Now self-consciousness takes that object to be good, and to exist per se, in which it finds itself; and that to be bad when it finds the opposite of itself there. Goodness means its identity with objective reality, badness their disparity. At the same time what is for it good and bad, is per se good and bad; because it is just that in which these two aspects — of being per se, and of being for it — are the same: it is the real indwelling soul of the objective facts, and the judgment is the evidence of its power within them, a power which makes them into what they are in themselves. What they are when spirit is actively related to them, their identity or non-identity with spirit, — that is their real nature and the test of their true meaning, and not how they are identical or diverse taken immediately in themselves apart from spirit, i.e. not their inherent being and self-existence in abstracto. The active relation of spirit to these moments, — which are first put forward as objects to it and thereafter pass by its action into what is essential and inherent — becomes at the same time their reflection into themselves, in virtue of which they obtain actual spiritual existence, and their spiritual meaning comes to light. But as their first immediate characteristic is distinct from the relation of 504 Phenomenology of Mind spirit to them, the third determinate moment — their own proper spirit — is also distinguished from the second moment. Their second inherent nature (Das zweite Ansich derselben) — their essentiality which comes to light through the relation of spirit to them — must in the first instance turn out different from the immediate inherent nature; for indeed this mediating process of spiritual activity puts in motion the immediate characteristic, and turns it into something else.
As a result of this process, the self-contained conscious mind doubtless finds now in the Power of the State its reality pure and simple, and its subsistence; but it does not find its individuality as such; it finds its inherent and essential being, but not what it is for itself. Rather, it finds there its action qua individual action rejected and denied, and subdued into obedience. The individual thus recoils before this power and turns back into himself; it is the reality that suppresses him, and is the bad. For instead of being identical with him, that with which he is at one, it is something utterly in discordance with individuality. In contrast with this, Wealth and Riches are the good; they tend to the general enjoyment, they are there simply to be disposed of, and they ensure for every one the consciousness of his particular self. Riches means in its very nature universal beneficence: if it refuses any benefit in a given case, and does not gratify every need, this is merely an accident which does not detract from its universal and necessary nature of imparting to every individual his share and being a thousand-handed benefactor.
These two judgments provide the ideas of goodness Culture and its Sphere of Reality 505 and badness with a content which is the reverse of what they had for us. Self-consciousness has up till now, however, been related to its objects only incompletely, viz. only according to the criterion of the self-existent. But consciousness is also real in its inherent nature, and has likewise to take this aspect for its point of view and criterion, and by so doing round off completely the judgment of self-conscious spirit. According to this aspect state-power expresses its essential nature: the power of the state is in part the quiet insistence of law, in part government and prescription, which appoints and regulates the particular processes of universal action. The one is the substance pure and simple, the other its action which animates and sustains itself and all individuals. The individual thus finds therein his ground and nature expressed, organised, and exercised. As against this, the individual, by the enjoyment of riches, does not get to know his own universal nature: he only gets a transitory consciousness and enjoyment of himself qua particular and self-existing, and discovers his discordance, his want of harmony with his own essential nature. The conceptions good and bad thus receive here a content the opposite of which they had before.
These two ways of judging find each of them an identity and a disagreement. In the first case consciousness finds the power of the state out of agreement with it, and the enjoyment that came from wealth in accord with it; while in the second case the reverse holds good. There is a twofold attainment of identity and a twofold form of disagreement: there is an opposite relation established towards both the essential realities. We must pass judgment on these different 506 Phenomenology of Mind ways of judging as such; to this end we have to apply the criterion already brought forward. The conscious relation where identity or agreement is found, is, according to this standard, the good; that where want of agreement obtains, the bad. These two types of relation must henceforth be regarded as modes or forms of conscious existence. Conscious life, through taking up a different kind of relation, thereby becomes itself characterised as different, comes to be itself good or bad. It is not simply distinct in virtue of the fact that it took as its constitutive principle either existence for itself, or mere being in itself; for both are equally essential moments of its life: that dual way of judging, above discussed, presented those principles as separated, and contained, therefore, merely abstract ways of judging. Concrete actual conscious life has within it both principles, and the distinction between them falls solely within its own nature, viz. inside the relation of itself to the real.
