Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

706 Phenomenology of Mind finds lying over against itself as an ordinary existing fact and cancels; at the same time this consciousness is not merely this negative cancelling self-existent being, but produces its own objective idea of itself, — selfexistence put forth in the form of an object. This c- ^ process of production is, all the same, not yet perfect production ; it is a conditioned activity, the forming of a given material.

The Artificer* Spirit, then, here takes the form of the artificer, and its action, when producing itself as object, but without having as yet grasped the thought of itself, is an instinctive kind of working, hke bees building their cells. The first form, because immediate, has the abstract character of " understanding," and the work accomphshed is not yet in itself endued with spirit. The crystals of Pyramids and Obehsks, simple combinations of straight fines with even surfaces and equal relations of parts in which incommensurability of curvature is set aside — these are the works produced in strict geometrical form by this artificer. Owing to the purely abstract intelfigible nature of the form, it is not in itself the true significance of the form ; it is not the spiritual self. Thus, either the works produced only receive spirit into them as an alien, departed spirit, one that has forsaken its hving suffusion and permeation with reahty, and, being itself dead, enters into these fifeless crystals ; or they take up an external relation to spirit as something which is itself external and not there as spirit — they are related to it as to the orient Light, which throws its significance on them. The separation of elements from which spirit as * Egyptian religions. 707

708 Phenomenology of Mind artificer starts — the separation of the impHcit essential nature, which becomes the material it works upon, and independent self-existence, which is the aspect of self-consciousness at work — this division has become objective in the result achieved.

Its further endeavour has to be directed to cancelhng and doing away with this separation of soul and body ; it must strive to clothe and give embodied shape to soul per se, and endow the body with soul. The two aspects, since they are brought closer to one another, bear towards each other, in this condition, the character of ideally presented spirit and of enveloping shell.

Spirit's oneness with itself contains this opposition of individuahty and universality. Since the aspects of the work produced become closer by performance of it, there comes about thereby at the same time the other fact, that the work gets nearer to the self-consciousness performing it, and that the latter attains in the work knowledge of itself as it truly is.

In this way, however, the work merely constitutes to begin with the abstract side of the activity of spirit, which does not yet perceive the content of this activity within itself but in its work, which is a "thing.'' The artificer as such, spirit in its entirety, has not yet appeared ; the artificer is still the inner, hidden reahty, which qua entire is present only as broken up into active self-consciousness and the object it has produced.

The surrounding habitation, external reahty, which to begin with is raised merely to the abstract form of the understanding, is worked up by the artificer and made into a more animated form. The artificer employs plant life for this purpose, which is no longer sacred, as in the previous case of inactive impotent

The Artificer 709 pantheism ; rather, the artificer, who holds himself to be the self-existent reahty, takes that plant Hfe as something to be used and degrades it to an external aspect, to the level of an ornament.

But it is not turned to use without some alteration : for the worker producing the self-conscious form destroys at the same time the transitoriness, inherently characteristic of the immediate existence of this hfe, and brings its organic forms nearer to the more exact and more universal forms of thought.

The organic form, which, left to itself, grows and thrives in particularity, being on its side subjugated by the form of thought, elevates in turn these straight-lined and level shapes into more animated roundedness — a blending which becomes the root of free architecture.* This dwelhng, (the aspect of the universal element or inorganic nature of spirits), also includes within it now a form of individuality, which brings nearer to actuahty the spirit that was formerly separated from existence and external or internal thereto, and thus makes the work to accord more with active self-consciousness.

The worker lays hold, first of all, on the form of self-existence in general, on the forms of animal life.

That he is no longer directly aware of himself in animal hfe, he shows by the fact that in reference to sToa this he constitutes himself the productive force, and knows himself in it as being his own work, whereby the productive force at the same time is one which is superseded and becomes the hieroglyphic symbol of another meaning, the hieroglyph of a thought.

Hence also this force is no longer solely and entirely used by the worker, but becomes blended with the shape embody- * The Egyptian columns and architecture.