things with my conceptions, for these are only correct conceptions held by me, the individual person. In the idea we have nothing to do with the individual, nor with figurate conceptions, nor with external things. And yet, again, everything actual, in so far as it is true, is the Idea, and has its truth by and in virtue of the Idea alone. Every individual being is some one aspect of the Idea for which, therefore, yet other actualities are needed, which in their turn appear to have a self-subsistence of their own. It is only in them altogether and in their relation that the notion is realised. The individual by itself does not correspond to its notion. It is this limitation of its existence which constitutes the finitude and the ruin of the individual.

When we hear the Idea spoken of, we need not imagine something far away beyond this mortal sphere. The idea is rather what is completely present: and it is found, however confused and degenerated, in every consciousness. We conceive the world to ourselves as a great totality which is created by God, and so created that in it God has manifested himself to us. We regard the world also as ruled by Divine Providence: implying that the scattered and divided parts of the world are continually brought back, and made conformable, to the unity from which they have issued. The purpose of philosophy has always been the intellectual ascertainment of the Idea; and everything deserving the name of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness of an absolute unity where the understanding sees and accepts only separation. It is too late now to ask for proof that the Idea is the truth. The proof of that is contained in the whole deduction and development of thought up to this point. The idea is the result of this course of dialectic. Not that it is to be supposed that the idea is mediate only, i. e. mediated through something else than itself. It is rather its own result, and being so, is no less immediate than mediate. The stages hitherto considered, viz. those of Being and Essence, as well as those of Notion and of Objectivity, are not, when so distinguished, something permanent, resting upon themselves. They have proved to be dialectical; and their only truth is that they are dynamic elements of the idea.

214. The Idea may be described in many ways. It may be called reason (and this is the proper philosophical signification of reason); subject-object; the unity of the ideal and the real, of the finite and the infinite, of soul and body; the possibility which has its actuality in its own self; that of which the nature can be thought only as existent, &c. All these descriptions apply, because the Idea contains all the relations of understanding, but contains them in their infinite self-return and self-identity.

It is easy work for the understanding to show that everything said of the Idea is self-contradictory. But that can quite as well be retaliated, or rather in the Idea the retaliation is actually made. And this work, which is the work of reason, is certainly not so easy as that of the understanding. Understanding may demonstrate that the Idea is self-contradictory: because the subjective is subjective only and is always confronted by the objective, because being is different from notion and therefore cannot be picked out of it, because the finite is finite only, the exact antithesis of the infinite, and therefore not identical with it; and so on with every term of the description. The reverse of all this however is the doctrine of Logic. Logic shows that the subjective which is to be subjective only, the finite which would be finite only, the infinite which would be infinite only, and so on, have no truth, but contradict themselves, and pass over into their opposites. Hence this transition, and the unity in which the extremes are merged and become factors, each with a merely reflected existence, reveals itself as their truth.

The understanding, which addresses itself to deal with the Idea, commits a double misunderstanding. It takes first the extremes of the Idea (be they expressed as they will, so long as they are in their unity), not as they are understood when stamped with this concrete unity, but as if they remained abstractions outside of it. It no less mistakes the relation between them, even when it has been expressly stated. Thus, for example, it overlooks even the nature of the copula in the judgment, which affirms that the individual, or subject, is after all not individual, but universal. But, in the second place, the understanding believes its "reflection," that the self-identical Idea contains

its own negative, or contains contradiction, — to be an external reflection which does not lie within the Idea itself. But the reflection is really no peculiar cleverness of the understanding. The Idea itself is the dialectic which for ever divides and distinguishes the self-identical from the differentiated, the subjective from the objective, the finite from the infinite, soul from body. Only on these terms is it an eternal creation, eternal vitality, and eternal spirit. But while it thus passes or rather translates itself into the abstract understanding, it for ever remains reason. The Idea is the dialectic which again makes this mass of understanding and diversity understand its finite nature and the pseudo-independence in its productions, and which brings the diversity back to unity. Since this double movement is not separate or distinct in time, nor indeed in any other wayotherwise it would be only a repetition of the abstract understanding the Idea is the eternal vision of itself in the other, notion which in its objectivity has carried out itself, — object which is inward design, essential subjectivity.

