Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Culture and its S'phere of Reality 521 peculiar actuality, it is outside itself and belongs to an other, finds its personality as such dependent on the chance personahty of another, on the accident of a moment, of an arbitrary caprice, or some other sort of irrelevant circumstance.

In the sphere of legal right, what lies in the power of the objective being appears as an incidental content, from which it is possible to make abstraction ; and the governing power possessed does not affect the self as such; rather this self is recognised. But here the self sees its self-certainty as such to be the most unreal thing of all, finds its pure personality to be absolutely without the character of personahty.

The sense of its gratitude is, therefore, a state in which it feels profoundly this condition of being utterly outcast, and feels also the deepest revolt as well.

Since the pure ego sees itself outside self, and torn in sunder, everything that gives continuity and universahty, everything that bears the name of law, good, and right, is thereby torn to pieces at the same time, and goes to wreck and ruin : all identity and concord break up, for what holds sway is the purest discord and disunion, what was absolutely essential is absolutely unessential, what has a being on its own account has its being outside itself : the pure ego itself is absolutely disintegrated.

Thus since this consciousness receives back from the sphere of wealth the objective form of being a separate self-existence, and cancels that objective character, it is in principle not only, like the preceding reflexion, not completed, but is consciously unsatisfied : the reflexion, since the self receives itself as an objective fact, is the immediate contradiction that has taken root in the pure ego as such. Qua self, however.

522 Phenomenology of Mind it at the same time ipso facto rises above this contradiction ; it is absolutely elastic, and again cancels this sublation of itself, repudiates this repudiation of itself, wherein its self-existence is made to be something alien to it, revolts against this acceptance of itself and in the very reception of itself is self-existent.

Since, then, the attitude of this type of consciousness is bound up with this condition of utter disintegration, the distinction constituting its spiritual nature — that of being nobility and opposed to baseness — falls away and both aspects are the same.

The spirit of well-doing that characterises the action of wealth may, fmther, be distinguished from that of the conscious life accepting the benefit it confers, and deserves special consideration. The spirit animating wealth had an unreal insubstantial independence; wealth was something to be given up.

By communicating what it has, however, it passes into something essential and inherent ; since it fulfils its nature in sacrificing itself, it cancels the aspect of particularity, of merely seeking enjoyment for one's own particular self, and, being thus sublated qua particular, the type of spirit here is universahty or essentially real. What it imparts, what it gives to others, is selfexistence.

It does not hand itself over, however, as a natural self- less object, as the frankly and freely offered condition of unconscious Ufe, but as self-conscious, as a reality keeping hold of itself : it is not Hke the power 3-7 g of an inorganic element which is felt by the consciousness receiving its force to be inherently transitory ; it is the power over self, a power aware that it is independent and voluntary, and knowing at the same time that what it dispenses becomes the self of some one else.

Culture and its Sphere of Reality 523 Wealth thus shares reprobation with its chentele ; but in place of revolt appears arrogance. For in one aspect it knows, as well as the self it benefits, that its self-existence is a matter of accident ; but itself is this accident in whose power personaHty is placed.

In this mood of arrogance — which thinks it has secured through a dole an ahen ego -nature, and thereby brought its inmost being into submission— it overlooks the secret rebellion of the other self : it overlooks the fact of all bonds being completely cast aside, overlooks this pure disintegration, in which, the self-identity of what exists for its own sake having become sheer internal discordance, all oneness and concord, all subsistence is rent asunder, and in which in consequence the thoughts and intentions of the benefactor are the first to be shattered.

It stands directly in front of this abyss, cleaving it to the innermost, this bottomless pit, where every soHd base and stay have vanished : and in the depths it sees nothing but a common thing, a display of whims on its part, a chance result of its own caprice. Its spirit consists in quite unreal imagining, in being superficiality forsaken of all true spiritual import.

Just as self-consciousness had its own manner of speech in deahng with state-power, in other words, just as spirit took the form of expressly and actually mediating between these two extremes, self-consciousness has also a mode of speech in dealing with wealth ; but still more when in revolt does it adopt a language of its own.

The form of utterance which supphes wealth with the sense of its own essential significance, and thereby makes it master of itself, is likewise the language of flattery, but of ignoble flattery ; for what it gives