This horrified rejection of mediation, however, arises as a fact from want of acquaintance with its nature, and with the nature of absolute knowledge itself. For mediating is nothing but self-identity working itself out through an active self-directed process; or, in other words, it is reflection into self, the aspect in which the ego is for itself, objective to itself. It is pure negativity, or, reduced to its utmost abstraction, the process of bare and simple becoming. The ego, or becoming in general, this process of mediating is, because of its being simple, just immediacy coming to be, and is immediacy itself. We misconceive therefore the nature of reason if we exclude reflection or meditation from ultimate truth, and do not take it to be a Preface 19 Preface 19 positive moment of tlie Absolute. It is reflection svhich constitutes truth the final result, and yet at bhe same time does away with the contrast between result and the process of arriving at it. For this process is hkewise simple, and therefore not distinct from the form of truth, which consists in appearing as simple in the result; it is indeed just this restoration and return to simplicity. While the embryo is certainly, in itself, implicitly a human being, it is not so exphcitly, it does not take itself to be a human being [fUr sich); it is only the latter in the form of developed and cultivated reason, which has made itself to be what it is implicitly. Its actual reality is first fomid here. But this result arrived at is itself simple immediacy; for it is self-conscious freedom, which is at one with itself, and has not set aside the opposition it involves and left it there, but has made its account with it and become reconciled to it.
What has been said may also be expressed by saying that reason is purposive activity. Extolling so-called nature at the expense of thought misunderstood, and more especially the rejection of external purposiveness, have brought the idea of purpose in general into disrepute. AU the same, in the sense in which Aristotle, too, characterises nature as purposive activity, purpose is the inunediate, the midisturbed, the unmoved which is self-moving; as such it is subject. Its power of moving, taken abstractly, is its existence for itself, or pure negativity. The result is the same as the beginning solely because the beginning is purpose. Stated otherwise, what is actual and concrete is the same as its inner principle or notion simply because the immediate qua purpose contains within it the self, or 20 Phenomenology of Mind pure actuality. The realised purpose, or concrete actuality, is movement and process of development. But this very unrest is the self; and it is one and the same with that immediacy and simphcity characteristic of the beginning just for the reason thai it is the result, and has returned upon itself — while this latter again is just the self, and the self is self-referring and self-relating identity and simphcity.
When thinking of the Absolute as subject, men have made use of statements Uke ' God is the eternal,' the ' moral order of the world,' or ' love,' etc. In such propositions ultimate truth is just barely stated to be Subject, but not set forth as the process of reflectively mediating itself within itself. In a proposition of that kind we begin with the word God. By itself this is a meaningless sound, a mere name; the predicate says afterwards wliat it is, gives it content and meaning: the empty beginning becomes real knowledge only when we thus get to the end of the statement. So far as that goes, why not speak alone of the eternal, of the moral order of the world, etc., or, Hke the ancients, of pure conceptions such as being, the one, etc., i.e. of what gives the meaning without adding the meaningless sound at all? But this word just indicates that it is not a being or essence or universal in general that is put forward, but something reflected into self, a subject. Yet at the same time this acceptance of the Absolute as Subject is merely anticipated, not really affirmed. The subject is taken to be a fixed point, and to it as their support the predicates are attached, by a process falhng within the individual knowing about it, but not looked upon as belonging to the point of atta,chment itself; only by such a process, however, Preface 21 Preface 21 could the content be presented as subject. Constituted as it is, tbis process cannot belong to tbe subject; but when that point of support is fixed to start wdth, this process cannot be otherwise constituted, it can only be external. The anticipation that the Absolute is subject is therefore not merely not the realisation of this conception; it even makes reahsation impossible. For it makes out the notion to be a static point, while its actual reahty is self-movement, self-activity. «^ Among the many consequences that follow from what has been said, it is of importance to emphasise this, that knowledge is only real and can only be set forth fully in the form of science, in the form of system; and further, that a so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, even if it is true, is yet none the less false just because and in so far as it is merely a fundamental proposition, merely a first principle. It is for that reason easily refuted. The refutation consists in bringing out its defective character; and it is defective because it is merely the universal^ merely a principle, the beginning. If the refutation is complete and thorough, it is derived and developed from the nature of the principle itself, and not accomplished by bringing in from elsewhere other coimter assurances and chance fancies. It would be strictly the development of the principle, and thus the completion of its deficiency, were it not that it misunderstands its own purport by taking account solely of the negative aspect of what it seeks to do, and is not conscious of the positive character of its process and result. The really positive working out of the beginning is at the same time just as much the very reverse, it is a negative attitude towards the principle we start from, negative, that is to 22 PJienomenology of Mind say, of its one-sided form, which consists in being primarily immediate, a mere purpose. It may therefore be regarded as a refutation of what constitutes the basis of the system; but more correctly it should be looked at as a demonstration that the basis or principle of the system is in point of fact