Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Culture and its S'phere of Reality 515 and whose self-existence is not yet done away with, the self-will that remains always in reserve. These two moments into which the extremes are refined, and which, therefore, find expression in language, are the abstract universal, which is called the "universal best," and the pure self which by rendering service abrogated the life of absorption in the manifold variety of existence.

Both in principle are the same ; for pure self is just the abstract universal, and hence their unity acts as their mediating term. But the self is, to begin with, actual only in consciousness as one extreme, while the inherent nature {Ansich) is actuahsed in state-authority as the other extreme.

That state-power not merely in the form of honour but in reality should be transferred to it, is lacking in the case of consciousness; while in the case of state-authority there is lacking the fact that it was obeyed not merely as a so-called universal best, but as will, in other words, as state-power which is the self regulating and deciding.

The unity of the principle in which statepower still remains, and into which consciousness has been refined, becomes real in this mediating process, and this exists qua mediating term in the simple form of speech. All the same, the aspects of this unity are not yet present in the form of two selves as selves ; for state-power comes first to be inspired with active self-hood.

This language is, therefore, not yet spiritual existence in the sense in which spirit completely knows and expresses itself. Nobihty of consciousness, because the extreme form of self, assumes the role of creating the language by which the separate factors related are formed into active spiritual wholes. The heroism of dumb service

516 Phenomenology of Mind passes into the heroism of flattery.

This reflection of service in express language constitutes the selfconscious self-disintegrating mediating term, and reflects back into itself not only its own special extreme, but reflects the extreme of universal power back into this self too, and makes that power, which is at first implicit, into an independent self-existence, and gives it the individualistic form of self-consciousness.

Through this process the indwelling spirit of this state-power 3y3 comes into existence — that of an unlimited monarch. It is unlimited ; the language, of flattery raises power into transparent, clearly-acknowledged universality; this moment being the product of language, of transparent spiritualised existence, is a purified form of self-identity.

It is a monarch; for flattering language likewise puts individualistic self-consciousness on its pinnacle; what conscious nobility abandons as regards this aspect of pure spiritual unity is the pure essential natiu-e of its thought, its ego itself. The naked particularity of its ego, which otherwise is only imagined, flattery brings out more definitely into relief as an actual existence, by giving the monarch a proper name.

For it is in the name alone that the distinction of the individual from every one else is not imagined but is actually made by all. By having a name the individual passes for a pure individual not merely in his own consciousness of himself, but in the consciousness of all.

By its name, then, the monarch becomes absolutely detached from every one, exclusive and solitary, and in virtue of it is unique as an atom that cannot commute any part of its essential nature, and has nothing like itself. This name is thus its reflection into itself, or is the actual reality

Culture and its Sphere of Reality 517 which universal power has inherently within itself : through the name the power is the monarch.* Conversely he, this particular individual, thereby knows himself, this individual self, to be universal power, knows that the nobles not only are ready and prepared for the service of the state-authority, but are grouped as an ornamental setting round the throne, and that they are for ever telHng him who sits thereon what he is.

The language of their professed praise is in this way the spirit that unites together the two extremes in the case of state-power itself. This language reflects in itself the abstract power and gives to it the moment peculiar to the other extreme, an isolated self of its own, willing and deciding on its own account, and consequently gives it self-conscious existence.

Or again, by that means this self-conscious particular being comes to be aware of itself for certain as the supreme authority. This power is the central focal self into which, through relinquishing their own inner certainty of self, the many separate centres of self- j7/^ hood are fused together into one.

Since, however, this proper spirit of state-power subsists by getting its realisation and its noiu'ishment from the homage of action and thought rendered by the nobility, it is a form of independence in internal self-estrangement. The noble, the extreme form of self-existence, keeps back the other extreme of actual universahty, and keeps it back for the universahty of thought which was relinquished.

The power of the state has passed over to and fallen upon the noble. It falls to the noble primarily to make the state- * Cp. " L'etat c'est moi. "