This relation takes opposite forms; in the one there is an active attitude towards state-power and wealth as to something with which it is in accord, in the other it is related to these realities as to something with which it is at variance. A conscious life which finds itself at one with them has the attribute of Nobility. In the case of the public authority of the state, it beholds what is in accord with itself, and sees that it has there its own nature pure and simple and the region for the exercise of its own powers, and takes up the position of open willing and obedient service in its interests, as well as that of inner reverence towards it. In the same way in the sphere of wealth, it sees that wealth secures for it the consciousness of self-existence, of Culture and its Sphere of Reality 507 realising the other essential aspect of its nature: hence it looks upon wealth likewise as something essential in relation to itself, acknowledges him from whence the enjoyment comes as a benefactor, and considers itself under a debt of obligation.
The conscious life involved in the other relation, again, that of disagreement, has the attribute of Baseness. It remains at variance with both those essential elements. It looks upon the authoritative power of the state as a chain, as something suppressing its separate existence for its own sake, and hence hates the ruler, obeys only with secret malice, and stands ever ready to burst out in rebellion. It sees, too, in wealth, by which it attains to the enjoyment of its own independent existence, merely something discordant, or out of harmony with its permanent nature; since through wealth it only gets a sense of its particular isolated existence and a consciousness of passing enjoyment, this type of mind loves wealth, but despises it, and, with the disappearance of enjoyment, of what is inherently evanescent, regards its relation to the man of wealth as having ceased too.
These relations now express, in the first instance, a judgment, the determinate characterisation of what both those facts [state-power and wealth] are as objects for consciousness; not as yet what they are in their complete objective nature (an und fur sich). The reflection which is presented in this judgment is partly at first for us [who are philosophising] an affirmation of the one characteristic along with the other, and hence is a simultaneous cancelling of both; it is not yet the reflection of them for consciousness itself. Partly, again, they are at first immediate essential entities; they have not become this nor is there in 508 Phenomenology of Mind them consciousness of self: that for which they are is not yet their animating principle: they are predicates which are not yet themselves subject. On account of this separation, the entirety of the spiritual process of judgment also breaks asunder into two existent modes of consciousness, each of which has a one-sided character. Now, just as at the outset the indifference of the two aspects in the process of selfestrangement — one of which was the inherent essential being of pure consciousness, viz. the determinate ideas of good and bad, the other their actual existence in the form of state-power and wealth — passed to the stage of being related the one to the other, passed to the level of judgment; in the same way this external relation must be raised to the level of their inner unity, must become a relation of thought to actual reality. In this way the spirit animating both the forms of judgment will make its appearance. This takes place when judgment passes into inference, becomes the mediating process in which the middle term necessitating and connecting both sides of the judgment is brought forward.
The noble type of consciousness, then, finds itself in the judgment related to state-power, in the sense that this power is indeed not a self as yet but at first is universal substance, in which however this form of mind feels its own essential nature to exist, is conscious of its own purpose and absolute content. By taking up a positive relation to this substance, it assumes a negative attitude towards its own special purposes, its particular content and individual existence, and lets them disappear. This type of mind is the heroism of Service; the virtue which sacrifices individual being Culture and its Sphere of Reality 509 to the universal, and thereby brings this into existence; the type of personality which renounces possession and enjoyment, acts for the sake of the prevailing power, and becomes a concrete reality in this way.
Through this process the universal becomes united and bound up with existence in general, just as the individual consciousness makes itself by this renunciation essentially universal. That from which this consciousness alienates itself by submitting to serve is its consciousness immersed in mere existence: but the being alienated from itself is the inherent nature. By thus shaping its life in accord with what is universal, it acquires a Reverence for itself, and gets reverence from others. The power of the state, however, which to start with was merely universal in thought, the inherent nature, becomes through this very process universal in fact, becomes actual power. It is actually so only in getting that actual obedience which it obtains through self-consciousness judging it to be the essential reality, and through the self being freely surrendered to it. The result of this action, binding the essential reality and self indissolubly together, is to produce a twofold actuality, — a self that is truly actualised, and a state-power whose authority is accepted as true.