merely its beginning. " ^ That the truth is only realised in the form of system, that substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the idea which represents the Absolute as Spirit (Geist) — the grandest conception of all, and one which is due to modern times and its religion. Spirit is the only Reality. It is the inner being of the world, that which essentially is, and is per se; it assumes objective, determinate form, and enters into relations with itself — it is externahty (otherness), and exists for self; yet, in this determination, and in its otherness, it is still one with itself — it is self-contained and self-complete, in itself and for itself at once. This self-containedness, however, is first something known by us, it is imphcit in its nature {an sicli); it is Substance spiritual. It has to become self-contained for itself, on its own account; it must get knowledge of spirit, and must be consciousness of itself as spirit. This means, it must be presented to itself as an object, but at the same time straightway annul and transcend this objective form; it must be its own object in which it finds itself reflected. So far as its spiritual content is produced by its own activity, it is only we [the thinkers] who know spirit to be for itself, to be objective to itself; but in so far as spirit laiows itself to be for itself, then this selfproduction, the pure notion, is the sphere and element in which its objectification takes effect, and where it b Preface 23 b Preface 23 gets its existential form. In tliis way it is in its existence aware of itself as an object in which, its own self is reflected. Mind, which, when thus developed, knows itself to be mind, is science. Science is its realisation, and the kingdom it sets up for itself in its own native element. - A self having knowledge purely of itself in the absplute antithesis of itself, this pure ether as such, is the very soil where science flourishes, is knowledge in universal form. The beginning of philosophy presupposes or demands from consciousness that it should feel at home in this element. But this element only attains its perfect meaning and acquires transparency through the process of gradually developing it. It is pure spirituality as the universal which assumes the shape of simple immediacy; and this simple element, existing as such, is the soil of science, is thinking, and can be only in mind. Because this medium, this immediacy of mind, is the mind's substantial nature in general, it is the transfigured essence, reflection which itself is simple, which is aware of itself as immediacy; it is being, which is reflection into itself. Science on its side requires the individual self-consciousness to have risen into this high ether, in order to be able to Hve with science, and in science, and really to feel ahve there. Conversely the individual has the right to demand that science shall hold the ladder to help him to get at least as far as this position, shall show him that he has in himself this ground to stand on. His right rests on his absolute independence, which he knows he possesses in every type and phase of knowledge; for in every phase, whether recognised by science or not, and whatever be the content, his right as an 24 Phenomenology of Mind individual is the absolute and final form, i.e. lie is the immediate certainty of self, and thereby is unconditioned being, were this expression preferred. If the position taken up by consciousness, that of knowing about objective things as opposed to itself, and about itself as opposed to them, is held by science to be the very opposite of this position: if, when in knowing it keeps within itself and never gets beyond itself, science holds this state to be rather the loss of mind altogether — on the other hand the element in which science consists is looked at by consciousness as a remote and distant region, in which consciousness is no longer in possession of itself. Each of these two sides takes the other to be the perversion of the truth. For the naive consciousness to give itself up completely and straight away to science is to make an attempt, induced by some unkno-wm influence, all at once to walk on its head. The compulsion to take up this attitude and move about in this position, is a constraining force it is urged to fall in with, without ever being prepared for it and with no apparent necessity for doing so. Let science be fcr se what it likes, in its relation to naive immediate self-conscious life it presents the appearance of being a reversal of the latter; or, again, because naive self-consciousness finds the principle of its reahty in the certainty of itself, science bears the character of unreality, since consciousness ' for itself ' is a state quite outside of science. Science has for that reason to combine that other element of self-certainty with its own, or rather to show that the other element belongs to itself, and how it does so. When devoid of that sort of reality, science is merely the content of mind qua something imphcit or potential {an sich); Preface 25 purpose whicli at the start is no more than something internal; not spirit, but at first merely spiritual substance. This impHcit moment (AnsicJi) has to find external expression, and become objective on its own account. This means nothing else than that this moment has to establish self-consciousness as one with itself.
It is this process by which science in general comes about, this gradual development of knowing, that is set forth here in the Phenomenology of Mind.* Knowing, as it is found at the start, mind in its immediate and primitive stage, is without the essential nature of mind, is^ sense-consciousness. To get the length of genuine knowledge, or produce the element where science is found — the pure conception of science itself — a long and laborious journey must be undertaken. This process towards science, as regards the content it will bring to light and the forms it will assume in the course of its progress, will not be what is primarily imagined by leading the unscientific consciousness up to the level of science: it will be something different, too, from establishing and laying the foundations of science; and anyway something else than the sort of ecstatic enthusiasm which starts straight of! with absolute knowledge, as if shot out of a pistol, and makes short work of other points of view simply by explaining that it is to take no notice of them.
