Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

518 Phenomenology of Mind authority truly effective : in his existence as a self on his own account, that authority ceases to be the inert being it appeared to be qua extreme of abstract and merely implicit reality. Looked at "per se, state-power reflected back into itself, or becoming spiritual, means nothing else than that it has come to be a moment of self-conscious Hfe, i.e. is only by being sublated.

Consequently it is now the real in the sense of something whose spiritual meaning lies in being sacrificed and squandered ; it exists in the sense of wealth.

It continues, no doubt, to subsist at the same time as a form of reaHty over against wealth, into which in principle it is forever passing ; but it is a reality, whose inherent principle is this very process of passing over — owing to the service and the reverence rendered to it, and by which it arises — into its opposite, into the condition of relinquishing its power.

Thus from its point of view {Fürsich) the special and pecuhar self, which constitutes its will, becomes, by the self-abasement of the nobility, a universal that renounces itself, becomes completely an isolated particular, a mere accident, which is the prey of every stronger will. What remains to it of the universally acknowledged and incommunicable independence is the empty name.

While, then, the nobility may adopt the attitude of something that can in a similar way stand related to the universal power, its true nature lies rather in retaining its own separateness of being when rendering its service, but, in what is properly the abnegation of its person- Z'l^ aUty, its true being Hes in actually cancelling and rending in pieces the universal substance. Its spirit is the attitude of thoroughgoing discordance (inequahty) :

Culture and its Sphere of Reality 519 on one side it retains its own will in the honour it receives, on the other hand it gives up its will : in part it alienates its inner nature from itself, and arrives at the extreme of discordance with itself, in part it subdues the universal substance to itself, and puts this entirely at variance with itself.

It is obvious that, as a result, its own specific nature, which kept it distinct from the so-called base type of mind, disappears, and with that this latter type of mind too. The base type has gained its end, that of subordinating universal power to self-centred isolation of self.

Endowed in this way with universal power, selfconsciousness exists in the form of universal beneficence : or, from another point of view, universal power is wealth that again is itself an object for consciousness. For wealth is here taken to be the universal put in subjection, which, however, through this first transcendence, is not yet absolutely returned into the self.

Self has not as yet its self as such for object, but the universal essential reahty in a state of sublation.

Since this object has first come into being, the relation of consciousness towards it is immediate, and consciousness has thus not yet set forth its want of congruity with this object : we have here the nobility preserving its own self-centred existence in the universal that has become non-essential, and hence acknowledging the object and feehng grateful to its benefactor.

Wealth has within it from the first the aspect of selfexistence {Fürsichsein). It is not the self-less universal of state-power, or the unconstrained simphcity of the natural life of spirit ; it is state-power as holding its own by effort of will in opposition to a will that wants to get the mastery over it and get enjoyment out of it.

520 Phenomenology of Mind But since wealth has merely the form of being essen- Äa* Vfo^»*^, tial, this one-sided self-existent Hfe, — which has no being in itself, which is rather the sublation of inherent being, — is the retm:n of the individual into himself to find no essential reaHty in his enjoyment.

It thus itself 3rV> needs to be given animation ; and its reflective process of bringing this about consists in its becoming something real in itself as well as for itself, instead of being merely for itself ; wealth, which is the sublated essential reality, has to become the essentially real. In this way it preserves its own spiritual principle in itself.

It will be sufficient here to describe the content of this process since we have already explained at length its form. Nobility, then, stands here in relation not to the object in the general sense of something essential ; what is alien to it is self-existence itself.

It finds itself face to face with its own self as such in a state of alienation, as an objective solid actuality which it has to take from the hands of another self-centred being, another equally fixed and solid entity.

Its object is self-existence, i.e. its own being : but by being an object this is at the same time if so facto an alien reality, which is a self-centred being on its own account, has a will of its own ; i.e. it sees its self under the power of an alien will on which it depends for the concession of its self.

From each particular aspect self-consciousness can abstract, and for that reason, even when under an obligation to one of these aspects, retains the recognition and inherent validity of self-consciousness as an independent reality. Here, however, it finds that, as regards its own ego, its own proper and