Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 577 of the mediating process which takes effect through an ahen third term, and does not think on that process wherein the immediate is itself the third term, through which it mediates itself with the other, viz. with itself. Finally, on the view enlightenment takes of the action of belief, the rejection of enjoyment and possessions is looked upon as wrong and purposeless.

As to the wrong thus done, enlightenment preserves the harmony of the beheving attitude in this that behef acknowledges the actual reality of possessing property, keeping hold of it, and enjoying it.

In insisting on its property, it behaves with all the more stubborn independence and exclusiveness, and in its enjoyment with all the more frank self-abandonment, since its rehgious act of giving up pleasure and property takes effect beyond the region of this actuahty, and purchases for it freedom to do as it hkes so far as that other sphere is concerned.

This service, that consists in sacrificing natural impulses and enjoyments, in point of fact has no truth, owing to this opposition. The retention and the sacrifice subsist together side by side. The sacrifice is merely a "sign" which performs real sacrifice only as regards a small part, and hence in point of fact only representatively suggests sacrifice.

As for purposiveness, enhghtenment finds it pointless and stupid to throw away a possession in order to feel and to prove oneself to be free from all possession, to renounce an enjoyment in order to think and demonstrate that one is rid of all enjoyment. The believing mind itself takes the absolute act for a universal one. Not only does the action of its absolute Reality VOL. II.— M

578 Phenomenology of Mind as its object appear something universal, but the individual consciousness, too, has to prove itself detached entirely and altogether from its sensuous nature. But throwing away a particular possession, giving up and disclaiming a particular enjoyment, is not acting universally in this way.

And since in the action it is essentially the purpose, which is a universal, and the performance, which is a particular process, that had to stand in all their incompatibility before consciousness, that action shows itself to be of a kind in which consciousness has no share, and consequently this way of acting is seen to be too naive to be an action at all.

It is too naive to fast in order to prove oneself quite indifferent to the pleasures of the table ; too naive to rid oneself, Hke Origen, of other bodily pleasure in order to show that pleasure is finished and done with. The act itself proves to be an external and a particular function.

But desire is deeply rooted within the inner Kfe, and is a universal element ; its pleasure neither disappears with the instrument for getting pleasure nor by abstention from particular pleasures.

But enlightenment on its side here isolates the unreahsed inwardness as against the concrete actuality ; just as in the case of the devotion and direct intuition of belief, enlightenment holds fast to the externality of things of sense as against the inward attitude of beHef. Enlightenment finds the main point in the intention, in the thought, and thereby finds no need for actually bringing about the Hberation from natural ends.

On the contrary, this inner sphere is itself the formal element that has its concrete fulfilment in natm^al impulses, which are justified simply by the

The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 579 fact that they fall within, that they belong to universal being, to nature. Enlightenment, then, holds irresistible sway over beHef by the fact that the latter finds in its own constitution the very moments to which enlightenment uf9 gives significance and validity. Looking more closely at the action exerted by this force, its operation on belief seems to rend asunder the unity and happy harmony of trustfulness and immediate confidence, to pollute its spiritual life with lower thoughts drawn from the sphere of sense, to destroy the feeling of calm security in its attitude of submission by introducing the vanity of understanding, of self-will, and self-fulfilment. But in point of fact, enlightenment really brings to pass the abohtion of that state of unthinking, or rather uncomprehended (begrifflos) cleavage, which finds a place in the nature of belief. The believing mood weighs and measures by a twofold standard, it has two sorts of eyes and ears, uses two voices to express its meaning, it duplicates all ideas, without comparing and squaring the sense and meaning in the two forms used. Or we may say belief fives its Hfe amidst two sorts of perceptions, the one the perceptions of thought which is asleep, purely uncritical and uncomprehending, the other those of waking consciousness living solely and simply in the world of sense ; and in each of them it manages to carry on a household all its own. Enlightenment illuminates that world of heaven with ideas drawn from the world of sense, pointing out there this element of finitude which behef cannot deny or repudiate, because it is self-consciousness, and in being so is the unity to which both kinds of ideas ifl^