Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

562 Phenomenology of Mind immediately within itself. But pm*e consciousness is just as much a mediate relation of conscious certainty to truth, a relation constituting the basis of belief. For enlightenment this ground comes at the same time to be regarded as a chance knowledge of chance occurrences.

The ground of knowledge, however, is the conscious universal, and in its ultimate meaning is absolute spirit, which in abstract pure consciousness, or thought Lfti' as such, is merely absolute Being, but qua self -consciousness is the knowledge of itself. Pure insight sets up this conscious universal, self-knowing spirit pure and simple, likewise as a negative element for self-consciousness.

Doubtless this insight is itself pure mediate thought, i.e. thought mediating itself with itself, it is pure knowledge; but since it is pure insight, or pure knowledge, which does not yet know itself, i.e. for which as yet there is no awareness that it is this pure process of mediation, this process seems to insight, like everything else constituting it, to be something external, an other.

When realising its inherent principle, then, it develops this moment essential to it ; but that moment seems to it to belong to belief, and to be, in its character of an external other, a fortuitous knowledge of just such common historical actualities.

It thus here charges religious belief with basing its certainty on some particular historical evidence, which, considered as historical evidence, would assuredly not even warrant that degree of certainty about the matter which we get regarding any event mentioned in the newspapers.

It further makes the imputation that the certainty in the case of religious belief rests on the accidental fact of the preservation of all this evidence : on the preservation of this evidence partly by means of paper, and partly

The Struggle of Enlightenment ivith Superstition 563 through the skill and honesty in transferring what is written from one paper to another, and lastly rests upon the accurate interpretation of the sense of dead words and letters. As a matter of fact, however, it never occurs to belief to make its certainty depend on such evidence and such fortuitous circumstances.

Belief in its conscious assurance occupies a naive unsophisticated attitude towards its absolute object, knows it with a purity, which never mixes up letters, paper, or copyists with its consciousness of the Absolute Being, and does not make use of things of that sort to effect its union with the Absolute.

On the contrary, this consciousness is the self-mediating, self-relating ground of its knowledge ; it is spirit itself which bears witness of itself both in the inner heart of the individual consciousness, as well as through the presence everywhere and in all men of belief in it.

If belief wants to appeal to historical evidences in order to get also that kind of foundation, or at least confirmation, for its content which enlightenment speaks of, and is really serious in thinking and acting as if that were an important matter, then it has eo if so allowed itself to be corrupted and led astray by the insinuations of enlightenment ; the efforts it makes to secure a basis or support in this way are merely indications that show how it has been affected and contaminated by enlightenment.

There still remains the third aspect, the active relation of consciousness to Absolute Being, its forms of service.* This action consists in cancelling the particularity of the individual, or the natural form of its selfexistence, whence arises its certainty of being pure self - consciousness, of being, as the result of its * The cult.

V*)

564 Phenomenology of Mind action, i.e. as a self-existing conscious individual, one with ultimate Reality. Since in this action purposiveness and end get distinguished, and pm*e insight likewise takes up a negative attitude towards this action, and denies itself just as it did in the other moments, it must as regards purposiveness present the appearance of being stupid and unintelligent, since insight united with intention, accordance of end with means, appears to it as an other, as really the opposite of what insight is. As regards the end, however, it has to make badness, enjoyment, and possession, its purpose, and prove itself in consequence to be the impurest kind of intention, since pure intention, qua external, an other, is equally impure intention. Accordingly we find that, so far as concerns purposiveness, enhghtenment thinks it foolish when the believing individual seeks to obtain the higher consciousness,— ^where there is no entanglement with natural enjoyment and pleasure, — by positively denying itself natural enjoyment and pleasure, and proving through its acts that it makes no denial of its contempt for them, but rather that the contempt is quite genuine. In the same way enlightenment finds it foolish for consciousness to absolve itself of its characteristic of being absolutely individual, excluding all others, and possessing property of its own, by itself demitting its own property, for thereby it shows in reality that this isolation is not really serious. It shows rather that itself is something that can rise above the natural necessity of isolating itself and of denying, in this absolute isolation of its own individual existence, that the others are one and the same with itself.