Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

ReDealed Religion 789 existence, and returns to His inner Being. The Divine Being is then Spirit when it is reflected into itself. The reconcihation of the Divine Being with its antithesis as a whole, and, specifically, with the thought of this other — evil — is thus presented here in a figurative way.

When this reconciliation is expressed conceptually, by saying it consists in the fact that evil is inherently the same as what goodness is, or again that the Divine Being is the same as natm^e in its entire extent, just as nature separated from God is simply nothingness, — then this must be looked at as an unspiritual mode of expression which is bound to give rise to misunderstandings.

When evil is the same as goodness, then evil is just not evil nor goodness good ; on the contrary, both are really done away with — evil in general, self-centred self-existence, and goodness, selfless simple abstraction.

Since in this way they are both expressed in terms of their notion, the unity of the two is at once apparent ; for self-centred self-existence is simple knowledge ; and what is self-less simple abstraction is as much pure self-existence centred within itself.

Hence, if it must be said that good and evil in their conception, i.e., so far as they are 7iot good and evil, are the same, just as certainly it must be said that they are not the same, but absolutely different ; for simple selfexistence, or again pure knowledge, is equally pure negativity or per se absolute distinction.

It is only these two propositions that make the whole complete; and when the first is asserted and asseverated, it must be met and opposed by insisting on the other with immovable obstinacy. Since both are equally right, they are both equally wrong, and their wrong consists in taking such abstract forms as " the same "

790 Phenomenology of Mind and " not the same," " identity " and " non-identity," to be something true, fixed, real, and in resting on them. Neither the one nor the other has truth ; their truth is just their movement, the process in which simple sameness is abstraction and thus absolute distinction, while this again, being distinction per se, is distinguished from itself and so is self-identity.

Precisely this is what we have in the case of the sameness of the Divine Being and Nature in general and human nature in particular : the former is Nature so far as it is not essentially Being; Nature is divine in its essential Being.

But it is in Spirit that we find both abstract aspects affirmed as they truly are, viz. as cancelled and preserved at once : and this way of affirming them cannot be expressed by the judgment, by the soulless word " is," the copula of the judgment.

In the same way Nature is nothing outside its essential Being [God] ; but this nothing itself is all the same ; it is absolute abstraction, pure thought or self-centredness, and with its moment of opposition to spiritual unity it is the principle of Evil.

The difficulty people find in these conceptions is due solely to sticking to the term " is," and forgetting the character of thought, where the moments as much are as they are not, — are the process which is Spirit. It is this spiritual unity, — unity where the distinctions are merely in the form of moments, or are transcended and maintained — which became known to presentative thinking in that atoning reconcihation spoken of above.

And since this unity is the universahty of self-consciousness, self-consciousness has ceased to be figurative or pictorial in its thinking; the process has turned back into it. Spirit thus takes up its position in the third element,

Revealed Religion 791 in universal self-consciousness : Spirit is its own community. The movement of this community being that of self-consciousness, which distinguishes itself from its figurative idea, consists in explicitly bringing out what has impHcitly become estabhshed. The dead Divine Man, or Human God, is implicitly universal selfconsciousness ; he has to become explicitly so for this self - consciousness. Or, since this self - consciousness constitutes one side of the opposition involved in ideal presentation, viz. the side of evil, which takes natural existence and individual self-existence to be the essential reality — this aspect, which is presented as independent, and not yet as a moment, has, on account of its independence, to raise itself in and for itself, to the level of Spirit ; it has to reveal the process of Spirit in this aspect. This particular self-consciousness is Spirit in natural form, natural spirit : self has to withdraw from this natural existence and enter into itself, become selfcentred ; that means, it has to become evil. But this aspect is already per se evil : entering into itself consists, therefore, in persuading itself that natural existence is what is evil. By presentational picturethinking the world is supposed actually to become evil and be evil as an actual fact, and the atoning reconcilement of the Absolute Being is viewed as an actual existent phenomenon. By self-consciousness as such, however, this figurative presentation of the truth, as regards its form, is considered to be merely a moment that is already superseded and transcended ; for the self is the principle of negation, and hence knowledge — a knowledge which is a pure act of consciousness within itself. Tliis moment of the nega-

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