VIII. Absolute Knowledge

The Spirit manifested in revealed religion has not as yet surmounted its attitude of consciousness as such; or, what is the same thing, its concrete self-consciousness is not at this stage the object it is aware of. Spirit as a whole and the moments distinguished in it fall within the sphere of presentative thinking, are presentations with the form of objectivity. The content of this presentational thought is Absolute Spirit. All that remains to be done now is to cancel and transcend this bare form; or better, because the form appertains to consciousness as such its true meaning must have come out in the shapes and modes consciousness has already assumed.

The surmounting of the object of consciousness in this way is not to be taken one-sidedly as meaning that the object shows itself returning into the self. It has a more definite and specific meaning: it means that the object as such presents itself to the self as a vanishing factor; and, furthermore, that the emptying, the relinquishment, of self-consciousness itself establishes thinghood, and that this laying aside of self-consciousness has not merely negative, but positive significance, a significance not merely for us or per se, but for self-consciousness itself. The negative of the object, its cancelling its own existence, gets, for self-consciousness, a positive significance; or, self-consciousness knows this nothingness of the object because on the one hand self-consciousness itself relinquishes itself; for in doing so it establishes itself as object, or, by reason of the indivisible unity characterising its self-existence, sets up the object as its self. On the other hand, there is also this other moment in the process, that self-consciousness has just as really cancelled and done away with this self-relinquishment and objectification, and has resumed them into itself, and is thus at home with itself in its otherness. This is the movement of consciousness, and in this process consciousness is the totality of its moments.

Consciousness, at the same time, had to take up a relation to the object in all its aspects and phases, and grasp its meaning from the point of view of each of them. This totality of its determinate characteristics makes the object per se and inherently a spiritual reality; and it becomes so in truth for consciousness, when the latter apprehends every individual one of them as self, i.e. when it takes up towards them the spiritual relationship just spoken of.

The object is, then, partly immediate existence, a thing in general—corresponding to immediate consciousness; partly an alteration of itself, its relatedness, (or existence-for-another and existence-for-self), (determinateness—corresponding to perception; partly essential being or in the form of a universal—corresponding to intelligence or understanding. The object as a whole is the mediated result [the conclusion] or the passing of universality into individuality through specification, as also the reverse process from individual to universal through cancelled individuality or specific determination.

These three specific aspects, then, determine the ways in which consciousness must get to know the object in the form of self. This knowledge of which we are speaking is, however, not knowledge in the sense of pure conceptual comprehension of the object; here this knowledge is to be taken as a developing process, has to be taken in its various moments and set forth in the manner appropriate to consciousness as such; and the moments of the notion proper, of pure and absolute knowledge, are to assume the form of modes or attitudes of consciousness. For that reason the object does not yet, when present in consciousness as such, appear as the inner essence of Spirit in the way this has just been expressed. The procedure consciousness adopts in regard to the object is not that of considering it either in this totality as such or in the pure conceptual form; it is partly that of a mode or attitude of consciousness in general, partly a multitude of such modes which we [who analyse the process] gather together, and in which the totality of the moments of the object and of the procedure of consciousness can be shown merely resolved into their separate elements.

To understand this method of grasping the object, where apprehension is a form or mode of consciousness, we have here only to recall the previous forms of consciousness which came before us earlier in the argument. As regards the object, then, so far as it is immediate, an indifferent objective entity, we saw Reason, at the stage of “Observation,” seeking and finding itself in this indifferent thing—i.e. we saw it conscious that its activity is there of an external sort, and at the same time conscious of the object merely as an immediate object. We saw, too, its specific character take expression at its highest stage in the infinite judgment: “the being of the ego is a thing.” And, further, the ego is an immediate thing of sense. When ego is called a soul, it is indeed represented also as a thing, but a thing in the sense of something invisible, impalpable, etc., i.e. in fact not as an immediate entity, and not as that which is generally understood by a thing. That judgment, then, “ego is a thing” taken at first glance, has no spiritual content, or rather, is just the absence of spirituality. In its conception, however, it is in fact the most luminous and illuminating judgment; and this, its inner significance, which is not yet made evident, is what the two other moments to be considered express.