Owing to this alienation [implied in the idea of sacrifice] state-power, however, is not yet a selfconsciousness that knows itself as state-power. It is merely the law of the state, its inherent principle, that is accepted; the state-power has as yet no particular will. For as yet the self-consciousness rendering service has not alienated its pure selfhood, and made it an animating influence in the exercise of state-power; the serving attitude merely 510 Phenomenology of Mind gives the state its bare being, sacrifices merely its existence to the state, not its essential nature. This type of self-consciousness passes thus for something that is in conformity with the essential nature, and is acknowledged and accepted because of its inherent reality. The others find their essential nature operative in it, but not their independent existence — find their thinking, their pure consciousness fulfilled, but not their specific individuality. It has a value, therefore, in their thoughts, and is honoured accordingly. Such a type is the haughty vassal; he is active in the interests of the state-power, so far as the latter is not a personal will [a monarch] but merely an essential will. His self-importance lies only in the honour thus acquired, only in the general opinion thinking of his concern for the essential will, not in an individuality gratefully thinking of his services; for he has not helped this individuality [the monarch] to get independence. The language he would use, were he to occupy a direct relation to the personal will of the state-power, which thus far has not arisen, would take the form of " counsel " imparted in the interests of what is the best for all.
State-power has, therefore, still at this stage no will to meet the advice, and does not decide between the different opinions as to what is universally the best. It is not yet governmental control, and on that account is in truth not yet real state-power. Individual selfexistence, the possession of an individual will that is not yet qua will surrendered, is the inner separatist spiritual principle of the various classes and stations, a spirit which keeps for its own behoof what suits itself best, in spite of its words about Culture and its Sphere of Reality 511 the universal best, and this clap-trap about what is universally the best tends to be made a substitute for action bringing it about. The sacrifice of existence, which takes place in the case of service, is indeed complete when it goes so far as death. But the constant danger of a death which the individual survives, leaves a specific kind of existence, and hence a particular self-reference still untouched; and this makes the counsel imparted in the interests of the universally best ambiguous and open to suspicion; it really means, in point of fact, retaining the claim to a private opinion of his own, and a separate individual will as against the power of the state. Its relation to the latter is, therefore, still one of discordance; and it possesses the characteristic found in the case of the base type of consciousness — it is ever at the point of breaking out into rebellion.
This contradiction, which has to be got rid of, in this form of discordance and opposition between the independence of the individual conscious life and the universality belonging to state-authority, contains at the same time another aspect. That renunciation of existence, when it is complete, as it is in death, is one that does not revert to the conscious life that makes the sacrifice; it simply is: this conscious life does not survive the renunciation and exist by itself as an objective fact (an und fur sich), it merely passes away in the unreconciled opposition. That alone is true sacrifice of individuality, therefore, in which it gives itself up as completely as in the case of death, but all the while preserves itself in the renunciation. It comes thereby to be actually what it is implicitly, — the identical unity of self with its opposed self. In this way, by the 512 Phenomenology of Mind inner withdrawn and separatist spiritual principle, the self as such, coming forward and abrogating itself, the state-power becomes ipso facto raised into a proper self of its own; without this alienation of self the deeds of honour, the actions of the noble type of consciousness, and the counsels which its insight reveals, would continue to maintain the ambiguous character which, as we saw, kept that secret reserve of private intention and self-will, in spite of its overt pretensions.
