HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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Section III. Absolute Mind 171.

§ 553. The notion of mind has its reality in the mind. If this reality in identity with that notion is to exist as the consciousness of the absolute Idea, then the necessary aspect is that the implicitly free intelligence be in its actuality liberated to its notion, if that actuality is to be a vehicle worthy of it. The subjective and the objective spirit are to be looked on as the road on which this aspect of reality or existence rises to maturity.

§ 554. The absolute mind, while it is self-centred identity, is always also identity returning and ever returned into itself: if it is the one and universal substance it is so as a spirit, discerning itself into a self and a consciousness, for which it is as substance. Religion, as this supreme sphere may be in general designated, if it has on one hand to be studied as issuing from the subject and having its home in the subject, must no less be regarded as objectively issuing from the absolute spirit which as spirit is in its community.

That here, as always, belief or faith is not opposite to consciousness or knowledge, but rather to a sort of knowledge, and that belief is only a particular form of the latter, has been remarked already (§ 63 note). If nowadays there is so little consciousness of God, and his objective essence is so little dwelt upon, while people speak so much more of the subjective side of religion, i.e. of God's indwelling in us, and if that and not the truth as such is called for,—in this there is at least the correct principle that God must be apprehended as spirit in his community.

§ 555. The subjective consciousness of the absolute spirit is essentially and intrinsically a process, the immediate and substantial unity of which is the Belief in the witness of the spirit as the certainty of objective truth. Belief, at once this immediate unity and containing it as a reciprocal dependence of these different terms, has in devotion—the implicit or more explicit act of worship (cultus)—passed over into the process of superseding the contrast till it becomes spiritual liberation, the process of authenticating that first certainty by this intermediation, and of gaining its concrete determination, viz. reconciliation, the actuality of the spirit.

Sub Section A. Art

§ 556. As this consciousness of the Absolute first takes shape, its immediacy produces the factor of finitude in Art. On one hand that is, it breaks up into a work of external common existence, into the subject which produces that work, and the subject which contemplates and worships it. But, on the other hand, it is the concrete contemplation and mental picture of implicitly absolute spirit as the Ideal. In this ideal, or the concrete shape born of the subjective spirit, its natural immediacy, which is only a sign of the Idea, is so transfigured by the informing spirit in order to express the Idea, that the figure shows it and it alone:—the shape or form of Beauty.

§ 557. The sensuous externality attaching to the beautiful,—the form of immediacy as such,—at the same time qualifieswhat it embodies: and the God (of art) has with his spirituality at the same time the stamp upon him of a natural medium or natural phase of existence—He contains the so-called unity of nature and spirit—i.e. the immediate unity in sensuously intuitional form—hence not the spiritual unity, in which the natural would be put only as “ideal,” as superseded in spirit, and the spiritual content would be only in self-relation. It is not the absolute spirit which enters this consciousness. On the subjective side the community has of course an ethical life, aware, as it is, of the spirituality of its essence: and its self-consciousness and actuality are in it elevated to substantial liberty. But with the stigma of immediacy upon it, the subject's liberty is only a manner of life, without the infinite self-reflection and the subjective inwardness of conscience. These considerations govern in their further developments the devotion and the worship in the religion of fine art.

§ 558. For the objects of contemplation it has to produce, Art requires not only an external given material—(under which are also included subjective images and ideas), but—for the expression of spiritual truth—must use the given forms of nature with a significance which art must divine and possess (cf. § 411). Of all such forms the human is the highest and the true, because only in it can the spirit have its corporeity and thus its visible expression.

This disposes of the principle of the imitation of nature in art: a point on which it is impossible to come to an understanding while a distinction is left thus abstract,—in other words, so long as the natural is only taken in its externality, not as the “characteristic” meaningful nature-form which is significant of spirit.

§ 559. In such single shapes the “absolute” mind cannot be made explicit: in and to art therefore the spirit is a limited natural spirit whose implicit universality, when steps are taken to specify its fullness in detail, breaks up into an indeterminate polytheism. With the essential restrictedness of its content, Beauty in general goes no further than a penetration of the vision or image by the spiritual principle,—something formal, so that the thought embodied, or the idea, can, like the material which it uses to work in, be of the most diverse and unessential kind, and still the work be something beautiful and a work of art.

§ 560. The one-sidedness of immediacy on the part of the Ideal involves the opposite one-sidedness (§ 556) that it is something made by the artist. The subject or agent is the mere technical activity: and the work of art is only then an expression of the God, when there is no sign of subjective particularity in it, and the net power of the indwelling spirit is conceived and born into the world, without admixture and unspotted from its contingency. But as liberty only goes as far as there is thought, the action inspired with the fullness of this indwelling power, the artist's enthusiasm, is like a foreign force under which he is bound and passive; the artistic production has on its part the form of natural immediacy, it belongs to the genius or particular endowment of the artist,—and is at the same time a labour concerned with technical cleverness and mechanical externalities. The work of art therefore is just as much a work due to free option, and the artist is the master of the God.

§ 561. In work so inspired the reconciliation appears so obvious in its initial stage that it is without more ado accomplished in the subjective self-consciousness, which is thus self-confident and of good cheer, without the depth and without the sense of its antithesis to the absolute essence. On the further side of the perfection (which is reached in such reconciliation, in the beauty of classical art) lies the art of sublimity,—symbolic art, in which the figuration suitable to the Idea is not yet found, and the thought as going forth and wrestling with the figure is exhibited as a negative attitude to it, and yet all the while toiling to work itself into it. The meaning or theme thus shows it has not yet reached the infinite form, is not yet known, not yet conscious of itself, as free spirit. The artist's theme only is as the abstract God of pure thought, or an effort towards him,—a restless and unappeased effort which throws itself into shape after shape as it vainly tries to find its goal.

§ 562. In another way the Idea and the sensuous figure it appears in are incompatible; and that is where the infinite form, subjectivity, is not as in the first extreme a mere superficial personality, but its inmost depth, and God is known not as only seeking his form or satisfying himself in an external form, but as only finding himself in himself, and thus giving himself his adequate figure in the spiritual world alone. Romantic art gives up the task of showing him as such in external form and by means of beauty: it presents him as only condescending to appearance, and the divine as the heart of hearts in an externality from which it always disengages itself. Thus the external can here appear as contingent towards its significance.

The Philosophy of Religion has to discover the logical necessity in the progress by which the Being, known as the Absolute, assumes fuller and firmer features; it has to note to what particular feature the kind of cultus corresponds,—and then to see how the secular self-consciousness, the consciousness of what is the supreme vocation of man,—in short how the nature of a nation's moral life, the principle of its law, of its actual liberty, and of its constitution, as well as of its art and science, corresponds to the principle which constitutes the substance of a religion. That all these elements of a nation's actuality constitute one systematic totality, that one spirit creates and informs them, is a truth on which follows the further truth that the history of religions coincides with the world-history.

As regards the close connexion of art with the various religions it may be specially noted that beautiful art can only belong to those religions in which the spiritual principle, though concrete and intrinsically free, is not yet absolute. In religions where the Idea has not yet been revealed and known in its free character, though the craving for art is felt in order to bring in imaginative visibility to consciousness the idea of the supreme being, and though art is the sole organ in which the abstract and radically indistinct content,—a mixture from natural and spiritual sources,—can try to bring itself to consciousness;—still this art is defective; its form is defective because its subject-matter and theme is so,—for the defect in subject-matter comes from the form not being immanent in it. The representations of this symbolic art keep a certain tastelessness and stolidity—for the principle it embodies is itself stolid and dull, and hence has not the power freely to transmute the external to significance and shape. Beautiful art, on the contrary, has for its condition the self-consciousness of the free spirit,—the consciousness that compared with it the natural and sensuous has no standing of its own: it makes the natural wholly into the mere expression of spirit, which is thus the inner form that gives utterance to itself alone.

