Duty itself now, qua duty deserted by the self, is known and thought to be merely a moment; it has ceased to mean absolute being, it has become degraded to something which is not a self, does not exist on its own account, and is thus what exists for something else. But this existing-for-something-else remains just for that reason an essential moment, because self, qua consciousness, constitutes and establishes the opposition between existence-for-self and existencefor-another; and now duty essentially means something immediately actual, and is no longer a mere abstract consciousness of duty.
This existence for something else is, then, the inherently essential substance distinguished from the self. Conscience has not given up pure duty, the abstract implicit essence: pure duty is the essential moment of relating itself, qua universality, to others. Conscience is the common element of distinct self-consciousnesses; and this is the substance in which the act secures subsistence and reality, the moment enabling recognition by others to take place. The moral selfconsciousness does not possess this moment of recognition, of pure consciousness which has definite existence; and on that account really does not "act" at all, does not effectually actualise anything. Its inherent nature is for it either the abstract unreal essence, or else existence in the form of a reality which has no spiritual character. The actual reality of conscience, however, is one which is a self, i.e. an existence conscious of itself, the spiritual element of being recognised. Doing something is, therefore, merely the translation 650 Phenomenology of Mind of its particular content into that objective element where it is universal and is recognised, and this very fact, that the content is recognised, makes the deed an actuality. The action is recognised and thereby real, because the actual reality is immediately bound up with conviction or knowledge; or, in other words, knowledge of its purpose is immediately and at once the element of existence, universal recognition. For the essence of the act, duty, consists in the conviction conscience has about it. This conviction is just the inherent principle itself; it is inherently universal selfconsciousness — in other words, is recognition and hence reality. The result achieved under conviction of duty is therefore directly one which has substantial solid existence. Thus, we hear nothing more there about good intention not coming to anything definite, or about the good man faring badly. What is known as duty is carried out completely and becomes an actual fact, just because what is dutiful is the universal for all selfconsciousnesses, that which is recognised, acknowledged, and thus objectively is. Taken separately and alone, however, without the content of self, this duty is existence-for-another, the transparent element, which has merely the significance of an unsubstantial ultimate factor in general.
If we look back on the sphere where in general spiritual reality made its appearance, we find that the principle involved was that the utterance of individuality is the absolutely real, the ultimately self-sufficing. But the shape which, in the first instance, gave expression to this notion, was the " honest consciousness " * which was occupied and Conscience 651 concerned with abstract " fact itself." This " fact itself " was there a predicate. In conscience, however, it is for the first time a Subject, which has put all aspects of consciousness in it, and for which all these moments, substantiality in general, external existence, and essence of thought, are contained in this certainty of itself. The " fact itself " has substantiality in general in the ethical order (Sittlichkeit), external existence in culture, self-knowing essence of thought in morality; and in conscience it is the Subject, which knows these moments within itself. While the " honest consciousness " is for ever grasping merely the bare and empty " fact itself/' conscience, on the other hand, secures the " fact itself "in its fullness, a fullness which conscience of itself supplies. Conscience has this power through its knowing the moments of consciousness as moments, and controlling them because it is their negative essential principle.
When conscience is considered in relation to the particular features of the opposition which appears in action, and when we consider its consciousness regarding the nature of those features, its attitude towards the reality of the particular case where action takes effect is, in the first instance, that of knowledge. So far as the aspect of universality is present in such knowledge, it is the business of conscientious action, qua knowledge, to compass the reality before it in an unrestricted exhaustive manner, and thus get to know exactly the circumstances of the case, and give them due consideration. This knowledge, however, since it is aware of universality as a moment, is in consequence a kind of knowledge of these circumstances which is conscious all the while of not embracing 652 Phenomenology of Mind them, is conscious of not being conscientious in its procedure. The genuinely universal and pure relation of knowledge would be one towards something not opposed, a relation to itself. But action through the opposition essentially implied in action is related to what negates consciousness, to a reality existing per se. Contrasted with the simple nature of pure consciousness, the absolute other, externality, multiplicity per se, is a sheer plurality of circumstances which breaks up indefinitely and spreads in all directions — backwards in their conditions, sidewards in their associations, forwards in their consequences.