This estrangement, however, takes place in Language, in words alone, and language assumes here its peculiar role. Both in the sphere of the general social order (Sittlichkeit), where language conveys laws and commands, and in the sphere of actual life, where it appears as conveying advice, the content of what it expresses is the essential reality, and language is the form of that essential content. Here, however, it takes the form in which qua language it exists to be its content, and possesses authority, qua spoken word; it is the power of utterance qua utterance which, just in speaking, performs what has to be performed. For it is the existence of a pure self qua self; in speech the particular self-existent self-consciousness comes as such into existence, so that its particular individuality is something for others. Ego qua this particular pure ego is non-existent otherwise; in every other mode of expression it is absorbed in some concrete actuality, and appears in a shape from which it can withdraw; it turns reflectively back into itself, away from its act, as well as from its physiognomic expression, and leaves such an incomplete existence, (in which there is always at once too much as well as too little), lying soulless behind, Speech, however, contains this ego in its Culture and its Sphere of Reality 513 purity; it alone expresses I, qua self. Its existence in this case is, qua existence, a form of objectivity which has in it the true nature of existence. Ego is this particular ego, but at the same time universal; its appearing is ipso facto and at once the alienation and disappearance of this particular ego, and in consequence its remaining all the while universal. The I, that expresses itself, is apprehended as an ego; it is a kind of infection, in virtue of which it establishes at once a unity with those who are aware of it, a spark that kindles a universal consciousness of self. That it is perceived as a fact by others means eo ipso that its existence is itself dying away: this its otherness is taken back into itself; and its existence lies just in this, that, qua self-conscious Now, as it exists, it has no subsistence and that it subsists just through its disappearance. This disappearance is, therefore, itself ipso facto its continuance; it is its own cognition of itself, and its knowing itself as something that has passed into another self that has been perceived and apprehended and is universal.
Spirit maintains this form of reality here, because the extremes, too, whose unity spirit is, have directly the character of being realities each on its own account. Their unity is disintegrated into rigid aspects, each of which is an actual object for the other, and each is excluded from the other. The unity, therefore, appears in the role of a mediating term, which is excluded and distinguished from the separated reality of the two sides; it has, therefore, itself the actual character of something objective, apart, and distinguished from its aspects, and objective for them, i.e. the unity is an existent objective fact.
VOL. II.— H 514 Phenomenology of Mind The spiritual substance comes as such into existence only when it has been able to take as its aspects those selfconsciousnesses, which know this pure self to be a reality claiming immediate validity, and therein immediately know, too, that they are such realities merely through the process of alienation. Through that pure self the moments of substance get the transparency of a self-knowing category, and become clarified so far as to be moments of spirit; through the mediating process spirit comes to exist in spiritual form. Spirit in this way is the mediating term, presupposing those extremes and produced through their existence; but it is also the spiritual whole breaking out between them, which sunders its self into them, and creates each solely in virtue of that contact with the whole which belongs to its very principle. The fact that both extremes are from the start and in their very nature transcended and disintegrated brings out their unity; and this is the process which fuses both together, interchanges their characteristic features, and binds them together, and does so in each extreme. This mediating process consequently actualises the principle of each of the two extremes, or makes what each is inherently in itself its controlling and moving spirit.
Both extremes, the state-authority and the noble type of consciousness, are disintegrated by this latter. In state-power, the two sides are the abstract universal which is obeyed, and the individual will existing on its own account, which, however, does not yet belong to the universal itself. In nobility, the two sides are the obedience in giving up existence, or the inherent maintenance of self-respect and honour, and, on the other hand, a self which exists purely for its own sake Culture and its Sphere of Reality 515 and whose self-existence is not yet done away with, the self-will that remains always in reserve. These two moments into which the extremes are refined, and which, therefore, find expression in language, are the abstract universal, which is called the "universal best/' and the pure self which by rendering service abrogated the life of absorption in the manifold variety of existence. Both in principle are the same; for > pure self is just the abstract universal, and hence their unity acts as their mediating term. But the self is, to begin with, actual only in consciousness as one extreme, while the inherent nature (Ansich) is actualised in state-authority as the other extreme. That state-power not merely in the form of honour but in reality should be transferred to it, is lacking in the case of consciousness; while in the case of state-authority there is lacking the fact that it was obeyed not merely as a so-called universal best, but as will, in other words, as state-power which is the self regulating and deciding. The unity of the principle in which statepower still remains, and into which consciousness has been refined, becomes real in this mediating process, and this exists qua mediating term in the simple form of speech. All the same, the aspects of this unity are not yet present in the form of two selves as selves; for state-power comes first to be inspired with active self-hood. This language is, therefore, not yet spiritual existence in the sense in which spirit completely knows and expresses itself.
