§ 434. This status, in the first place, implies _common_ wants and common

concern for their satisfaction,—for the means of mastery, the slave, must

likewise be kept in life. In place of the rude destruction of the

immediate object there ensues acquisition, preservation, and formation of

it, as the instrumentality in which the two extremes of independence and

non-independence are welded together. The form of universality thus

arising in satisfying the want, creates a _permanent_ means and a

provision which takes care for and secures the future.

§ 435. But secondly, when we look to the distinction of the two, the

master beholds in the slave and his servitude the supremacy of his

_single_ self-hood, and that by the suppression of immediate self-hood, a

suppression, however, which falls on another. This other, the slave,

however, in the service of the master, works off his individualist

self-will, overcomes the inner immediacy of appetite, and in this

divestment of self and in “the fear of his lord” makes “the beginning of

wisdom”—the passage to universal self-consciousness.

(γ) Universal Self-consciousness.

§ 436. Universal self-consciousness is the affirmative awareness of self

in an other self: each self as a free individuality has his own “absolute”

independence, yet in virtue of the negation of its immediacy or appetite

without distinguishing itself from that other. Each is thus universal

self-conscious and objective; each has “real” universality in the shape of

reciprocity, so far as each knows itself recognised in the other freeman,

and is aware of this in so far as it recognises the other and knows him to

be free.

This universal re-appearance of self-consciousness—the notion which is

aware of itself in its objectivity as a subjectivity identical with itself

and for that reason universal—is the form of consciousness which lies at

the root of all true mental or spiritual life—in family, fatherland,

state, and of all virtues, love, friendship, valour, honour, fame. But

this appearance of the underlying essence may be severed from that

essential, and be maintained apart in worthless honour, idle fame, &c.

§ 437. This unity of consciousness and self-consciousness implies in the

first instance the individuals mutually throwing light upon each other.

But the difference between those who are thus identified is mere vague

diversity—or rather it is a difference which is none. Hence its truth is

the fully and really existent universality and objectivity of

self-consciousness,—which is _Reason_.

Reason, as the _Idea_ (§ 213) as it here appears, is to be taken as

meaning that the distinction between notion and reality which it unifies

has the special aspect of a distinction between the self-concentrated

notion or consciousness, and the object subsisting external and opposed to

it.

(c) Reason(133).

§ 438. The essential and actual truth which reason is, lies in the simple

identity of the subjectivity of the notion, with its objectivity and

universality. The universality of reason, therefore, whilst it signifies

that the object, which was only given in consciousness _quâ_

consciousness, is now itself universal, permeating and encompassing the

ego, also signifies that the pure ego is the pure form which overlaps the

object, and encompasses it without it.

§ 439. Self-consciousness, thus certified that its determinations are no

less objective, or determinations of the very being of things, than they

are its own thoughts, is Reason, which as such an identity is not only the

absolute _substance_, but the _truth_ that knows it. For truth here has,

as its peculiar mode and immanent form, the self-centred pure notion, ego,

the certitude of self as infinite universality. Truth, aware of what it

is, is mind (spirit).

Sub-Section C. Psychology. Mind(134).

§ 440. Mind has defined itself as the truth of soul and consciousness,—the

former a simple immediate totality, the latter now an infinite form which

is not, like consciousness, restricted by that content, and does not stand

in mere correlation to it as to its object, but is an awareness of this

substantial totality, neither subjective nor objective. Mind, therefore,

starts only from its own being and is in correlation only with its own

features.

Psychology accordingly studies the faculties or general modes of mental

activity _quâ_ mental—mental vision, ideation, remembering, &c., desires,

&c.—apart both from the content, which on the phenomenal side is found in

empirical ideation, in thinking also and in desire and will, and from the

two forms in which these modes exist, viz. in the soul as a physical mode,

and in consciousness itself as a separately existent object of that

consciousness. This, however, is not an arbitrary abstraction by the

psychologist. Mind is just this elevation above nature and physical modes,

and above the complication with an external object—in one word, above the

material, as its concept has just shown. All it has now to do is to

realise this notion of its freedom, and get rid of the _form_ of immediacy

with which it once more begins. The content which is elevated to

intuitions is _its_ sensations: it is _its_ intuitions also which are

transmuted into representations, and its representations which are

transmuted again into thoughts, &c.

§ 441. The soul is finite, so far as its features are immediate or

con-natural. Consciousness is finite, in so far as it has an object. Mind

is finite, in so far as, though it no longer has an object, it has a mode

in its knowledge; i.e., it is finite by means of its immediacy, or, what

is the same thing, by being subjective or only a notion. And it is a

matter of no consequence, which is defined as its notion, and which as the

reality of that notion. Say that its notion is the utterly infinite

objective reason, then its reality is knowledge or _intelligence_: say

that knowledge is its notion, then its reality is that reason, and the

realisation of knowledge consists in appropriating reason. Hence the

finitude of mind is to be placed in the (temporary) failure of knowledge

to get hold of the full reality of its reason, or, equally, in the

(temporary) failure of reason to attain full manifestation in knowledge.

Reason at the same time is only infinite so far as it is “absolute”

freedom; so far, that is, as presupposing itself for its knowledge to work

upon, it thereby reduces itself to finitude, and appears as everlasting

movement of superseding this immediacy, of comprehending itself, and being

a rational knowledge.

§ 442. The progress of mind is _development_, in so far as its existent

phase, viz. knowledge, involves as its intrinsic purpose and burden that

utter and complete autonomy which is rationality; in which case the action

of translating this purpose into reality is strictly only a nominal

passage over into manifestation, and is even there a return into itself.

So far as knowledge which has not shaken off its original quality of

_mere_ knowledge is only abstract or formal, the goal of mind is to give

it objective fulfilment, and thus at the same time produce its freedom.

The development here meant is not that of the individual (which has a

certain _anthropological_ character), where faculties and forces are

regarded as successively emerging and presenting themselves in external

existence—a series of steps, on the ascertainment on which there was for a

long time great stress laid (by the system of Condillac), as if a

conjectural natural emergence could exhibit the origin of these faculties

and _explain_ them. In Condillac’s method there is an unmistakable

intention to show how the _several_ modes of mental activity could be made

intelligible without losing sight of mental unity, and to exhibit their

necessary interconnexion. But the categories employed in doing so are of a

wretched sort. Their ruling principle is that the sensible is taken (and

with justice) as the _prius_ or the initial basis, but that the later

phases that follow this starting-point present themselves as emerging in a

solely _affirmative_ manner, and the negative aspect of mental activity,

by which this material is transmuted into mind and destroyed _as_ a

sensible, is misconceived and overlooked. As the theory of Condillac

states it, the sensible is not merely the empirical first, but is left as

if it were the true and essential foundation.

Similarly, if the activities of mind are treated as mere manifestations,

forces, perhaps in terms stating their utility or suitability for some

other interest of head or heart, there is no indication of the true final

aim of the whole business. That can only be the intelligible unity of

mind, and its activity can only have itself as aim; i.e. its aim can only

be to get rid of the form of immediacy or subjectivity, to reach and get

hold of itself, and to liberate itself to itself. In this way the

so-called faculties of mind as thus distinguished are only to be treated

as steps of this liberation. And this is the only _rational_ mode of

studying the mind and its various activities.