The thing is ego. In point of fact, thing is transcended in this infinite judgment. The thing is nothing in itself; it only has significance in a relation, only through the ego and its reference to the ego. This moment came before consciousness in pure insight and enlightenment. Things are simply and solely useful, profitable, and only to be considered from the point of view of their utility. The trained and cultivated self-consciousness, which has traversed the region of spirit in self-alienation, has, by giving up itself, produced the thing as its self; it retains itself, therefore, still in the thing, and knows the thing to have no independence, in other words knows that the thing has essentially and solely a relative existence. Or again—to give complete expression to the relationship, i.e. to what here alone constitutes the nature of the object—the thing stands for something that is self-existent; sense-certainty, sense-experience, is announced as absolute truth; but this self-existence is itself declared to be a moment which merely disappears, and passes into its opposite, into a being at the mercy of an “other.”

But knowledge of the thing is not yet finished at this point. The thing must become known as self not merely in regard to the immediateness of its being and as regards specific determinateness, but also in the sense of essence or inner reality. This is found in the case of Moral Self-consciousness. This mode of experience thinks of its knowledge as the absolute essential element, knows no other objective being than pure will or pure knowledge. It is nothing but merely this will and this knowledge. Any other possesses merely non-essential being, i.e. being that has no inherent nature per se, but only its empty husk. In so far as the moral consciousness, in its view of the world, lets existence drop out of the self, it just as truly reclaims and takes this existence back again into the self. In the form of conscience, finally, it is no longer this incessant alternation between the “placing” and the “displacing” [dissembling] of existence and self; it knows that its existence as such is this pure certainty of its own self; the objective element, into which qua acting it puts forth itself, is nothing else than pure knowledge of itself by itself.

These are the moments which compose the reconciliation of spirit with its own consciousness proper. By themselves they are particular and separate; and it is their spiritual unity alone which furnishes the power for this reconciliation. The last of these moments is, however, necessarily this unity itself, and, as we see, binds them all in fact into itself. Spirit certain of itself in its objective existence takes as the element of its existence nothing else than this knowledge of self. The declaration that what it does it does in accordance with the convictions of duty—this statement is the warrant for its own action, and makes good its conduct.

Action is the first inherent division of the simple unity of the notion, and the return out of this division. This first movement turns round into the second, since the element of recognition is put forward as simple knowledge of duty in contrast to the distinction and diremption that lie in action as such and, in this way, form a rigid reality confronting action. In pardon, however, we saw how this rigid fixity gave way and renounced its claims. Reality has here, qua immediate existence, no other significance for self-consciousness than that of being pure knowledge; similarly, qua determinate existence, or qua relation, what is self-opposed is a knowledge partly of this purely individual self, partly of knowledge qua universal. Herein it is established, at the same time, that the third moment, universality, or the essence, means for each of the two opposite factors merely knowledge. Finally they also cancel the empty opposition that still remains, and are the knowledge of ego as identical with ego:—this individual self which is immediately pure knowledge or universal.

This reconciliation of consciousness with self-consciousness thus proves to be brought about in a double-sided way; in the one case, in the religious mind, in the other case, in consciousness itself as such. They are distinguished inter se by the fact that the one is this reconciliation in the form of implicit immanence, the other in the form of explicit self-existence. As we have considered them, they at the beginning fall apart. In the order in which the modes or types of consciousness came before us, consciousness has reached the individual moments of that order, and also their unification, long before ever religion gave its object the shape and mould of actual self-consciousness. The unification of both aspects is not yet brought to light; it is this that winds up this series of embodiments of spiritual life, for in it spirit gets to the point where it knows itself not only as it is inherently in itself, or in terms of its absolute content, nor only as it is objectively for itself in terms of its bare form devoid of content, or in terms of self-consciousness, but as it is in its self-completeness, as it is inherently and explicitly, in itself and for itself.