But with a further and deeper study, we see that the advent of art, in a religion still in the bonds of sensuous externality, shows that such religion is on the decline. At the very time it seems to give religion the supreme glorification, expression and brilliancy, it has lifted the religion away over its limitation. In the sublime divinity to which the work of art succeeds in giving expression the artistic genius and the spectator find themselves at home, with their personal sense and feeling, satisfied and liberated: to them the vision and the consciousness of free spirit has been vouchsafed and attained. Beautiful art, from its side, has thus performed the same service as philosophy: it has purified the spirit from its thraldom. The older religion in which the need of fine art, and just for that reason, is first generated, looks up in its principle to an other-world which is sensuous and unmeaning: the images adored by its devotees are hideous idols regarded as wonder-working talismans, which point to the unspiritual objectivity of that other world,—and bones perform a similar or even a better service than such images. But even fine art is only a grade of liberation, not the supreme liberation itself.—The genuine objectivity, which is only in the medium of thought,—the medium in which alone the pure spirit is for the spirit, and where the liberation is accompanied with reverence,—is still absent in the sensuous beauty of the work of art, still more in that external, unbeautiful sensuousness.

§ 563. Beautiful Art, like the religion peculiar to it, has its future in true religion. The restricted value of the Idea passes utterly and naturally into the universality identical with the infinite form;—the vision in which consciousness has to depend upon the senses passes into a self-mediating knowledge, into an existence which is itself knowledge,—into revelation. Thus the principle which gives the Idea its content is that it embody free intelligence, and as “absolute” spirit it is for the spirit.

Sub Section B. Revealed Religion. 172.

§ 564. It lies essentially in the notion of religion,—the religion i.e. whose content is absolute mind—that it be revealed, and, what is more, revealed by God. Knowledge (the principle by which the substance is mind) is a self-determining principle, as infinite self-realising form,—it therefore is manifestation out and out. The spirit is only spirit in so far as it is for the spirit, and in the absolute religion it is the absolute spirit which manifests no longer abstract elements of its being but itself.

The old conception—due to a one-sided survey of human life—of Nemesis, which made the divinity and its action in the world only a levelling power, dashing to pieces everything high and great,—was confronted by Plato and Aristotle with the doctrine that God is not envious. The same answer may be given to the modern assertions that man cannot ascertain God. These assertions (and more than assertions they are not) are the more illogical, because made within a religion which is expressly called the revealed; for according to them it would rather be the religion in which nothing of God was revealed, in which he had not revealed himself, and those belonging to it would be the heathen “who know not God.” If the word of God is taken in earnest in religion at all, it is from Him, the theme and centre of religion, that the method of divine knowledge may and must begin: and if self-revelation is refused Him, then the only thing left to constitute His nature would be to ascribe envy to Him. But clearly if the word Mind is to have a meaning, it implies the revelation of Him.

If we recollect how intricate is the knowledge of the divine Mind for those who are not content with the homely pictures of faith but proceed to thought,—at first only “rationalising” reflection, but afterwards, as in duty bound, to speculative comprehension, it may almost create surprise that so many, and especially theologians whose vocation it is to deal with these Ideas, have tried to get off their task by gladly accepting anything offered them for this behoof. And nothing serves better to shirk it than to adopt the conclusion that man knows nothing of God. To know what God as spirit is—to apprehend this accurately and distinctly in thoughts—requires careful and thorough speculation. It includes, in its fore-front, the propositions: God is God only so far as he knows himself: his self-knowledge is, further, his self-consciousness in man, and man's knowledge of God, which proceeds to man's self-knowledge in God.—See the profound elucidation of these propositions in the work from which they are taken: Aphorisms on Knowing and Not-knowing, &c., by C. F. G—l.: Berlin 1829.

§ 565. When the immediacy and sensuousness of shape and knowledge is superseded, God is, in point of content, the essential and actual spirit of nature and spirit, while in point of form he is, first of all, presented to consciousness as a mental representation. This quasi-pictorial representation gives to the elements of his content, on one hand, a separate being, making them presuppositions towards each other, and phenomena which succeed each other; their relationship it makes a series of events according to finite reflective categories. But, on the other hand, such a form of finite representationalism is also overcome and superseded in the faith which realises one spirit and in the devotion of worship.

§ 566. In this separating, the form parts from the content: and in the form the different functions of the notion part off into special spheres or media, in each of which the absolute spirit exhibits itself; (α) as eternal content, abiding self-centred, even in its manifestation; (β) as distinction of the eternal essence from its manifestation, which by this difference becomes the phenomenal world into which the content enters; (γ) as infinite return, and reconciliation with the eternal being, of the world it gave away—the withdrawal of the eternal from the phenomenal into the unity of its fullness.

§ 567. (α) Under the “moment” of Universality,—the sphere of pure thought or the abstract medium of essence,—it is therefore the absolute spirit, which is at first the presupposed principle, not however staying aloof and inert, but (as underlying and essential power under the reflective category of causality) creator of heaven and earth: but yet in this eternal sphere rather only begetting himself as his son, with whom, though different, he still remains in original identity,—just as, again, this differentiation of him from the universal essence eternally supersedes itself, and, though this mediating of a self-superseding mediation, the first substance is essentially as concrete individuality and subjectivity,—is the Spirit.

§ 568. (β) Under the “moment” of particularity, or of judgment, it is this concrete eternal being which is presupposed: its movement is the creation of the phenomenal world. The eternal “moment” of mediation—of the only Son—divides itself to become the antithesis of two separate worlds. On one hand is heaven and earth, the elemental and the concrete nature,—on the other hand, standing in action and reaction with such nature, the spirit, which therefore is finite. That spirit, as the extreme of inherent negativity, completes its independence till it becomes wickedness, and is that extreme through its connexion with a confronting nature and through its own naturalness thereby investing it. Yet, amid that naturalness, it is, when it thinks, directed towards the Eternal, though, for that reason, only standing to it in an external connexion.

§ 569. (γ) Under the “moment” of individuality as such,—of subjectivity and the notion itself, in which the contrast of universal and particular has sunk to its identical ground, the place of presupposition (1) is taken by the universal substance, as actualised out of its abstraction into an individual self-consciousness. This individual, who as such is identified with the essence,—(in the Eternal sphere he is called the Son)—is transplanted into the world of time, and in him wickedness is implicitly overcome. Further, this immediate, and thus sensuous, existence of the absolutely concrete is represented as putting himself in judgment and expiring in the pain of negativity, in which he, as infinite subjectivity, keeps himself unchanged, and thus, as absolute return from that negativity and as universal unity of universal and individual essentiality, has realised his being as the Idea of the spirit, eternal, but alive and present in the world.

§ 570. (2) This objective totality of the divine man who is the Idea of the spirit is the implicit presupposition for the finite immediacy of the single subject. For such subject therefore it is at first an Other, an object of contemplating vision,—but the vision of implicit truth, through which witness of the spirit in him, he, on account of his immediate nature, at first characterised himself as nought and wicked. But, secondly, after the example of his truth, by means of the faith on the unity (in that example implicitly accomplished) of universal and individual essence, he is also the movement to throw off his immediacy, his natural man and self-will, to close himself in unity with that example (who is his implicit life) in the pain of negativity, and thus to know himself made one with the essential Being. Thus the Being of Beings (3) through this mediation brings about its own indwelling in self-consciousness, and is the actual presence of the essential and self-subsisting spirit who is all in all.

§ 571. These three syllogisms, constituting the one syllogism of the absolute self-mediation of spirit, are the revelation of that spirit whose life is set out as a cycle of concrete shapes in pictorial thought. From this its separation into parts, with a temporal and external sequence, the unfolding of the mediation contracts itself in the result,—where the spirit closes in unity with itself,—not merely to the simplicity of faith and devotional feeling, but even to thought. In the immanent simplicity of thought the unfolding still has its expansion, yet is all the while known as an indivisible coherence of the universal, simple, and eternal spirit in itself. In this form of truth, truth is the object of philosophy.

If the result—the realised Spirit in which all meditation has superseded itself—is taken in a merely formal, contentless sense, so that the spirit is not also at the same time known as implicitly existent and objectively self-unfolding;—then that infinite subjectivity is the merely formal self-consciousness, knowing itself in itself as absolute,—Irony. Irony, which can make every objective reality nought and vain, is itself the emptiness and vanity, which from itself, and therefore by chance and its own good pleasure, gives itself direction and content, remains master over it, is not bound by it,—and, with the assertion that it stands on the very summit of religion and philosophy, falls rather back into the vanity of wilfulness. It is only in proportion as the pure infinite form, the self-centred manifestation, throws off the one-sidedness of subjectivity in which it is the vanity of thought, that it is the free thought which has its infinite characteristic at the same time as essential and actual content, and has that content as an object in which it is also free. Thinking, so far, is only the formal aspect of the absolute content.