§ 443. As consciousness has for its object the stage which preceded it,

viz. the natural soul (§ 413), so mind has or rather makes consciousness

its object: i.e. whereas consciousness is only the virtual identity of the

ego with its other (§ 415), the mind realises that identity as the

concrete unity which it and it only knows. Its productions are governed by

the principle of all reason that the contents are at once potentially

existent, and are the mind’s own, in freedom. Thus, if we consider the

initial aspect of mind, that aspect is twofold—as _being_ and as _its

own_: by the one, the mind finds in itself something which _is_, by the

other it affirms it to be only _its own_. The way of mind is therefore

(_a_) to be theoretical: it has to do with the rational as its immediate

affection which it must render its own: or it has to free knowledge from

its pre-supposedness and therefore from its abstractness, and make the

affection subjective. When the affection has been rendered its own, and

the knowledge consequently characterised as free intelligence, i.e. as

having its full and free characterisation in itself, it is

(_b_) Will: _practical_ mind, which in the first place is likewise

formal—i.e. its content is at first _only_ its own, and is immediately

willed; and it proceeds next to liberate its volition from its

subjectivity, which is the one-sided form of its contents, so that it

(_c_) confronts itself as free mind and thus gets rid of both its defects

of one-sidedness.

§ 444. The theoretical as well as the practical mind still fall under the

general range of Mind Subjective. They are not to be distinguished as

active and passive. Subjective mind is productive: but it is a merely

nominal productivity. Inwards, the theoretical mind produces only its

“ideal” world, and gains abstract autonomy within; while the practical,

while it has to do with autonomous products, with a material which is its

own, has a material which is only nominally such, and therefore a

restricted content, for which it gains the form of universality. Outwards,

the subjective mind (which as a unity of soul and consciousness, is thus

also a reality,—a reality at once anthropological and conformable to

consciousness) has for its products, in the theoretical range, the _word_,

and in the practical (not yet deed and action, but) _enjoyment_.

Psychology, like logic, is one of those sciences which in modern times

have yet derived least profit from the more general mental culture and the

deeper conception of reason. It is still extremely ill off. The turn which

the Kantian philosophy has taken has given it greater importance: it has,

and that in its empirical condition, been claimed as the basis of

metaphysics, which is to consist of nothing but the empirical apprehension

and the analysis of the facts of human consciousness, merely as facts,

just as they are given. This position of psychology, mixing it up with

forms belonging to the range of consciousness and with anthropology, has

led to no improvement in its own condition: but it has had the further

effect that, both for the mind as such, and for metaphysics and philosophy

generally, all attempts have been abandoned to ascertain the necessity of

essential and actual reality, to get at the notion and the truth.

(a) Theoretical mind.

§ 445. Intelligence(135) _finds_ itself determined: this is its apparent

aspect from which in its immediacy it starts. But as knowledge,

intelligence consists in treating what is found as its own. Its activity

has to do with the empty form—the pretence of _finding_ reason: and its

aim is to realise its concept or to be reason actual, along with which the

content is realised as rational. This activity is _cognition_. The nominal

knowledge, which is only certitude, elevates itself, as reason is

concrete, to definite and conceptual knowledge. The course of this

elevation is itself rational, and consists in a necessary passage

(governed by the concept) of one grade or term of intelligent activity (a

so-called faculty of mind) into another. The refutation which such

cognition gives of the semblance that the rational is _found_, starts from

the certitude or the faith of intelligence in its capability of rational

knowledge, and in the possibility of being able to appropriate the reason,

which it and the content virtually is.

The distinction of Intelligence from Will is often incorrectly taken to

mean that each has a fixed and separate existence of its own, as if

volition could be without intelligence, or the activity of intelligence

could be without will. The possibility of a culture of the intellect which

leaves the heart untouched, as it is said, and of the heart without the

intellect—of hearts which in one-sided way want intellect, and heartless

intellects—only proves at most that bad and radically untrue existences

occur. But it is not philosophy which should take such untruths of

existence and of mere imagining for truth—take the worthless for the

essential nature. A host of other phrases used of intelligence, e.g. that

it receives and accepts impressions from outside, that ideas arise through

the causal operations of external things upon it, &c., belong to a point

of view utterly alien to the mental level or to the position of

philosophic study.

A favourite reflectional form is that of powers and faculties of soul,

intelligence, or mind. Faculty, like power or force, is the fixed quality

of any object of thought, conceived as reflected into self. Force (§ 136)

is no doubt the infinity of form—of the inward and the outward: but its

essential finitude involves the indifference of content to form (ib.

note). In this lies the want of organic unity which by this reflectional

form, treating mind as a “lot” of forces, is brought into mind, as it is

by the same method brought into nature. Any aspect which can be

distinguished in mental action is stereotyped as an independent entity,

and the mind thus made a skeleton-like mechanical collection. It makes

absolutely no difference if we substitute the expression “activities” for

powers and faculties. Isolate the activities and you similarly make the

mind a mere aggregate, and treat their essential correlation as an

external incident.

The action of intelligence as theoretical mind has been called _cognition_

(knowledge). Yet this does not mean intelligence _inter alia_

knows,—besides which it also intuites, conceives, remembers, imagines, &c.

To take up such a position is in the first instance part and parcel of

that isolating of mental activity just censured; but it is also in

addition connected with the great question of modern times, as to whether

true knowledge or the knowledge of truth is possible,—which, if answered

in the negative, must lead to abandoning the effort. The numerous aspects

and reasons and modes of phrase with which external reflection swells the

bulk of this question are cleared up in their place: the more external the

attitude of understanding in the question, the more diffuse it makes a

simple object. At the present place the simple concept of cognition is

what confronts the quite general assumption taken up by the question, viz.

the assumption that the possibility of true knowledge in general is in

dispute, and the assumption that it is possible for us at our will either

to prosecute or to abandon cognition. The concept or possibility of

cognition has come out as intelligence itself, as the certitude of reason:

the act of cognition itself is therefore the actuality of intelligence. It

follows from this that it is absurd to speak of intelligence and yet at

the same time of the possibility or choice of knowing or not. But

cognition is genuine, just so far as it realises itself, or makes the

concept its own. This nominal description has its concrete meaning exactly

where cognition has it. The stages of its realising activity are

intuition, conception, memory, &c.: these activities have no other

immanent meaning: their aim is solely the concept of cognition (§ 445

note). If they are isolated, however, then an impression is implied that

they are useful for something else than cognition, or that they severally

procure a cognitive satisfaction of their own; and that leads to a

glorification of the delights of intuition, remembrance, imagination. It

is true that even as isolated (i.e. as non-intelligent), intuition,

imagination, &c. can afford a certain satisfaction: what physical nature

succeeds in doing by its fundamental quality—its

out-of-selfness,—exhibiting the elements or factors of immanent reason

external to each other,—that the intelligence can do by voluntary act, but

the same result may happen where the intelligence is itself only natural

and untrained. But the _true satisfaction_, it is admitted, is only

afforded by an intuition permeated by intellect and mind, by rational

conception, by products of imagination which are permeated by reason and

exhibit ideas—in a word, by _cognitive_ intuition, cognitive conception,

&c. The truth ascribed to such satisfaction lies in this, that intuition,

conception, &c. are not isolated, and exist only as “moments” in the

totality of cognition itself.

