Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

540 Phenomenology oj Mmd is outside every relation, and has a being all its own ; in another each takes up an attitude towards the concrete actual world standing in antithesis to pure consciousness ; while in the third form each is related to the other inside pure consciousness. In the case of belief the aspect of complete being, of being in-and-for-itself, is its absolute object, whose content and character we have already come to know.

For it lies in the very notion of belief that this object is nothing else than the real world lifted into the universality of pure consciousness. The articulation of this world, therefore, constitutes the organisation belonging to pure universality also, except that the parts in the latter case do not alienate one another when spiritualised, but are complete realities all by themselves, are spirits* returned into themselves and self-contained.

The process of their transition from one into the other is, therefore, only for us [who are analysing the process] an ahenation of the characteristic nature in which their distinction lies, and only for us, the i<}» observers, does it constitute a necessary series; for belief, however, their distinction is a static diversity, and their movement simply a historical fact.

To deal shortly with the external character of their form : as in the world of culture state-power or the good was primary, so here the first and foremost moment is Absolute Being, spirit absolutely self-contained, so far as it is simple eternal substance.!

But in the process of realising its constitutive notion, which consists in being spirit, that substance passes over into * The ''persons" of the "Trinity.'' t God transcendent, God as Suhstance.

Belief and Pure Insight 541 a form where it exists for an other ; its self-identity becomes actual Absolute Being, actualised in self-sacrifice ; it becomes a self, but a self that is transitory and passes away.* Hence the third stage is the return of self thus alienated, the substance thus abased into its first primal simplicity of nature.

Only when this is done is spirit presented and manifested as spirit, f These distinct ultimate Realities, when brought back by thought into self out of the flux of the actual world, are changeless, eternal spirits, whose being lies in thinking the unity which they constitute.

While thus torn away from self-consciousness, these Realities all the same lay hold on it; for if the Ultimate Reality were to be fixed and unmoved in the form of the first bare and simple substance, it would remain alien to self-consciousness.

But the laying aside, the " emptying,"' of this substance, and afterwards its spirit, involves the element of concrete actuality, and thereby participates in the believing self-consciousness, or the believing attitude of consciousness belongs to the real world.

According to this second condition, the believing type of consciousness partly finds its actuality in the real world of culture, and constitutes its spirit and its existence, which have been described ; partly, however, behef takes up an attitude of opposition to this its own actuality, looks on this as something vain, and is the process of cancelling and abohshing it.

This process does not consist in the believing consciousness having ingenious views about the perverted condition of that reahty ; for it is bare and simple * The God-man, Christ. t God as Absolute Spirit and Subject.

542 Phenomenology of Mind consciousness, which reckons esprit and wit as something vain and empty, because this still has the real world for its purpose. On the contrary, in opposition to its placid realm of thought stands concrete actuahty as a soulless form of existence, which on that account 3 <] I has to be overcome in external fashion.

This obedience through service and rewards, by cancelHng sense-knowledge and action, brings out the consciousness of unity with the self-complete and self-existing Being, though not in the sense of an actual perceived unity. This service is merely the incessant process of producing the sense of unity, a process that never completely reaches its goal in the actual present.

The religious communion no doubt does so, for it is universal self-consciousness. But for the individual self-consciousness the realm of pure thought necessarily remains something away beyond its sphere of reality ; or, again, since this remote region by the emptying, the *'kenosis," of the eternal Being, has entered the sphere of actuality, its ,<yu f^ ' actuality is sensuous, non-conceptual.

But one sensuous actuahty is ever indifferent and external to another, and what hes beyond has thus only received the further character of remoteness in space and time. The essential notion, however, — the concrete actuality of spirit directly present to itself — remains for belief an inner principle, which is all and effects all, but never itself comes to the light.

In the case of pure insight, however, the principle, the essential notion {Begriff), is alone the real ; and this third aspect of belief — that of being an object for pure insight — is the specific relation in which the notion here appears. Pure insight itself has similarly to be considered partly by itself {an und für sich), partly in re-