Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

700 Phenomenology of Mind still continues to appear, it has withdrawn into what is without any essential significance : just as, on the other hand, where the lower still predominates, while the higher is also present, the one co-exists in a self-less way alongside of the other.

While, therefore, the various ideas falling within a particular rehgion no doubt exhibit the whole course its forms take, the character of each is determined by the particular unity of consciousness and self-consciousness ; that is to say, by the fact that self-consciousness has taken into itself the determination belonging to the object of consciousness, has, by its own action, made that determination altogether its own, and Imows it to be the essential one as compared with the others.

The truth of behef in a given determination of the rehgious spirit shows itself in this, that the actual spirit is constituted after the same manner as the form in which spirit beholds itself in rehgion ; thus e.g. the incarnation of God, which is found in Eastern rehgion, has no truth, because the concrete actual spirit of this religion is without the reconcihation this principle imphes.

It is not in place here to return from the totahty of specific determinations back to the particular determination, and show in what shape the plenitude of all the others is contained within it and within its particular form of religion. The higher form, when put back under a lower, is deprived of its significance for self-conscious spirit, belongs to spirit merely in a superficial way, and is for it at the level of a presentation.

The higher form has to be considered in its own peculiar significance, and dealt with where it is the principle of a particular religion, and is certified and approved by its actual spirit.

a God as Light* Spirit, as the absolute Being, which is self-consciousness— or the self-conscious absolute Being, which is all truth and knows all reality as itself — is, to begin with, merely its notion and principle in contrast to the reahty which it acquires in the process of its conscious activity.

And this conception is, as contrasted with the clear dayhght of that explicit development, the darkness and night of its inner hfe ; in contrast to the existence of its various moments as independent forms and shapes, this notion is the creative secret of its birth.

This secret has its revelation within itself ; for existence has its necessary place in this notion, because this notion is spirit knowing itself, and thus possesses in its own nature the moment of being consciousness and of presenting itself objectively.

We have here the pure ego, which, in externalising itself, in seeing itself qua universal object, has the certainty of self ; in other words, this object is, for the ego, the fusion of all thought and all reahty. When the first and immediate cleavage is made within self-knowing Absolute Spirit, its form assumes that character which belongs to immediate consciousness or to sense-certainty. It beholds itself in the form of being ; but not being in the sense of what is without * Parsee religion. 701

702 Phenomenology of Mind spirit, containing only the contingent qualities of sensation— the kind of being that belongs solely to sensecertainty. Its being is filled with the content of spirit. It also includes within it the form which we found in the case of immediate self-consciousness, the form of lord and master,* with reference to the self-consciousness of spirit which retreats from its object.

This being, having as its content the notion of spirit, is, then, the mode of spirit in relation simply to itself — the form of having no special form at all. In virtue of this characteristic, this mode is the pure all-containing, all-suffusing Light of the East, which preserves itself in its formless indeterminate substantiality. Its counterpart, its otherness, is the equally simple negative — Darkness.

The processes of its own self-abandonment, its creations in the unresisting element of its counterpart, are bursts of Light. At the same time in their ultimate simpHcity they are its way of becoming something for itself, its return from its objective existence, streams of fire consuming its embodiment.

The distinction, which it gives itself, no doubt thrives abundantly on the substance of existence, and grows into and assumes the diverse forms of nature.

But the essential simplicity of its thought rambles and roves about inconstant and inconsistent, enlarges 5^ i^ its boimds to measureless extent, and its beauty heightened to splendour is lost in its subhmity.f The content, which this state of mere being involves, its perceptive activity, is, therefore, an unreal byplay on this substance which merely rises, without descending into itself to become subject and secure * Term applied iu e.g. Judaism and Mohammedanism, t Cp. Philos. ofRelig., W.W., XI, 403, 404, 411.