V.B. The Realisation of Rational Self-Consciousness through Its Own Activity

Self-consciousness found the “thing” in the form of itself, and itself in the form of a thing; that is to say, self-consciousness is explicitly aware of being in itself the objective reality. It is no longer the immediate certainty of being all reality; it is rather that certainty for which the immediate in general assumes the form of something sublated, so that the objectivity of the immediate is regarded now as merely something superficial, whose inner core and essence is self-consciousness.

The object, therefore, to which self-consciousness is positively related, is a self-consciousness. The object has the form and character of a thing, i.e. is independent: but self-consciousness has the conviction that this independent object is not alien to itself; it knows straightway that itself is inherently and essentially recognised by the object. Self-consciousness is mind, which has the assurance of having, in the duplication of its self-consciousness and in the independence of both, its unity with its own self. This certainty has to be brought out now in all its truth; what self-consciousness holds as a fact, viz. that implicitly in itself and in its inner certainty it is, has to enter into full consciousness and become explicit for it.

What the general stages of this actualisation will be can be indicated in a general way by reference to the road thus far traversed. Just as reason, when exercised in observation, repeated in the medium of categories the movement of “consciousness” as such, namely, sense-certainty, perception, and understanding, the course of reason here, too, will again traverse the double movement of “self-consciousness,” and from independence pass over into its freedom. To begin with this active reason is aware of itself merely as “an individual,” and must, being such, demand and bring forth its reality in an “other.” Thereupon, however, its consciousness being lifted into universality, it becomes universal reason, and is consciously aware of itself as reason, as something already recognised in and for itself, which within its mere consciousness unites all self-consciousness. It is, again, the simple ultimate spiritual reality (Wesen), which, by coming at the same time to consciousness, is the real substance, into which preceding forms return and in which they find their ground, so that they are, with reference to the latter, merely particular moments of its process of coming into being, moments which indeed break loose and appear as forms on their own account, but have in fact only existence and actuality when borne and supported by it, and only retain their truth in so far as they are and remain in it.

If we take this final result of the process as it is when really accomplished—this end, which is the notion that has just come before us, viz. recognised self-consciousness, which has the certainty of itself in the other free self-consciousness, and finds its truth precisely there; in other words, if we bring this merely inward and unevolved mind to light as the substance that has developed into its concrete existence,—we shall find that in this notion there is opened up before us the realm of the Social Order, the Ethical World (Sittlichkeit). For this latter is nothing else than the absolute spiritual unity of the essential substance (Wesen) of individuals in their independent realisation of themselves as individuals; it is an inherently universal self-consciousness, which is aware of being so concrete and real in an other consciousness, that this latter has complete independence, is looked on as a “thing,” and the universal self-consciousness is aware precisely therein of its unity with that “thing,” and is only then self-consciousness, when thus in unity with this objective being (Wesen). This ethical substance when taken in its abstract universality is only the conception of law, thought-constituted law; but even so it is immediately actual self-consciousness, it is Custom (Sitte). The single individual, conversely, is only a “this,” a given existent unit, since he is aware of the universal consciousness as his own being in his own particular individuality, seeing that his action and existence are the universal custom.

In point of fact the notion of the realisation of self-conscious reason—of having a sense of complete unity with another in his independence: of having for my object an other in the form of a “thing,” found detached and apart from me, and the negative of myself, and of taking this as my self-existence (Für michseyn)—finds its actual fulfilment in the life of a nation. Reason appears here as the fluent universal substance, as unchangeable simple “thingness,” which at the same time breaks up into many entirely independent beings, just as light bursts asunder into stars as innumerable luminous points, each giving light on its own account, and whose absolute self-existence (Fürsichseyn) is dissolved, not merely implicitly (an sich), but explicitly for themselves (für sich), within the simple independent substance. They are conscious within themselves of being these individual independent beings through the fact that they surrender and sacrifice their particular individuality, and that this universal substance is their soul and essence:—as this universal again is the action of themselves as individuals, and is the work and product of their own activity.

The purely particular activity and business of the individual refer to needs and wants, which he has as a part of nature, i.e. as a mere existent particular. That even these, its commonest functions, do not come to nothing, but have reality, is brought about by the universal sustaining medium, the might of the entire nation.

It is not merely, however, this form of subsistence for his activity in general that the individual gets in the universal substance, but likewise also his content; what he does is what all are capable of doing, is the custom all follow. This content, in so far as it is completely particularised, is, in its concrete reality, not confined to the single individual, but involves and embraces the activity of all. The labour of the individual for his own wants and necessities is just as much a satisfaction of those of others as of himself, and the satisfaction of his own he attains only by the labour of others.

As the individual in his own particular work ipso facto accomplishes unconsciously a universal work so again he also performs the universal task as his conscious object. The whole becomes in its entirety his work, for which he sacrifices himself, and precisely by that means receives back his own self from it.

There is nothing here which could not be reciprocal, nothing in regard to which the independence of the individual might not, in dissipating its existence on its own account (Fürsichseyn), in negating itself, give itself its positive significance of existing for itself. This unity of existing for another, or making self a “thing,” and of existence for self, this universal substance, utters its universal language in the customs and laws of a nation. But this existent unchangeable nature (Wesen) is nothing else than the expression of the particular individuality which seems opposed to it: the laws give expression to that which each individual is and does; the individual knows them not merely to be what constitutes his universal objective nature as a “thing,” but knows himself, too, in that form, or knows it to be particularized in his own individuality and in each of his fellow-citizens. In the universal mind, therefore, each is certain of himself only because he finds in the actual reality nothing but himself; he is as certain of the others as of himself. I apprehend and see in all of them that they are in their own eyes (für sich selbst) only these independent beings just as I am. I see in their case the free unity with others in such wise that just as this unity exists through me, so it exists through the others too—I see them as myself, myself as them.