The task of conducting the individual mind from its unscientific standpoint to that of science had to be taken in its general sense; we had to contemplate the formative development (Bildung) of the universal * " Being the first part of the System of Science " (first edition; omitted in later edition).
26 Phenomenology of Mind [or general] individual, of self-conscious spirit. As to the relation between these two [the particular and general individual], every moment, as it gains concrete form and its own proper shape and appearance, finds a place in the life of the universal individual. The particular individual is incomplete mind, a concrete shape in whose existence, taken as a whole, one determinate characteristic predominates, while the others are found only in blurred outline. In that mind which stands higher than another the lower concrete form of existence has sunk into an obscure moment; what was once substantial objective fact {die Sache selhst) is now only a single trace: its definite shape has been veiled, and become simply a piece of shading. The individual, whose substance is mind at the higher level, passes through these past forms, much in the way that one who takes up a higher science goes through those preparatory forms of Imowledge, which he has long made his own, in order to call up their content before him; he brings back the recollection of them without stopping to fix his interest upon them. The particular individual, so far as content is concerned, has also to go through the stages through which the general mind has passed, but as shapes once assumed by mind and now laid aside, as stages of a road which has been worked over and levelled out. Hence it is that, in the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture deUneated in faint outhne. This bygone mode of existence has already become an acquired Preface 27 possession of the general mind, wliicli constitutes the substance of the individual, and, by thus appearing externally to him, furnishes his inorganic nature. In this respect culture or development of mind (Bildung), regarded from the side of the individual, consists in his acquiring what hes at his hand ready for him, in making its inorganic nature organic to himself, and taking possession of it for himself. Looked at, how--ever, from the side of universal mind qua general spiritual substance, culture means nothing else than that this substance gives itself its own self -consciousness, brings about its own taherent process and its own reflection into self.
Science lays before us the morphogenetic process of this cultural development in all its detailed fullness and necessity, and at the same time shows it to be something that has already sunk into the mind as a moment of its being and become a possession of mind. The goal to be reached is the mind's insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary; and again we must halt at every stage, for each is itself a complete individual form, and is fully and finally considered only so far as its determinate character is taken and dealt with as a rounded and concrete whole, or only so far as the whole is looked at in the light of the special and pecuhar character which this determination gives it. Because the substance of individual mind, nay, more, because the universal mind at work in the world (Weltgeist), has had the patience to go through these forms in the long stretch of time's extent, and to take upon itself the 28 Phenomenology of Mind prodigious labour of the world's history, where it bodied forth in each form the entire content of itself, which each is capable of grasping; and because by nothing less could that all-pervading mind ever manage to become conscious of what itself is — for that reason, the individual mind, in the nature of the case, cannot expect by less toil to grasp what its own substance contains. All the same, its task has meanwhile been made much hghter, because this has historically been imphcitly {an sicli) accomphshed, the content is one where reality has already given place to spiritual possibihties, where immediacy has been overcome and brought under the control of reflection, the various forms and shapes have been already reduced to their intellectual abbreviations, to determinations of thought (GedanJcenbestinimung) pure and simple. Being now a thought, the content is the possession of the substance of mind; existence has no more to be changed into the form of what is inherent and impKcit (Ansichseins), but only the imphcit — no longer merely something primitive, nor lying hidden within existence, but already present as a recollection — into the form of what is exphcit, of what is objective to self [Filrsichseins).
We have to state more exactly the way this is done. At the point at which we here take up this movement, we are spared, in connection with the whole, the process of cancelhng and transcending the stage of mere existence. This process has already taken place. "What is still to be done and needs a higher kind of transfor::iation, is to transcend the forms as ideally presented and made familiar to our minds. By that previous negative process,: existence, having been withdrawn into the mind's sub-~ stance, is, in the first instance, transferred to the life- Preface 29 of self only in an immediate way. The possession tlie self has thereby acquired, has still the same character of imcomprehended immediacy, of passive indifference, which existence itself had; existence has in this way merely passed into the form of an ideal presentation. At the same time, by so doing, it is something famihar to us, something " well-known," something which the existent mind has finished and done with, and hence takes no more to do with and no further interest in. While the activity that is done with the existent is itself merely the process of the particular mind, of mind which is not comprehending itself, on the other hand, hnowledge is directed against this ideal presentation which has hereby arisen, against this " being-familiar " and " well-known "; it is an action of universal mind, the concern of tliouglit.