(α) Intuition (Intelligent Perception)(136).

§ 446. The mind which as soul is physically conditioned,—which as

consciousness stands to this condition on the same terms as to an outward

object,—but which as intelligence _finds itself_ so characterised—is (1)

an inarticulate embryonic life, in which it is to itself as it were

palpable and has the whole _material_ of its knowledge. In consequence of

the immediacy in which it is thus originally, it is in this stage only as

an individual and possesses a vulgar subjectivity. It thus appears as mind

in the guise of _feeling_.

If feeling formerly turned up (§ 399) as a mode of the _soul’s_ existence,

the finding of it or its immediacy was in that case essentially to be

conceived as a congenital or corporeal condition; whereas at present it is

only to be taken abstractly in the general sense of immediacy.

§ 447. The characteristic form of feeling is that though it is a mode of

some “affection,” this mode is simple. Hence feeling, even should its

import be most sterling and true, has the form of casual

particularity,—not to mention that its import may also be the most scanty

and most untrue.

It is commonly enough assumed that mind has in its feeling the material of

its ideas, but the statement is more usually understood in a sense the

opposite of that which it has here. In contrast with the simplicity of

feeling it is usual rather to assume that the primary mental phase is

judgment generally, or the distinction of consciousness into subject and

object; and the special quality of sensation is derived from an

independent _object_, external or internal. With us, in the truth of mind,

the mere consciousness point of view, as opposed to true mental

“idealism,” is swallowed up, and the matter of feeling has rather been

supposed already as _immanent_ in the mind.—It is commonly taken for

granted that as regards content there is more in feeling than in thought:

this being specially affirmed of moral and religious feelings. Now the

material, which the mind as it feels is to itself, is _here_ the result

and the mature result of a fully organised reason: hence under the head of

feeling is comprised all rational and indeed all spiritual content

whatever. But the form of selfish singleness to which feeling reduces the

mind is the lowest and worst vehicle it can have—one in which it is not

found as a free and infinitely universal principle, but rather as

subjective and private, in content and value entirely contingent. Trained

and sterling feeling is the feeling of an educated mind which has acquired

the consciousness of the true differences of things, of their essential

relationships and real characters; and it is with such a mind that this

rectified material enters into its feeling and receives this form. Feeling

is the immediate, as it were the closest, contact in which the thinking

subject can stand to a given content. Against that content the subject

re-acts first of all with its particular self-feeling, which though it

_may_ be of more sterling value and of wider range than a onesided

intellectual standpoint, may just as likely be narrow and poor; and in any

case is the form of the particular and subjective. If a man on any topic

appeals not to the nature and notion of the thing, or at least to

reasons—to the generalities of common sense—but to his feeling, the only

thing to do is to let him alone, because by his behaviour he refuses to

have any lot or part in common rationality, and shuts himself up in his

own isolated subjectivity—his private and particular self.

§ 448. (2) As this immediate finding is broken up into elements, we have

the one factor in _Attention_—the abstract _identical_ direction of mind

(in feeling, as also in all other more advanced developments of it)—an

active self-collection—the factor of fixing it as our own, but with an as

yet only nominal autonomy of intelligence. Apart from such attention there

is nothing for the mind. The other factor is to invest the special quality

of feeling, as contrasted with this inwardness of mind, with the character

of something existent, but as a _negative_ or as the abstract otherness of

itself. Intelligence thus defines the content of sensation as something

that is out of itself, projects it into time and space, which are the

forms in which it is intuitive. To the view of consciousness the material

is only an object of consciousness, a relative other: from mind it

receives the rational characteristic of being _its very other_ (§§ 147,

254).

§ 449. (3) When intelligence reaches a concrete unity of the two factors,

that is to say, when it is at once self-collected in this externally

existing material, and yet in this self-collectedness sunk in the

out-of-selfness, it is _Intuition_ or Mental Vision.

§ 450. At and towards this its own out-of-selfness, intelligence no less

essentially directs its attention. In this its immediacy it is an awaking

to itself, a recollection of itself. Thus intuition becomes a concretion

of the material with the intelligence, which makes it its own, so that it

no longer needs this immediacy, no longer needs to find the content.

(β) Representation (or Mental Idea)(137).

§ 451. Representation is this recollected or inwardised intuition, and as

such is the middle between that stage of intelligence where it finds

itself immediately subject to modification and that where intelligence is

in its freedom, or, as thought. The representation is the property of

intelligence; with a preponderating subjectivity, however, as its right of

property is still conditioned by contrast with the immediacy, and the

representation cannot as it stands be said to _be_. The path of

intelligence in representations is to render the immediacy inward, to

invest itself with intuitive action in itself, and at the same time to get

rid of the subjectivity of the inwardness, and inwardly divest itself of

it; so as to be in itself in an externality of its own. But as

representation begins from intuition and the ready-found material of

intuition, the intuitional contrast still continues to affect its

activity, and makes its concrete products still “syntheses,” which do not

grow to the concrete immanence of the notion till they reach the stage of

thought.

(αα) Recollection(138).

§ 452. Intelligence, as it at first recollects the intuition, places the

content of feeling in its own inwardness—in a space and a time of its own.

In this way that content is (1) an _image_ or picture, liberated from its

original immediacy and abstract singleness amongst other things, and

received into the universality of the ego. The image loses the full

complement of features proper to intuition, and is arbitrary or

contingent, isolated, we may say, from the external place, time, and

immediate context in which the intuition stood.

§ 453. (2) The image is of itself transient, and intelligence itself is as

attention its time and also its place, its when and where. But

intelligence is not only consciousness and actual existence, but _quâ_

intelligence is the subject and the potentiality of its own

specialisations. The image when thus kept in mind is no longer existent,

but stored up out of consciousness.

To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a

world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in

consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which

bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat e.g. the germ as

affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that

come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree. Inability

to grasp a universal like this, which, though intrinsically concrete,

still continues _simple_, is what has led people to talk about special

fibres and areas as receptacles of particular ideas. It was felt that what

was diverse should in the nature of things have a local habitation

peculiar to itself. But whereas the reversion of the germ from its

existing specialisations to its simplicity in a purely potential existence

takes place only in another germ,—the germ of the fruit; intelligence

_quâ_ intelligence shows the potential coming to free existence in its

development, and yet at the same time collecting itself in its inwardness.

Hence from the other point of view intelligence is to be conceived as this

sub-conscious mine, i.e. as the _existent_ universal in which the

different has not yet been realised in its separations. And it is indeed

this potentiality which is the first form of universality offered in

mental representation.

§ 454. (3) An image thus abstractly treasured up needs, if it is to exist,

an actual intuition: and what is strictly called Remembrance is the

reference of the image to an intuition,—and that as a subsumption of the

immediate single intuition (impression) under what is in point of form

universal, under the representation (idea) with the same content. Thus

intelligence recognises the specific sensation and the intuition of it as

what is already its own,—in them it is still within itself: at the same

time it is aware that what is only its (primarily) internal image is also

an immediate object of intuition, by which it is authenticated. The image,

which in the mine of intelligence was only its _property_, now that it has

been endued with externality, comes actually into its _possession_. And so

the image is at once rendered distinguishable from the intuition and

separable from the blank night in which it was originally submerged.