The conscientious mind is aware of this state of affairs and of its relation thereto, and knows it is not acquainted to the full and complete extent required with the case in which its action takes effect, and knows that its pretence of conscientiously weighing and considering all the circumstances is futile. This acquaintance with and consideration of all the circumstances, however, are not entirely absent: but they are merely present as a moment, as something which is only for others: and the conscientious mind holds its incomplete knowledge to be sufficient and complete, merely because it is its own knowledge.
In a similar way is constituted the process in connection with the universality of the essential principle, the universality by which the content is characterised when determined through pure consciousness. Conscience, when it goes on to act, takes up a relation to the various sides of the case. The case breaks up into separate elements, and the relation of pure consciousness towards it does the same: whereby the multiplicity characteristic of the case Conscience 653 Conscience 653 becomes a multiplicity of duties. Conscience knows that it has to select and decide amongst them; for none of them specifically, in its content, is an absolute duty; only duty pure and simple is so. But this abstract entity has, in its realisation, come to denote self-conscious ego. Spirit certain of itself is at rest within itself in the form of conscience, and its real universality, its duty, lies in its bare conviction concerning duty. This bare conviction as such is as empty as pure duty, pure in the sense that nothing within it, no definite content, is duty. Action, however, has to take place, the individual must determine to do something or other; and spirit which is certain of itself, in which the inherent principle has attained the significance of self-conscious ego, knows it has this determination, this specific content, within the immediate certainty of its own self. This certainty, being a determination and a content, is " natural " consciousness, i.e. the various impulses and inclinations.
Conscience admits no content as absolute for it, because it is absolute negativity of all that is definite. It determines from itself alone. The circle of the self, however, within which determinateness as such falls, is so-called " sensibility ": in order to get a content out of the immediate certainty of self, there is no other means to be found except sensibility.
Everything that in previous modes of experience was presented as good or bad, law and right, is something other than immediate certainty of self; it is a universal, which is now a relative entity, an existence-foranother. Or, looked at otherwise, it is an object which, while connecting and relating consciousness with itself, comes between consciousness and its own proper truth, 654 Phenomenology of Mind and instead of that object being the immediacy of consciousness, it rather cuts consciousness off from itself.
For conscience, however, certainty of self is the pure, direct, and immediate truth: and this truth is thus its immediate certainty of self presented as content; i.e. its truth is altogether the caprice of the individual, and the accidental content of his unconscious natural existence [his sensibility].
This content at the same time passes for essential moral reality, for duty. For pure duty, as was found when testing and examining laws,* is utterly indifferent to every content, and gets along with any. Here it has at the same time the essential form of self-existence, of existing on its own account: and this form of individual conviction is nothing else than the sense of the emptiness of pure duty, and the consciousness that this is merely a moment, that its substantial independence is a predicate which finds its subject in the individual, whose caprice gives pure duty content, can connect every content with this form, and attach its feeling of conscientiousness to any content.
An individual increases his property in a certain way. It is a duty that each should see to the maintenance of himself and family, and no less ensure the possibility of his being serviceable to his neighbours and of doing good to those standing in need. The individual is aware that this is a duty, for this content is directly contained in the certainty he has of himself. He perceives, further, that he fulfils this particular duty in this particular case. Other people possibly consider the specific way he adopts as fraud: they hold by other sides of the concrete case presented, while he holds firmly to Conscience 655 this particular side of it by the fact of his being conscious that the increase of property is a pure and' absolute duty.
