immediacy is therefore its rising anew as Spirit. When the self-conscious Being cancels and transcends its immediate present, it is universal selfconsciousness.

This notion of the transcended individual self which is Absolute Being, immediately expresses therefore the estabHshment of a commimion which, while hitherto having its abode in the sphere of pictorial presentation, now returns into itself as the Self : and Spirit thus passes from the second element constituting it, — figurative presentation — and goes over to the third — self -consciousness as such. If we further consider the kind of procedure that pre-

788 Phenomenology of Mind sentative thinking adopts as it goes along, we find in the first place the expression that the Divine Being "puts on'' human nature.

Here it is eo ipso asserted that imphcitly and inherently the two are not separate : just as in the statement, that the Divine Being from the beginning empties Itself of Itself, that its objective existence is self-absorbed, centres in Itself and becomes evil, it is not asserted but imphed that 'per se this evil existence is not something alien to the Divine nature.

Absolute Being would be merely an empty name if in very truth there were any other being external to it, if there were an absolute " fall " from it. The aspect of self-centredness, self-absorption, really constitutes the essential moment of the self of Spirit.

That this self-centredness, whence primarily comes its reahty, belongs to the Divine Being — while this is for us a notion, and so as far as it is a notion, — appears to presentative thinking as an inconceivable historical fact. The inherent and essential nature assumes for figurative thought the form of a bare objective fact external and indifferent to God.

The thought, however, that those apparently mutually repugnant moments, absolute Being and self-existent Self, are not inseparable, comes also before this figurative way of thinking (since it does possess the real content), but that thought appears afterwards, in the form that the Divine Being empties Itself of Itself and is made flesh.

This figurative idea, which in this way is still immediate and hence not spiritual, i.e. it takes the human form assumed by the Divine to be merely in the first instance a particular form, not yet a universal form — becomes spiritual for this consciousness in the process whereby God, who has assumed shape and form, surrenders again His external, His immediate