Intelligence is thus the force which can give forth its property, and

dispense with external intuition for its existence in it. This “synthesis”

of the internal image with the recollected existence is _representation_

proper: by this synthesis the internal now has the qualification of being

able to be presented before intelligence and to have its existence in it.

(ββ) Imagination(139).

§ 455. (1) The intelligence which is active in this possession is the

_reproductive imagination_, where the images issue from the inward world

belonging to the ego, which is now the power over them. The images are in

the first instance referred to this external, immediate time and space

which is treasured up along with them. But it is solely in the conscious

subject, where it is treasured up, that the image has the individuality in

which the features composing it are conjoined: whereas their original

concretion, i.e. at first only in space and time, as a _unit_ of

intuition, has been broken up. The content reproduced, belonging as it

does to the self-identical unity of intelligence, and an out-put from its

universal mine, has a general idea (representation) to supply the link of

association for the images which according to circumstances are more

abstract or more concrete ideas.

The so-called _laws of the association of ideas_ were objects of great

interest, especially during that outburst of empirical psychology which

was contemporaneous with the decline of philosophy. In the first place, it

is not _Ideas_ (properly so called) which are associated. Secondly, these

modes of relation are not _laws_, just for the reason that there are so

many laws about the same thing, as to suggest a caprice and a contingency

opposed to the very nature of law. It is a matter of chance whether the

link of association is something pictorial, or an intellectual category,

such as likeness and contrast, reason and consequence. The train of images

and representations suggested by association is the sport of vacant-minded

ideation, where, though intelligence shows itself by a certain formal

universality, the matter is entirely pictorial.—Image and idea, if we

leave out of account the more precise definition of those forms given

above, present also a distinction in content. The former is the more

consciously-concrete idea, whereas the idea (representation), whatever be

its content (from image, notion, or idea), has always the peculiarity,

though belonging to intelligence, of being in respect of its content given

and immediate. It is still true of this idea or representation, as of all

intelligence, that it finds its material, as a matter of fact, to _be_ so

and so; and the universality which the aforesaid material receives by

ideation is still abstract. Mental representation is the mean in the

syllogism of the elevation of intelligence, the link between the two

significations of self-relatedness—viz. _being_ and _universality_, which

in consciousness receive the title of object and subject. Intelligence

complements what is merely found by the attribution of universality, and

the internal and its own by the attribution of being, but a being of its

own institution. (On the distinction of representations and thoughts, see

Introd. to the Logic, § 20 note.)

Abstraction, which occurs in the ideational activity by which general

ideas are produced (and ideas _quâ_ ideas virtually have the form of

generality), is frequently explained as the incidence of many similar

images one upon another and is supposed to be thus made intelligible. If

this super-imposing is to be no mere accident and without principle, a

force of attraction in like images must be assumed, or something of the

sort, which at the same time would have the negative power of rubbing off

the dissimilar elements against each other. This force is really

intelligence itself,—the self-identical ego which by its internalising

recollection gives the images _ipso facto_ generality, and subsumes the

single intuition under the already internalised image (§ 453).

§ 456. Thus even the association of ideas is to be treated as a

subsumption of the individual under the universal, which forms their

connecting link. But here intelligence is more than merely a general form:

its inwardness is an internally definite, concrete subjectivity with a

substance and value of its own, derived from some interest, some latent

concept or Ideal principle, so far as we may by anticipation speak of

such. Intelligence is the power which wields the stores of images and

ideas belonging to it, and which thus (2) freely combines and subsumes

these stores in obedience to its peculiar tenor. Such is creative

imagination(140)—symbolic, allegoric, or poetical imagination—where the

intelligence gets a definite embodiment in this store of ideas and informs

them with its general tone. These more or less concrete, individualised

creations are still “syntheses”: for the material, in which the subjective

principles and ideas get a mentally pictorial existence, is derived from

the data of intuition.

§ 457. In creative imagination intelligence has been so far perfected as

to need no helps for intuition. Its self-sprung ideas have pictorial

existence. This pictorial creation of its intuitive spontaneity is

subjective—still lacks the side of existence. But as the creation unites

the internal idea with the vehicle of materialisation, intelligence has

therein _implicitly_ returned both to identical self-relation and to

immediacy. As reason, its first start was to appropriate the immediate

datum in itself (§§ 445, 455), i.e. to universalise it; and now its action

as reason (§ 458) is from the present point directed towards giving the

character of an existent to what in it has been perfected to concrete

auto-intuition. In other words, it aims at making itself _be_ and be a

fact. Acting on this view, it is self-uttering, intuition-producing: the

imagination which creates signs.

Productive imagination is the centre in which the universal and being,

one’s own and what is picked up, internal and external, are completely

welded into one. The preceding “syntheses” of intuition, recollection,

&c., are unifications of the same factors, but they are “syntheses”; it is

not till creative imagination that intelligence ceases to be the vague

mine and the universal, and becomes an individuality, a concrete

subjectivity, in which the self-reference is defined both to being and to

universality. The creations of imagination are on all hands recognised as

such combinations of the mind’s own and inward with the matter of

intuition; what further and more definite aspects they have is a matter

for other departments. For the present this internal studio of

intelligence is only to be looked at in these abstract

aspects.—Imagination, when regarded as the agency of this unification, is

reason, but only a nominal reason, because the matter or theme it embodies

is to imagination _quâ_ imagination a matter of indifference; whilst

reason _quâ_ reason also insists upon the _truth_ of its content.

Another point calling for special notice is that, when imagination

elevates the internal meaning to an image and intuition, and this is

expressed by saying that it gives the former the character of an

_existent_, the phrase must not seem surprising that intelligence makes

itself _be_ as a _thing_; for its ideal import is itself, and so is the

aspect which it imposes upon it. The image produced by imagination of an

object is a bare mental or subjective intuition: in the sign or symbol it

adds intuitability proper; and in mechanical memory it completes, so far

as it is concerned, this form of _being_.

§ 458. In this unity (initiated by intelligence) of an independent

representation with an intuition, the matter of the latter is, in the

first instance, something accepted, somewhat immediate or given (e.g. the

colour of the cockade, &c.). But in the fusion of the two elements, the

intuition does not count positively or as representing itself, but as

representative of something else. It is an image, which has received as

its soul and meaning an independent mental representation. This intuition

is the _Sign_.

The sign is some immediate intuition, representing a totally different

import from what naturally belongs to it; it is the pyramid into which a

foreign soul has been conveyed, and where it is conserved. The _sign_ is

different from the _symbol_: for in the symbol the original characters (in

essence and conception) of the visible object are more or less identical

with the import which it bears as symbol; whereas in the sign, strictly

so-called, the natural attributes of the intuition, and the connotation of

which it is a sign, have nothing to do with each other. Intelligence

therefore gives proof of wider choice and ampler authority in the use of

intuitions when it treats them as designatory (significative) rather than

as symbolical.

In logic and psychology, signs and language are usually foisted in

somewhere as an appendix, without any trouble being taken to display their

necessity and systematic place in the economy of intelligence. The right

place for the sign is that just given: where intelligence—which as

intuiting generates the form of time and space, but is apparently

recipient of sensible matter, out of which it forms ideas—now gives its

own original ideas a definite existence from itself, treating the

intuition (or time and space as filled full) as its own property, deleting

the connotation which properly and naturally belongs to it, and conferring

on it an other connotation as its soul and import. This sign-creating

activity may be distinctively named “productive” Memory (the primarily

abstract “Mnemosyne”); since memory, which in ordinary life is often used

as interchangeable and synonymous with remembrance (recollection), and

even with conception and imagination, has always to do with signs only.