Sub Section C. Philosophy.

§ 572. This science is the unity of Art and Religion. Whereas the vision-method of Art, external in point of form, is but subjective production and shivers the substantial content into many separate shapes, and whereas Religion, with its separation into parts, opens it out in mental picture, and mediates what is thus opened out; Philosophy not merely keeps them together to make a total, but even unifies them into the simple spiritual vision, and then in that raises them to self-conscious thought. Such consciousness is thus the intelligible unity (cognised by thought) of art and religion, in which the diverse elements in the content are cognised as necessary, and this necessary as free.

§ 573. Philosophy thus characterises itself as a cognition of the necessity in the content of the absolute picture-idea, as also of the necessity in the two forms—on one hand, immediate vision and its poetry, and the objective and external revelation presupposed by representation,—on the other hand, first the subjective retreat inwards, then the subjective movement of faith and its final identification with the presupposed object. This cognition is thus the recognition of this content and its form; it is the liberation from the one-sidedness of the forms, elevation of them into the absolute form, which determines itself to content, remains identical with it, and is in that the cognition of that essential and actual necessity. This movement, which philosophy is, finds itself already accomplished, when at the close it seizes its own notion,—i.e. only looks back on its knowledge.

Here might seem to be the place to treat in a definite exposition of the reciprocal relations of philosophy and religion. The whole question turns entirely on the difference of the forms of speculative thought from the forms of mental representation and “reflecting” intellect. But it is the whole cycle of philosophy, and of logic in particular, which has not merely taught and made known this difference, but also criticised it, or rather has let its nature develop and judge itself by these very categories. It is only by an insight into the value of these forms that the true and needful conviction can be gained, that the content of religion and philosophy is the same,—leaving out, of course, the further details of external nature and finite mind which fall outside the range of religion. But religion is the truth for all men: faith rests on the witness of the spirit, which as witnessing is the spirit in man. This witness—the underlying essence in all humanity—takes, when driven to expound itself, its first definite form under those acquired habits of thought which his secular consciousness and intellect otherwise employs. In this way the truth becomes liable to the terms and conditions of finitude in general. This does not prevent the spirit, even in employing sensuous ideas and finite categories of thought, from retaining its content (which as religion is essentially speculative,) with a tenacity which does violence to them, and acts inconsistently towards them. By this inconsistency it corrects their defects. Nothing easier therefore for the “Rationalist” than to point out contradictions in the exposition of the faith, and then to prepare triumphs for its principle of formal identity. If the spirit yields to this finite reflection, which has usurped the title of reason and philosophy—(“Rationalism”)—it strips religious truth of its infinity and makes it in reality nought. Religion in that case is completely in the right in guarding herself against such reason and philosophy and treating them as enemies. But it is another thing when religion sets herself against comprehending reason, and against philosophy in general, and specially against a philosophy of which the doctrine is speculative, and so religious. Such an opposition proceeds from failure to appreciate the difference indicated and the value of spiritual form in general, and particularly of the logical form; or, to be more precise, still from failure to note the distinction of the content—which may be in both the same—from these forms. It is on the ground of form that philosophy has been reproached and accused by the religious party; just as conversely its speculative content has brought the same charges upon it from a self-styled philosophy—and from a pithless orthodoxy. It had too little of God in it for the former; too much for the latter.

The charge of Atheism, which used often to be brought against philosophy (that it has too little of God), has grown rare: the more wide-spread grows the charge of Pantheism, that it has too much of him:—so much so, that it is treated not so much as an imputation, but as a proved fact, or a sheer fact which needs no proof. Piety, in particular, which with its pious airs of superiority fancies itself free to dispense with proof, goes hand in hand with empty rationalism—(which means to be so much opposed to it, though both repose really on the same habit of mind)—in the wanton assertion, almost as if it merely mentioned a notorious fact, that Philosophy is the All-one doctrine, or Pantheism. It must be said that it was more to the credit of piety and theology when they accused a philosophical system (e.g. Spinozism) of Atheism than of Pantheism, though the former imputation at the first glance looks more cruel and insidious (cf. § 71 note). The imputation of Atheism presupposes a definite idea of a full and real God, and arises because the popular idea does not detect in the philosophical notion the peculiar form to which it is attached. Philosophy indeed can recognise its own forms in the categories of religious consciousness, and even its own teaching in the doctrine of religion—which therefore it does not disparage. But the converse is not true: the religious consciousness does not apply the criticism of thought to itself, does not comprehend itself, and is therefore, as it stands, exclusive. To impute Pantheism instead of Atheism to Philosophy is part of the modern habit of mind—of the new piety and new theology. For them philosophy has too much of God:—so much so, that, if we believe them, it asserts that God is everything and everything is God. This new theology, which makes religion only a subjective feeling and denies the knowledge of the divine nature, thus retains nothing more than a God in general without objective characteristics. Without interest of its own for the concrete, fulfilled notion of God, it treats it only as an interest which others once had, and hence treats what belongs to the doctrine of God's concrete nature as something merely historical. The indeterminate God is to be found in all religions; every kind of piety (§ 72)—that of the Hindoo to asses, cows,—or to dalai-lamas,—that of the Egyptians to the ox—is always adoration of an object which, with all its absurdities, also contains the generic abstract, God in General. If this theory needs no more than such a God, so as to find God in everything called religion, it must at least find such a God recognised even in philosophy, and can no longer accuse it of Atheism. The mitigation of the reproach of Atheism into that of Pantheism has its ground therefore in the superficial idea to which this mildness has attenuated and emptied God. As that popular idea clings to its abstract universality, from which all definite quality is excluded, all such definiteness is only the non-divine, the secularity of things, thus left standing in fixed undisturbed substantiality. On such a presupposition, even after philosophy has maintained God's absolute universality, and the consequent untruth of the being of external things, the hearer clings as he did before to his belief that secular things still keep their being, and form all that is definite in the divine universality. He thus changes that universality into what he calls the pantheistic:—Everything is—(empirical things, without distinction, whether higher or lower in the scale, are)—all possess substantiality; and so—thus he understands philosophy—each and every secular thing is God. It is only his own stupidity, and the falsifications due to such misconception, which generate the imagination and the allegation of such pantheism.

But if those who give out that a certain philosophy is Pantheism, are unable and unwilling to see this—for it is just to see the notion that they refuse—they should before everything have verified the alleged fact that any one philosopher, or any one man, had really ascribed substantial or objective and inherent reality to all things and regarded them as God:—that such an idea had ever come into the hand of any body but themselves. This allegation I will further elucidate in this exoteric discussion: and the only way to do so is to set down the evidence. If we want to take so-called Pantheism in its most poetical, most sublime, or if you will, its grossest shape, we must, as is well known, consult the oriental poets: and the most copious delineations of it are found in Hindoo literature. Amongst the abundant resources open to our disposal on this topic, I select—as the most authentic statement accessible—the Bhagavat-Gita, and amongst its effusions, prolix and reiterative ad nauseam, some of the most telling passages. In the 10th Lesson (in Schlegel, p. 162) Krishna says of himself173:—“I am the self, seated in the hearts of all beings. I am the beginning and the middle and the end also of all beings ... I am the beaming sun amongst the shining ones, and the moon among the lunar mansions.... Amongst the Vedas I am the Sâma-Veda: I am mind amongst the senses: I am consciousness in living beings. And I am Sankara (Siva) among the Rudras, ... Meru among the high-topped mountains, ... the Himalaya among the firmly-fixed (mountains).... Among beasts I am the lord of beasts.... Among letters I am the letter A.... I am the spring among the seasons.... I am also that which is the seed of all things: there is nothing moveable or immoveable which can exist without me.”

Even in these totally sensuous delineations, Krishna (and we must not suppose there is, besides Krishna, still God, or a God besides; as he said before he was Siva, or Indra, so it is afterwards said that Brahma too is in him) makes himself out to be—not everything, but only—the most excellent of everything. Everywhere there is a distinction drawn between external, unessential existences, and one essential amongst them, which he is. Even when, at the beginning of the passage, he is said to be the beginning, middle, and end of living things, this totality is distinguished from the living things themselves as single existences. Even such a picture which extends deity far and wide in its existence cannot be called pantheism: we must rather say that in the infinitely multiple empirical world, everything is reduced to a limited number of essential existences, to a polytheism. But even what has been quoted shows that these very substantialities of the externally-existent do not retain the independence entitling them to be named Gods; even Siva, Indra, &c. melt into the one Krishna.