This unification has, however, already taken place by implication, and has done so in religion, in the return of the objective presentation (Vorstellung) into self-consciousness, but not according to the proper form, for the religious aspect is the aspect of the essentially independent (Ansich) and stands in contrast to the process of self-consciousness. The unification therefore belongs to this other aspect, which by contrast is the aspect of reflection into self, is that side which contains its self and its opposite, and contains them not only implicitly (an sich) or in a general way, but explicitly (für sich) or expressly developed and distinguished. The content, as well as the other aspect of self-conscious spirit, so far as it is the other aspect, have been brought to light and are here in their completeness: the unification still a-wanting is the simple unity of the notion. This notion is also already given with the aspect of self-consciousness; but as it previously came before us above, it, like all the other moments, has the form of being a particular mode or type of consciousness. It is that part of the embodiment of self-assured spirit which keeps within its essential principle and was called the “beautiful soul.” That is to say, the “beautiful soul” is its own knowledge of itself in its pure transparent unity—self-consciousness, which knows this pure knowledge of pure inwardness to be spirit, is not merely intuition of the divine, but the self-intuition of God Himself.

Since this notion keeps itself fixedly opposed to its realisation, it is the one-sided form which we saw before disappear into thin air, but also take a positive external embodiment and advance further. Through the process of realisation, this self-consciousness bereft of objective content ceases to hold fast by itself, the abstract determinateness of the notion over against its fulfilment is cancelled and done away with. Its self-consciousness attains the form of universality; and what remains is its true notion, the notion that has attained its realisation—the notion in its truth, i.e. in unity with its externalisation. It is knowledge of pure knowledge, not in the sense of an abstract essence such as duty is, but in the sense of an essential being which is this particular knowledge, this individual pure self-consciousness which is at the same time an object; for the object is the self-existing self.

This notion obtained its fulfilment partly from the acts performed by the spirit that is sure of itself, partly from religion. In the latter it obtained the absolute content qua content, or in the form of an ideal presentation or of otherness for consciousness. On the other hand, in the first the form is just the self, for that mode contains the active practical spirit sure of itself; the self accomplishes the life of Absolute Spirit. This mode, as we see, is that simple notion, which however gives up its eternal inner Being, takes upon itself objective existence, or acts. The power of diremption or of coming forth out of its inwardness lies in the purity of the notion, for this purity is absolute abstraction or negativity. In the same way the notion finds its element of reality, or the objective being it contains, in pure knowledge itself; for this knowledge is simple immediacy, which is being and existence as well as essence, the former negative thought, the latter positive thought. This existence, finally, is just as much that state of reflection into self which comes out of pure existence—both qua existence and qua duty—and this is the state of evil. This process of “going into self” constitutes the opposition lying in the notion, and is thus the appearance on the scene of pure knowledge of the essence, a knowledge giving rise to no action and no reality. But to make its appearance in this opposition is to participate in it; pure knowledge of essence has inherently relinquished its simplicity, for it is the diremption or negativity which constitutes the notion. So far as this process of diremption is the process of becoming self-centred, it is the principle of evil: so far as it is the inherently essential, it is the principle of constant goodness.