In the same way there is fulfilled by the individual, as a duty, what other people call violence and wrongdoing— the duty of asserting one's independence against others: and, again, the duty of preserving one's life, and maintaining the possibility of being useful to one's neighbours. Others call this cowardice, but what they call courage really violates both these duties. But cowardice cannot be so stupid and thoughtless as not to know that the maintenance of life and the possibility of being useful to others are duties — so inept as not to be convinced of the dutifulness of its action, and not to know that dutifulness consists in knowledge. Otherwise it would commit the absurdity of being without morality. Since morality lies in the consciousness of having fulfilled one's duty, this will not be lacking when the action is what is called cowardice any more than when it is what is called courage. As the abstraction called " duty " is capable of every content, it is quite equal to this latter content. The agent acting knows what he does to be duty, and since he knows this, and conviction as to duty is just dutifulness, he is thus recognised and acknowledged by others. The act thereby becomes accepted as valid and has actual existence.
It is of no avail to object to this freedom — which puts one kind of content as well as any other into this universal inert receptacle of pure duty and pure knowledge— by asserting that another content ought to have been put there. For whatever the content be, each content has upon it the stain of determinateness from 656 Phenomenology oj Mind which pure knowledge is free, which pure knowledge can disregard just as readily as it can take up every determinateness in turn. Every content, through its being determinate, stands on the same footing with every other, even though it seems to have precisely the character that the particularity in the content is cancelled. It may well seem — since in concrete cases duty breaks regularly into opposition, and, by doing so, sunders the opposites particularity and universality— that the duty, whose content is the universal as such, contains on that account, ipso facto, the nature of pure duty, and that thus form and content are here entirely in accord. On this view, it might seem that, e.g., acting for the universal good, for what is the best for all, is to be preferred to acting for what is the best for the individual. But this universal duty is in its entirety what is present as self-contained actual substance, in the form of [established] law and right, and holds good independently of the individual's knowledge and conviction and immediate interest. It is thus precisely that against the form of which morality as a whole is directed. As regards its content, however, even this is determinate in character, in so far as the " universally best " is opposed to the " individual best." Consequently, its law is one from which conscience knows itself to be absolutely free, and it gives itself the absolute privilege to add and pare, to neglect as well as fulfil it.
Then, again, the above distinction of duty towards the individual and duty towards the universal is not something fixed and final, when we look at the nature of the opposition in question. On the contrary, what the individual does for himself is to the advantage of the Conscience 657 universal as well. The more he looks after his own good, not only is there the greater possibility of his usefulness to others: his very reality consists merely in his living and existing in connection with others. His individual enjoyment means ultimately and essentially putting what is his own at the disposal of others, and helping them to secure their enjoyment. In fulfilling duty to individuals, and hence duty to self, duty to the general thus also gets fulfilled. Weighing, considering, comparing duties, should this appear here, would take the line of calculating the advantage which the general would get from any given action. But there can be no such process; partly because morality would thereby be handed over to the inevitable contingency characteristic of mere " insight "; partly because it is precisely the nature of conscience to have done with all this calculating and weighing of duties, and to decide directly from itself without reasons of any kind.
In this way, then, conscience acts and maintains itself in the unity of its essential being and its objective existence for itself, in the unity of pure thought and individuality: it is spirit certain of itself, which inherently possesses its own truth, within itself, in its knowledge, a knowledge in the sense of knowledge of its duty. It maintains its being therein by the fact that the positive element in the act, the content as well as form of duty and the knowledge of duty, belong to the self, to the certainty of itself. What, however, seeks to come before the self with an inherent being of its own is held to be not truly real, merely a transcended element, only a moment. Consequently, it is not universal knowledge in general VOL. II.— R 658 Phenomenology of Mind that has a value, but what is known of the circumstances. It puts into duty, which is the universal immanent essence, the content which it derives from its natural individuality; for the content is one that is present in its own being. This content, in virtue of the universal medium wherein it exists, becomes the duty which it carries out, and empty bare duty is, through this very fact, affirmed to be something transcended, a moment. This content is its emptiness, transcended and cancelled, i.e. is the fulfilling of pure duty.
But at the same time conscience is detached from every possible content. It absolves itself from every specific duty, which would try to pass for a law. In the strength of its certainty of itself, it has the majesty of absolute self-sufficiency, of absolute avrdpKeia, to bind or to loose. This self-determination is at once, therefore, absolute conformity to duty. Duty is the knowledge itself; this pure and simple selfhood, however, is the immanent principle and essence; for this inherent principle is pure self -identity, and self-identity lies in this consciousness.