This reduction is more expressly made in the following scene (7th Lesson, p. 7 sqq.). Krishna says: “I am the producer and the destroyer of the whole universe. There is nothing else higher than myself; all this is woven upon me, like numbers of pearls upon a thread. I am the taste in water;... I am the light of the sun and the moon; I am ‘Om’ in all the Vedas.... I am life in all beings.... I am the discernment of the discerning ones.... I am also the strength of the strong.” Then he adds: “The whole universe deluded by these three states of mind developed from the qualities [sc. goodness, passion, darkness] does not know me who am beyond them and inexhaustible: for this delusion of mine,” [even the Maya is his, nothing independent], “developed from the qualities is divine and difficult to transcend. Those cross beyond this delusion who resort to me alone.” Then the picture gathers itself up in a simple expression: “At the end of many lives, the man possessed of knowledge approaches me, (believing) that Vasudeva is everything. Such a high-souled mind is very hard to find. Those who are deprived of knowledge by various desires approach other divinities... Whichever form of deity one worships with faith, from it he obtains the beneficial things he desires really given by me. But the fruit thus obtained by those of little judgment is perishable.... The undiscerning ones, not knowing my transcendent and inexhaustible essence, than which there is nothing higher, think me who am unperceived to have become perceptible.”

This “All,” which Krishna calls himself, is not, any more than the Eleatic One, and the Spinozan Substance, the Every-thing. This every-thing, rather, the infinitely-manifold sensuous manifold of the finite is in all these pictures, but defined as the “accidental,” without essential being of its very own, but having its truth in the substance, the One which, as different from that accidental, is alone the divine and God. Hindooism however has the higher conception of Brahma, the pure unity of thought in itself, where the empirical everything of the world, as also those proximate substantialities, called Gods, vanish. On that account Colebrooke and many others have described the Hindoo religion as at bottom a Monotheism. That this description is not incorrect is clear from these short citations. But so little concrete is this divine unity—spiritual as its idea of God is—so powerless its grip, so to speak—that Hindooism, with a monstrous inconsistency, is also the maddest of polytheisms. But the idolatry of the wretched Hindoo, when he adores the ape, or other creature, is still a long way from that wretched fancy of a Pantheism, to which everything is God, and God everything. Hindoo monotheism moreover is itself an example how little comes of mere monotheism, if the Idea of God is not deeply determinate in itself. For that unity, if it be intrinsically abstract and therefore empty, tends of itself to let whatever is concrete, outside it—be it as a lot of Gods or as secular, empirical individuals—keep its independence. That pantheism indeed—on the shallow conception of it—might with a show of logic as well be called a monotheism: for if God, as it says, is identical with the world, then as there is only one world there would be in that pantheism only one God. Perhaps the empty numerical unity must be predicated of the world: but such abstract predication of it has no further special interest; on the contrary, a mere numerical unity just means that its content is an infinite multeity and variety of finitudes. But it is that delusion with the empty unity, which alone makes possible and induces the wrong idea of pantheism. It is only the picture—floating in the indefinite blue—of the world as one thing, the all, that could ever be considered capable of combining with God: only on that assumption could philosophy be supposed to teach that God is the world: for if the world were taken as it is, as everything, as the endless lot of empirical existence, then it would hardly have been even held possible to suppose a pantheism which asserted of such stuff that it is God.

But to go back again to the question of fact. If we want to see the consciousness of the One—not as with the Hindoos split between the featureless unity of abstract thought, on one hand, and on the other, the long-winded weary story of its particular detail, but—in its finest purity and sublimity, we must consult the Mohammedans. If e.g. in the excellent Jelaleddin-Rumi in particular, we find the unity of the soul with the One set forth, and that unity described as love, this spiritual unity is an exaltation above the finite and vulgar, a transfiguration of the natural and the spiritual, in which the externalism and transitoriness of immediate nature, and of empirical secular spirit, is discarded and absorbed174.

I refrain from accumulating further examples of the religious and poetic conceptions which it is customary to call pantheistic. Of the philosophies to which that name is given, the Eleatic, or Spinozist, it has been remarked earlier (§ 50, note) that so far are they from identifying God with the world and making him finite, that in these systems this “everything” has no truth, and that we should rather call them monotheistic, or, in relation to the popular idea of the world, acosmical. They are most accurately called systems which apprehend the Absolute only as substance. Of the oriental, especially the Mohammedan, modes of envisaging God, we may rather say that they represent the Absolute as the utterly universal genus which dwells in the species or existences, but dwells so potently that these existences have no actual reality. The fault of all these modes of thought and systems is that they stop short of defining substance as subject and as mind.

These systems and modes of pictorial conception originate from the one need common to all philosophies and all religions of getting an idea of God, and, secondly, of the relationship of God and the world. (In philosophy it is specially made out that the determination of God's nature determines his relations with the world.) The “reflective” understanding begins by rejecting all systems and modes of conception, which, whether they spring from heart, imagination or speculation, express the interconnexion of God and the world: and in order to have God pure in faith or consciousness, he is as essence parted from appearance, as infinite from the finite. But, after this partition, the conviction arises also that the appearance has a relation to the essence, the finite to the infinite, and so on: and thus arises the question of reflection as to the nature of this relation. It is in the reflective form that the whole difficulty of the affair lies, and that causes this relation to be called incomprehensible by the agnostic. The close of philosophy is not the place, even in a general exoteric discussion, to waste a word on what a “notion” means. But as the view taken of this relation is closely connected with the view taken of philosophy generally and with all imputations against it, we may still add the remark that though philosophy certainly has to do with unity in general, it is not however with abstract unity, mere identity, and the empty absolute, but with concrete unity (the notion), and that in its whole course it has to do with nothing else;—that each step in its advance is a peculiar term or phase of this concrete unity, and that the deepest and last expression of unity is the unity of absolute mind itself. Would-be judges and critics of philosophy might be recommended to familiarise themselves with these phases of unity and to take the trouble to get acquainted with them, at least to know so much that of these terms there are a great many, and that amongst them there is great variety. But they show so little acquaintance with them—and still less take trouble about it—that, when they hear of unity—and relation ipso facto implies unity—they rather stick fast at quite abstract indeterminate unity, and lose sight of the chief point of interest—the special mode in which the unity is qualified. Hence all they can say about philosophy is that dry identity is its principle and result, and that it is the system of identity. Sticking fast to the undigested thought of identity, they have laid hands on, not the concrete unity, the notion and content of philosophy, but rather its reverse. In the philosophical field they proceed, as in the physical field the physicist; who also is well aware that he has before him a variety of sensuous properties and matters—or usually matters alone, (for the properties get transformed into matters also for the physicist)—and that these matters (elements) also stand in relation to one another. But the question is, Of what kind is this relation? Every peculiarity and the whole difference of natural things, inorganic and living, depend solely on the different modes of this unity. But instead of ascertaining these different modes, the ordinary physicist (chemist included) takes up only one, the most external and the worst, viz.composition, applies only it in the whole range of natural structures, which he thus renders for ever inexplicable.

