Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

The Abstract Work of Art 725 this very act reflected on is something contingent, because it refers to what is opportune and has a relation to what is particular. The true self-conscious existence, which spirit receives in the form of speech, which is not the utterance of extraneous and so accidental, i.e. not universal, selfconsciousness, is the work of art which we met with before.

It stands in contrast to the statue, which has the character of a " thing. As the statue is existence in a state of rest, the other is existence in a state of transience.

In the case of the former, objectivity is set free and dispenses \vith the iromediate presence of the self proper ; in the latter, on the other hand, objectivity is too much bound up with the self, attains insufiiciently to definite embodiment, and is, Hke time, no longer there just as soon as it is there.

The rehgious Cult constitutes the process of the two - sides — a process in which the divine embodiment in ' motion within the pure feehng-element of self-consciousness and its embodiment at rest in the element of thinghood, reciprocally abandon the different character each possesses, and the unity, which is the underlying principle of their being, becomes an existing fact.

Here in the Cult, the self gives itself a consciousness of the Divine Being descending from its remoteness into it, and this Divine Being, which was formerly the unreal and merely objective, thereby receives the proper actuahty of self-consciousness. This principle of the Cult is essentially contained and present already in the flow of the melody of the Hymn.

These hymns of devotion are the way the self obtains immediate pure satisfaction through and within itself. It is the soul purified, which, in the

726 Phenomenology of Mind purity it thus attains, is immediately and only absolute Being, and is one with absolute Being. The soul, because of its abstract character, is not consciousness distinguishing its object from itself, and is thus merely the night of its existence and the place prepared for its form. The abstract Cult, therefore, raises the self into being this pure divine element.

The soul brings about the attainment of this purity in a conscious way. Still it is not yet the self, which has descended to the depths of its being, and knows itself as evil.

It is something that merely is, a soul, which cleanses its exterior with the washing of water, and robes it in white, while its innermost traverses the path set before itself of labour, punishment, and reward, the way of spiritual discipline, of altogether rehnquishing its particularity—the road by which it reaches the mansions and the fellowship of the blest.

This ceremonial cult is, in its first form, merely in secret, i.e. is merely a performance accomplished subjectively in idea, and unrealised. It has to become a real act, for an unreal act is a contradiction in terms. Consciousness proper, thereby, rises to the level of its pure self-consciousness.

The essential Being has in it the significance of a free object ; through the actual cult this object turns back to the self; and in so far as, in pure consciousness, it has the significance of absolute isii} Being dwelling in its purity beyond actual reality, this Being descends, through this mediating process of the cult, from its universahty into individual form, and thus combines and unites with actual reahty.

The way the two sides make their appearance in the act is of such a character that the self-conscious aspect, so far as it is actual consciousness, finds the absolute

The Abstract Work of Art 727 Being manifesting itself as actual nature. On the one hand, nature belongs to self - consciousness as its possession and property, and stands for what has no existence fer se. On the other hand, nature is its proper immediate reahty and particularity, which is equally regarded as not truly real and essential, and is abrogated.

At the same time, that external nature has the opposite significance for its pure consciousness — viz. the significance of being the inherently real, for which the self sacrifices its own [relative] unreahty, just as, conversely, the self sacrifices the imessential aspect of nature to itself.

The act is thereby a spiritual movement, because it is this doublesided process of cancelling the abstraction of absolute Being (in the way devotion determines the object), and making it something concrete and actual, and, on the other hand, of cancelhng the actual (in the way the agent determines the object and the self acting), and raising it into universahty.

The practice of the rehgious Cult begins, therefore, with the pure and simple " offering up " or " surrender " of a possession, which the owner apparently considers quite useless for himself and spills on the ground or lets rise up in smoke.

By so doing he renounces before the ultimate Being of his pure consciousness all possession and right of property and enjoyment thereof ; renounces personahty and the reversion of his action to his self ; and instead, reflects the act into the universal, into the absolute Being rather than into himself. Conversely, however, the objective ultimate Being too is annihilated in that very process. The animal offered up is the sjanbol of a god ; the fruits consumed are the actual hving Ceres and