The different modes of apprehending the Idea as unity of ideal and real, of finite and infinite, of identity and difference, etc., are more or less formal. They designate some one stage of the specific notion. Only the notion itself, however, is free and the genuine universal: in the Idea, therefore, the specific character of the notion is only the notion itself, - an objectivity, viz., into which it, being the universal, continues itself, and in which it has only its own character, the total character. The Idea is the infinite judgment, of which the terms are severally the independent totality; and in which, as each grows to the fulness of its own nature, it has thereby at the same time passed into the other. None of the other specific notions exhibits this totality complete on both its sides as the notion itself and objectivity.

215. The Idea is essentially a process, because its identity is the absolute and free identity of the notion, only in so far as it is absolute negativity and for that reason dialectical. It is the round of movement, in which the notion, in the capacity of universality which is individuality, gives itself the character of ob

jectivity and of the antithesis thereto; and this externality which has the notion for its substance, finds its way back to subjectivity through its immanent dialectic.

As the idea is (a) a process, it follows that such an expression for the Absolute as unity of thought and being, of finite and infinite, etc., is false; for unity expresses an abstract and merely quiescent identity. As the Idea is (b) subjectivity, it follows that the expression is equally false on another account. That unity of which it speaks expresses a merely virtual or underlying presence of the genuine unity. The infinite would thus seem to be merely neutralised by the finite, the subjective by the objective, thought by being. But in the negative unity of the Idea, the infinite overlaps and includes the finite, thought overlaps being, subjectivity overlaps objectivity. The unity of the Idea is thought, infinity, and subjectivity, and is in consequence to be essentially distinguished from the Idea as substance, just as this overlapping subjectivity, thought, or infinity is to be distinguished from the one-sided subjectivity, one-sided thought, onesided infinity to which it descends in judging and defining.

The idea as a process runs through three stages in its development. The first form of the idea is Life: that is, the idea in the form of immediacy. The second form is that of mediation or differentiation; and this is the idea in the form of Knowledge, which appears under the double aspect of the Theoretical and Practical idea. The process of knowledge eventuates in the restoration of the unity enriched by difference. This gives the third form of the idea, the Absolute Idea: which last stage of the logical idea evinces itself to be at the same time the true first, and to have a being due to itself alone.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SPIRIT

Freely translated from the German* by
JOSIAH ROYCE

THE CONTRITE CONSCIOUSNESS1

IN Scepticism Consciousness learns in truth, that it is divided against itself. And from this experience there is born a new Type of Consciousness, wherein are linked the two thoughts which Scepticism had kept asunder. The thoughtless selfignorance of Scepticism must pass away; for in fact the two

* From Hegel's System der Wissenschaft, Erster Theil: Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, Würzburg, 1807.

1 The Phänomenologie des Geistes, the first of Hegel's systematic works (1807), is intended as a novel sort of "Introduction to Philosophy." It depicts a series of "phases" or Gestalten of consciousness which lie between our natural "common sense" view of the real world, and what Hegel regards as the truly philosophical view of reality. These phases form a series, whose order Hegel conceives as necessary. Each stage or phase of insight into the truth of things is meanwhile illustrated in this book by examples derived from literature, from history, or from the general experience of mankind. These mere illustrations are freely chosen; and Hegel does not conceive that the special embodiment or clothing which his choice of the illustrations gives to each phase or stage of consciousness is part of the necessary development.

The "unhappy" or "contrite" consciousness (das unglückliche Bewusstsein) is a phase or stage of consciousness which is subjectively idealistic in its interpretation of reality, but which is abstract and dualistic in its view of its relations to truth. It is therefore concerned not with external nature, but with its own private ideals, and with a search for personal perfection. It is, in brief, what Professor William James might call a "variety of religious experience." This experience is here that of a lonely devotee, whose world consists of his search for inner spiritual perfection, together with the goal of this search, namely his far-off "changeless" or divine consciousness. Both the social and the more technically theological aspects of religion play no essential part in the phase of consciousness here in question. The illustrations are obviously derived from mediæval cloister life; but this part of the setting of the phase in question is accidental. Any lonely religious experience might present essentially the same features.

The union of theoretical opinions about the nature of truth, with practical and emotional interpretations of life, is characteristic of the Phenomenology. Any coherent plan of life embodies a theory of truth and of reality. Any view about the universe expresses itself in a way of life. Such is the general notion illustrated by the phases of consciousness which the Phenomenology portrays.