The aforesaid shallow pantheism is an equally obvious inference from this shallow identity. All that those who employ this invention of their own to accuse philosophy gather from the study of God's relation to the world is that the one, but only the one factor of this category of relation—and that the factor of indeterminateness—is identity. Thereupon they stick fast in this half-perception, and assert—falsely as a fact—that philosophy teaches the identity of God and the world. And as in their judgment either of the two,—the world as much as God—has the same solid substantiality as the other, they infer that in the philosophic Idea God is composed of God and the world. Such then is the idea they form of pantheism, and which they ascribe to philosophy. Unaccustomed in their own thinking and apprehending of thoughts to go beyond such categories, they import them into philosophy, where they are utterly unknown; they thus infect it with the disease against which they subsequently raise an outcry. If any difficulty emerge in comprehending God's relation to the world, they at once and very easily escape it by admitting that this relation contains for them an inexplicable contradiction; and that hence, they must stop at the vague conception of such relation, perhaps under the more familiar names of, e.g. omnipresence, providence, &c. Faith in their use of the term means no more than a refusal to define the conception, or to enter on a closer discussion of the problem. That men and classes of untrained intellect are satisfied with such indefiniteness, is what one expects; but when a trained intellect and an interest for reflective study is satisfied, in matters admitted to be of superior, if not even of supreme interest, with indefinite ideas, it is hard to decide whether the thinker is really in earnest with the subject. But if those who cling to this crude “rationalism” were in earnest, e.g. with God's omnipresence, so far as to realise their faith thereon in a definite mental idea, in what difficulties would they be involved by their belief in the true reality of the things of sense! They would hardly like, as Epicurus does, to let God dwell in the interspaces of things, i.e. in the pores of the physicists,—said pores being the negative, something supposed to exist beside the material reality. This very “Beside” would give their pantheism its spatiality,—their everything, conceived as the mutual exclusion of parts in space. But in ascribing to God, in his relation to the world, an action on and in the space thus filled on the world and in it, they would endlessly split up the divine actuality into infinite materiality. They would really thus have the misconception they call pantheism or all-one-doctrine, only as the necessary sequel of their misconceptions of God and the world. But to put that sort of thing, this stale gossip of oneness or identity, on the shoulders of philosophy, shows such recklessness about justice and truth that it can only be explained through the difficulty of getting into the head thoughts and notions, i.e. not abstract unity, but the many-shaped modes specified. If statements as to facts are put forward, and the facts in question are thoughts and notions, it is indispensable to get hold of their meaning. But even the fulfilment of this requirement has been rendered superfluous, now that it has long been a foregone conclusion that philosophy is pantheism, a system of identity, an All-one doctrine, and that the person therefore who might be unaware of this fact is treated either as merely unaware of a matter of common notoriety, or as prevaricating for a purpose. On account of this chorus of assertions, then, I have believed myself obliged to speak at more length and exoterically on the outward and inward untruth of this alleged fact: for exoteric discussion is the only method available in dealing with the external apprehension of notions as mere facts,—by which notions are perverted into their opposite. The esoteric study of God and identity, as of cognitions and notions, is philosophy itself.

§ 574. This notion of philosophy is the self-thinking Idea, the truth aware of itself (§ 236),—the logical system, but with the signification that it is universality approved and certified in concrete content as in its actuality. In this way the science has gone back to its beginning: its result is the logical system but as a spiritual principle: out of the presupposing judgment, in which the notion was only implicit and the beginning an immediate,—and thus out of the appearance which it had there—it has risen into its pure principle and thus also into its proper medium.

§ 575. It is this appearing which originally gives the motive of the further development. The first appearance is formed by the syllogism, which is based on the Logical system as starting-point, with Nature for the middle term which couples the Mind with it. The Logical principle turns to Nature and Nature to Mind. Nature, standing between the Mind and its essence, sunders itself, not indeed to extremes of finite abstraction, nor itself to something away from them and independent,—which, as other than they, only serves as a link between them: for the syllogism is in the Idea and Nature is essentially defined as a transition-point and negative factor, and as implicitly the Idea. Still the mediation of the notion has the external form of transition, and the science of Nature presents itself as the course of necessity, so that it is only in the one extreme that the liberty of the notion is explicit as a self-amalgamation.

§ 576. In the second syllogism this appearance is so far superseded, that that syllogism is the standpoint of the Mind itself, which—as the mediating agent in the process—presupposes Nature and couples it with the Logical principle. It is the syllogism where Mind reflects on itself in the Idea: philosophy appears as a subjective cognition, of which liberty is the aim, and which is itself the way to produce it.

§ 577. The third syllogism is the Idea of philosophy, which has self-knowing reason, the absolutely-universal, for its middle term: a middle, which divides itself into Mind and Nature, making the former its presupposition, as process of the Idea's subjective activity, and the latter its universal extreme, as process of the objectively and implicitly existing Idea. The self-judging of the Idea into its two appearances (§§ 575, 576) characterises both as its (the self-knowing reason's) manifestations: and in it there is a unification of the two aspects:—it is the nature of the fact, the notion, which causes the movement and development, yet this same movement is equally the action of cognition. The eternal Idea, in full fruition of its essence, eternally sets itself to work, engenders and enjoys itself as absolute Mind.

Ἡ δὲ νόησις ἡ καθ᾽ αὑτὴν τοῦ καθ᾽ αὑτὸ ἀρίστου, καὶ ἡ μάλιστα τοῦ μάλιστα. Αὑτὸν δὲ νοεῖ ὁ νοῦς κατὰ μετάληψιν τοῦ νοητοῦ νοητὸς γὰρ γίγνεται θιγγάνων καὶ νοῶν, ὥστε ταὐτὸν νοῦς καὶ νοητόν. Τὸ γὰρ δεκτικὸν τοῦ νοητοῦ καὶ τῆς οὐσίας νοῦς. Ἐνεργεῖ δὲ ἔχων. Ὥστ᾽ ἐκεῖνο μᾶλλον τούτου ὂ δοκεῖ ὁ νοῦς θεῖον ἔχειν, καὶ ἡ θεωρία τὸ ἥδιστον καὶ ἄριστον. Εἰ οὖν οὕτως εὖ ἔχει, ὡς ἡμεῖς ποτέ, ὁ θεὸς ἀεί, θαυμαστόν; εἰ δὲ μᾶλλον, ἔτι θαυμασιώτερον. Ἔχει δὲ ὡδί. Καὶ ζωὴ δέ γε ὑπάρχει; ἡ γὰρ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ζωή, ἐκεῖνος δὲ ἡ ἐνέργεια; ἐνέργεια δὲ ἡ καθ᾽ αὑτὴν ἐκείνου ζωὴ ἀρίστη καὶ ἀΐδιος. Φαμὲν δὲ τὸν θεὸν εἶναι ζῷον ἀΐδιον ἄριστον, ὥστε ζωὴ αἰὼν συνεχὴς καὶ ἀΐδιος ὑπάρχει τῷ θεῷ; τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ θεός. (ARIST. Met. XI. 7.)