§ 459. The intuition—in its natural phase a something given and given in

space—acquires, when employed as a sign, the peculiar characteristic of

existing only as superseded and sublimated. Such is the negativity of

intelligence; and thus the truer phase of the intuition used as a sign is

existence in _time_ (but its existence vanishes in the moment of being),

and if we consider the rest of its external psychical quality, its

_institution_ by intelligence, but an institution growing out of its

(anthropological) own naturalness. This institution of the natural is the

vocal note, where the inward idea manifests itself in adequate utterance.

The vocal note which receives further articulation to express specific

ideas—speech and, its system, language—gives to sensations, intuitions,

conceptions, a second and higher existence than they naturally

possess,—invests them with the right of existence in the ideational realm.

Language here comes under discussion only in the special aspect of a

product of intelligence for manifesting its ideas in an external medium.

If language had to be treated in its concrete nature, it would be

necessary for its vocabulary or material part to recall the

anthropological or psycho-physiological point of view (§ 401), and for the

grammar or formal portion to anticipate the standpoint of analytic

understanding. With regard to the elementary _material_ of language, while

on one hand the theory of mere accident has disappeared, on the other the

principle of imitation has been restricted to the slight range it actually

covers—that of vocal objects. Yet one may still hear the German language

praised for its wealth—that wealth consisting in its special expression

for special sounds—_Rauschen_, _Sausen_, _Knarren_, &c.;—there have been

collected more than a hundred such words, perhaps: the humour of the

moment creates fresh ones when it pleases. Such superabundance in the

realm of sense and of triviality contributes nothing to form the real

wealth of a cultivated language. The strictly raw material of language

itself depends more upon an inward symbolism than a symbolism referring to

external objects; it depends, i.e. on anthropological articulation, as it

were the posture in the corporeal act of oral utterance. For each vowel

and consonant accordingly, as well as for their more abstract elements

(the posture of lips, palate, tongue in each) and for their combinations,

people have tried to find the appropriate signification. But these dull

sub-conscious beginnings are deprived of their original importance and

prominence by new influences, it may be by external agencies or by the

needs of civilisation. Having been originally sensuous intuitions, they

are reduced to signs, and thus have only traces left of their original

meaning, if it be not altogether extinguished. As to the _formal_ element,

again, it is the work of analytic intellect which informs language with

its categories: it is this logical instinct which gives rise to grammar.

The study of languages still in their original state, which we have first

really begun to make acquaintance with in modern times, has shown on this

point that they contain a very elaborate grammar and express distinctions

which are lost or have been largely obliterated in the languages of more

civilised nations. It seems as if the language of the most civilised

nations has the most imperfect grammar, and that the same language has a

more perfect grammar when the nation is in a more uncivilised state than

when it reaches a higher civilisation. (Cf. W. von Humboldt’s _Essay on

the Dual_.)

In speaking of vocal (which is the original) language, we may touch, only

in passing, upon written language,—a further development in the particular

sphere of language which borrows the help of an externally practical

activity. It is from the province of immediate spatial intuition to which

written language proceeds that it takes and produces the signs (§ 454). In

particular, hieroglyphics uses spatial figures to designate _ideas_;

alphabetical writing, on the other hand, uses them to designate vocal

notes which are already signs. Alphabetical writing thus consists of signs

of signs,—the words or concrete signs of vocal language being analysed

into their simple elements, which severally receive

designation.—Leibnitz’s practical mind misled him to exaggerate the

advantages which a complete written language, formed on the hieroglyphic

method (and hieroglyphics are used even where there is alphabetic writing,

as in our signs for the numbers, the planets, the chemical elements, &c.),

would have as a universal language for the intercourse of nations and

especially of scholars. But we may be sure that it was rather the

intercourse of nations (as was probably the case in Phoenicia, and still

takes place in Canton—see _Macartney’s Travels_ by Staunton) which

occasioned the need of alphabetical writing and led to its formation. At

any rate a comprehensive hieroglyphic language for ever completed is

impracticable. Sensible objects no doubt admit of permanent signs; but, as

regards signs for mental objects, the progress of thought and the

continual development of logic lead to changes in the views of their

internal relations and thus also of their nature; and this would involve

the rise of a new hieroglyphical denotation. Even in the case of

sense-objects it happens that their names, i.e. their signs in vocal

language, are frequently changed, as e.g. in chemistry and mineralogy. Now

that it has been forgotten what names properly are, viz. externalities

which of themselves have no sense, and only get signification as signs,

and now that, instead of names proper, people ask for terms expressing a

sort of definition, which is frequently changed capriciously and

fortuitously, the denomination, i.e. the composite name formed of signs of

their generic characters or other supposed characteristic properties, is

altered in accordance with the differences of view with regard to the

genus or other supposed specific property. It is only a stationary

civilisation, like the Chinese, which admits of the hieroglyphic language

of that nation; and its method of writing moreover can only be the lot of

that small part of a nation which is in exclusive possession of mental

culture.—The progress of the vocal language depends most closely on the

habit of alphabetical writing; by means of which only does vocal language

acquire the precision and purity of its articulation. The imperfection of

the Chinese vocal language is notorious: numbers of its words possess

several utterly different meanings, as many as ten and twenty, so that, in

speaking, the distinction is made perceptible merely by accent and

intensity, by speaking low and soft or crying out. The European, learning

to speak Chinese, falls into the most ridiculous blunders before he has

mastered these absurd refinements of accentuation. Perfection here

consists in the opposite of that _parler sans accent_ which in Europe is

justly required of an educated speaker. The hieroglyphic mode of writing

keeps the Chinese vocal language from reaching that objective precision

which is gained in articulation by alphabetic writing.

Alphabetic writing is on all accounts the more intelligent: in it the

_word_—the mode, peculiar to the intellect, of uttering its ideas most

worthily—is brought to consciousness and made an object of reflection.

Engaging the attention of intelligence, as it does, it is analysed; the

work of sign-making is reduced to its few simple elements (the primary

postures of articulation) in which the sense-factor in speech is brought

to the form of universality, at the same time that in this elementary

phase it acquires complete precision and purity. Thus alphabetic writing

retains at the same time the advantage of vocal language, that the ideas

have names strictly so called: the name is the simple sign for the exact

idea, i.e. the simple plain idea, not decomposed into its features and

compounded out of them. Hieroglyphics, instead of springing from the

direct analysis of sensible signs, like alphabetic writing, arise from an

antecedent analysis of ideas. Thus a theory readily arises that all ideas

may be reduced to their elements, or simple logical terms, so that from

the elementary signs chosen to express these (as, in the case of the

Chinese _Koua_, the simple straight stroke, and the stroke broken into two

parts) a hieroglyphic system would be generated by their composition. This

feature of hieroglyphic—the analytical designations of ideas—which misled

Leibnitz to regard it as preferable to alphabetic writing is rather in

antagonism with the fundamental desideratum of language,—the name. To want

a name means that for the immediate idea (which, however ample a

connotation it may include, is still for the mind simple in the name), we

require a simple immediate sign which for its own sake does not suggest

anything, and has for its sole function to signify and represent sensibly

the simple idea as such. It is not merely the image-loving and

image-limited intelligence that lingers over the simplicity of ideas and

redintegrates them from the more abstract factors into which they have

been analysed: thought too reduces to the form of a simple thought the

concrete connotation which it “resumes” and reunites from the mere

aggregate of attributes to which analysis has reduced it. Both alike

require such signs, simple in respect of their meaning: signs, which

though consisting of several letters or syllables and even decomposed into

such, yet do not exhibit a combination of several ideas.—What has been

stated is the principle for settling the value of these written languages.

