Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

The Struggle of EnligJitefurtwnt vnth Superstition 559 consciousness believes in it, trusts in it, and seeks to make it favourably disposed towards itself ; i.e. that consciousness therein sees its pure ultimate Being just as much as its own particular and universal individuahty, and creates by its own action this unity of itself with its essential reality.

In other words, it directly declares that to be the very inmost nature of consciousness which it declares to be something alien to consciousness. How, then, can it possibly speak about deception and delusion ? By the fact that it directly expresses about belief the very opposite of what it asserts of beHef, it ipso facto really reveals itself to be the transparent lie.

How are deception and delusion to take place, where consciousness in its very truth has directly and immediately the certitude of itself, where it possesses itself in its object, since it just as much finds as produces itself there ? The distinction no longer exists, even in words.

When the general question has been raised, whether it is permissible to delude a people, the answer, as a fact, had to be that the question is pointless, because it is impossible to deceive a people in this matter.

Brass in place of gold, counterfeit instead of genuine coin may doubtless have been disposed of in many an instance ; many a one has stuck to it that a battle lost was a battle won; and lies of all sorts about things of sense and particular events have been credited for a time ; but in the knowledge of that inmost reaUty where consciousness finds the direct certainty of its own self, the idea of delusion is entirely baseless. Let us see further how belief finds enlightenment in the case of the different moments of its own con-

560 Phenomenology oj Mind scious experience, to which the view just noted referred in the first instance only in a general way.

These moments are pm'e thought, or, qua object, absolute Being fer se {an und für sich) ; then its relation, as a form of knowledge, to absolute Being, the ultimate basis of its belief ; and finally its relation to absolute Being in its acts, i.e. its and " worship " service.* Just as pure insight has misconceived itself in belief as a whole and denied its own nature, we shall find it taking up in these moments, too, an attitude similarly perverted and distorted.

Pure insight assumes towards the absolute Reality of the believing mind a negative attitude.

This Being is pure thought, and pure thought is established within itself as object or as the true Being; in the believing consciousness this immanent and essential reality of thought preserves at the same time for the self-existent consciousness the form of objectivity, but merely the empty form ; it exists in the character of something consciously "presented.'' To pure insight, however, since it is pure consciousness in its aspect of self existing for itself, this other appears as something negative of self-consciousness.

This might, again, be taken either as the pure essential reality of thought, or even as the being found in sense-experience, the object of sense-certainty. But since it is at the same time for the self, and this self, qua self which has an object, is an actual consciousness, for insight the peculiar l^ih object as such is an ordinary existing thing of sense. This its object appears before it when it examines the ideas found in belief. It condemns these ideas * Enlightenment attacks the object and the Urns of belief, and the mode of worship.

The Struggle of EnligUenment with Superstition 561 and in doing so condemns its own proper object. It really commits a wrong, however, against belief in so apprehending the object of belief as if it were its own object.

According to this account it states regarding belief that its absolute Being is a piece of stone, a block of wood, having eyes and seeing not, or again some bread-paste, which is obtained from grain grown on the field and transformed by men and set aside for that purpose; or in whatever other ways belief anthromorphoses absolute Being, making it objective and representable.

Enlightenment, proclaiming itself as the pure and true, here turns what is held to be eternal hfe and holy spirit into a concrete passing thing of sense, and contaminates it with the inherent nothingness of sense- experience— with an aspect and point of view which is not to be found at all in the worshipping attitude of belief, so that enhghtenment simply calumniates it by speaking of such an aspect.

What behef reveres is for behef assuredly neither stone nor wood, nor bread-dough, nor any other sort of thing of time and sense.

If enlightenment thinks it worth while to say its object all the same is this as well, or even that belief is this in its inherent nature and in truth, then behef also knows that something which it is " as well," but for it this, something lies outside its worship ; on the other hand, however, belief does not in general look on such things as stones, etc., as having an inherent and essential being at all, the Absolute Reality of pure thought is for it alone something inherent.

The second moment is the relation of belief as a form of knowing consciousness to this ultimate Reality. As pure thinking consciousness belief has this Reality VOL. II.— L.