What we are " famihar with " is not intelhgently known, just for the reason that it is " familiar." When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be famihar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, imderstanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something significant, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and demonstrating consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not, 30 Phenomenology of Mind Analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, did anyhow consist in notMng else ttan doing away with its character of familiarity. To break up an idea into its ultimate elements means returning upon its moments, which at least do not have the form of the idea as picked up, but are the imjnediate property of the self. Doubtless this analysis only arrives at thoughts which are themselves known elements, fixed inert determinations. But what is thus broken up into parts, this imreal entity, is itself an essential moment; for just because the concrete fact is self-divided, and turns into unxeahty, it is something self-moving, self-active. The action of separating the elements is the exercise of the force of Understanding, the most astonishing and greatest of all powers, or rather the absolute power. The circle, which is self-enclosed and at rest, and, being a substance, holds its own moments, is an immediate condition, the immediate, continuous relation of elements with their unity, and hence arouses no sense of wonderment. But that an accident as such, when cut loose from its containing circmnference, — that what is bound and held by something else and actual only by being connected with it, — should get an existence all its own, gain freedom and independence on its own account — this is the portentous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of pure ego. Death, as we may call that unreality, is the most terrible thing, and to keep and hold fast what is dead demands the greatest force of all. Beauty, powerless and helpless, hates understanding, because the latter exacts from it what it cannot perform.* But the Ufe of mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction; * This is directed against Novalis and the cult of beauty.
Preface 31 it endures its death and in death maintaitis its being. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself in utter desolation. It is this mighty power, not by being a positive which turns away from the negative, as when we say of anything it is nothing or it is false, and, being then done with it, pass off to something else; on the contrary, mind is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and dwelhng with it. This dwelling beside it is the magic power that converts the negative into being. That power is just what we spoke of above as subject, which by giving determinateness a place in its substance, cancels abstract immediacy, i.e. immediacy which merely is, and, by so doing, becomes the true substance, becomes being or immediacy that does not have mediation outside it, but is this mediation itself.
This process of making what is objectively presented a possession of pm:e self-consciousness, of raising it to the level of universahty in general, is merely one aspect of mental development; spiritual evolution is not yet completed. The manner of study in ancient times is distinct from that of the modern world, in that the former consisted in the cultivation and perfecting of the natural mind. Testing hfe carefully at all points, philosophising about everything it came across, the former created an experience permeated through and through by universals. In modern times, however, an individual finds the abstract form ready made. In straining to grasp it and make it his own, he rather strives to bring forward the inner meaning alone, without any process of mediation; the production of the universal is abridged, instead of the universal arising out of the manifold detail of concrete existence.
32 Phenomenology of Mind 'Hence nowadays the task before us consists not so mucli in getting the individual clear of the level of sensuous immediacy, and making him a substance that thinks and is grasped in terms of thought, but rather the very opposite: it consists in actuahsing the universal, and giving it spiritual vitality, by the process of breaking down and superseding fixed and determinate thoughts. But it is much more difficult to make fixed and definite thoughts fuse with one another and form a continuous whole than to bring sensuous existence into this state. The reason hes in what was said before.
Thought determinations get their substance and the element of their existence from the ego, the power of the negative, or piire reality; while determinations of sense find this in impotent abstract immediacy, in mere being as such. Thoughts become fluent and interfuse, when thinking pure and simple, this inner immediacy, knows itself as a moment, when pure certainty of self abstracts from itself. It does not " abstract " in the sense of getting away from itself and setting itself on one side, but of surrendering the fixed quaUty of its self-affirmation, and giving up both the fixity of the purely concrete — vifhich is the ego as contrasted with the variety of its content — and the fixity of all those distinctions [the various thought-functions, principles, etc.] which are present in the element of pure thought and share that absoluteness of the ego. In virtue of this process pure thoughts become notions and conceptions, and are then what they are in truth, selfmoving functions, circles, are what their substance consists in, are spiritual entities.
This movement of the spiritual entities constitutes the nature of scientific procedure in general. Looked Preface 33 at as the concatenation of their content, this movement is the necessitated development and expansion of that content into an organic systematic whole. By this movement, too, the road, which leads to the notion of knowledge, becomes itself hkewise a necessary and complete evolving process (Werden). This preparatory stage thus ceases to consist of casual philosophical reflections, referring to objects here and there, to processes and thoughts of the undeveloped mind as chance may direct; and it does not try to estabhsh the truth by miscellaneous ratiocinations, inferences, and consequences drawn from circimiscribed thoughts. The road to science, by the very movement of the notion itself, will compass the entire objective world of conscious hfe in its rational necessity.
Further, a systematic exposition like this constitutes the first part of science,* because the positive existence of mind, qua primary and ultimate, is nothing but the immediate aspect of mind, the beginning; the beginning, but not yet its return to itself. The characteristic feature distinguishing this part of science [Phenomenology] from the others is the element of positive immediate existence. The mention of this distinction leads us to discuss certain established ideas that usually come to notice in this connection.