Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

652 Phenomenology/ of Mind them, is conscious of not being conscientious in its procedure. The genuinely universal and pure relation of knowledge would be one towards something not opposed, a relation to itself. But action through the opposition essentially implied in action is related to what negates consciousness, to a reality existing per se.

Contrasted with the simple nature of pure consciousness, the absolute other, externality, multiplicity per se, is a sheer plurality of circumstances which breaks up indefinitely and spreads in all directions — backwards in their conditions, sidewards in their associations, forwards in their consequences.

The conscientious mind is aware of this state of affairs and of its relation thereto, and knows it is not acquainted to the full and complete extent required with the case in which its action takes effect, and knows that its pretence of conscientiously weighing and considering all the circumstances is futile.

This acquaintance with and consideration of all the circumstances, however, are not entirely absent : but they are merely present as a moment, as something which is only for others : and the conscientious mind holds its incomplete knowledge to be sufficient and complete, merely because it is its own knowledge.

In a similar way is constituted the process in connection with the universality of the essential principle, the universality by which the content is characterised when determined through pure coui^ta sciousness. Conscience, when it goes on to act, takes up a relation to the various sides of the case.

The case breaks up into separate elements, and the relation of pure consciousness towards it does the same : whereby the multiplicity characteristic of the case

Conscience 653 becomes a multiplicity of duties. Conscience knows that it has to select and decide amongst them ; for none of them specifically, in its content, is an absolute duty ; only duty pure and simple is so. But this abstract entity has, in its realisation, come to denote self-conscious ego.

Spirit certain of itself is at rest within itself in the form of conscience, and its real universaUty, its duty, Hes in its bare conviction concerning duty. This bare conviction as such is as empty as pure duty, pure in the sense that nothing within it, no definite content, is duty.

Action, however, has to take place, the individual must determine to do something or other ; and spirit which is certain of itself, in which the inherent principle has attained the significance of self-conscious ego, knows it has this determination, this specific content, within the immediate certainty of its own self. This certainty, being a determination and a content, is " natural '' consciousness, i.e. the various impulses and inchnations.

Conscience admits no content as absolute for it, because it is absolute negativity of all that is definite. It determines from itself alone. The circle of the self, however, within which determinateness as such falls, is so-called " sensibility " : in order to get a content out of the immediate certainty of self, there is no other means to be found except sensibility.

Everything that in previous modes of experience was presented as good or bad, law and right, is something other than immediate certainty of self ; it is a universal, which is now a relative entity, an existence-foranother. Or, looked at otherwise, it is an object which, while connecting and relating consciousness with itself, comes between consciousness and its own proper truth,

654 Phenomenology of Mind and instead of that object being the immediacy of consciousness, it rather cuts consciousness off from itself. For conscience, however, certainty of self is the pure, direct, and immediate truth : and this truth is i^ y^ thus its immediate certainty of self presented as content ; i.e. its truth is altogether the caprice of the individual, and the accidental content of his unconscious natural existence [his sensibility].

This content at the same time passes for essential moral reality, for duty. For pure duty, as was found when testing and examining laws,* is utterly indifferent to every content, and gets along with any.

Here it has at the same time the essential form of self-existence, of existing on its own account : and this form of individual conviction is nothing else than the sense of the emptiness of pure duty, and the consciousness that this is merely a moment, that its substantial independence is a predicate v/hich finds its subject in the individual, whose caprice gives pure duty content, can connect every content with this form, and attach its feeling of conscientiousness to any content.

An individual increases his property in a certain way. It is a duty that each should see to the maintenance of himself and family, and no less ensure the possibility of his being serviceable to his neighbours and of doing good to those standing in need. The individual is aware that this is a duty, for this content is directly contained in the certainty he has of himself.

He perceives, further, that he fulfils this particular duty in this particular case. Other people possibly consider the specific way he adopts as fraud : they hold by other sides of the concrete case presented, while he holds firmly to * v.p. 418 if.