This pure knowledge is immediately objective, is existence-for-another; for, qua pure self -identity, it is immediacy, it is objective being. This being, however, is at the same time pure universality, the selfhood of all: in other words, action is acknowledged, and hence actual. This being forms the element by which conscience directly stands on a footing of equality with every self-consciousness; and this relation means not an abstract impersonal law, but the self of conscience.
In that this right which conscience does is at the same time, however, a fact for others, a disparity seems Conscience 659 to affect conscience. The duty which it fulfils is a determinate content; that content is, no doubt, the self of consciousness, and so its knowledge of itself, its identity with its self. But when fulfilled, when planted in the general element of existence, this identity is no longer knowledge, no longer this process of distinction which directly and at the same time does away with its distinctions. Rather, in the sphere of existence, distinction is set up as subsistent, and the act is a determinate specific one, not identical with the element of everybody's self-consciousness, and hence not necessarily acknowledged and recognised. Both aspects, conscience qua acting, and the general consciousness acknowledging this act to be duty, stand equally loose from the specific character belonging to this deed. On account of this freedom and detachment, the relation of the two within the common medium of their connection is rather a relationship of complete disparity — as a result of which, the consciousness doing and owning the act finds itself in complete uncertainty regarding the spirit which does the act and is " certain of itself."
This spirit acts and places in existence a particular determinate characteristic; others hold to this existence, as its truth, and are therein certain of this spirit; it has therein expressed what it takes to be its duty. But it is detached and free from any specific duty; it has, therefore, left the point where other people think it actually to be; and this very medium of existence and duty as inherently existing are held by it to be merely transitory moments. What it thus places before them, it also " displaces " again, or rather has, eo ipso, immediately " displaced." For its reality is, for it, not the duty and determinate content thus 660 Phenomenology of Mind put forward, but rather is the reality which it has in its absolute certainty of itself.
The other self-consciousnesses do not know, then, whether this particular conscience is morally good or is wicked; or, rather, not merely can they not know this conscience, but they must take it to be also wicked. For just as it stands loose to the determinate content of duty, and detached from duty as inherently existing, so do they likewise. What is placed before them, they themselves know how to " displace " or dissemble: it is something expressing merely the self of another individual, not their own: they do not merely know themselves to be detached and free from it, but have to resolve and dissipate it within their own consciousness, reduce it to nothingness by judgments and explanations in order to preserve their own self.
But the act of conscience is not merely this determination of existence, a determinate content forsaken by the pure self. What ought to be binding as duty and get recognised as such, only is so through knowledge and conviction as to its being duty, by knowledge of self in the deed done. When the deed ceases to have in it this element of self, it ceases to be what is alone its essential nature. Its existence, if deserted by this consciousness of self, would be an ordinary reality, and the act would appear to us a way of fulfilling one's pleasure and desire. What ought to exist has here essentiality only by its being known to be individuality giving itself expression. And its being thus known is the fact acknowledged and recognised by others, and is that which as such ought to have existence.
The self enters existence as self. The spirit which is certain of itself exists as such for others; its immediate Conscience 661 act is not what is accepted and real; what is acknowledged by others is, not the determinate element, not the inherent being, but solely and simply the self knowing itself as such. The element which gives permanence and stability is universal self-consciousness. What enters this element cannot be the effect of the act: the latter does not last there, and maintains no permanence: only self-consciousness is what is recognised and gains concrete reality.
Here again,* then, we see Language to be the form in which spirit finds existence. Language is the way self-consciousness exists for others; it is self-consciousness which is there immediately present as such, and in the form of this actual universal self-consciousness. Language is self separating itself from itself, which comes objectively before itself as the pure ego identical with ego, which at once maintains itself in this objective form as this actual self, and at the same time fuses directly with others and is their self-consciousness. The self perceives itself at the same time that it is perceived by others: and this perceiving is just existence which has become a self.