In a free nation, therefore, reason is in truth realised. It is a present living mind, where the individual not only finds his determinate nature, i.e. his universal and particular being, expressed and given to him in the form; of a “thing,” but himself is this real being, and has also attained his constitutive character and position. The wisest men of antiquity for that reason declared that wisdom and virtue consist in living in accordance with the customs of one’s own nation.

From this happy state, however, of having attained its determinate nature, and of living in it, the self-consciousness, which in the first instance is only immediately and in principle mind, has broken away; or perhaps it has not yet attained it: for both can be said with equal truth.

Reason must pass out of and leave this happy condition. For only implicitly or immediately is the life of a free nation real objective ethical order (Sittlichkeit). In other words, the latter is a merely existent social order, and in consequence this universal mind is also something particular. The totality of customs and laws is a specifically determinate ethical substance, which casts off this restricted Limitation only when it reaches the higher moment, namely, when it becomes conscious regarding its own nature; only with this knowledge does it get its absolute truth, and not as it is immediately in its bare existence. In this latter form it is partly restricted and circumscribed, partly the absolute limitation consists just in this that mind is there in the form of existence.

Hence, further, the individual, as he immediately finds his existence in the actual objective social order, in the life of his nation, has a solid imperturbable confidence; the universal mind has not here resolved itself into its abstract moments, and thus, too, he does not think of himself as existing in singleness and independence. When however he has once arrived at this knowledge, as indeed he must, this immediate unity with mind, this undifferentiated existence in the substance of mind, his sense of naive confidence, is lost. Isolated by himself he is himself now the central essential reality—no longer universal mind. The element of this singleness of self-consciousness is no doubt in universal mind itself, but merely as a vanishing quantity, which, as it appears with an existence of its own, is straightway resolved within the universal, and only becomes consciously felt in the form of that sense of confidence. When the individual gets fixity in the form of singleness (and every moment, being a moment of the essential reality, must manage to reveal itself as essential), the individual has thereby set himself in opposition to the laws and customs. These latter are looked on as merely a thought without absolutely essential significance, an abstract theory without reality; while he qua this particular ego is in his own view the living truth.

Or, again [we can say, as above stated, that] self-’ consciousness has not yet attained this happy state of being ethical substance, the mind of a nation. For, ‘after leaving the process of rational Observation, mind, at first, is not yet as such actually realised through itself; it is merely affirmed as inner nature and essence, or as abstraction. In other words, mind is first immediate. As immediately existing, however, it is particular. It is practical consciousness, which steps into the world it finds lying ready-made with the intention of duplicating itself in the determinate form of an individual, of producing itself as this particular individual, and creating this its own existential counterpart, and thus becoming conscious of this unity of its own actual reality with the objective world. Self-consciousness possesses the certainty of this unity; it holds that the unity is implicitly (an sich) already present, or that this union and agreement between itself and “thinghood” (objective existence) is already a fait accompli, and has only to become expressly so through its own agency; or that its making that unity is at the same time and as much its finding the unity. Since this unity means happiness, the individual is thus sent forth into the world by his own spirit to seek his happiness.

If, then, we for our part find the truth of this rational self-consciousness to be ethical substance, that self-consciousness on its part finds here the beginning of its moral experience of the world. Looking at it as not having yet had such experience, this process drives it in that direction, and what is cancelled in the process are the particular moments which self-consciousness takes as valid in isolation. They have the form of an immediate will-process, or impulse of nature, which attains its satisfaction, this satisfaction itself being the content of a new impulse. Looking at self-consciousness, however, as having lost the happiness of being in the substance, these natural impulses are bound up with a consciousness that their purpose is the true vocation and essential nature of self-consciousness. Ethical substance has sunk to the level of a floating selfless adjective, whose living subjects are individuals, which have to fill up their universality through themselves, and to provide for their vocation out of the same source.

Taken in the former sense, then, those forms and modes are the process by which the ethical substance comes to be, and precede this substance: in the latter they succeed it, and disclose for self-consciousness what its vocation is. In the former aspect the immediacy or raw brute impulses get lost in the process of finding out what their truth is, and their content passes over to a higher. In the latter aspect, however, the false idea of consciousness, which puts its vocation in that immediacy, passes to a higher idea. In the former case the goal which they attain is the immediate ethical substance; while, in the latter, the end is the consciousness of that substance, such a consciousness as knows the substance to be its own essential being; and to that extent this process would be the development of morality (Moralität), a higher state or attitude than the former (Sittlichkeit). But these modes at the same time constitute only one side of the development of morality, that, namely, which belongs to self-existence, or in which consciousness cancels its purposes; they do not constitute the side where morality arises out of the substance itself. Since these moments cannot yet have the signification of being made into purposes in opposition to the lost social order (Sittlichkeit), they hold here no doubt in their simple uncriticised content, and the end towards which they work is the ethical substance: but since with our time is more directly associated that form of these moments in which they appear after consciousness has lost its ethical custom-constituted (sittliches) life, and in the search for it repeats those forms, they may be represented more after this latter manner of expression.

Self-consciousness, which is merely at first the notion of mind, takes this path with the specific characteristic of being to itself the essential reality qua individual mind, and its purpose, therefore, is to give itself actualisation as individual, and to enjoy itself, qua individual, in so doing.

In existing for itself it is aware of itself as the essentially real. In this character it is the negativity of the other. There arises, therefore, within its consciousness an opposition between itself qua positive and something which no doubt exists, but for it not in the sense of existing substantially. Consciousness appears sundered into this objective reality found lying at its hand, and the purpose, which it carries out by the process of cancelling that objectivity, and which it makes the actual fact instead of the given object. Its primary purpose, however, is its immediate abstract existence for itself, its seeing itself as this particular individual in another, or in looking upon another self-consciousness as itself. The experience of what the truth of this purpose is, places self-consciousness on a higher plane, and henceforth it is to itself purpose, in so far as it is at once universal, and has the law immediately within it. In carrying out this law of its heart, however, it learns that here the individual cannot preserve himself, but rather the good can only be performed through the sacrifice of the individual: and so it passes into Virtue. The experience which virtue goes through can be no other than that of finding that its purpose is already implicitly (an sich) carried out, that happiness lies immediately in action itself, and action is just the good. The principle and notion of this entire sphere of experience—viz. that “thinghood” is the independent self-existence of mind—becomes in the course of this experience an objective fact for self-consciousness. When self-consciousness has found this principle it is aware of itself as reality in the sense of directly self-expressing Individuality, which no longer finds any resistance in a reality opposed to it, and whose object and purpose are merely this function of self-expression.

