The other aspect, however, in which Spirit comes into being, History, is process in terms of knowledge, a conscious self-mediating process — Spirit given over to and emptied into Time. But this form of abandonment is, similarly, an emptying of itself by itself.; the negative is negative of itself. This way of becoming presents a tardy procession and succession of spiritual shapes and forms, a gallery of pictures, each of which is endowed with the entire wealth of Spirit, and moves so tardily just for the reason that the self has to permeate and assimilate all this wealth of its substance. Since its accomplishment consists in Spirit knowing what it is, in fully comprehending its substance, this knowledge means its subjectification, a state in which Spirit leaves its external existence behind and gives itself over to the attitude of Recollection (Erinnerung). In this subjectification, Spirit is engulfed in the darkness and night of its own self-consciousness; its vanished existence is, however, conserved therein; and this superseded existence— the previous state, but born anew from the * Cp. Ency. §244; also Nuturphilos., Introd.
822 Phenomenology of Mind womb of knowledge — is the new stage of existence, a new world, and a new type and mode of Spirit. Here it has to begin all over again at its immediacy,* as freshly as before, and thence rise once more to the measure of its stature, as if, for it, all that preceded were lost, and as if it had learned nothing from the experience of the spirits that preceded. But re-collection (Erinnerung) has conserved that experience, and is the inner being, and, in fact, the higher form of the substance.
While, then, this phase of Spirit begins all over again its formative development, apparently starting solely from itself, yet at the same time it commences at a higher level. The realm of spirits developed in this way, and assuming definite shape in existence, constitutes a succession, where one detaches and sets loose the other, and each takes over from its predecessor the empire of the spiritual world. The goal of the process is the revelation of the depth of spiritual life, and this is the Absolute Notion. This revelation consequently means superseding its " depth/' is its " extension " or spatial embodiment, the negation of this subjectivity of the ego — a negativity which is its self-relinquishment, its externalisation, or its substance: and this revelation is also its temporal embodiment, in that this externalisation in its very nature relinquishes, externalises itself, and so exists at once in its spatial " extension " as well as in its " depth " or the self. The goal, which is Absolute Knowledge or Spirit knowing itself as Spirit, finds its pathway in the recollection of spiritual forms as they are in themselves and as they accomplish the organisation of their spiritual kingdom. Their conservation, looked * Cp. Aristotle, Metap., 10716, " Movement can neither come into being, nor cease to be; nor can time come into being or cease to be."
Absolute Knowledge 823 at from the side of their free phenomenal existence in the sphere of contingency, is History; looked at from the side of their conceptually comprehended organisation, it is the Science of phenomenal knowledge, of the ways in which knowledge appears.* Both together, or History comprehended conceptually, form at once the recollection and the golgotha of Absolute Spirit, the reality, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without which it were lifeless, solitary, and alone. Only This chalice of God's plenitude Yields foaming His Infinitude, f * "Phenomenology."
t Adaptation of Schiller's Die Freundschaft ad fin.; cp. also Schiller's Philos. Brief e, " Gott."
WILLIAM I1RENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA