Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

646 Phenomenology of Mind always be one side inj ured, one duty violated, when the act took definite shape: or else, if action did take place, the violation of one of the conflicting duties would be the actual result brought about. Conscience is rather the negative single unity, it is the absolute self, which does away with this variety of substantial moral constituents.

It is simple action in accordance with duty, action which does not fulfil this or that duty, but knows and does what is concretely right. It is, therefore, in general, and for the first time in moral experience, moral action as action, and into this the previous stage of mere consciousness of morality without action has passed.

The concrete shape which the act takes may be l^ii^ analysed by a conscious process of distinction into a variety of properties, i.e. in this case into a variety of moral relationships ; and these may either be each expressly held to be absolute (as each must be if it is to be duty) or, again, subjected to comparison and criticism.

In the simple moral action arising from conscience, duties are shed so promiscuously that the isolated independence of all these separate entities is immediately destroyed, and the process of critically considering and worrying about what our duty is finds no place at all in the unshaken certainty of conscience.

Just as little, again, do we find in conscience that fluctuating uncertainty of mind, which puts now socalled " pure " morality away from itself, assigning it to some other holy being, and takes itself to be unholy, and then again, on the other hand, puts this moral purity within itself, and places in that other the connexion of the sensuous with the moral element. It renounces all these semblances and dissem-

Conscience 647 blances {Stellungen und Verstellungen) characteristic of the moral point of view, when it gives up thinking that there is a contradiction between duty and actual reality. According to this latter state of mind, I act morally when I am conscious of performing merely pure duty and nothing else but that : i.e. in fact, when I do not act.

When, however, I really act, I am conscious of an "other," of a reality which is there before me, and one which I want to bring about ; I have a definite end and fulfil a definite duty. There is something else therein than the pure duty, which alone was supposed to be kept in view.

Conscience, on the other hand, is the sense that, when the moral consciousness declares pure duty to be the essence of its action, this bare purpose is a dissemblance of the actual fact.

For the real fact is that bare duty consists in the empty abstraction of pure thought, and finds its reality and content solely in some definite actual existence, an actuality which is actuality of consciousness itself — not of consciousness in the sense of a thought-entity, but as an individual. Conscience, i.;bf for its own part, finds its truth to He in the direct certainty regarding itself.

This immediate concrete certainty of itself is true reality. Looking at this certainty from the point of view of the opposition which consciousness involves, its own immediate particularity constitutes the content of moral action ; and the form of moral action is just this very self as a pure process, viz. as the process of knowing, in other words, is private individual conviction.

Looking more closely at the unity and the significance of the moments of this stage, we find that moral consciousness conceived itself merely in the form of

648 Phenomenology of Mind the inherent principle, or as ultimate essence ; qua conscience, however, it lays hold of its expUcit individual self-existence (Filrsichseyn), or its self. The contradiction involved in the moral point of view is resolved, i.e. the distinction, which lay at the basis of its pecuhar attitude, proves to be no distinction, and melts into the process of pure negativity.

This process of negativity is, however, just the self : a single simple self which is at once pure knowledge and knowledge of itself as this individual conscious hfe. This self constitutes, therefore, the content of what formerly was the empty essence ; for it is something actual and concrete, which no longer has the significance of being a nature alien to the ultimate essence, a nature independent and with laws of its own.

As the negative element, it introduces distinction into the pure essence, a definite content, and one, too, which has a value in its own right as it stands. Further, this self is, qua pure self-identical knowledge, the universal without quahfication, so that just this knowledge, being its very own knowledge, being conviction, constitutes duty.

Duty is no longer the universal appearing over against and opposed to the self ; duty is known to have in this condition of separation and opposition no validity. It is now the law, which exists for the sake of the self, and not the self for the sake of the law.

The law and duty, however, have for that reason not only the significance of existing on their own account, but also of being inherent and essential ; for this knowledge is, in virtue of its identity with itself, just what is inherently essential. This inherent being gets also separated in consciousness from that direct and immediate unity with