Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

506 Phenomenology of Mind ways of judging as such ; to this end we have to apply the criterion akeady brought forward. The conscious relation where identity or agreement is found, is, according to this standard, the good ; that where want of agreement obtains, the bad. These two types of relation must henceforth be regarded as modes or forms of conscious existence.

Conscious life, through taking up a different kind of relation, thereby becomes itself characterised as different, comes to be itself good or bad.

It is not simply distinct in virtue of the fact that it took as its constitutive principle either existence for itself, or mere being in itself ; for both are equally essential moments of its life : that dual way of judging, above discussed, presented those principles as separated, and contained, therefore, merely abstract ways of judging.

Concrete actual conscious life has 31 fc within it both principles, and the distinction between them falls solely within its own nature, viz. inside the relation of itself to the real. This relation takes opposite forms ; in the one there is an active attitude towards state-power and wealth as to something with which it is in accord, in the other it is related to these realities as to something with which it is at variance.

A conscious Hfe which finds itself at one with them has the attribute of Nobility. In the case of the public authority of the state, it beholds what is in accord with itself, and sees that it has there its own nature pure and simple and the region for the exercise of its own powers, and takes up the position of open willing and obedient service in its interests, as well as that of inner reverence towards it. In the same way in the sphere of wealth, it sees that wealth secures for it the consciousness of self-existence, of

Culture and its Sphere of Reality 507 realising the other essential aspect of its nature : hence it looks upon wealth hkewise as something essential in relation to itself, acknowledges him from whence the enjoyment comes as a benefactor, and considers itself under a debt of obligation. The conscious life involved in the other relation, again, that of disagreement, has the attribute of Baseness.

It remains at variance with both those essential elements. It looks upon the authoritative power of the state as a chain, as something suppressing its separate existence for its own sake, and hence hates the ruler, obeys only with secret malice, and stands ever ready to burst out in rebelHon.

It sees, too, in wealth, by which it attains to the enjoyment of its own independent existence, merely something discordant, or out of harmony with its permanent nature ; since through wealth it only gets a sense of its particular isolated existence and a consciousness of passing enjoyment, this type of mind loves wealth, but despises it, and, with the disappearance of enjoyment, of what is inherently evanescent, regards its relation to the man of wealth as having ceased too.

These relations now express, in the first instance, a judgment, the determinate characterisation of what both those facts [state-power and wealth] are as objects for consciousness ; not as yet what they are in their complete objective nature {an und für sich).

The reflection which is presented in this judgment is partly at first for us [who are philosophising] an affirmation of the one characteristic along with the other, and hence is a simultaneous cancelling of both ; it is not yet the reflection of them for consciousness itself. Partly, again, they are at first immediate essential entities ; they have not become this nor is there in

5ÖÖ Phenomenology of Mind them consciousness of self : that for which they are is not yet their animating principle : they are predicates which are not yet themselves subject. On account of this separation, the entirety of the spiritual process of judgment also breaks asunder into two existent modes of consciousness, each of which has a one-sided character.

Now, just as at the outset the indifference of the two aspects in the process of selfestrangement — one of which was the inherent essential being of pure consciousness, viz. the determinate ideas of good and bad, the other their actual existence in the form of state-power and wealth — passed to the stage of being related the one to the other, passed to the level of judgment ; in the same way this external relation must be raised to the level of their inner unity, must become a relation of thought to actual reality.

In this way the spirit animating both the forms of judgment will make its appearance. This takes place when judgment passes into inference, becomes the mediating process in which the middle term necessitating and connecting both sides of the judgment is brought forward.

The noble type of consciousness, then, finds itself in the judgment related to state-power, in the sense that this power is indeed not a self as yet but at first is universal substance, in which however this form of mind feels its own essential nature to exist, is conscious of its own purpose and absolute content.

By taking up a positive relation to this substance, it assumes a negative attitude towards its own special purposes, its particular content and individual existence, and lets them disappear. This type of mind is the heroism of Service ; the virtue which sacrifices individual being