Self-consciousness, which is aware of being the reality, has its object within itself, but an object which, at first, is merely its own (für sich), and is not yet in actual existence. Existence stands opposed to it as a reality other than its own; and the aim of self-consciousness consists in carrying out what it is “for itself” so as to see itself as another independent being. This first purpose is to become conscious, in that other self-consciousness, of itself as an individual, to turn this other into its own self. It has the assurance that this other already is essentially itself.

In so far as it has risen above the substance of ethical life and the quiescent state of thought, and attained its conscious independence, it has left behind the law of custom and of substantial existence, the kinds of knowledge acquired through observation, and the sphere of theory; these lie behind it as a gray shadow that is just vanishing. For this latter is rather a knowledge of something, the independent existence (Fürsichseyn) and actuality of which are other than those of self-consciousness. Instead of being the seemingly heaven-born spirit of universality in knowledge and action, wherein the feeling and enjoyment of being an individual are stilled, the earth-born spirit has made its way to this new level of self-consciousness, and holds that being alone as true reality which is the reality of individual consciousness.

Intellect and science are despised, / Those highest gifts possessed by men—/ The devil will now its master be, / And it must be o’erthrown.

It plunges into life, and carries to its completion the pure individuality in which it appears. It does not so much make its own happiness as take it directly and enjoy it. The gray shades of science, laws and principles, which alone stand between it and its own reality, vanish like a lifeless mist that cannot support the living certainty of its reality. It takes to itself life much as a ripe fruit is plucked, which comes to meet the hand that takes it.

Its action is only in one respect an act of Desire; it does not proceed to abolish the objective fact in its entirety, but merely concerns itself with the form of its otherness or objectivity, which is an unreal appearance; for it holds this to be inherently and implicitly the same reality as its own self. The sphere in which desire and its object subsist independently and indifferent towards each other is that of living existence; the enjoyment of desire cancels this existence, so far as concerns its being object of desire. But here this element, which gives to both separate and distinct actuality, is rather the category, a form of being which has essentially the character of a presentation. It is therefore the consciousness of independence—it may be natural consciousness, or the consciousness developed into a system of laws—which preserves individuals each for himself. This separation does not, in itself, hold for self-consciousness, which knows the other as its own proper self-hood. It attains therefore to the enjoyment of Pleasure, to the consciousness of its actualisation in a consciousness which appears as independent, or to the intuition of the unity of both independent self-consciousnesses. It succeeds in its purpose, but only to learn there what the truth of that purpose is. It conceives itself as this individual self-existent (Fürsich-seyn) being; but the actualisation of this purpose is just the cancelling of the purpose. For it comes consciously to be, not object in the sense of a given particular individual, but rather as unity of its self and the other self-consciousness, consequently as cancelled and transcended individual, i.e. as universal.

The pleasure enjoyed has, indeed, the positive significance that the self has become aware of itself as objective self-consciousness: but the negative import is there as well—that of having cancelled itself. And since it took its realisation in the former sense only, its experience comes consciously before it as contradiction, in which the acquired reality of its individual existence finds itself destroyed by the negative element, which stands without reality and without content over against the former, and yet is the force which consumes it. This negative element is nothing else than the notion of what this individuality inherently is. This individuality is, however, as yet the poorest form of self-realising mind; for it is still simply the abstraction of reason, or is the merely immediate unity of being-for-self and being-in-self (Für-sich und Ansich-seyns), of explicit and implicit self. Its essential nature is only that of the abstract category. Still it has no longer the form of immediate simple being as in the case of Observation, where it is abstract being, or, when affirmed as something alien, is thinghood in general. Here in the case before us there has entered into this thinghood self-existence (Fürsichseyn) and mediation. It comes on the scene here, therefore, in the form of a circular process, whose content is the developed pure relation of simple ultimate elements. The actualisation attained in the case of this individuality consists, therefore, in nothing else than its having turned out this cycle of abstractions from the restricted confines of simple self-consciousness, and put them into the sphere and condition of self-existence, where they appear spread out in detail as distinct objects.

The sort of object, then, that self-consciousness in its pleasurable enjoyment takes to be its true reality, is the detailed expansion of those bare essential elements—of pure unity, of bare difference, and of their relation. Further than this the object, which individuality finds to be its true nature, has no content. It is what is called Necessity. For Necessity, Fate, or the like, is just that about which we are unable to say what it is doing, what its definite laws and its positive content actually are, because it is the absolute pure notion itself, viewed as being, relation bare and simple, but imperturbable, irresistible, and immovable, whose work is merely the nothingness of individual existence. It is this firm unbending connexion, because the connecting factor consists in pure essentialities or empty abstractions. Unity, Difference, and Relation are categories, each of which is nothing as it stands by itself, but only in its relation to its opposite, and they therefore cannot come apart from one another. They are by their own notion related to each other, for they are the pure notions themselves; and this absolute relation and bare abstract process constitute Necessity. The merely particular individuality, which has in the first instance only the pure notion of reason for its content, instead of having escaped from dead theory and plunged into actual life, has thus only precipitated itself into consciousness of its own lifelessness, and finds its lot to be merely naked and alien necessity, lifeless actuality.

The transition takes place from the form of oneness to that of universality, from one absolute abstraction into the other; it proceeds from that purpose of pure explicit existence-for-self, which has cast off fellowship and communion with others, into the sheer opposite—i.e. into equally abstract implicit immanent existence—into mere being-in-itself. This appears consequently in such form that the individual is simply reduced to naught, and the utter atomicity of separate individual existence is pulverised on the equally hard but continuous actuality.