Nobility of consciousness, because the extreme form of self, assumes the role of creating the language by which the separate factors related are formed into active spiritual wholes. The heroism of dumb service 516 Phenomenology of Mind passes into the heroism of flattery. This reflection of service in express language constitutes the selfconscious self-disintegrating mediating term, and reflects back into itself not only its own special extreme, but reflects the extreme of universal power back into this self too, and makes that power, which is at first implicit, into an independent self-existence, and gives it the individualistic form of self-consciousness. Through this process the indwelling spirit of this state-power comes into existence — that of an unlimited monarch. It is unlimited; the language of flattery raises power into transparent, clearly-acknowledged universality; this moment being the product of language, of transparent spiritualised existence, is a purified form of self -identity. It is a monarch; for flattering language likewise puts individualistic self-consciousness on its pinnacle; what conscious nobility abandons as regards this aspect of pure spiritual unity is the pure essential nature of its thought, its ego itself. The naked particularity of its ego, which otherwise is only imagined, flattery brings out more definitely into relief as an actual existence, by giving the monarch a proper name. For it is in the name alone that the distinction of the individual from every one else is not imagined but is actually made by all.
By having a name the individual passes for a pure individual not merely in his own consciousness of himself, but in the consciousness of all. By its name, then, the monarch becomes absolutely detached from every one, exclusive and solitary, and in virtue of it is unique as an atom that cannot commute any part of its essential nature, and has nothing like itself. This name is thus its reflection into itself, or is the actual reality Culture and its Sphere of Reality 517 which universal power has inherently within itself: through the name the power is the monarch.* Conversely he, this particular individual, thereby knows himself, this individual self, to be universal power, knows that the nobles not only are ready and prepared for the service of the state-authority, but are grouped as an ornamental setting round the throne, and that they are for ever telling him who sits thereon what he is.
The language of their professed praise is in this way the spirit that unites together the two extremes in the case of state-power itself. This language reflects in itself the abstract power and gives to it the moment peculiar to the other extreme, an isolated self of its own, willing and deciding on its own account, and consequently gives it self-conscious existence. Or again, by that means this self-conscious particular being comes to be aware of itself for certain as the supreme authority. This power is the central focal self into which, through relinquishing their own inner certainty of self, the many separate centres of selfhood are fused together into one.
Since, however, this proper spirit of state-power subsists by getting its realisation and its nourishment from the homage of action and thought rendered by the nobility, it is a form of independence in internal self-estrangement. The noble, the extreme form of self -existence, keeps back the other extreme of actual universality, and keeps it back for the universality of thought which was relinquished. The power of the state has passed over to and fallen upon the noble. It falls to the noble primarily to make the state- 518 Phenomenology of Mind authority truly effective: in his existence as a self on his own account, that authority ceases to be the inert being it appeared to be qua extreme of abstract and merely implicit reality.
Looked at per se, state-power reflected back into itself, or becoming spiritual, means nothing else than that it has come to be a moment of self-conscious life, i.e. is only by being sublated. Consequently it is now the real in the sense of something whose spiritual meaning lies in being sacrificed and squandered; it exists in the sense of wealth. It continues, no doubt, to subsist at the same time as a form of reality over against wealth, into which in principle it is forever passing; but it is a reality, whose inherent principle is this very process of passing over — owing to the service and the reverence rendered to it, and by which it arises — into its opposite, into the condition of relinquishing its power. Thus from its point of view (Fursich) the special and peculiar self, which constitutes its will, becomes, by the self-abasement of the nobility, a universal that renounces itself, becomes completely an isolated particular, a mere accident, which is the prey of every stronger will. What remains to it of the universally acknowledged and incommunicable independence is the empty name.
While, then, the nobility may adopt the attitude of something that can in a similar way stand related to the universal power, its true nature lies rather in retaining its own separateness of being when rendering its service, but, in what is properly the abnegation of its personality, its true being lies in actually cancelling and rending in pieces the universal substance. Its spirit is the attitude of thoroughgoing discordance (inequality): Culture and its Sphere of Reality 519 on one side it retains its own will in the honour it receives, on the other hand it gives up its will: in part it alienates its inner nature from itself, and arrives at the extreme of discordance with itself, in part it subdues the universal substance to itself, and puts this entirely at variance with itself. It is obvious that, as a result, its own specific nature, which kept it distinct from the so-called base type of mind, disappears, and with that this latter type of mind too. The base type has gained its end, that of subordinating universal power to self-centred isolation of self.