Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

664 Plienomenologij of Mind account of its being specific and determinate. The universality lies in the form of the act. It is this form which is to be affirmed as real : the form is the self, which as such is actual in language, pronounces itself to be the truth, and just by so doing acknowledges all other selves, and is recognised by them.

Conscience, then, in its majestic sublimity above any specific law and every content of duty, puts whatever content there is into its knowledge and willing. It i^yg becomes moral genius and originality, which takes the inner voice of its immediate knowledge to be a voice divine ; and since in such knowledge it directly knows existence as well, it is divine creative power, which contains living force in its very conception.

It is in itself, too, divine worship), " service of God," for its action consists in beholding this its own proper divinity.

This solitary worship, this " service of God " in solitude of soul, is at the same time essentially " service of God " in public, on the part of a religious community ; and pure inward self-knowledge and perception of self pass to being a moment of consciousness.* To behold itself is to exist objectively, and this objective element is the utterance of its knowledge and will in a universal way.

Through such expression the self becomes established and accepted, and the act becomes an effective deed, a deed carrying out a definite result. What gives reality and subsistence to its deed is universal selfconsciousness. When, however, conscience finds expression, this puts the certainty of itself in the form of pure self and thereby as universal self. Others let the act * i.e. into a state which implies distinction and opposition of subject and object.

The "Beautiful Soul" 665 hold as valid, owing to the explicit terms in which the self is thus expressed and acknowledged to be the essential reality.

The spirit and the substance of their community are, thus, the mutual assurance of their conscientiousness, of their good intentions, the rejoicing over this reciprocal purity of purpose, the quickening and refreshment received from the glorious privilege of knowing and of getting expression, of fostering and cherishing a state so altogether excellent and desirable.

So far as this sphere of conscience still distinguishes its abstract consciousness from its self-consciousness, its hfe is merely hid in God. God is indeed immediately present to its mind and heart, to its self. But what is revealed, its actual consciousness and the mediating process of this consciousness, is, to it, something other than that hidden inner life and the immediacy of God's presence.

But, with the completion of conscience, the distinction between its abstract consciousness and its self- consciousness is done away.

It knows that the abstract consciousness is just this self, this individual self-existence which is certain of itself : that the very difference between the terms is abolished in the immediateness of the relation of the self to the ultimate Being, which, when placed outside the self, is the abstract essence, and a Being concealed from it.

For a relation is mediate when the terms related are not one and the same, but each is a different term for the other, and is one only with the other in some third term: an immediate relation, however, means, in fact, nothing else than the unity of the terms. Having risen above the meaningless position of holding these distinctions, which are not distinctions at all, to be still such, consciousness knows the immediateness of

666 Phenomenology of Mind the presence of ultimate Being within it to be the unity of that Being and its self : it thus knows itself to be the living inherent reality, and takes its knowledge to be Religion, which, qua knowedge viewed as an object or knowledge with an objective existence, is the utterance of the religious communion regarding its own spirit.

We see then, here, self-consciousness withdrawn into the inmost retreats of its being, with all externality, as such, gone and vanished from it — returned into the intuition of ego as altogether identical with ego, an intuition where this ego is all that is essential, and all that exists.

It is absorbed in this conception of itself ; for it is driven to the extreme limit of its extreme positions, and in such a way that the moments distinguished, moments through which it is real or still consciousness, are not merely for us these bare extremes ; rather what it is for itself, and what, to it, is inherent, and what is, for it, existence — all these moments evaporate into abstractions.

They have no longer stability, no substantial existence for this phase of consciousness. Everything, that was hitherto for consciousness essential, has reverted into these abstractions. When clarified to this degree of transparency, consciousness exists in its poorest form, and the poverty, constituting its sole and only possession, is itself a process of disappearance.

This absolute certainty into which the substance has been resolved is absolute untruth, which collapses within itself ; it is absolute self -consciousness, in which consciousness [with its relation of self and object] is submerged and goes under. Looking at this absorption and disappearance from