Since it is qua consciousness the unity of itself and its opposite, this transition is still a fact for it. Its purpose and its realisation as well as the contradiction of what constituted its essential nature, and what inherently that nature is—all this it is consciously aware of. It learns the double meaning which lies in what it does, when it sought to “take” and possess its life: it “took” life, but thereby rather laid hold on death.

This transition of its living being into lifeless necessity appears to it therefore a perversion which is mediated by no agency at all. The mediating factor would have to be that in which both sides would be one, where consciousness thus knew the one moment in the other, found its purpose and action in Fate, and its fate in its purpose and action, saw its own true nature in this Necessity. But, for consciousness the meaning of this unity here is just pleasure itself, or simple particular feeling; and the transition from the moment of this its purpose into the moment of its true nature is for it a mere leap into the opposite. For these moments are not contained and combined in feeling, but only in the bare pure self, which is a universal or thought. Consciousness, therefore, through the experience in which its truth ought to have come to light, has instead become to itself a dark riddle; the consequences of its deeds are to it not really its own deeds. What happens to it is found to be not the experience of what it inherently is; the transition is not a mere alteration in form of the same content and essential nature, presented now as content and true reality of consciousness, thereafter as object or intuitively perceived essence of itself. The abstract necessity thus gets the significance of the merely negativing uncomprehended power of universality, on which individuality is broken in pieces.

The appearance of this mode of self-consciousness goes as far as this stage. The last moment of the existence of this mode is the thought of the loss it suffers at the hands of necessity, or the thought of itself as a being (Wesen) entirely alien to itself. Self-consciousness in itself, however, has survived this loss; for this necessity or pure universality is its own proper nature (Wesen). This reflection of consciousness into self, the knowledge that itself is necessity, is a new mode or attitude of consciousness.

Necessity is for this new mode of consciousness what in truth self-consciousness finds necessity in its own case to be. In its new attitude self-consciousness regards itself as the necessary element. It knows that it has the universal, the law, immediately within itself, a law which, because of this characteristic of being immediately within consciousness as it is for itself, is called the Law of the Heart. This mode or attitude of consciousness is for itself, qua individual, essential reality as the former mode similarly was; but in the present case it is richer by the characteristic that this self-existence is taken as necessary or universal.

The law, therefore, which is primarily the law proper of self-consciousness, or a “heart” which however has in it a law, is the purpose which the self proceeds to realise. It remains to be seen whether its realisation corresponds to its notion, and whether it will therein come to find this its law to be the essential ultimate fact.

Opposed to this “heart” stands a reality. For in the “heart” the law is in the first place merely for itself; it is not yet actualized, and thus, too, is something other than what the notion is. This other is thereby characterised as a reality which is the antithesis of what is to be realised, and consequently is the contradiction of the law and the individual. This reality is thus on the one hand a law by which the particular individuality is crushed and oppressed, a violent ordinance of the world which contradicts the law of the heart, and, on the other hand, a humanity suffering under that ordinance—a humanity which does not follow the law of the heart, but is subjected to an alien necessity.

This reality, appearing in opposition to the present mode of consciousness, is, as is evident, nothing but the foregoing diremption of individuality and its truth, a relation of gruesome necessity, under which the former is crushed. We, who trace the process, see the preceding movement, therefore, as in opposition to the new form, because the latter has essentially arisen from it, and the moment whence the new form comes to the present stage is necessary for it. The new mode, however, looks on that moment as something lying at hand, something simply met with, since it has no consciousness of its origin, and takes its real essence to consist rather in being independent, in being for itself, or negatively disposed towards this positive, implicit, immanent content.

The aim and object of this individuality is thus to cancel and transcend this necessity which contradicts the law of the heart, as also to do away with the suffering thereby arising. There is in consequence no longer here the frivolity of the former mode, which merely wanted some particular pleasure; it is the earnestness of a high purpose, which seeks its pleasure in displaying the excellence of its own true nature, and in bringing about the welfare of mankind. What it realises is itself the law, and its pleasure is at the same time universal, a pleasure which all hearts feel. To it both are inseparable; its pleasure is what conforms to the law and the realisation of the law of all mankind prepares the way for its particular pleasure. For within its own self individuality and necessity are immediately and directly one; the law is a law of the heart. Individuality is not yet removed from its place; and the unity of both has not been brought about by the process mediating that unity, has not yet been established by discipline. The realisation of the immediate undisciplined nature passes for a display of excellence and for bringing about the well-being of mankind.

The law, again, which is opposed to the law of the heart is divided from the heart, and exists on its own account. Mankind, which is bound to it, does not live in the blissful unity of the law with the heart, but either lives in dismal separation and suffering, or at least in deprivation of the enjoyment of itself in obeying the law, and without the consciousness of its own excellence in overstepping it. Because that all-dominating divine and human ordinance is divided from the heart it is regarded by the latter as a delusion, which ought to lose what it still possesses, namely, power and objectivity. It may, indeed, in its content agree by chance with the law of the heart, and then the latter can acquiesce in it. But, for the heart, it is not the bare conformity to law as such which constitutes the essential fact (Wesen), but the consciousness of itself which the “heart” thereby obtains, the fact that it has therein found satisfaction. Where the content of universal necessity, however, does not agree with the heart, necessity is also, as regards its content, nothing in itself, and must give way before the law of the heart.

The individual, then, fulfils, carries out the law of his heart. This law becomes a universal ordinance, and pleasure becomes a reality which, as it stands, conforms to law. But in this realisation, the law has, in point of fact, escaped the individual; and thus there arises immediately only that relation which ought to be cancelled. The law of the heart ceases through its very realisation to be a law of the heart. For it thereby takes on the form of actually “being,” and is now universal power, which holds this particular “heart” to be a matter of indifference; so that the individual, in establishing his own ordinance, no longer finds it to be his own. By realising his law he consequently brings about, not his law, but—since the realisation is inherently and implicitly his own, but explicitly alien and external—merely this: he gets involved and entangled in the actual ordinance, and, indeed, entangled in it, not merely as something alien to himself but as a hostile, overpowering dominion.