Now what in the first instance takes place implicitly and inherently is at once objectively for consciousness, and is duplicated as well—is both for consciousness and is its self-existence or its own proper action. The same thing that is already inherently established, thus repeats itself now as knowledge thereof on the part of consciousness and as conscious action. Each finds the other lay aside the independence of character with which each appears confronting the other. This waiving of independence is the same renunciation of the one-sidedness of the notion as constituted implicitly the beginning; but it is now its own act of renunciation, just as the notion renounced is its own notion. That implicit nature of the beginning is in truth as much mediated, because it is negativity; it now establishes itself as it is in its truth; and the negative element exists as a determinate quality which each has for the other, and is inherently and essentially self-cancelling, self-transcending. The one of the two parts of the opposition is the disparity between existence within itself in its individuality and universality; the other, disparity between its abstract universality and the self. The former lets its self-existence perish, and relinquishes itself, makes confession; the latter renounces the rigidity of its abstract universality, and thereby puts away its lifeless self and its inert universality; so that the former is completed through the moment of universality, which is the essence, and the latter through universality, which is self. By this process of action spirit has come to light in the form of pure universality of knowledge, which is self-consciousness as self-consciousness, which is simple unity of knowledge. It is through action that spirit is spirit so as definitely to exist; it raises its existence into the sphere of thought and hence into absolute opposition, and returns out of it through and within this very opposition.

Thus, then, what was in the case of religion objective content, or a way of ideally presenting an other, is here the action proper of the self. The notion is the connecting principle securing that the content is the action proper of the self. For this notion is, as we see, the knowledge that the action of the self within itself is all that is essential and all existence, the knowledge of this Subject as Substance and of the Substance as this knowledge of its action. What we have done here, in addition, is simply to gather together the particular moments, each of which in principle exhibits the life of spirit in its entirety, and again to fix and secure the notion in the form of the notion, whose content was disclosed in those moments and had already presented itself in the form of a mode or type of consciousness.

This last embodiment of spirit—spirit which at once gives its complete and true content the form of self, and thereby realises its notion, and in doing so remains within its own notion—this is Absolute Knowledge. It is spirit knowing itself in the form of spirit, it is conceptual comprehensive knowledge through notions. Truth is here not merely in itself absolutely identical with certainty; it has also the typical form of certainty of self, or in its existence—i.e. for spirit knowing it—it is in the form of knowledge of itself. Truth is the content, which in the case of religion is not as yet at one with its certainty. This identification, however, is secured when the content has received the form and character of self. By this means, what constitutes the very essence, viz. the notion, comes to have the nature of existence, i.e. assumes the form of what is objective to consciousness. Spirit, appearing before consciousness in this element of existence, or, what is here the same thing, produced by it in this element, is systematic Science.

The nature, moments, and process of this type of knowledge have then come about in such a way that this knowledge is pure self-existence of self-consciousness.

It is ego, which is this concrete ego and no other, and at the same time, from its very nature, is mediated, or sublated universal ego. It has a content, which it distinguishes from itself; for it is pure negativity, or self-diremption; it is consciousness. This content in its distinction is itself the ego, for it is the process of superseding itself, or the same pure negativity which constitutes ego. Ego is in it, qua distinguished, reflected into itself; only then is the content conceptually comprehended (begriffen) when ego in its otherness is still at home with itself. More precisely stated, this content is nothing else than the very process just spoken of; for the content is the spirit which traverses the whole range of its own being, and does this for itself qua spirit, by the fact that it possesses the form of the notion in its objectivity.

As to the actual existence of this notion, science does not appear in time and in reality till spirit has arrived at this stage of being conscious regarding itself. Qua spirit which knows what it is, it did not exist before, and is not to be found at all till after the completion of the task of mastering and overcoming the imperfection of its form—the task of procuring for its consciousness and making itself aware of the shape of its inmost essence, and in this manner squaring its self-consciousness with its consciousness. Spirit in and for itself, spirit in its self-contained reality, is, when distinguished into its separate moments, self-existent knowledge, conceptual comprehension in general, which as such has not yet reached the substance, or is not in itself absolute knowledge.