It also follows that in hieroglyphics the relations of concrete mental

ideas to one another must necessarily be tangled and perplexed, and that

the analysis of these (and the proximate results of such analysis must

again be analysed) appears to be possible in the most various and

divergent ways. Every divergence in analysis would give rise to another

formation of the written name; just as in modern times (as already noted,

even in the region of sense) muriatic acid has undergone several changes

of name. A hieroglyphic written language would require a philosophy as

stationary as is the civilisation of the Chinese.

What has been said shows the inestimable and not sufficiently appreciated

educational value of learning to read and write an alphabetic character.

It leads the mind from the sensibly concrete image to attend to the more

formal structure of the vocal word and its abstract elements, and

contributes much to give stability and independence to the inward realm of

mental life. Acquired habit subsequently effaces the peculiarity by which

alphabetic writing appears, in the interest of vision, as a roundabout way

to ideas by means of audibility; it makes them a sort of hieroglyphic to

us, so that in using them we need not consciously realise them by means of

tones, whereas people unpractised in reading utter aloud what they read in

order to catch its meaning in the sound. Thus, while (with the faculty

which transformed alphabetic writing into hieroglyphics) the capacity of

abstraction gained by the first practice remains, hieroglyphic reading is

of itself a deaf reading and a dumb writing. It is true that the audible

(which is in time) and the visible (which is in space), each have their

own basis, one no less authoritative than the other. But in the case of

alphabetic writing there is only a _single_ basis: the two aspects occupy

their rightful relation to each other: the visible language is related to

the vocal only as a sign, and intelligence expresses itself immediately

and unconditionally by speaking.—The instrumental function of the

comparatively non-sensuous element of tone for all ideational work shows

itself further as peculiarly important in memory which forms the passage

from representation to thought.

§ 460. The name, combining the intuition (an intellectual production) with

its signification, is primarily a single transient product; and

conjunction of the idea (which is inward) with the intuition (which is

outward) is itself outward. The reduction of this outwardness to

inwardness is (verbal) Memory.

(γγ) Memory(141).

§ 461. Under the shape of memory the course of intelligence passes through

the same inwardising (recollecting) functions, as regards the intuition of

the _word_, as representation in general does in dealing with the first

immediate intuition (§ 451). (1) Making its own the synthesis achieved in

the sign, intelligence, by this inwardising (memorising) elevates the

_single_ synthesis to a universal, i.e. permanent, synthesis, in which

name and meaning are for it objectively united, and renders the intuition

(which the name originally is) a representation. Thus the import

(connotation) and sign, being identified, form one representation: the

representation in its inwardness is rendered concrete and gets existence

for its import: all this being the work of memory which retains names

(retentive Memory).

§ 462. The name is thus the thing so far as it exists and counts in the

ideational realm. (2) In the name, _Reproductive_ memory has and

recognises the thing, and with the thing it has the name, apart from

intuition and image. The name, as giving an _existence_ to the content in

intelligence, is the externality of intelligence to itself; and the

inwardising or recollection of the name, i.e. of an intuition of

intellectual origin, is at the same time a self-externalisation to which

intelligence reduces itself on its own ground. The association of the

particular names lies in the meaning of the features sensitive,

representative, or cogitant,—series of which the intelligence traverses as

it feels, represents, or thinks.

Given the name lion, we need neither the actual vision of the animal, nor

its image even: the name alone, if we _understand_ it, is the unimaged

simple representation. We _think_ in names.

The recent attempts—already, as they deserved, forgotten—to rehabilitate

the Mnemonic of the ancients, consist in transforming names into images,

and thus again deposing memory to the level of imagination. The place of

the power of memory is taken by a permanent tableau of a series of images,

fixed in the imagination, to which is then attached the series of ideas

forming the composition to be learned by rote. Considering the

heterogeneity between the import of these ideas and those permanent

images, and the speed with which the attachment has to be made, the

attachment cannot be made otherwise than by shallow, silly, and utterly

accidental links. Not merely is the mind put to the torture of being

worried by idiotic stuff, but what is thus learnt by rote is just as

quickly forgotten, seeing that the same tableau is used for getting by

rote every other series of ideas, and so those previously attached to it

are effaced. What is mnemonically impressed is not like what is retained

in memory really got by heart, i.e. strictly produced from within

outwards, from the deep pit of the ego, and thus recited, but is, so to

speak, read off the tableau of fancy.—Mnemonic is connected with the

common prepossession about memory, in comparison with fancy and

imagination; as if the latter were a higher and more intellectual activity

than memory. On the contrary, memory has ceased to deal with an image

derived from intuition,—the immediate and incomplete mode of intelligence;

it has rather to do with an object which is the product of intelligence

itself,—such a _without book_(142) as remains locked up in the

_within-book_(143) of intelligence, and is, within intelligence, only its

outward and existing side.

§ 463. (3) As the interconnexion of the names lies in the meaning, the

conjunction of their meaning with the reality as names is still an

(external) synthesis; and intelligence in this its externality has not

made a complete and simple return into self. But intelligence is the

universal,—the single plain truth of its particular self-divestments; and

its consummated appropriation of them abolishes that distinction between

meaning and name. This extreme inwardising of representation is the

supreme self-divestment of intelligence, in which it renders itself the

mere _being_, the universal space of names as such, i.e. of meaningless

words. The ego, which is this abstract being, is, because subjectivity, at

the same time the power over the different names,—the link which, having

nothing in itself, fixes in itself series of them and keeps them in stable

order. So far as they merely _are_, and intelligence is here itself this

_being_ of theirs, its power is a merely abstract subjectivity,—memory;

which, on account of the complete externality in which the members of such

series stand to one another, and because it is itself this externality

(subjective though that be), is called mechanical (§ 195).

A composition is, as we know, not thoroughly conned by rote, until one

attaches no meaning to the words. The recitation of what has been thus got

by heart is therefore of course accentless. The correct accent, if it is

introduced, suggests the meaning: but this introduction of the

signification of an idea disturbs the mechanical nexus and therefore

easily throws out the reciter. The faculty of conning by rote series of

words, with no principle governing their succession, or which are

separately meaningless, e.g. a series of proper names, is so supremely

marvellous, because it is the very essence of mind to have its wits about

it; whereas in this case the mind is estranged in itself, and its action

is like machinery. But it is only as uniting subjectivity with objectivity

that the mind has its wits about it. Whereas in the case before us, after

it has in intuition been at first so external as to pick up its facts

ready-made, and in representation inwardises or recollects this datum and

makes it its own,—it proceeds as memory to make itself external in itself,

so that what is its own assumes the guise of something found. Thus one of

the two dynamic factors of thought, viz. objectivity, is here put in

intelligence itself as a quality of it.—It is only a step further to treat

memory as mechanical—the act implying no intelligence—in which case it is

only justified by its uses, its indispensability perhaps for other

purposes and functions of mind. But by so doing we overlook the proper

signification it has in the mind.