By this act he takes his place in, or rather as, the general element of existent actuality; and his act is, in his own regard, intended to have the value of a universal ordinance. But thereby he has let himself get detached from his own self; qua universality he lives, grows on his own account, and gets rid of individuality. The individual who recognises universality merely in the form of his own immediate self-subsistence (Fürsichseyn) does not, therefore, find himself in this liberated and independent universality, while all the same he belongs to it, because the latter is his doing. This doing thus has the reverse significance; it contradicts the universal ordinance. For the individual’s act is intended to be that of his individual heart, and not independent universal reality; and at the same time he has, in fact, recognised and acknowledged this latter, for the act has the import of setting up his essential nature as free and independent reality, that is to say, of recognising reality to be his own essential being.

The individual has, by the very principle of his action, determined the more special manner in which actual universality, to which he has leagued himself, gets turned against him. His act, qua actuality, belongs to the universal; its content, however, is his own individuality, which, being this particular individuality, wants to preserve itself in opposition to universality. It is not any specific law whose establishment was in question; on the contrary, the immediate unity of the individual heart with universality is the idea—raised to the dignity of a law and claiming to be valid—that every heart must know its own self in what is universal law. But only the heart of this individual has established its reality in his act, which, in his view, expresses his self-existence (Fürsichseyn) or his pleasure. The act is intended to stand immediately for what is universal; that is to say, it is in truth something particular, and has merely the form of universality: its particular content is, as such, to pass for universal. Hence others find in this content not the law of their heart fulfilled, but rather that of some one else; and even in view of the universal law, that each is to find his own heart in what is law, they turn against that reality which he set up, just as he on his side turned against theirs. The individual therefore finds, as at first merely the rigid law, so now the hearts of men themselves opposed to his excellent intentions, and detesting them.

Because this type of consciousness finds universality in the first place merely as immediate, and knows necessity as necessity of the heart, the nature of actualisation and effective activity is to it unknown. This consciousness is unaware that effective realisation involves objective existence, and is in truth the inherently universal in which the particular life of consciousness, which commits itself to it in order to have being in the sense of an immediate individual life, is really submerged. Instead of obtaining this particular life of its own in that objective existence, it thus becomes estranged from itself. But that in which it does not know itself is no longer dead necessity, but necessity animated by universal individuality. It took this divine and human ordinance, which it discovered in operation, to be a dead reality, wherein not only its own self—which claims the position of a particular individual, insists on being a particular “heart” with a life of its own and opposed to the universal—but those as well who fall within this reality had no consciousness of themselves. Now, however, it finds that reality animated by the consciousness of all, and a law for all hearts. It learns through experience that the reality in question is an ordinance infused and endowed with life, and learns this, indeed, just by the fact that it actualizes the law of its own heart. For this means nothing else than that individuality becomes its own object in the form of universality, without however knowing itself therein.

Thus, then, what the experience of this mode of self-consciousness reveals as the truth, contradicts what this mode takes itself to be. What, however, it takes itself to be has for it the form of absolute universality; and what is immediately one with consciousness of self is the law of the heart. At the same time the stable living ordinance is likewise its own true nature and work; it produces nothing else but that; the latter is in direct, immediate union with self-consciousness. In this way self-consciousness here has the characteristic of belonging to a twofold antithetic essence; it is inherently contradictory and torn to distraction in its inmost being. The law of “this individual heart” is only that wherein self-consciousness knows itself; but the universal and accepted ordinance has by actualizing that law become likewise its own essential nature and its own reality. What thus contradicts itself within its consciousness has for it in both cases the character of essence, and of being its own reality.

When it gives expression to this moment of conscious destruction, and thereby expresses the result of its experience, it shows itself to be this inner perversion of itself, to be consciousness gone crazy, its own essence being at once not essence, its reality directly unreality.

The madness here cannot be taken to mean that in general something unessential is regarded as essential, something unreal as real, so that what for one is essential or actual might not be so for another, and thus the consciousness of real and of unreal, or of essential and unessential, would fall apart. If something in point of fact is real and essential for consciousness in general, but for me is not so, then, in being conscious of its nothingness, I have, since I am consciousness in general, at the same time the consciousness of its reality; and since they both are fixed and rooted within me, this is a union which is madness in general. In this state, however, there is only one object deranged for consciousness—not consciousness as such within itself and for itself. But in the result of the process of experience, which has here come about, consciousness is in its law aware of its self as this individual reality; and at the same time, since precisely this same essential fact, this same reality, is estranged from it, it is—qua self-consciousness, qua absolute reality—aware of its unreality. In other words, both aspects are held in their contradiction to be directly its essence, which is thus in its inmost being distracted.

The heart-throb for the welfare of mankind passes therefore into the rage of frantic self-conceit, into the fury of consciousness to preserve itself from destruction; and to do so by casting out of its life the perversion which it really is, and by straining to regard and to express that perversion as something else. The universal ordinance and law it, therefore, now speaks of as an utter distortion of the law of its heart and of its happiness, a perversion invented by fanatical priests, by riotous, revelling despots and their minions, who seek to indemnify themselves for their own degradation by degrading and oppressing in their turn—a distortion practised to the nameless misery of deluded mankind.

Consciousness in this its frenzy proclaims individuality to be deranging, mad, and perverted, but this is an alien and accidental individuality. It is the heart, however, or the particular consciousness immediately seeking to be universal, that is thus raving and perverted, and the outcome of its action is merely that this contradiction comes to its consciousness. For the truth in its view is the law of its heart, something merely intended, which has not outlasted as the permanent ordinance has done, but rather collapses when it comes face to face with this latter. This its law ought to have reality: herein the law has for it the sense of reality, is a valid ordinance, purpose and essential nature; but that reality, that very law as valid ordinance, is at once and at the same time for it nothingness and void.

