Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

470 Phenomenology of Mind part and the incomplete work, which steadily advances till the equilibrium between the two is attained. It is in the equal suppression of both sides that absolute right is first accomphshed, and the ethical substance, as the negative force devouring both sides, in other words omnipotent and righteous Destiny, makes its appearance.

If both powers are taken according to their specific content and its individualisation, we have the scene presented of a contest between them as individuated. On its formal side, this is the struggle of the ethical order and of self-consciousness with unconscious nature and a contingency due to this nature. The latter has a right as against the former, because this is only objective spirit, merely in immediate unity with its substance.

On the side of content, the struggle is the rupture of divine and human law. The youth goes forth from the unconscious life of the family and becomes the individuality of the community [i.e. Ruler].

But that he still shares the natural Hfe from which he has torn himself away, is seen in the fact that he emerges therefrom only to find his claim afiected by the contingency that there are two brothers * who with equal right take possession of the community ; t the inequality due to the one having been born earlier and the other later, an inequahty which is a natural difference, has no importance for them when they enter the ethical life of society.

But government, as the single soul, the self of the national spirit, does not admit of a duahty of individuality ; and in contrast to the ethical necessity of this unity, nature appears as by accident providing * Eteocles and Polynices : v. OMipus at Colonus. t viz. the throne of their Father ffidipus.

Guilt and Destiny 471 more than one. These two [brothers], therefore, become disunited ; and their equal right in regard to the power of the state is destructive to both, for they are equally wrong. Humanly considered, he has committed the crime who, not being in actual possession, seizes on the community, at the head of which the other stood.

While again he has right on his side who knew how to seize the other merely qua particular individual, detached from the community, and banish him, while thus powerless, out of the community ; he has merely laid hands on the individual as such, not the community, not the essential nature of human right.

The community, attacked and defended from a point of view which is merely particular, maintains itself ; and both brothers find their destruction reciprocally through one another. For individuality, which involves peril to the whole in the maintenance of its own selfexistence (Fürsichseyn), has thrust its ovv^n self out of the community, and is disintegrated in its own nature.

The community, however, will do honoiu: to the one who is found on its side ; the government, the reestablished singleness of the self of the community, will punish by depriving of the last honour him who already proclaimed its devastation on the walls of the city.

He who came to affront the highest spiritual form of conscious hfe, the spirit of the community, must be stripped of the honour of his entire and complete nature, the honour due to the spirit of the departed.* But if the universal thus lightly knocks off the highest point of its pyramid, and doubtless triumphs victoriously over the family, the rebellious principle * V, Antigone.

472 Phenomenology of Mind of individuation, it has thereby merely put itself into conflict with divine law, the self-conscious with the unconscious spirit. For the latter, this unconscious spirit, is the other essential power, and therefore the power undestroyed, but only insulted by the former. It finds, however, only a bloodless shade to lend it help towards actually carrying itself out in the face of that masterful and openly enunciated law.

Being the law of weakness and of darkness, it therefore gives way, to begin with, before law which has force and publicity ; for the strength of the former is effective in the nether realm, not on earth and in the light of day. But the actual and concrete, which has taken away from what is inward its honour and its power, has thereby consumed its own real nature.

The spirit which is manifest to the light of day has the roots of its power in the lower world : the certainty felt by a nation, a certainty of which it is sure and which makes itself assured, finds the truth of its oath binding all its members into one, solely in the mute unconscious substance of all, in the waters of forgetfulness.

In consequence, the fulfilment of the pubhc spirit turns round into its opposite, and learns that its supreme right is supreme wrong, its victory rather its own defeat. The slain, whose right is injured, knows, therefore, how to find means of vengeance which are of the same reahty and strength as the power at whose hands it has suffered.

These powers are other communities,* whose altars the dogs or birds defiled with the corpse of the dead, which is not raised into unconscious universality by being restored, as is its due, to the ultimate Individuum, the elemental * Refers to the attack of Argos agaiust Thebes : v. Antigone.