§ 464. If it is to be the fact and true objectivity, the mere name as an

existent requires something else,—to be interpreted by the representing

intellect. Now in the shape of mechanical memory, intelligence is at once

that external objectivity and the meaning. In this way intelligence is

explicitly made an _existence_ of this identity, i.e. it is explicitly

active as such an identity which as reason it is implicitly. Memory is in

this manner the passage into the function of _thought_, which no longer

has a _meaning_, i.e. its objectivity is no longer severed from the

subjective, and its inwardness does not need to go outside for its

existence.

The German language has etymologically assigned memory (_Gedächtniß_), of

which it has become a foregone conclusion to speak contemptuously, the

high position of direct kindred with thought (_Gedanke_).—It is not matter

of chance that the young have a better memory than the old, nor is their

memory solely exercised for the sake of utility. The young have a good

memory because they have not yet reached the stage of reflection; their

memory is exercised with or without design so as to level the ground of

their inner life to pure being or to pure space in which the fact, the

implicit content, may reign and unfold itself with no antithesis to a

subjective inwardness. Genuine ability is in youth generally combined with

a good memory. But empirical statements of this sort help little towards a

knowledge of what memory intrinsically is. To comprehend the position and

meaning of memory and to understand its organic interconnexion with

thought is one of the hardest points, and hitherto one quite unregarded in

the theory of mind. Memory _quâ_ memory is itself the merely _external_

mode, or merely _existential_ aspect of thought, and thus needs a

complementary element. The passage from it to thought is to our view and

implicitly the identity of reason with this existential mode: an identity

from which it follows that reason only exists in a subject, and as the

function of that subject. Thus active reason is _Thinking_.

(γ) Thinking(144).

§ 465. Intelligence is recognitive: it cognises an intuition, but only

because that intuition is already its own (§ 454); and in the name it

re-discovers the fact (§ 462): but now it finds _its_ universal in the

double signification of the universal as such, and of the universal as

immediate or as being,—finds i.e. the genuine universal which is its own

unity overlapping and including its other, viz. being. Thus intelligence

is explicitly, and on its own part cognitive: _virtually_ it is the

universal,—its product (the thought) is the thing: it is a plain identity

of subjective and objective. It knows that what is _thought_, _is_, and

that what _is_, only _is_ in so far as it is a thought (§ 521); the

thinking of intelligence is to _have thoughts_: these are as its content

and object.

§ 466. But cognition by thought is still in the first instance formal: the

universality and its being is the plain subjectivity of intelligence. The

thoughts therefore are not yet fully and freely determinate, and the

representations which have been inwardised to thoughts are so far still

the given content.

§ 467. As dealing with this given content, thought is (α) _understanding_

with its formal identity, working up the representations, that have been

memorised, into species, genera, laws, forces, &c., in short into

categories,—thus indicating that the raw material does not get the truth

of its being save in these thought-forms. As intrinsically infinite

negativity, thought is (β) essentially an act of partition,—_judgment_,

which however does not break up the concept again into the old antithesis

of universality and being, but distinguishes on the lines supplied by the

interconnexions peculiar to the concept. Thirdly (γ), thought supersedes

the formal distinction and institutes at the same time an identity of the

differences,—thus being nominal _reason_ or inferential understanding.

Intelligence, as the act of thought, cognises. And (α) understanding out

of its generalities (the categories) _explains_ the individual, and is

then said to comprehend or understand itself: (β) in the judgment it

explains the individual to be an universal (species, genus). In these

forms the _content_ appears as given: (γ) but in inference (syllogism) it

characterises a content from itself, by superseding that form-difference.

With the perception of the necessity, the last immediacy still attaching

to formal thought has vanished.

In _Logic_ there was thought, but in its implicitness, and as reason

develops itself in this distinction-lacking medium. So in _consciousness_

thought occurs as a stage (§ 437 note). Here reason is as the truth of the

antithetical distinction, as it had taken shape within the mind’s own

limits. Thought thus recurs again and again in these different parts of

philosophy, because these parts are different only through the medium they

are in and the antithesis they imply; while thought is this one and the

same centre, to which as to their truth the antithesis return.

§ 468. Intelligence which as theoretical appropriates an immediate mode of

being, is, now that it has completed _taking possession_, in its own

_property_: the last negation of immediacy has implicitly required that

the intelligence shall itself determine its content. Thus thought, as free

notion, is now also free in point of _content_. But when intelligence is

aware that it is determinative of the content, which is _its_ mode no less

than it is a mode of being, it is Will.

(b) Mind Practical(145).

§ 469. As will, the mind is aware that it is the author of its own

conclusions, the origin of its self-fulfilment. Thus fulfilled, this

independency or individuality form the side of existence or of _reality_

for the Idea of mind. As will, the mind steps into actuality; whereas as

cognition it is on the soil of notional generality. Supplying its own

content, the will is self-possessed, and in the widest sense free: this is

its characteristic trait. Its finitude lies in the formalism that the

spontaneity of its self-fulfilment means no more than a general and

abstract ownness, not yet identified with matured reason. It is the

function of the essential will to bring liberty to exist in the formal

will, and it is therefore the aim of that formal will to fill itself with

its essential nature, i.e. to make liberty its pervading character,

content, and aim, as well as its sphere of existence. The essential

freedom of will is, and must always be, a thought: hence the way by which

will can make itself objective mind is to rise to be a thinking will,—to

give itself the content which it can only have as it thinks itself.

True liberty, in the shape of moral life, consists in the will finding its

purpose in a universal content, not in subjective or selfish interests.

But such a content is only possible in thought and through thought: it is

nothing short of absurd to seek to banish thought from the moral,

religious, and law-abiding life.

§ 470. Practical mind, considered at first as formal or immediate will,

contains a double ought—(1) in the contrast which the new mode of being

projected outward by the will offers to the immediate positivity of its

old existence and condition,—an antagonism which in consciousness grows to

correlation with external objects. (2) That first self-determination,

being itself immediate, is not at once elevated into a thinking

universality: the latter, therefore, virtually constitutes an obligation

on the former in point of form, as it may also constitute it in point of

matter;—a distinction which only exists for the observer.

(α) Practical Sense or Feeling(146).

§ 471. The autonomy of the practical mind at first is immediate and

therefore formal, i.e. it _finds_ itself as an _individuality_ determined

in _its_ inward _nature_. It is thus “practical feeling,” or instinct of

action. In this phase, as it is at bottom a subjectivity simply identical

with reason, it has no doubt a rational content, but a content which as it

stands is individual, and for that reason also natural, contingent and

subjective,—a content which may be determined quite as much by mere

personalities of want and opinion, &c., and by the subjectivity which

selfishly sets itself against the universal, as it may be virtually in

conformity with reason.