Similarly its own reality proper, itself as particular consciousness, is in its view the essential truth. Its purpose, however, is to establish that particularity as existent. It thus prima facie and in the first instance takes its self qua not individual to be the truly real, or purpose in the sense of law, and hence precisely a universality, which it is to be objectively as a conscious fact. This its notion comes by its own act to be its object. Its (individual) self is thus discovered to be unreal, and unreality it finds out to be its reality. It is thus not an accidental and alien individuality, but just this particular “heart,” in every respect inherently perverted and perverting.

Since, however, the directly universal individuality is that condition of perversion, this universal ordinance, being the law of all hearts, and so of the perverted consciousness, is no less itself in its very nature the perverted element, as indeed raging frenzy declared. On the one hand this ordinance proves itself to be a law for all hearts, by the resistance which the law of one heart meets with from other individuals. The accepted and established laws are defended against the law of a single individual because they are not empty necessity, unconscious and dead, but have spiritual substance and universality, in which those in whom this spiritual substance is realised live as individuals, and are conscious of their own selves. Hence, even when they complain of this ordinance, as if it went contrary to their own inmost law, and maintain in opposition to it the claims of the “heart,” in point of fact they inwardly cling to it as being their essential nature; and if they are deprived of this ordinance, or put themselves outside the range of its influence, they lose everything. Since, then, it is precisely in this that the reality and power of public ordinance consist, the latter appears as the essence, self-identical and everywhere alive, and individuality appears as its form.

On the other hand, however, this ordinance is the sphere of perversion. For in that this ordinance is the law of all hearts, in that all individuals are immediately this universal, it is a reality which is only that of self-existing individuality, i.e. of the heart. When consciousness therefore sets up the law of its heart, it finds itself resisted by others, and the latter in opposing it are doing nothing else but setting up in their turn and making valid their own law. The universal which comes out, therefore, is only a universal resistance and struggle of all against one another, in which each makes good his own individuality, but at the same time does not come off successfully, because each individuality meets with the same opposition, and each is reciprocally dissipated by the others. What appears as public ordinance is thus this state of war of each against all, in which every one for himself wrests what he can, executes even-handed justice upon the individual lives of others, and establishes his own individual existence, which in its turn vanishes at the hands of others. We have here the Course of the World, the mere semblance of a constant regular trend, which is only a pretence of universality, and whose content is rather the meaningless insubstantial sport of setting up individual beings as fixed and stable, and then dissipating them.

If we put both sides of the universal ordinance over against one another and consider them, we see that this later universality has for its content restless individuality, which regards opinion or the merely particular as law, the real as unreal, and the unreal as real. That universality is, however, at the same time the side of realisation of the ordinance, for to it belongs the independent self-existence (Fürsichseyn) of individuality. The other side is the universal in the sense of stable passive essence; but, for that very reason, the universal is only something inner, which is not indeed absolutely non-existent, but still not an actual reality, and can itself only become actual by cancelling the individuality, that has presumed to claim actuality. This type of consciousness, which becomes aware of itself in the law—in what is inherently true and good—not as particular, or individual, but only as essentially real, yet knows individuality to be what is perverted and perverting, and hence feels bound to surrender and sacrifice particularity of consciousness—this type of consciousness is Virtue.

In the first mode of active reason, self-consciousness felt it was pure individuality; and over against this stood empty -universality. In the second the two factors in the antithesis had each both the moments within them, both law and individuality; the one factor, the “heart,” was their immediate unity, the other their opposition. Here, in the relation of virtue and the course of the world, both members are each severally unity and antithesis of the moments, are each a process, but in an opposite direction, of law and individuality inter se. For the virtuous consciousness law is the essential element, and individuality the one to be superseded and cancelled both in the case of its own conscious life, as well as in that of the course of the world. In the former case the private individuality claimed by any one has to be brought under the discipline and control of the universal, the inherently good and true. It remains there, however, still a personal consciousness. True cultivation and discipline consist solely in the surrender of the entire personality, as a way of making sure that in point of fact individual peculiarities are no longer asserted and insisted on. In this individual surrender, individuality, as it is found in the world’s process, is at the same time annihilated; for individuality is also a simple moment common to both.

In the world’s process individuality adopts a position the reverse of what it is in the case of the virtuous consciousness, viz. that of making itself the essential factor, and subordinating to its own ends the inherently-good and true. Further, the course of the world, too, does not, as regards virtue, mean merely a universal thus overturned and perverted through individuality; absolute law and order form likewise a common moment consciously found to be in the world’s process, not, however, in the sense of an existing actual fact, but as the inmost essence of the process. That regulative order, therefore, has not, properly speaking, to be first produced by virtue, for the production of it means qua action, a consciousness of individuality, and consists rather in superseding the latter. By thus cancelling individuality, however, the inherent nature of the world’s process merely gets room, as it were, to enter real existence independently on its own account (an und für sich selbst).

The general content of the actual course of the world has already made itself known. Looked at more closely, it is again nothing else than the two preceding movements of self-consciousness. From them has come virtue’s shape and mould, for since they originate it, virtue has them before it; its aim, however, is to supersede its source and origin, and realise itself, or be “for itself,” become objectively explicit. The way of the world is thus, from one point of view, particular individuality seeking its pleasure and enjoyment, finding itself overthrown in doing so, and as a result satisfying the demands of the universal. But this satisfaction, like the rest of the moments of this relationship, is a perverted state and process of the universal. The real fact is merely the particular pleasure and enjoyment, while the universal is opposed to it—a necessity which is only the empty shape of universality, a merely negative reaction, the form of an act without any content.

