Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

The "Beautiful Soul" 667 within, the inherent and essential substance is, for consciousness, knowledge in the sense of its knowledge. Being consciousness, it is split up into the opposition between itself and the object, which is, for it, the essentially real. But this very object is what is perfectly transparent, is its self ; and its consciousness is merely knowledge concerning itself.

All life and all spiritual truth have returned into this self, and have lost their difference from the ego. The moments of consciousness are therefore these extreme abstractions, of which none holds its ground, but each loses itself in the other and produces it.

We have here the process of the " unhappy soul," * in restless change with self ; in the present case, however, this is a conscious experience going on inside itself, fully conscious of being the notion of reason, while the " unhappy soul " above spoken of was only reason implicitly.

The absolute certainty of self thus finds itself qua consciousness, converted directly into a dying sound, a mere objectification of its subjectivity or self -existence. But this world so created is the utterance of its own voice, which in hke manner it has directly heard, and the echo of which only returns to it.

This return does not therefore mean that the self is there in its true reahty {an und für sich) : for the real is, for it, not an inherent being, is no per se, but its very self. Just as httle has consciousness itself existence, for the objective aspect does not succeed in becoming something negative of the actual self, in the same way as this self does not reach complete actuality.

It lacks force to externahse itself, the power to make itself a thing, and endure existence. It hves in dread of staining the radiance of its inner being by action and * v.p. 200 ff.

668 Phenomenology of Mind existence. And to preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with actuaUty, and steadfastly perseveres in a state of self-willed impotence to renounce a self which is pared away to the last point of abstraction, and to give itself substantial existence, or, in other words, to transform its thought into being, and commit itself to absolute distinction [that between thought and being].

The hollow object, which it produces, now fills it, therefore, with the feehng of emptiness. Its activity consists in yearning ; it merely loses itself in becoming an unsubstantial shadowy object, and, rising ;+?/ above this loss and falling back on itself, finds itself merely as lost.

In this transparent purity of its moments it becomes a sorrow-laden " beautiful soul,'' as it is called ; its light dims and dies within it, and it vanishes as a shapeless vapour dissolving into thin air.* This silent fusion of the pithless unsubstantial elements of evaporated life has, however, still to be taken in the other sense of the reality of conscience, and in the way its process actually appears.

Conscience has to be considered as acting. The objective moment in this phase of consciousness took above the determinate form of universal consciousness. The knowing of self is, qua this particular self, different from another self.

Language in which all reciprocally recognise and acknowledge each other as acting conscientiously — this general equality breaks up into the inequahty of each individual existing for himself ; each consciousness turns from its universahty back into itself, each is just as much reflected absolutely into itself as it is universal. By this means there necessarily comes about * Cf. Hegel's remarks on Jacolii's conception of the " beautiful soul " : WWX., 1, p. .303.

Evil and Forgiveness 669 the opposition of individuality to other individuals and to the universal. And this relation and its procedure we have to consider.

Or, again, this universahty and duty have the absolutely opposite significance ; they signify determinate individuality, exempting itself from what is universal, individuality which looks on pure duty as universality that has appeared merely on the surface and is turned on its outside : " duty is merely a matter of words," and passes for that whose being is for something else.

Conscience, which in the first instance takes up merely a negative attitude towards duty, qua a given determinate duty, feels itself detached from it. But since conscience fills empty duty with a determinate content drawn from its own self, it is positively aware of the fact that it, qua this particular self, makes its own content. Its pure self, as it is empty knowledge, is without content and without definiteness.

The content which it supphes to that knowledge is drawn from its own self, quu this determinate self, is drawn from itself as a natural individuality.

In speaking of the conscientiousness of its action, it is doubtless aware of its pure self, but in the purpose of its action — a purpose which brings in a concrete content — it is conscious of itself as this particular individual, and is conscious of the opposition between what it is for itself and what it is for others, of the opposition of universality or duty and its state of being reflected into self away from the universal.

While in this way the opposition, into which conscience passes when it acts, finds expression in its inner Hfe, the opposition is at the same time disparity on its outer side, in the sphere of existence — the disparity