Now in actual reality the knowing substance is arrived at earlier than its form, earlier than the form of the notion. For the substance is the undeveloped inherent nature, the fundamental notion in its inert simplicity, the state of inwardness or the self of spirit not yet objectivified. What is there, what does exist, is in the shape of unexpressed simplicity, the undeveloped immediate, or the object of presentative consciousness in general. Because knowledge (Erkennen) is a spiritual state of consciousness, which is only aware of what implicitly and inherently is so far as this is a being for the self and a being of the self or a notion—knowledge has on this account merely a barren object to begin with, in contrast to which the substance and the consciousness of this substance are richer in content. Revelation in such a case is, in fact, concealment; for the substance is here still self-less existence and nothing but certainty of self is manifest or revealed to it. To begin with, therefore, it is only the abstract moments that fall to self-consciousness when dealing with the substance. But since these moments are pure activities and must move forward by their very nature, self-consciousness enriches itself till it has torn from consciousness the entire substance, and absorbed into itself the entire structure of the substance with all its constituent elements. Since this negative attitude towards objectivity is positive as well, establishes and fixes the content, it goes on till it has produced these elements out of itself and thereby reinstated them once more as objects of consciousness. In the notion, knowing itself as notion, the moments thus make their appearance prior to the whole in its complete fulfilment; the movement of these moments is the process by which the whole comes into being. In consciousness, on the other hand, the whole—but not as comprehended conceptually—is prior to the moments.

Time is just the notion definitely existent, and presented to consciousness in the form of empty pure intuition. Hence spirit necessarily appears in time, and it appears in time so long as it does not grasp its pure notion, i.e. so long as it does not annul time. Time is the pure self in external form, apprehended in intuition, and not grasped and understood by the self, it is the notion directly apprehended through intuition. When this notion grasps itself, it supersedes the time character, conceptually comprehends intuition, and is intuition comprehended and comprehending through conceptions. Time therefore appears as spirit’s destiny and necessity, where spirit is not yet complete within itself; it is the necessity compelling spirit to increase and enrich the share self-consciousness has in consciousness, to put into motion the immediacy of the inherent nature (which is the form in which the substance is present in consciousness); or, conversely, to realise and make manifest what is inherent, regarded as inward and immanent, to make manifest that which is at first within—i.e. to vindicate and secure for it the certainty of self.

For this reason it must be said that nothing is consciously known which does not fall within experience, or (as it is also expressed) which is not felt to be true, which is not given as an inwardly revealed eternal verity, as a sacred object of belief, or whatever other expressions we care to employ. For experience just consists in this, that the content—and the content is spirit—in its inherent nature is substance and so object of consciousness. But this substance in which spirit consists, is the development of itself explicitly to what it is inherently and implicitly; and only by this process of reflecting itself into itself is it then essentially and in truth spirit. It is inherently the movement which constitutes the process of knowledge—the transforming of that implicit inherent nature into explicitness and objectivity, of Substance into Subject, of the object of consciousness into the object of self-consciousness, i.e. into an object that is at the same time superseded and transcended—in other words, into the notion. This transforming process is a cycle that returns into itself, a cycle that presupposes its beginning, and reaches its beginning only at the end. So far as spirit, then, is of necessity this process of self-distinction, it appears as a single whole, intuitively apprehended, over against its simple self-consciousness. And since that whole is the aspect distinguished, it is distinguished into the intuitively apprehended pure notion, Time, and the content, the inherent implicit nature. Substance, qua subject, involves the necessity, at first an inner necessity, to set forth in itself what it inherently is, to show itself to be spirit. The completed systematic expression in objective form becomes, then, at the same time the reflection of substance, the development of it into a self or subject. Consequently, until and unless spirit is inherently completed, completed as a world-spirit, it cannot reach its completion as self-conscious spirit. The content of religion therefore expresses earlier in time than speculative science what spirit is; but science alone is the perfect form in which spirit truly knows itself. The process of carrying forward this form of knowledge of itself constitutes the task which spirit accomplishes in the concrete actual shape of History. The religious communion, in so far as it is at the outset the substance of Absolute Spirit, is the crude form of consciousness, which has an existence all the harsher and more barbaric the deeper is its inner spirit; and its inarticulate stolid self has all the harder task in dealing with its essence, the unconceived content alien to its consciousness. Not till it has surrendered the hope of cancelling that foreignness by an external, i.e. alien method, does it turn to itself, to its own peculiar world in the actual present. It turns thither because to supersede that alien method means returning into self-consciousness. It thus discovers this world in the living present to be its own property; and so has taken the first step to descend from the ideal intelligible world, the world of the intellect, or rather to endue the abstract element of the intellect with concrete self-hood. Through “observation,” on the one hand, it finds existence in the shape of thought, and comprehends existence; and, conversely, it finds in its thought existence. When, in the first instance, it has thus itself expressed in an abstract way the immediate unity of thought and existence, of abstract Being and Self; and when it has expressed the primal principle of “Light” in a purer form, viz. as unity of extension and existence—for “existence” is an ultimate simple term more akin to thought than “Light”—and in this way has revived again in thought the Substance of the Orient, the Absolute Substance of Eastern Religions; thereupon spirit at once recoils in horror from this abstract unity, from this self-less substance, and maintains as against it the principle of subjective Individuality. But after spirit has relinquished this principle and brought it under the ordeal of culture, has thereby made it an objective existence and established it throughout the whole of existence, has arrived at the idea of “Utility” and in the sphere of absolute freedom has found the key to existence to be Individual Will,—after these stages spirit then brings to light the thought that lies in its inmost depths, and expresses ultimate Reality in the form Ego = Ego.