The content, which language has here obtained, is no longer the self we found in the world of culture, perverted, perverting, and distraught. It is spirit which, having returned to itself, is certain of itself, certain in itself of its truth, of its own act of recognition, and of being recognised as this knowledge. The language of the ethical spirit of society is law, and simple command and complaint, which is but a tear shed over necessity. Moral consciousness, on the other hand, remains dumb, shut up within its inner life; for self has no existence 662 Phenomenology of Mind as yet in its case: rather existence and self there stand, in the first instance, in external relation to each other. Language, however, comes forward merely as the mediating element between independent self-consciousnesses recognised and acknowledged; and the existent self means immediately universal recognition, means recognition in manifold ways and in this very manifoldness simple recognition. What the language of conscience contains is the self knowing itself as essential reality. This alone is what that language expresses, and this expression is the true realisation of " doing " anything, and renders the act valid and acceptable. Consciousness expresses its conviction: in this conviction alone is the action duty: it holds good as duty, too, solely by the conviction being expressed. For universal self-consciousness stands detached from the specific act which merely exists: the act qua existence means nothing to it: what it holds of importance is the conviction that the act is a duty; and this appears concretely in language.
To realise the act means here not translating its content from the form of purpose, or subjectivity, into the form of abstract reality: it means translating it from the form of immediate certainty of self, which takes its knowledge, its self-existence, to be the essential fact, into the form of the assurance that consciousness is convinced of its duty, and, being conscience, knows of itself what duty is. This assurance thus guarantees that it is convinced of its conviction being the essential fact.
Whether the assurance, that it acts from conviction of duty, is true, whether that really is duty which is done — these questions or doubts have no meaning if Conscience 663 Conscience 663 directed against conscience. In the case of the question, whether the assurance is true, it would be assumed that the inner intention is different from the one put forward, i.e. that the willing of a particular self can be separated from duty, from the will of the universal and pure consciousness: the latter will would in that case be a matter of words, while the former would be strictly the real moving principle of the act. But such a distinction between the universal consciousness and the particular self is precisely what has been cancelled, and the superseding of it constitutes conscience. Immediate knowledge on the part of self which is certain of itself is law and duty. Its intention, by being its own intention, is what is right. All that is required is that it should know this, and state its conviction that its knowledge and will are the right. The expression of this assurance ipso facto cancels the form of its particularity. It recognises thereby the necessary universality of the self. In that it calls itself conscience, it calls itself pure self-knowledge and pure abstract will, i.e. it calls itself a universal knowledge and will which acknowledges and recognises others, is like them — for they are just this pure self-knowledge and will — and which is on that account also recognised by them. In the willing of the self which is certain of itself, in this knowledge of the self as the essential reality, lies the essence of the right.
When any one says, therefore, he is acting from conscience, he is saying what is true, for his conscience is the self which knows and wills. He must, however, necessarily say so, for this self has to be at the same time universal self. It is not universal in the content o f the act: for this content is per se indifferent on 664 Phenomenology of Mind account of its being specific and determinate. The universality lies in the form of the act. It is this form which is to be affirmed as real: the form is the self, which as such is actual in language, pronounces itself to be the truth, and just by so doing acknowledges all other selves, and is recognised by them.
Conscience, then, in its majestic sublimity above any specific law and every content of duty, puts whatever content there is into its knowledge and willing. It becomes moral genius and originality, which takes the inner voice of its immediate knowledge to be a voice divine; and since in such knowledge it directly knows existence as well, it is divine creative power, which contains living force in its very conception. It is in itself, too, divine worship, "service of God," for its action consists in beholding this its own proper divinity.
This solitary worship, this " service of God " in solitude of soul, is at the same time essentially " service of God " in public, on the part of a religious community; and pure inward self-knowledge and perception of self pass to being a moment of consciousness.* To behold itself is to exist objectively, and this objective element is the utterance of its knowledge and will in a universal way. Through such expression the self becomes established and accepted, and the act becomes an effective deed, a deed carrying out a definite result. What gives reality and subsistence to its deed is universal selfconsciousness. When, however, conscience finds expression, this puts the certainty of itself in the form of pure self and thereby as universal self. Others let the act * i.e. into a state which implies distinction and opposition of subject and object.