The other moment of the world’s process is individuality, which wants to be a law independently and on its own account, and under the influence of this conceit upsets the established regular order. The universal law no doubt manages to hold its own against this sort of conceit, and no longer appears in the form of an empty opposite over against consciousness, does not play the rôle of a lifeless necessity, but is a necessity operating within the conscious life itself. But in the sense in which it is a reality existing in a conscious state of absolute contradiction, it is madness; while in the sense in which it is an objective reality it is simply utter perversion. The universal, then, in both aspects proves to be the might that moves them; but the existential form this force assumes is merely that of general perversion.

It is from virtue that the universal is now to receive its true reality, by cancelling individuality, the principle of perversion. Virtue’s purpose is by this means to transmute again the perverted world’s process, and bring out its true inner nature. This true being is in the world-process merely in the form of its implicit inherent nature; it is not yet actual; and hence virtue merely believes it. Virtue proceeds to raise this faith to sight, without, however, enjoying the fruit of its labour and sacrifice. For so far as it is individuality, it is the active carrying-on of the contest which it wages with the world’s process. Its purpose and true nature, however, lie in conquering the reality of the world’s process; and the existence of the good thereby effectuated carries with it the cessation of its action, i.e. of the consciousness of individuality.

How this struggle itself will come off, what virtue finds out in the course of it, whether, by the sacrifice which virtue takes upon itself to undergo, the world’s process succumbs while virtue triumphs—all this must be decided from the nature of the living weapons the combatants carry. For the weapons are nothing else than the essential being of the combatants themselves, a being which only makes its appearance for them both reciprocally. What their weapons are is in this way already evident from what is inherently implied in this struggle.

The universal is an authentic element for the virtuous consciousness as a matter of belief; it is “implicitly” or “inherently” true; not yet an actual, but an abstract universality. It plays the part of purpose in the case of this consciousness, and of inner principle in that of the world’s process. Precisely by having this character the universal also manifests itself in the relation of virtue to the world’s process; for virtue first “wills” to carry out the good, and does not in the first instance claim reality for it. This characteristic can also be looked at in this way: the good, in that it comes on the scene in the struggle with the world’s process, thereby manifests itself in the form of what is for another, as something which is not self-contained (an und für sich selbst), for otherwise it would not want to get at its own truth by vanquishing its opposite. By having its being only when it is for another, is meant the same as was shown in the opposite way of looking at it, viz: that it is to begin with an abstraction which only attains reality in a relation, and has no reality of itself as it stands.

The good or universal, as it appears here, is, then, what is called Gifts, Capacities, Powers. It is a mode or form of spiritual life, where it is presented as a universal, which requires the principle of individuality to give it life and movement, and in individuality finds its realisation. This universal is applied well by the principle of individuality so far as this principle dwells in the consciousness of virtue, and misused by it so far as it is in the world’s process—a passive instrument, which can be regulated and directed by the hand of free individuality quite irrespective of the use it is put to, and can be misused for the production of a reality which means its ruin: a lifeless material deprived of its own independence—a material that can be formed in this way or that, or even to its own destruction.

Since this universal is at the beck and call equally of the virtuous consciousness as well as of the course of the world, it is not apparent whether with this equipment virtue will get the better of vice. The weapons are the same—these capacities and powers. Virtue has, it is true, carefully ensconced its belief in the original unity of its purpose and the essential nature of the world’s process, and the reserve thus placed in ambush is intended to fall on the rear of the enemy during the fight, and per se accomplish its own purpose: so that thereby the knight of virtue finds as a matter of fact that his part in waging this warfare is, properly speaking, a mere sham-fight, which he cannot take seriously because he puts all his strength and confidence in the good being self-sufficient and real per se, i.e. in the good bringing about its own fulfilment—a sham-fight which he dare not even allow to become serious. For what he turns against the enemy, and finds turned against himself, and what, both in his own case and as regards his enemy as well, he runs the risk of getting wasted and damaged in the struggle, is not the good itself; he fights to keep and carry that out: what is exposed to the hazard of the contest is merely gifts and capacities that are indifferent to the issue. But these, in point of fact, are nothing else than just that universal from which individuality has been eliminated, and which is to be conserved and actualized by the struggle.

This universal, however, is at the same time directly realised and ipso facto made actual by the very notion of the contest; it is the inherent essential nature, the “universal,” and its actualisation means merely that it is at the same time for an other. The two aspects mentioned above, in each of which it became an abstraction, are no longer separated; it is in and through the struggle that the good is primarily affirmed and established in both forms.

The virtuous consciousness, however, enters into conflict with the way of the world as if this were a factor opposed to the good. What the conflict brings to light is the universal, not merely as an abstract universal, but as one animated by individuality, and existing for an other, in other words the universal in the sense of the actually real good. Wherever virtue comes to grips with the world’s process, it always hits upon places where goodness is found to exist; the good, as the inherent nature of the world’s process, is inseparably interwoven with all the manifestations of it, with all the ways in which the world’s process makes its appearance, and where it is real the good has its own existence too. Virtue thus finds the world’s process invulnerable. All the moments which virtue was to jeopardize in itself when dealing with the world’s process, all the moments which it was to sacrifice—these are just so many ways in which goodness exists, and consequently are inviolable relations. The conflict can, therefore, only be an oscillation between conserving and sacrificing; or rather there can be no place for either sacrificing one’s own or doing harm to what comes from elsewhere. Virtue is not merely like the combatant whose sole concern in the fight is to keep his sword well-burnished; but it has even started the fight simply to preserve its weapons. And not merely is it unable to use its own weapons, but it must also preserve intact those of its enemy, and protect them against its own attack, seeing they are all noble parts of the good, on behalf of which it enters the field of battle.

This enemy, on the other hand, has as its essential element not the inherent universal, but individuality. Its force is thus the negative principle before which nothing stands, nothing is absolutely sacred, but which can risk and endure the loss of everything and anything. In so doing it feels victory to be assured, as much from its very nature as by the contradiction in which its opponent gets entangled. What is to virtue implicit and inherent is taken merely as an explicit objective fact in the case of the world’s process. The latter is detached from every moment which virtue finds fixed and to which it is fast secured. The world-process has such a moment under its power and has consequently in its control the tethered knight of virtue bound thereto, by the fact that this moment is held to be merely one which the world’s process can as readily cancel as let be. This knight of valour cannot work himself loose from it as he might from a cloak thrown round him, and get free by leaving it behind; for it is to him the essential element which there is no getting rid of.

