Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

530 Phenomenology of Mind quite isolated and particular, merely an esfece, a sort of thing. And to represent the existence of the good and the noble as an isolated particular anecdote, whether fictitious or true, is the bitterest thing that can be said about it.

Finally, should the naive mind require this entire sphere of perversion to be dissolved and broken up, it cannot ask the individual to withdraw out of it, for even Diogenes in his tub [with his pretence of withdrawal] is under the sway of that perversion ; and to ask this of the particular individual is to ask him to do precisely what is taken to be bad, viz. to care for the self as particular.

But if the demand to withdraw is directed at the universal individual, it cannot mean that reason must again give up the culture and development of spiritual conscious life which has been reached, that reason should let the extensive riches of its moments sink back into the naivete of natural emotion, and revert and approximate to the wild condition of the animal consciousness, which is also called the natural state of innocence.

On the contrary, the demand for this dissolution when addressed to the spirit reahsed in culture can only mean that it must qua spirit return out of its confusion into itself, and win for itself a still higher level of conscious life. In point of fact, however, spirit has already accomplished this result.

To be conscious of its own distraught and torn condition and to express itself accordingly, — this is to pour scornful laughter on its existence, on the confusion pervading the whole and on itself as well : it is at the same time this whole confusion dying away and yet apprehending itself to be doing so. This self-apprehending vanity of all reality and of every

Culture and its Sphere of Reality 531 definite principle reflects the real world into itself in a twofold form : — in the particular self of consciousness qua particular, and in the pure imiversahty of consciousness, in thought.

According to the one aspect, mind thus come to itself has directed its gaze into the world of actual reahty, and makes that reality its own .'i^i^ purpose and its immediate content : from the other side, its gaze is in part turned solely on itself and against that world of reality, in part turned away from it towards heaven, and its object is the region beyond the world.

In respect of that return into self the vanity of all things is its own peculiar vanity, it is itself vain. It is self existing for its own sake, a self that knows not only how to sum up and chatter about everything, but with esprit and wit to hit off the contradiction that Hes in the heart of the all so solid seeming reality, and the fixed determinations which judgment sets up ; and that contradiction is their real truth.

Looked at formally it finds everything estranged from itself, self-existence is cut off from essential being {Ansich), what is intended and the purpose are separated from real truth, and from both again existence for another, what is ostensibly put forward is cut ofi from the proper meaning, the real fact, the true intention.

It thus knows exactly how to put each moment in antithesis to every other, knows in short how to express correctly the perversion that dominates all of them : it knows better than each what each is, no matter how it is constituted. Since it apprehends what is substantial from the side of that disunion and contradiction of elements combined within its nature, but not from the side of this union itself, it under-

532 Phenomenology of Mind stands very well how to pass judgment on this substantial reality, but has lost the capacity of truly grasping it. This vanity needs at the same time the vanity of all things, in order to get from them consciousness of itself ; it therefore itself creates this vanity, and is the soul that supports it.

State-power and wealth are the supreme purposes of its strenuous exertion, it is aware that through renunciation and sacrifice it is moulded into universal shape, that it attains universality, and in possessing universality finds general recognition and acceptance : state-power and wealth are the real and actually acknowledged sources of power.

But its gaining acceptance thus is itself vain, and just by the fact that it gets the mastery over them it knows them to be not real by themselves, knows rather itself to be the power within them, and them to be vain and empty.

That in possessing them it thus itself is able to stand apart from and outside them, — this is what it expresses in spirited languages ; and to express this is, therefore, 3 S b its supreme interest, and the true meaning of the whole process.

In such utterance this self, — in the form of a pure self not associated with or bound by determinations derived either from reality or thought, — comes consciously to be a spiritual entity having a truly universal significance and value. It is the condition in which the nature of all relationships is rent asunder, and it is the conscious rending of them all.

But only by selfconsciousness being roused to revolt does it know its own peculiar torn and shattered condition ; and in its knowing this it has if so facto risen above that condition. In that state of self-conscious vanity all substantial content comes to have a negative significance, which can no