Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

722 Phenomenology of Mind itself in its essential nature, pure thought or devotion, whose inwardness gets at the same time express existence in the Hymn. The hymn keeps within it the individuality of self-consciousness, and this individual character is at the same time perceived to be there universal.

Devotion, kindled in every one, is a spiritual stream which in all the manifold self-conscious units is conscious of itself as one and the same function in all ahke and a simple state of being. Spirit, being this universal self-consciousness of every one, holds in a single unity its pure inwardness as well as its objective existence for others and the independent self-existence of the individual units.

This kind of language is distinct from another way God speaks, which is not that of universal selfconsciousness. The Oracle, both in the case of the god of the religions of art as well as of the preceding religions, is the necessary and the first form of divine utterance. For its very principle imphes that God is at once the essence of nature and of spirit, and hence has not merely natural but spiritual existence as well.

In so far as this moment is imphed primarily in its principle and is not yet reahsed in rehgion, the language used is, for the religious selfconsciousness, the speech of an alien and external self-consciousness. The self-consciousness which re- ^ '7 mains ahen and foreign to its religious communion, is not yet there in the way its essential principle requires it should be.

The self is simple self-existence, and thereby is altogether universal self-existence ; that self, however, which is cut off from the self-consciousness of the communion, is primarily a mere particular self.

The Abstract Work of Art 723 The content of this its own pecuUar and individual form of speech is suppKed from the general determinate character which the Absolute Spirit as such adopts in its rehgion.

Thus the universal spirit of the East, which has not yet particularised its existence, utters about the Absolute equally simple, abstract, and universal statements, whose substantial content is subhme in the simpHcity of its truth, but at the same time appears, because of this universality, trivial to the self-consciousness developing further.

The further developed self, which advances to being distinctively for itself, rises above the pure " pathos " of [unconscious] substance, gets the mastery over the objectivity of the principle of Light in Eastern rehgion, and knows that simplicity of abstract truth to be the inherent reahty {das AnsicJiseyende) which does not possess the form of contingent existence through an utterance of an ahen self, but is the sure and unwritten law of the gods, a law that " Hves for ever, and no man knows what time it came.

As the universal truth, revealed by the " Light " of the world, has here returned into what is within or what is beneath, and has thus got rid of the form of contingent appearance; so too, on the other hand, in the rehgion of art, because God's form or shape has taken on consciousness and hence particularity in general, the pecuHar utterance of God, who is the spirit of an ethically constituted nation, is the Oracle, which knows its special circumstances and situation, and announces what is serviceable to its interests.

Reflective thought, however, satisfies itself as to the universal truths enunciated, because these are known as the essential imphcit reahty of the nation's hfe ;

724 Phenomenology of Mind and the utterance of them is thus for such reflection no longer a strange and ahen speech, but is its veryown.

Just as that wise man of old * searched in his own thought for what was worthy and good, but left it to his " Daimon " to find out and decide the petty contingent content of what he wanted to know — whether it was good for him to keep company with SiS this or that person, or good for one of his friends to go on a journey, and such like unimportant things ; in the same way the universal consciousness draws the knowledge about the contingent from birds, or trees, or fermenting earth, the steam from which deprives the self-conscious mind of its powers of discrimination.

For what is accidental is something imdiscerned, undiscriminated, and extraneous; and hence the ethical consciousness lets itself, as if by a throw of the dice, settle the matter in a manner that is similarly undiscriminating and extraneous.

If the individual, by his understanding, determines on a certain course, and selects, after consideration, what is useful for him, it is the specific nature of his particular character which is the ground of this self-determination.

This basis is just what is contingent ; and that knowledge which his understanding supplies as to what is useful for the individual, is hence just such a knowledge as that of " oracles " or of the " lot " ; only that he who questions the oracle or lot, thereby shows the ethical sentiment of indifference to what is accidental, while the former, on the contrary, treats the inherently contingent as an essential concern of his thought and knowledge.

Higher than both, however, is to make careful reflection the oracle for contingent action, but yet to recognise that * Socrates.