Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

574 Phenomenology of Mind that it is the undifferentiated element which absolutely divides itself. As against behef, then, insight is the power of the notion in so far as this is the active process of relating the moments lying apart from one another in belief ; a way of relating them in which the contradiction in them comes to light.

Herein lies the absolute right of the power which insight exercises over behef ; but the actuality which it gives this power lies just in the fact that the beheving state of consciousness is itself the notion and thus itself recognises and accepts the opposite which insight produces and presents before it.

Insight, therefore, has and retains right against belief, because it makes valid in belief what is necessary to belief itself, and what belief contains within it. At fii-st enlightenment asserts the moment of the notion to be an act of consciousness ; it maintains in the face of belief that the absolute Reality belief accepts is a Reality of the believer's consciousness qua a self, or that this absolute Reality is produced through consciousness.

To the beheving mind its absolute Being is just as it is in itself for the believer, at the same time not as a foreign thing, standing there no one knows how or whence it came there. The trust and confidence of behef consists just in finding itself in absolute Reality as a particular personal consciousness, and its obedience and service consist in acting so as to bring out that Reality as its own Absolute.

Enlightenment, strictly speaking, only reminds belief of this, if belief goes beyond the action of consciousness and gives expression to the ultimate natiire {Ansich) of absolute Being in abstracto. But while enlightenment no doubt puts alongside the one-sidedness of belief the opposite moment, viz. : — the

TJie Struggle of Enlighteimient with Superstition 575 action of belief in contrast to being — and being is all belief thinks about here, — and yet does not itself in doing so bring those opposite thoughts together, enlightenment isolates the pure moment of action, and declares that what belief takes to be fer se ultimate (Ansich) is merely a product of consciousness.

The ://,s' isolated separate act opposed to this ultimate Being (Ansich) is, however, a contingent action, and, qua presentative activity, is a creating of fictions, — presented figurative ideas that have no being in themselves. And this is how enUghtenment regards the content of belief. Conversely, however, pure insight equally says the very opposite.

Since insight lays stress on the moment of otherness which the notion contains, it declares the essential Reality for belief to be one which is not in any way due to consciousness, is away beyond consciousness, foreign to it, and unknown. To belief, too, that Reahty has the same character.

On one side belief trusts in it, and gets, in doing so, the assurance of its own self, on the other side it is unsearchable in all its ways and unattainable in its being. Further, enhghtenment maintains against the beheving mind a right which the latter concedes, when enhghtenment treats the object of the behever's veneration as stone and wood, or, in short, some finite anthropomorphic feature.

For, since this consciousness is divided within itself in having a 'beyond' remote from actuality and an immediate present embodiment of that remote beyond, there is also found in it, as a matter of fact, the view that sense-things have a value and significance in and for themselves {an und für sich). But belief does not bring together these two ideas of

576 Phenomenology of Mind what is " in and for itself," viz. that at one time what is " in and for itself " is for beHef pure essential Reahty and at another time is an ordinary thing of sense.

Even its own pure consciousness is affected by this last view ; for the distinctions of its supersensuous world, because dispensing with the notion, are a series of independent shapes and forms, and their activity is a happening, i.e. they exist merely in idea, merely as presentations, and have the characteristic of senseexistence.

Enlightenment on its side isolates actuality in the same way, treating it as a reality abandoned by spirit ; isolates specific determinateness as some fixed immovable finite element, as if it were not a moment in the spiritual process of the real itself, were neither i^ ( 4 nothing, nor something with a being all its own, but something evanescent and transitory. It is clear that the same is the case with regard to the ground of knowledge.

The beheving mind recognises itself to be an accidental knowledge ; for in belief the mind adopts an attitude towards contingencies, and absolute Reality itself comes before belief in the form of a presented idea of ordinary actual fact.

Consequently behef is also a kind of certainty which does not carry the truth within it, and it confesses itself to be an unsubstantial consciousness of this kind, far short of being well assured of itself and authentically secure. This moment, however, belief forgets in its immediate spiritual knowledge of absolute Reality.

Enhghtenment, however, which reminds beHef of all this, thinks again merely of the contingency of the knowledge and forgets the other — thinks only