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Index

Absolute (the), xlviii, 7.
Abstraction, 74.
Accent, 81, 87.
Ages of man, 17.
Alphabets, 81.
Altruism, 57.
Animal magnetism, clxi, 5, 29 seqq.
Anthropology, xxv, lxxxviii, 12 seqq.
Appetite, 53.
Aristotle, liii, cxxxiii, 4, 63, 163.
Art, xxxix seqq., 169 seqq.
Asceticism, cxv, cxliii, clxxxvii, 159.
Association of ideas, 73.
Atheism, 183.
Athens, cxxx.
Attention, clxxiii, 69.
Automatism (psychological), clxv.
Bacon (Fr.), xxi, lii, lix, clx.
Bain (A.), cxxi.
Beauty, 169.
Bhagavat-Gita, 186 seqq.
Biography, 151.
Body and Soul (relations of), lxxxii, cxvi, clvi, 13.
Boëthius, l.
Böhme (J.), 95.
Braid (J.), clxiv.
Bravery, cxcix.
Budget, 144.
Capitalism, cci seqq.
Cardinal virtues, cxxxii.
Categories, lx.
Catholicism, 157.
Children, lxxxvii, cii.
Chinese language, 81 seqq.
Choice, 98.
Christianity, xliv, cxli, clxxix, 7, 101, 157.
Clairvoyance, clviii, clxi, 33.
Cognition, 64.
Commercial morality, cci.
Comte (C.), xcix.
Condillac, lxxviii, 61.
Conscience, xxx, cxxii, clxxxvii, 117, 156, 161.
Consciousness, xxv, xcix, 47 seqq.
Constitution of the State, 132.
Contract, 108.
Corporation, 130.
Crime, cxciii, 109.
Criticism, xvi, cxxxviii, 149.
Custom, clxxxix, 104.
Dante, cxxxiv.
Deduction (Kantian and Fichtean), cx seqq.
Democracy, 141.
Development, 60.
Disease (mental), 27, 37.
Duty, cxiv, cxix, cxxi seqq., cxxxi, cxxxix, 97, 104, 116.
Economics, 122.
Education, xcii, cxxxvii, 11.
Ego (the), lxiv seqq., 47 seqq.
Egoism, 55.
Eleaticism, 190.
England, 143.
Epicureanism, cxli, 195.
Epistemology, ciii.
Equality (political and social), cxc, 133.
Equity, xxxi.
Estates, 123.
Ethics, xv, xix, xxx seqq., xcv, cxiii seqq., cxc seqq., 113 seqq.
Experience, 51.
Experimental psychology, lxxxi seqq., c.
Expression (mental), 23, 45.
Faculties of Mind, lxxiii seqq., xcvii, cxxvi, 58, 65.
Faith, cvii.
Faith-cure, clxi, 35.
Fame, 153.
Family, xxxii, cxcii, 121.
Fechner (G. T.), cli.
Feeling, 22, 68, 92.
Fichte (J. G.), cvi, cix seqq., clxiv, clxix, 49.
Finance, 144.
Finitude, 8.
Fraud, 110.
Freedom, cxxv seqq., clxxv, 6, 99, 113, 133 seqq.
Fries, clxxix.
Genius (the), clvii, 28.
German language, 78, 88:
politics, clxxvii;
empire, clxxxi.
God, xxxiv, xli, cxxii, 20, 154, 176.
Goethe, cliv, clxix.
Goodness, 115.
Government, 137;
forms of, 141.
Greek ethics, cxxix seqq., cxciv;
religion, 164.
Habit, clviii, 39.
Happiness, 99.
Herbart, lxii seqq., lxxxv, cxxvii.
Hieroglyphics, 80.
History, xxxiv, xlvii, xci, 147 seqq.
Hobbes, lxxvi, clxxxii.
Holiness, 159.
Honour, 124.
Humboldt (W. v.), 79.
Hume, lxxi, cxx.
Hypnotism, clxiv seqq., 31 seqq.
Idea (Platonic), 163.
Idealism, civ; political, clxxxvi.
Ideality, clxviii, 25.
Ideas, lxix seqq., ci seqq.
Imagination, 72.
Immaterialism, clii, 12, 45.
Impulse, 95.
Individualist ethics, cxx seqq.
Individuality in the State, 139.
Industrialism, cc, 123.
Insanity, 37.
Intention, 114.
International Law, 147.
Intuition, 67.
Irony, 179.
Jelaleddin-Rumi, 189.
Judgment, 89.
Judicial system, 127.
Jung-Stilling, clxii.
Juries, 128.
Kant (I.), xv, lxiv, lxxi, xcvi, cvii, cxxviii, clxxxviii, 20, 48, 51, 63, 154.
Kieser, clxiii.
Knowledge, cv, cxxxv, cxli, 64.
Krishna, 186 seqq.
Labour, 123.
Language, clxxiv, 79 seqq.
Laplace, clxiv.
Law, xxix, xcvi, cxc, 104, 125.
Legality, xxx, clxxxix.
Legislation, 125.
Leibniz, lxxii, lxxvii, cxlvi, 14, 80, 82.
Liberty, see Freedom.
Life, 13.
Logic, xiv, xvii, lxi, xcv, 196.
Lutheranism, 157.
Macchiavelli, clxxx.
Magic, clxi, 29.
Manifestation, 7.
Manners, 104.
Marriage, 121, 159.
Master and slave, 56.
Mathematics in psychology, lxviii.
Medium, 34.
Memory, clxxiv, 70, 84.
Mesmer, clxi.
Metaphysic, lviii seqq.
Mill (James), lxxix.
Mind (= Spirit), xlix seqq., 58, 196.
Mnemonics, 85.
Monarchy, 139.
Monasticism, 159.
Monotheism, 188.
Morality, xxx, xxxviii, cxxi, clxxxviii seqq., cxcviii, 113 seqq.
Münsterberg (H.), lxxxiii.
Napoleon, 19.
Nationality, 142, 150, 154, cxcv.
Natural Philosophy, xv, xvii, xxii.
Natural rights, 112.
Nature, cxx, cxxiv, 12, 133, 196.
Nemesis, 174.
Nietzsche (F.), cxxviii.
Nobility, cxcvii.
Observation, lxxxix.
Orders (social), cxcvii seqq., 124.
Ought, clxxv, 94, 116.
Pain, 6, 94.
Pantheism, 184, 194.
Parliament, 142.
Passion, 95.
Peasantry, cci.
Peel (Sir R.), 127.
Perception, 67.
Perfection, cxxvii, cxxix.
Person, 107, 119.
Personality, lxiv, clxvii.
Philosophy, xiv, cxvii, cxxxviii, 159 seqq., 179 seqq.
Phrenology, 35.
Physiology, lxxxi, c.
Pinel, 39.
Plato, xcviii, cxxxi, cxxxv, 33, 97, 102, 162.
Pleasure, cxxxvi, 94.
Plotinus, cxliv.
Police, 130.
Porphyry, xx.
Positivity of laws, 125.
Powers (political), ccii, 138.
Practice, 92.
Property, xxix, cxcii, 107.
Protestantism, 166.
Prussia, clxxviii, clxxxiv.
Psychiatry, 33.
Psychology, xxii, xxiv, lii seqq., lxiii, lxxxvi, xcv, cxvii, 4, 58, 63.
Psycho-physics, clvi, 23.
Punishment, cxciii, cciii, 111.
Purpose, 97, 114.
Races, 16.
Rationalism, clxv, 183.
Reason, cxv, cxliii, clxxii, 58.
Recollection, 70.
Reinhold, 49.
Religion, xxxvii seqq., cxcvi, 155 seqq., 167 seqq.
Representation, cxi, 70;
political, clxxxiii, 142.
Responsibility, 114.
Revelation, 7, 175.
Right, xxix, 104 (see Law).
Ritter, clxi, clxiii.
Romances, 151:
romantic art, 172.
Savages, lxxxvii, cii.
Schelling, clxi.
Schindler, clxiii.
Schopenhauer, cvi, cxvi, cli, clxiv, clxix, clxxxvii.
Science, xviii.
Scott (Sir W.), 151.
Self-consciousness, clxxi, 53 seqq.
Sensibility and sensation, 20, 50.
Sex, 18.
Siderism, clxiii, 15.
Signs (in language), 76.
Skill (acquired), 42.
Slavery, 56, 101.
Sleep, 18.
Society, xxxii, 56.
Sociology, xxiii.
Somnambulism, 30.
Soul, liv, lxix, lxxv, 26.
Spencer (H.), xxi seqq., cxi, cxxiii, cxliv.
Spinoza, lxxvi, ci, cxix, cl, 14, 49, 188.
Spiritualism, clxii.
State, xxxii seqq., clxxvi, clxxxiii, 131 seqq.
Stoicism, cxix, cxxiv, cxi, cxliii.
Suggestion, clxv seqq., 33.
Superstition, 158.
Syllogism, 90.
Symbol, 77, 171.
Sympathy, clv.
Telepathy, clxi, 34.
Tellurism, clxiii, 15.
Theology, 155.
Thinking, clxxiv, 89.
Tholuck, 191.
Trinity, 177 seqq.
Truth, cv, 182.
Unconscious (the), cxlvi.
Understanding, 52, 89.
Universalising, cxxviii.
Utilitarianism, cxxxvi.
Value, 109.
Virtues, cxxxi, cxcviii, 120.
War, cxcix, 146.
Wartburg, clxxix.
Welfare, 114.
Wickedness, 9, 94, 117.
Will, xxviii, cxxv, clxxv, 62, 90.
Wolff, lxxiii.
Words, clxxiv, 79.
Wordsworth, li, clxviii.
Written language, 81 seqq.
Wrong, 109.
Würtemberg, clxxxv.