The "Beautiful Soul" 665 hold as valid, owing to the explicit terms in which the self is thus expressed and acknowledged to be the essential reality. The spirit and the substance of their community are, thus, the mutual assurance of their conscientiousness, of their good intentions, the rejoicing over this reciprocal purity of purpose, the quickening and refreshment received from the glorious privilege of knowing and of getting expression, of fostering and cherishing a state so altogether excellent and desirable.
So far as this sphere of conscience still distinguishes its abstract consciousness from its self-consciousness, its life is merely hid in God. God is indeed immediately present to its mind and heart, to its self. But what is revealed, its actual consciousness and the mediating process of this consciousness, is, to it, something other than that hidden inner life and the immediacy of God's presence. But, with the completion of conscience, the distinction between its abstract consciousness and its self-consciousness is done away. It knows that the abstract consciousness is just this self, this individual self-existence which is certain of itself: that the very difference between the terms is abolished in the immediateness of the relation of the self to the ultimate Being, which, when placed outside the self, is the abstract essence, and a Being concealed from it. For a relation is mediate when the terms related are not one and the same, but each is a different term for the other, and is one only with the other in some third term: an immediate relation, however, means, in fact, nothing else than the unity of the terms. Having risen above the meaningless position of holding these distinctions, which are not distinctions at all, to be still such, consciousness knows the immediateness of 666 Phenomenology of Mind the presence of ultimate Being within it to be the unity of that Being and its self: it thus knows itself to be the living inherent reality, and takes its knowledge to be Religion, which, qua kno wedge viewed as an object or knowledge with an objective existence, is the utterance of the religious communion regarding its own spirit.
We see then, here, self-consciousness withdrawn into the inmost retreats of its being, with all externality, as such, gone and vanished from it — returned into the intuition of ego as altogether identical with ego, an intuition where this ego is all that is essential, and all that exists. It is absorbed in this conception of itself; for it is driven to the extreme limit of its extreme positions, and in such a way that the moments distinguished, moments through which it is real or still consciousness, are not merely for us these bare extremes; rather what it is for itself, and what, to it, is inherent, and what is, for it, existence — all these moments evaporate into abstractions. They have no longer stability, no substantial existence for this phase of consciousness. Everything, that was hitherto for consciousness essential, has reverted into these abstractions. When clarified to this degree of transparency, consciousness exists in its poorest form, and the poverty, constituting its sole and only possession, is itself a process of disappearance. This absolute certainty into which the substance has been resolved is absolute untruth, which collapses within itself; it is absolute self-consciousness, in which consciousness [with its relation of self and object] is submerged and goes under.
Looking at this absorption and disappearance from The "Beautiful Soul" 667 within, the inherent and essential substance is, for consciousness, knowledge in the sense of its knowledge. Being consciousness, it is split up into the opposition between itself and the object, which is, for it, the essentially real. But this very object is what is perfectly transparent, is its self; and its consciousness is merely knowledge concerning itself. All life and all spiritual truth have returned into this self, and have lost their difference from the ego. The moments of consciousness are therefore these extreme abstractions, of which none holds its ground, but each loses itself in the other and produces it. We have here the process of the " unhappy soul/' * in restless change with self; in the present case, however, this is a conscious experience going on inside itself, fully conscious of being the notion of reason, while the " unhappy soul " above spoken of was only reason implicitly. The absolute certainty of self thus finds itself qua consciousness, converted directly into a dying sound, a mere objectification of its subjectivity or self-existence. But this world so created is the utterance of its own voice, which in like manner it has directly heard, and the echo of which only returns to it. This return does not therefore mean that the self is there in its true reality (an und fiir sick): for the real is, for it, not an inherent being, is no per se, but its very self. Just as little has consciousness itself existence, for the objective aspect does not succeed in becoming something negative of the actual self, in the same way as this self does not reach complete actuality. It lacks force to externalise itself, the power to make itself a thing, and endure existence. It lives in dread of staining the radiance of its inner being by action and