This “Ego identical with Ego” is, however, an inward, self-reflecting process; for since this identity qua absolute negativity is absolute distinction, the self-identity of the Ego stands in contrast to this absolute distinction, which—being pure distinction and at the same time objective to the self that knows itself—has to be expressed as Time. In this way, just as formerly ultimate Reality was expressed as unity of thought and extension, it would here be interpreted as unity of thought and time. But distinction left to itself, unresting, unhalting time, really collapses upon itself; it is the objective quiescence, the stable continuity of extension; while this latter is pure identity with self—is Ego.

Again, Ego is not merely self, it is identity of self with itself. This identity, however, is complete and immediate unity with self; in other words this Subject is just as much Substance. Substance by itself alone would be void and empty Intuition (Anschauen), or the intuition of a content which qua specific would have merely a contingent character and would be devoid of necessity. Substance would only stand for the Absolute in so far as Substance was thought of or “intuited” as absolute unity; and all content would, as regards its diversity, have to fall outside the Substance and be due to reflection, a process which does not belong to Substance, because Substance would not be Subject, would not be conceived as Spirit, as reflecting about self and reflecting itself into self. If, nevertheless, a content were to be spoken of, then on the one hand, it would only exist in order to be thrown into the empty abysm of the Absolute, while on the other it would be picked up in external fashion from sense perception. Knowledge would appear to have come by things, by what is distinct from knowledge itself, and to have got at the distinctions between the endless variety of things, without any one understanding how or where all this came from.

Spirit, however, has shown itself to be neither the mere withdrawal of self-consciousness into its pure inwardness, nor the mere absorption of self-consciousness into blank Substance devoid of all distinctions. Spirit is the movement of the self which empties itself of self and sinks itself within its own substance, and qua subject, both goes out of that substance into itself, making its substance an object and a content, and also supersedes this distinction of objectivity and content. That first reflection out of immediacy is the subject’s distinction of self from its substance, the notion in a state of self-diremption, the subjectification of the self, and the coming of the pure ego into being. Since this distinction is the action pure and simple of Ego = Ego, the notion is the necessity for and the uprising of existence, which has the substance for its essential nature and subsists on its own account. But this subsisting of existence for itself is the notion established and realised in determinate form, and is thereby the notion’s own inherent movement—that of descending into the bare and simple substance, which is only subject by being this negativity and going through this process.