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Footnotes

1. Plato, Rep. 527.
2. The prospectus of the System of Synthetic Philosophy is dated 1860. Darwin's Origin of Species is 1859. But such ideas, both in Mr. Spencer and others, are earlier than Darwin's book.
3. Hegel's Verhältniss, the supreme category of what is called actuality: where object is necessitated by outside object.
4. Cf. Herbart, Werke (ed. Kehrbach), iv. 372. This consciousness proper is what Leibniz called « Apperception, » la connaissance réflexive de l'état intérieur (Nouveaux Essais).
5. Herbart, Werke, vi. 55 (ed. Kehrbach).
6. p. 59 (§ 440).
7. p. 63 (§ 440).
8. These remarks refer to four out of the five Herbartian ethical ideas. See also Leibniz, who (in 1693, De Notionibus juris et justitiae) had given the following definitions: “Caritas est benevolentia universalis. Justitia est caritas sapientis. Sapientia est scientia felicitatis.” The jus naturae has three grades: the lowest, jus strictum; the second, aequitas (or caritas, in the narrower sense); and the highest, pietas, which is honeste, i.e. pie vivere.
9. To which the Greek πόλις, the Latin civitas or respublica, were only approximations. Hegel is not writing a history. If he were, it would be necessary for him to point out how far the individual instance, e.g. Rome, or Prussia, corresponded to its Idea.
10. Shakespeare's phrase, as in Othello, iii. 2; Lover's Complaint, v. 24.
11. Iliad, xii. 243.
12. See Hegel's Logic, pp. 257 seq.
13. See p. 153 (§ 550).
14. Cf. Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel, chaps. xviii, xxvi.
15. As stated in p. 167 (Encycl. § 554). Cf. Phenom. d. Geistes, cap. vii, which includes the Religion of Art, and the same point of view is explicit in the first edition of the Encyclopaedia.
16. Philosophie der Religion (Werke, xi. 5).
17. Hegel, Phenomenologie des Geistes (Werke, ii. 545). The meeting-ground of the Greek spirit, as it passed through Rome, with Christianity.
18. Ib., p. 584.
19. Phenomenologie des Geistes (Werke, ii. 572). Thus Hegelian idealism claims to be the philosophical counterpart of the central dogma of Christianity.
20. From the old Provençal Lay of Boëthius.
21. It is the doctrine of the intellectus agens, or in actu; the actus purus of the Schoolmen.
22. Einleitung in die Philosophie, §§ 1, 2.
23. Psychologie als Wissenschaft, Vorrede.
24. Einleitung in die Philosophie, §§ 11, 12.
25. Einleitung in die Philosophie, § 18: cf. Werke, ed. Kehrbach, v. 108.
26. Cf. Plato's remarks on the problem in the word Self-control. Republ. 430-1.
27. Lehrbuch der Psychologie, §§ 202, 203.
28. Allgemeine Metaphysik, Vorrede.
29. Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik (1806), § 13.
30. Werke, ed. Kehrbach (Ueber die Möglichkeit, &c), v. 96.
31. Ibid., p. 100.
32. One might almost fancy Herbart was translating into a general philosophic thesis the words in which Goethe has described how he overcame a real trouble by transmuting it into an ideal shape, e.g. Wahrheit und Dichtung, cap. xii.
33. Herbart's language is almost identical with Hegel's: Encycl. § 389 (p. 12). Cf. Spencer, Psychology, i. 192. “Feelings are in all cases the materials out of which the superior tracts of consciousness and intellect are evolved.”
34. Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel, ch. xvii.
35. Psychologia Empirica, § 29.
36. As is also the case with Herbart's metaphysical reality of the Soul.
37. Human Nature, vii. 2. “Pleasure, Love, and appetite, which is also called desire, are divers names for divers considerations of the same thing....” Deliberation is (ch. xii. 1) the “alternate succession of appetite and fears.”
38. Eth. ii. 48 Schol.
39. Eth. ii. 43 Schol.: cf. 49 Schol.
40. This wide scope of thinking (cogitatio, penser) is at least as old as the Cartesian school: and should be kept in view, as against a tendency to narrow its range to the mere intellect.
41. e.g. Analysis of the Human Mind, ch. xxiv. “Attention is but another name for the interesting character of the idea;” ch. xix. “Desire and the idea of a pleasurable sensation are convertible terms.”
42. As Mr. Spencer says (Psychology, i. 141), “Objective psychology can have no existence as such without borrowing its data from subjective psychology.”
43. The same failure to note that experiment is valuable only where general points of view are defined, is a common fault in biology.
44. Münsterberg, Aufgaben und Methoden der Psychologie, p. 144.
45. Lehrbuch der Psychologie, § 54 (2nd ed.), or § 11 (1st ed.).
46. See p. 11 (§ 387).
47. Cf. Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, i. 43. “There is more reason in thy body than in thy best wisdom.”
48. This language is very characteristic of the physicists who dabble in psychology and imagine they are treading in the steps of Kant, if not even verifying what they call his guesswork: cf. Ziehen, Physiol. Psychologie, 2nd ed. p. 212. “In every case there is given us only the psychical series of sensations and their memory-images, and it is only a universal hypothesis if we assume beside this psychical series a material series standing in causal relation to it.... The material series is not given equally originally with the psychical.”
49. It is the same radical feature of consciousness which is thus noted by Mr. Spencer, Psychology, i. 475. “Perception and sensation are ever tending to exclude each other but never succeed.” “Cognition and feeling are antithetical and inseparable.” “Consciousness continues only in virtue of this conflict.” Cf. Plato's resolution in the Philebus of the contest between intelligence and feeling (pleasure).
50. It is the quasi-Aristotelian ἀπαγωγή, defined as the step from one proposition to another, the knowledge of which will set the first proposition in a full light.
51. Grundlage des Naturrechts, § 5.
52. System der Sittenlehre, § 8, iv.
53. Even though religion (according to Kant) conceive them as divine commands.
54. Cf. Hegel's Werke, vii. 2, p. 236 (Lecture-note on § 410). “We must treat as utterly empty the fancy of those who suppose that properly man should have no organic body,” &c.; and see p. 159 of the present work.
55. Criticism of Pure Reason, Architectonic.
56. Spencer, Psychology, i. 291: “Mind can be understood only by observing how mind is evolved.”
57. Cf. Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 339: “The ethical sentiment proper is, in the great mass of cases, scarcely discernible.”
58. Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel, p. 143.
59. Windelband (W.), Präludien (1884), p. 288.
60. Cf. Plato, Republic, p. 486.
61. Human Nature: Morals, Part III.
62. Emotion and Will, ch. xv. § 23.
63. It is characteristic of the Kantian doctrine to absolutise the conception of Duty and make it express the essence of the whole ethical idea.
64. Which are still, as the Socialist Fourier says, states of social incoherence, specially favourable to falsehood.
65. Rechtsphilosophie, § 4.
66. Cf. Schelling, ii. 12: “There are no born sons of freedom.”
67. Simmel (G.), Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, i. 184.
68. Jenseits von Gut und Böse, p. 225.
69. Aristot. Polit. i. 6.
70. Plato, Phaedo.
71. Carus, Psyche, p. 1.
72. See Arist., Anal. Post. ii. 19 (ed. Berl. 100, a. 10).
73. Cf. The Logic of Hegel, notes &c., p. 421.
74. “Omnia individua corpora quamvis diversis gradibus animata sunt.” Eth. ii. 13. schol.
75. Nanna (1848): Zendavesta (1851): Ueber die Seelenfrage (1861).
76. Described by S. as the rise from mere physical cause to physiological stimulus (Reiz), to psychical motive.
77. Infra, p. 12.
78. Aristot., De Anima, i. c. 4, 5.
79. Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, i. 10.
80. Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, iv. 18.
81. Works like Preyer's Seele des Kindes illustrate this aspect of mental evolution; its acquirement of definite and correlated functions.
82. Cf. the end of Caleb Balderstone (in The Bride of Lammermoor): “With a fidelity sometimes displayed by the canine race, but seldom by human beings, he pined and died.”
83. See Windischmann's letters in Briefe von und an Hegel.
84. Cf. Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel, chaps. xii-xiv.
85. Kieser's Tellurismus is, according to Schopenhauer, “the fullest and most thorough text-book of Animal Magnetism.”
86. Cf. Fichte, Nachgelassene Werke, iii. 295 (Tagebuch über den animalischen Magnetismus, 1813), and Schopenhauer, Der Wille in der Natur.
87. Bernheim: La suggestion domine toute l'histoire de l'humanité.
88. An instance from an unexpected quarter, in Eckermann's conversations with Goethe: “In my young days I have experienced cases enough, where on lonely walks there came over me a powerful yearning for a beloved girl, and I thought of her so long till she actually came to meet me.” (Conversation of Oct. 7, 1827.)
89. Gleichsam in einer Vorwelt, einer diese Welt schaffenden Welt (Nachgelassene Werke, iii. 321).
90. Selbst-bewusstsein is not self-consciousness, in the vulgar sense of brooding over feelings and self: but consciousness which is active and outgoing, rather than receptive and passive. It is practical, as opposed to theoretical.
91. The more detailed exposition of this Phenomenology of Mind is given in the book with that title: Hegel's Werke, ii. pp. 71-316.
92. System der Sittlichkeit, p. 15 (see Essay V).
93. Hegel's Werke, viii. 313, and cf. the passage quoted in my Logic of Hegel, notes, pp. 384, 385.
94. Hegel's Briefe, i. 15.
95. Kritik der Verfassung Deutschlands, edited by G. Mollat (1893). Parts of this were already given by Haym and Rosenkranz. The same editor has also in this year published, though not quite in full, Hegel's System der Sittlichkeit, to which reference is made in what follows.
96. In which some may find a prophecy of the effects of “blood and iron” in 1866.
97. Die Absolute Regierung: in the System der Sittlichkeit, p. 32: cf. p. 55. Hegel himself compares it to Fichte's Ephorate.
98. Die Absolute Regierung, l.c. pp. 37, 38.
99. Some idea of his meaning may perhaps be gathered by comparison with passages in Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, ii. 1, 2.
100. Kritik der Verfassung, p. 20.
101. In some respects Bacon's attitude in the struggle between royalty and parliament may be compared.
102. Just as Schopenhauer, on the contrary, always says moralisch—never sittlich.
103. Grey (G.), Journals of two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, ii. 220.
104. With some variation of ownership, perhaps, according to the prevalence of so-called matriarchal or patriarchal households.
105. Cf. the custom in certain tribes which names the father after his child: as if the son first gave his father legitimate position in society.
106. System der Sittlichkeit, p. 8.
107. Aufhebung (positive) as given in absolute Sittlichkeit.
108. System der Sittlichkeit, p. 15.
109. This phraseology shows the influence of Schelling, with whom he was at this epoch associated. See Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel, ch. xiv.
110. Cf. the intermediate function assigned to the priests and the aged.
111. System der Sittlichkeit, p. 19.
112. See infra, p. 156.
113. Wordsworth's Laodamia.
114. “For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’
But it's ‘Saviour of 'is country’ when the guns begin to shoot.”
115. “I can assure you,” said Werner (the merchant), “that I never reflected on the State in my life. My tolls, charges and dues I have paid for no other reason than that it was established usage.” (Wilh. Meisters Lehrjahre, viii. 2.)
116. System der Sittlichkeit, p. 40.
117. System der Sittlichkeit, p. 65.
118. Ibid. p. 46.
119. Natürliche Seele.
120. Natürliche Qualitäten.
121. Empfindung.
122. Die fühlende Seele.
123. Plato had a better idea of the relation of prophecy generally to the state of sober consciousness than many moderns, who supposed that the Platonic language on the subject of enthusiasm authorised their belief in the sublimity of the revelations of somnambulistic vision. Plato says in the Timaeus (p. 71), “The author of our being so ordered our inferior parts that they too might obtain a measure of truth, and in the liver placed their oracle (the power of divination by dreams). And herein is a proof that God has given the art of divination, not to the wisdom, but, to the foolishness of man; for no man when in his wits attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled by sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession (enthusiasm).” Plato very correctly notes not merely the bodily conditions on which such visionary knowledge depends, and the possibility of the truth of the dreams, but also the inferiority of them to the reasonable frame of mind.
124. Selbstgefühl.
125. Gewohnheit.
126. Die wirkliche Seele.
127. Das Bewußtsein als solches: (a) Das sinnliche Bewußtsein.
128. Wahrnehmung.
129. Der Verstand.
130. Selbstbewußtsein.
131. Die Begierde.
132. Das anerkennende Selbstbewußtsein.
133. Die Vernunft.
134. Der Geist.
135. Die Intelligenz.
136. Anschauung.
137. Vorstellung.
138. Die Erinnerung.
139. Die Einbildungskraft.
140. Phantasie.
141. Gedächtniß.
142. Auswendiges.
143. Inwendiges.
144. Das Denken.
145. Der praktische Geist.
146. Der praktische Gefühl.
147. Der Triebe und die Willkühr.
148. Die Glückseligkeit.
149. Der freie Geist.
150. Gesess.
151. Sitte.
152. Das Recht.
153. Moralität.
154. Naturrecht.
155. Moralität.
156. Der Vorsatz.
157. That.
158. Handlung.
159. Die Absicht und das Wohl.
160. Das Gute und das Böse.
161. Die Sittlichkeit.
162. Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft.
163. Das System der Bedürfnisse.
164. Die Rechtspflege.
165. Geseß.
166. Die Polizei und die Corporation.
167. Inneres Staatsrecht.
168. Das äußere Staatsrecht.
169. Die Weltgeschichte.
170. Weltweisheit.
171. Der absolute Geist.
172. Die geoffenbarte Religion.
173. [The citation given by Hegel from Schlegel's translation is here replaced by the version (in one or two points different) in the Sacred Books of the East, vol. viii.]
174. In order to give a clearer impression of it, I cannot refrain from quoting a few passages, which may at the same time give some indication of the marvellous skill of Rückert, from whom they are taken, as a translator. [For Rückert's verses a version is here substituted in which I have been kindly helped by Miss May Kendall.]

