Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Conscience 655 this particular side of it by the fact of his being conscious that the increase of property is a pure and absolute duty. In the same way there is fulfilled by the individual, as a duty, what other people call violence and wrongdoing— the duty of asserting one's independence against others : and, again, the duty of preserving one's hfe, and maintaining the possibility of being useful to one's neighbours.

Others call this cowardice, but what they call courage really violates both these duties. But cowardice cannot be so stupid and thoughtless as not to know that the maintenance of life and the possibility of being useful to others are duties — so inept as not to be convinced of the dutifulness of its action, and not to know that dutifulness consists in knowledge. Otherwise it would commit the absurdity of being without morality.

Since morahty hes in the consciousness of having fulfilled one's duty, this will not be lacking when the action is what is called cowardice any more than when it is what is called courage. As the abstraction called " duty " is capable of every content, it is quite equal to this latter content.

The agent acting knows what he does to be duty, and since he knows this, and conviction as to duty is just dutifulness, he is thus recognised and acknowledged by others. The act thereby becomes accepted as vahd and has actual existence.

It is of no avail to object to this freedom — which puts one kind of content as well as any other into this universal inert receptacle of pure duty and pure knowledge— by asserting that another content ought to have been put there. For whatever the content be, each content has upon it the stain of determinateness from

656 Phenomenology of Mind which pure knowledge is free, which pure knowledge can disregard just as readily as it can take up every determinateness in turn. Every content, through its being determinate, stands on the same footing with every other, even though it seems to have precisely the character that the particularity in the content is cancelled.

It may well seem — since in concrete cases duty breaks regularly into opposition, and, by doing so, sunders the opposites particularity and universality— that the duty, whose content is the universal as such, contains on that account, i'pso facto, the nature of pure duty, and that thus form and content are here entirely in accord.

On this view, it might seem that, e.g., acting for the universal good, for what is the best for all, is to be preferred to acting for what is the best for the individual. But this universal duty is in its entirety what is present as self-contained actual substance, in the form of [established] law and right, and holds good independently of the individual's knowledge and conviction and immediate interest.

It is thus precisely that against the form of which morality as a whole is directed. As regards its content, however, even this is determinate in character, in so far as the " universally best " is opposed to the " individual best. Consequently, its law is one from which conscience knows itself to be absolutely free, and it gives itself the absolute privilege to add and pare, to neglect as well as fulfil it.

Then, again, the above distinction of duty towards the individual and duty towards the universal is not something fixed and final, when we look at the nature of the opposition in question. On the contrary, what the individual does for himself is to the advantage of the

Conscience 657 universal as well. The more he looks after his own good, not only is there the greater possibility of his usefulness to others : his very reality consists merely in his Uving and existing in connection with others. His individual enjoyment means ultimately and essentially putting what is his own at the disposal of others, and helping them to secure their enjoyment.

In fulfilling duty to individuals, and hence duty to self, duty to the general thus also gets fulfilled. Weighing, considering, comparing duties, should this appear here, would take the line of calculating the advantage which the general would get from any given action.

But there can be no such process ; partly because morality would thereby be handed over to the inevitable contingency characteristic of mere " insight " ; partly because it is precisely the nature of conscience to have done with all this calculating and weighing of duties, and to decide directly from itself without reasons of any kind.

In this way, then, conscience acts and maintains itself in the unity of its essential being and its objective existence for itself, in the unity of pure thought and individuality : it is spirit certain of itself, which inherently possesses its own truth, within itself, in its knowledge, a knowledge in the sense of knowledge of its duty.

It maintains its being therein by the fact that the positive element in the act, the content as well as form of duty and the knowledge of duty, belong to the self, to the certainty of itself. What, however, seeks to come before the self with an inherent being of its own is held to be not truly real, merely a transcended element, only a moment. Consequently, it is not universal knowledge in general VOL. II.— R