Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

500 Phenomenology of Mind of the whole, in the first instance as regards the way they are presented qua thoughts, qua essential inherent entities falling within pure consciousness, and also secondly as regards the way they appear as objective reahties in concrete conscious life.

In the prst form, the simplicity of content found in pure consciousness, the real is the Good, the self-identical, immediate, unchanging, and primal nature of every consciousness, the independent spiritual power inherent in its essence, alongside which the activity of the mere self-existent consciousness is only by-play.

Its other is the passive spiritual being, the universal so far as it parts with its own claims, and lets individuals get in it the consciousness of their particular existence ; it is a state of nothingness, a being that is null and void, the Bad.

This absolute break-up of the real into these disjecta membra is itself a permanent condition; while the first member is the foundation, startingpoint, and result of individuals, which are there purely universal, the second member, on the other hand, is a being partly sacrificing itself for another, and, on that very account, is partly their incessant return to self qua individual, and their constant development of a separate being of their own.

But, secondly, these bare ideas of Good and Bad are similarly and immediately alienated from one another ; they are actual, and in actual consciousness appear as moments that are objective. In this sense the first state of being is the Power of the State, the second its Resources or Wealth.

The state-power is the simple spiritual substance, as well as the achievement of all, the absolutely accomplished fact, wherein individuals find their essential nature expressed, and where their

Culture and its S flier e of Reality 501 particular existence is simply and solely a consciousness of their own universality. It is likewise the achievement and simple result from which the sense of its having been their doing has vanished : it stands as the absolute basis of all their action, where all their action securely subsists.

This simple pervading substance of their life, owing to its thus determining their unalterable self -identity, has the nature of objective ''^a being, and hence only stands in relation to and exists for '' another. It is thus, if so facto, inherently the opposite of itself — Wealth or Resources.

Although wealth is something passive, is nothingness, it is likewise a universal spiritual entity, the continuously created result of the labour and action of all, just as it is again dissipated into the enjoyment of all.

In enjoyment each individuality no doubt becomes aware of self-existence, aware of itself as particular; but this enjoyment is itself the result of universal action, just as, reciprocally, wealth calls forth universal labour, and produces enjoyment for all. The actual has through and through the spiritual significance of being directly universal.

Each individual doubtless thinks he is acting in his own interests when getting this enjoyment ; for this is the aspect in which he gets the sense of being something on his own account, and for that reason he does not take it to be something spiritual. Yet looked at even in external fashion, it becomes manifest that in his own enjoyment each gives enjoyment to all, in his own labour each works for all as well as for himself, and all for him.

His self-existence is, therefore, inherently universal, and self-interest is merely a supposition that cannot get the length of making concrete and actual what it means or sup-

502 Phenomenology of Mind poses, viz. to do something that is not to further the good of all. Thus, then, in these two spiritual potencies selfconsciousness finds its own substance, content, and purpose ; it has there a direct intuitive consciousness of its twofold nature ; in one it sees what it is inherently in itself, in the other what it is exphcitly for itself.

At the same time qua spirit, it is the negative unity, uniting the subsistence of these potencies with the separation of individuahty from the universal, or that of reality from the self. Dominion and wealth are, therefore, before the individual as objects he is aware of, i.e. as objects from which he knows himself to be detached and between which he thinks he can choose, or even decUne to choose altogether.

In the form of this detached bare consciousness he stands over against the essential reality as one which is merely there for him. He then has the reality qua essential reahty within 3i3 itself. In this bare consciousness the moments of the substance are taken to be not state-power and wealth, but thoughts, the thoughts of Good and Bad.

But further, self-consciousness is a relation of his pure consciousness to his actual consciousness, of what is thought to the objective being; it is essentially Judgment. What is Good and what is Bad has aheady been brought out in the case of the two aspects of actual reahty by determining what the aspects primarily are; the one is statepower, the other wealth.

But this first judgment, this first distinction of content, cannot be looked at as a "spiritual" judgment; for in that first judgment the one side has been characterised as only the inherently existing or positive, and the other side as only the explicit self- existent and negative. But qua