III.

I saw but One through all heaven's starry spaces gleaming:
I saw but One in all sea billows wildly streaming.
I looked into the heart, a waste of worlds, a sea,—
I saw a thousand dreams,—yet One amid all dreaming.
And earth, air, water, fire, when thy decree is given,
Are molten into One: against thee none hath striven.
There is no living heart but beats unfailingly
In the one song of praise to thee, from earth and heaven.

V.

As one ray of thy light appears the noonday sun,
But yet thy light and mine eternally are one.
As dust beneath thy feet the heaven that rolls on high:
Yet only one, and one for ever, thou and I.
The dust may turn to heaven, and heaven to dust decay;
Yet art thou one with me, and shalt be one for aye.
How may the words of life that fill heaven's utmost part
Rest in the narrow casket of one poor human heart?
How can the sun's own rays, a fairer gleam to fling,
Hide in a lowly husk, the jewel's covering?
How may the rose-grove all its glorious bloom unfold,
Drinking in mire and slime, and feeding on the mould?
How can the darksome shell that sips the salt sea stream
Fashion a shining pearl, the sunlight's joyous beam?
Oh, heart! should warm winds fan thee, should'st thou floods endure,
One element are wind and flood; but be thou pure.

IX.

I'll tell thee how from out the dust God moulded man,—
Because the breath of Love He breathed into his clay:
I'll tell thee why the spheres their whirling paths began,—
They mirror to God's throne Love's glory day by day:
I'll tell thee why the morning winds blow o'er the grove,—
It is to bid Love's roses bloom abundantly:
I'll tell thee why the night broods deep the earth above,—
Love's bridal tent to deck with sacred canopy:
All riddles of the earth dost thou desire to prove?—
To every earthly riddle is Love alone the key.

XV.

Life shrinks from Death in woe and fear,
Though Death ends well Life's bitter need:
So shrinks the heart when Love draws near,
As though 'twere Death in very deed:
For wheresoever Love finds room,
There Self, the sullen tyrant, dies.
So let him perish in the gloom,—
Thou to the dawn of freedom rise.

In this poetry, which soars over all that is external and sensuous, who would recognise the prosaic ideas current about so-called pantheism—ideas which let the divine sink to the external and the sensuous? The copious extracts which Tholuck, in his work Anthology from the Eastern Mystics, gives us from the poems of Jelaleddin and others, are made from the very point of view now under discussion. In his Introduction, Herr Tholuck proves how profoundly his soul has caught the note of mysticism; and there, too, he points out the characteristic traits of its oriental phase, in distinction from that of the West and Christendom. With all their divergence, however, they have in common the mystical character. The conjunction of Mysticism with so-called Pantheism, as he says (p. 53), implies that inward quickening of soul and spirit which inevitably tends to annihilate that external Everything, which Pantheism is usually held to adore. But beyond that, Herr Tholuck leaves matters standing at the usual indistinct conception of Pantheism; a profounder discussion of it would have had, for the author's emotional Christianity, no direct interest; but we see that personally he is carried away by remarkable enthusiasm for a mysticism which, in the ordinary phrase, entirely deserves the epithet Pantheistic. Where, however, he tries philosophising (p. 12), he does not get beyond the standpoint of the “rationalist” metaphysic with its uncritical categories.