Finally, as to the ambush out of which the inherent good is cunningly and craftily to fall on the rear of the world’s process, this hope is vain and foolish from its very nature. The world’s process is the mind sure of itself and ever on the alert, that can never be got at from behind, but fronts breast-forward every quarter; for it consists in this that everything is an objective element for it, everything stands before it. But when the inherent goodness is for its enemy, then it finds itself in the struggle we have seen; so far, however, as it is not for its enemy, but subsists in itself, it is the passive instrument of gifts and capacities, material without reality. If represented as object, it would be a dormant consciousness, remaining in the background, no one knows where.

Virtue will thus be overpowered by the world’s process, because the abstract unreal essence is in fact virtue’s own purpose, and because its action as regards reality rests on distinctions that are solely a matter of words. Virtue wanted to consist in the fact of bringing about the realisation of goodness through sacrificing individuality; but the aspect of reality is itself nothing else than the aspect of individuality. The good was meant to be what is implicit and inherent, and opposed to what is; but the implicit and inherent, taken in its real truth, is simply being itself. The implicitly inherent element is primarily the abstraction of essence as against actual reality: but the abstraction is just what is not true, but a distinction merely for consciousness; this means, however, it is itself what is called actual, for the actual is what essentially is for an other—or it is being. But the consciousness of virtue rests on this distinction of implicitness and explicit being, a distinction without any true validity.

The world’s process was to be the perversion of the good, because it took individuality for its principle. But this latter is the principle of actual reality, for it is just that mode of consciousness by which what is implicit and inherent is for an other as well. The world’s process transmutes and perverts the unchangeable, but does so in fact by transmuting it out of the nothingness of abstraction into the being of reality.

The way of the world is, then, victorious over what, in opposition to it, constitutes virtue; it is victorious over that whose nature is an unreal abstraction. But it is not victorious over something real, but over the production of distinctions that are no distinctions, over this pompous talk about the best for mankind and the oppression of humanity, about sacrifice for goodness’ sake and the misuse of gifts. Imaginary idealities and purposes of that sort fall on the ear as idle phrases, which exalt the heart and leave the reason a blank, which edify but build up nothing that endures: declamations whose only definite announcement is that the individual who professes to act for such high ends and indulges in such fine phrases holds himself for a fine creature: a swollen enlargement which gives itself and others a mighty size of a head, but big from inflation with emptiness.

Virtue in the olden time had its secure and determinate significance, for it found the fullness of its content and its solid basis in the substantial life of the nation, and had for its purpose and end a concrete good that existed and lay at its hand: it was also for that reason not directed against actual reality as a general perversity, and not turned against a world-process. The virtue above considered, however, is removed from that substantial life, and is outside it, a virtue with no essential being, a virtue merely in idea and in words, and one that is deprived of all that content.

The vacuousness of this rhetorical eloquence in conflict with the world’s process would be at once discovered if it could be stated what all its eloquent phrases amount to. They are therefore assumed to be familiar and well-understood. The request to say what, then, this “well-known” is would be either met by a new swell of phrases, or in reply there would be an appeal to the “heart” which “inwardly” tells what they mean—which is tantamount to an admission of inability to say what the meaning is.

The fatuousness of that style of eloquence seems, too, in a quasi-unconscious manner to have got the length of being an acknowledged certainty for the cultivated minds of our time, since all interest in the whole mass of those rhetorical spread-eagle phrases has disappeared—a loss of interest which is betrayed in the sheer wearisomeness they produce.

The result, then, arising from this opposition, consists in the fact that consciousness lets the idea of an inherent good, which yet has no actual reality, slip from it like a mere cloak. Consciousness has learned in the course of its struggle that the world’s process is not so bad as it looked; for the reality of the world’s process is that of the universal. With the discovery of this it is seen that there is no way of producing the good through the sacrifice of individuality, the means for doing so have gone; for individuality is precisely the explicit actualisation of what is implicitly and inherently real (i.e. the universal); and the perversion ceases to be looked at as a perversion of goodness, for it is just the transmuting of the good, qua bare purpose, into actual reality. The moving process of individuality is the realising of the universal.

In point of fact, however, what as world-process stood opposed to the consciousness of the inherently and implicitly real, has likewise been vanquished and has disappeared with the attainment of the above result. The self-existence of individuality was there in opposition to the inner essential nature, the universal, and made its appearance as a reality cut off from the inherent implicit nature. Since, however, it has come out that reality is in undivided unity with the universal, the self-existence of the world’s process proves to have no longer a being, just as the inherent nature (Ansich) of virtue is merely an aspect too (Ansicht). The individuality of the world’s process may doubtless think it acts merely for itself or selfishly; it is better than it thinks; its action is at the same time one that is universal and with an inherent being of its own. If it acts selfishly, it does not know what it is doing; and if it insists that all men act selfishly, it merely asserts that all men are unaware as to what action is. If it acts for itself, this is just the explicit bringing into reality of what is at first implicit and inherent. The purpose of its self-existence, of its “being for itself,” which it fancies opposed to the inherent nature—its futile ingenuity and cunning, as also its fine-spun explanations which so knowingly demonstrate the existence of selfishness everywhere—all these have as much vanished as the purpose of the inherent element and its rhetorical eloquence.

Thus, then, the effort, the struggle, the activity of individuality is inherently an end in itself; the use of powers, the play of their outward manifestations—that is what gives them life: otherwise they would be lifeless, potential, and merely implicit (Ansich). The inherent implicit nature is not an abstract universal without existence and never carried into effect; it is itself immediately this actual present and this living actuality of the process of individuality.