Ego has not to take its stand on the form of self-consciousness in opposition to the form of substantiality and objectivity, as if it were afraid of emptying itself and becoming objective. The power of spirit lies rather in remaining one with itself when giving up itself, and, because it is self-contained and self-subsistent, in establishing as mere moments its explicit self-existence as well as its implicit inherent nature. Nor again is Ego a tertium quid which casts distinctions back into the abysm of the Absolute, and declares them all to mean the same there. On the contrary, true knowledge lies rather in the seeming inactivity which merely watches and considers how the element distinguished proceeds, how it is self-moved by its very nature and returns again into its own unity.

With absolute knowledge, then. Spirit has wound up the process of its various forms and modes, so far as in assuming these various shapes and forms it is affected with the insurmountable distinction which consciousness implies [i.e. the distinction of consciousness from its object or content]. Spirit has attained the pure element of its existence, the notion. The content is, in view of the freedom of its own existence, the self that empties and gives up itself to objectivity; in other words, that content is the immediate unity of self-knowledge. The pure process of thus relinquishing itself to externality constitutes—when we consider this process in its bearing on the content—the necessity of this content. The diversity of content is, qua determinate and specific, due to relation, and is not inherent; it is its restless activity of cancelling and superseding itself, or its negativity. Thus the necessity or diversity, like its free existence, is the self too; and in this self-form, in which existence is immediately thought, the content is a notion. Seeing, then, that Spirit has attained the notion, it unfolds its existence and develops its processes in this ether of its life and is Systematic Science. The moments of its process are set forth in Science no longer as determinate modes or forms of consciousness, but—since the distinction, which consciousness implies, has reverted to and has become a distinction within the self—as determinate notions, and as the organic self-explaining and self-constituted process of these conceptions. While in the Phenomenology of Mind each moment is the distinction of knowledge and truth, and the process in which that distinction is cancelled and transcended, on the other hand Systematic Science does not contain this distinction and supersession of distinction. Rather, since each moment has the form of the notion, it unites the objective form of truth and the knowing self in an immediate unity. In Science the individual moment does not appear as the process of passing back and forward from consciousness or presentation to self-consciousness and conversely: there the pure form, liberated from the condition of being an appearance in mere consciousness,—the pure notion with its further development, depends solely and purely on its characteristic and specific nature. Conversely, again, there corresponds to every abstract moment of absolute Science a form or mode in which mind as a whole makes it appearance. As the mind that actually exists and historically appears is not richer than Science, so, too, mind in its actual content is not poorer. To know the pure notions of Science in the form in which they are modes or types of consciousness—this constitutes the aspect of their reality, in which its essential element, the notion, appearing there in its simple mediating activity as thinking, breaks up and separates the moments of this mediation, and exhibits its content by reference to the internal and immanent opposition of its elements.

Science contains within itself this necessity of relinquishing and divesting itself of the form of the pure notion, and necessarily involves the transition of the notion into consciousness. For Spirit that knows itself is, just for the reason that it grasps its own notion, immediate identity with itself; and this, in the distinction it implies, is the certainty of what is immediate or is sense-consciousness—the beginning from which we started. This process of releasing itself from the form of its self is the highest freedom and security of its knowledge of itself.

All the same, this relinquishment of self and abandonment to externality are still incomplete. This process expresses the relation of the certainty of its self to the object, an object which, just by being in relation, has not yet attained its full freedom. Systematic knowledge is aware not only of itself, but also of the negative of itself, or its limit. Knowing its limit means knowing how to sacrifice itself. This sacrifice is the emptying of self, the self-abandonment, in which Spirit sets forth, in the form of free and unconstrained fortuitous contingency, its process of becoming Spirit, intuitively apprehending outside it its pure self as Time, and likewise its existence as Space. This last form into which Spirit passes, Nature, is its living immediate process of development. Nature—Spirit divested of self and given over to externality—is, in its actual existence, nothing but this eternal process of abandoning its own independent subsistence, and the movement which reinstates Subject.

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 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 (Er-innerung) 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 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.