An appeal is sometimes made to the sense (feeling) of right and morality,

as well as of religion, which man is alleged to possess,—to his benevolent

dispositions,—and even to his heart generally,—i.e. to the subject so far

as the various practical feelings are in it all combined. So far as this

appeal implies (1) that these ideas are immanent in his own self, and (2)

that when feeling is opposed to the logical understanding, it, and not the

partial abstractions of the latter, _may_ be the _totality_—the appeal has

a legitimate meaning. But on the other hand feeling too _may_ be onesided,

unessential and bad. The rational, which exists in the shape of

rationality when it is apprehended by thought, is the same content as the

_good_ practical feeling has, but presented in its universality and

necessity, in its objectivity and truth.

Thus it is on the one hand _silly_ to suppose that in the passage from

feeling to law and duty there is any loss of import and excellence; it is

this passage which lets feeling first reach its truth. It is equally silly

to consider intellect as superfluous or even harmful to feeling, heart,

and will; the truth and, what is the same thing, the actual rationality of

the heart and will can only be at home in the universality of intellect,

and not in the singleness of feeling as feeling. If feelings are of the

right sort, it is because of their quality or content,—which is right only

so far as it is intrinsically universal or has its source in the thinking

mind. The difficulty for the logical intellect consists in throwing off

the separation it has arbitrarily imposed between the several faculties of

feeling and thinking mind, and coming to see that in the human being there

is only _one_ reason, in feeling, volition, and thought. Another

difficulty connected with this is found in the fact that the Ideas which

are the special property of the thinking mind, viz. God, law and morality,

can also be _felt_. But feeling is only the form of the immediate and

peculiar individuality of the subject, in which these facts, like any

other objective facts (which consciousness also sets over against itself),

may be placed.

On the other hand, it is _suspicious_ or even worse to cling to feeling

and heart in place of the intelligent rationality of law, right and duty;

because all that the former holds more than the latter is only the

particular subjectivity with its vanity and caprice. For the same reason

it is out of place in a scientific treatment of the feelings to deal with

anything beyond their form, and to discuss their content; for the latter,

when thought, is precisely what constitutes, in their universality and

necessity, the rights and duties which are the true works of mental

autonomy. So long as we study practical feelings and dispositions

specially, we have only to deal with the selfish, bad, and evil; it is

these alone which belong to the individuality which retains its opposition

to the universal: their content is the reverse of rights and duties, and

precisely in that way do they—but only in antithesis to the latter—retain

a speciality of their own.

§ 472. The “Ought” of practical feeling is the claim of its essential

autonomy to control some existing mode of fact—which is assumed to be

worth nothing save as adapted to that claim. But as both, in their

immediacy, lack objective determination, this relation of the

_requirement_ to existent fact is the utterly subjective and superficial

feeling of pleasant or unpleasant.

Delight, joy, grief, &c., shame, repentance, contentment, &c., are partly

only modifications of the formal “practical feeling” in _general_, but are

partly different in the features that give the special tone and character

mode to their “Ought.”

The celebrated question as to the origin of evil in the world, so far at

least as evil is understood to mean what is disagreeable and painful

merely, arises on this stage of the formal practical feeling. Evil is

nothing but the incompatibility between what is and what ought to be.

“Ought” is an ambiguous term,—indeed infinitely so, considering that

casual aims may also come under the form of Ought. But where the objects

sought are thus casual, evil only executes what is rightfully due to the

vanity and nullity of their planning: for they themselves were radically

evil. The finitude of life and mind is seen in their judgment: the

contrary which is separated from them they also have as a negative in

them, and thus they are the contradiction called evil. In the dead there

is neither evil nor pain: for in inorganic nature the intelligible unity

(concept) does not confront its existence and does not in the difference

at the same time remain its permanent subject. Whereas in life, and still

more in mind, we have this immanent distinction present: hence arises the

Ought: and this negativity, subjectivity, ego, freedom are the principles

of evil and pain. Jacob Böhme viewed egoity (selfhood) as pain and

torment, and as the fountain of nature and of spirit.

(β) The Impulses and Choice(147).

§ 473. The practical ought is a “real” judgment. Will, which is

essentially self-determination, finds in the conformity—as immediate and

merely _found_ to hand—of the existing mode to its requirement a negation,

and something inappropriate to it. If the will is to satisfy itself, if

the implicit unity of the universality and the special mode is to be

realised, the conformity of its inner requirement and of the existent

thing ought to be its act and institution. The will, as regards the form

of its content, is at first still a natural will, directly identical with

its specific mode:—natural _impulse_ and _inclination_. Should, however,

the totality of the practical spirit throw itself into a single one of the

many restricted forms of impulse, each being always in conflict to

another, it is _passion_.

§ 474. Inclinations and passions embody the same constituent features as

the practical feeling. Thus, while on one hand they are based on the

rational nature of the mind; they on the other, as part and parcel of the

still subjective and single will, are infected with contingency, and

appear as particular to stand to the individual and to each other in an

external relation and with a necessity which creates bondage.

The special note in _passion_ is its restriction to one special mode of

volition, in which the whole subjectivity of the individual is merged, be

the value of that mode what it may. In consequence of this formalism,

passion is neither good nor bad; the title only states that a subject has

thrown his whole soul,—his interests of intellect, talent, character,

enjoyment,—on one aim and object. Nothing great has been and nothing great

can be accomplished without passion. It is only a dead, too often, indeed,

a hypocritical moralising which inveighs against the form of passion as

such.

But with regard to the inclinations, the question is directly raised,

Which are good and bad?—Up to what degree the good continue good;—and (as

there are many, each with its private range) In what way have they, being

all in one subject and hardly all, as experience shows, admitting of

gratification, to suffer at least reciprocal restriction? And, first of

all, as regards the numbers of these impulses and propensities, the case

is much the same as with the psychical powers, whose aggregate is to form

the mind theoretical,—an aggregate which is now increased by the host of

impulses. The nominal rationality of impulse and propensity lies merely in

their general impulse not to be subjective merely, but to get realised,

overcoming the subjectivity by the subject’s own agency. Their genuine

rationality cannot reveal its secret to a method of outer reflection which

pre-supposes a number of _independent_ innate tendencies and immediate

instincts, and therefore is wanting in a single principle and final

purpose for them. But the immanent “reflection” of mind itself carries it

beyond their particularity and their natural immediacy, and gives their

contents a rationality and objectivity, in which they exist as necessary

ties of social relation, as rights and duties. It is this objectification

which evinces their real value, their mutual connexions, and their truth.

And thus it was a true perception when Plato (especially including as he

did the mind’s whole nature under its right) showed that the full reality

of justice could be exhibited only in the _objective_ phase of justice,

viz. in the construction of the State as the ethical life.

The answer to the question, therefore, What are the good and rational

propensities, and how they are to be co-ordinated with each other?

resolves itself into an exposition of the laws and forms of common life

produced by the mind when developing itself as _objective_ mind—a

development in which the _content_ of autonomous action loses its

contingency and optionality. The discussion of the true intrinsic worth of

the impulses, inclinations, and passions is thus essentially the theory of

legal, moral, and social _duties_.

§ 475. The subject is the act of satisfying impulses, an act of (at least)

formal rationality, as it translates them from the subjectivity of content

(which so far is _purpose_) into objectivity, where the subject is made to

close with itself. If the content of the impulse is distinguished as the

thing or business from this act of carrying it out, and we regard the

thing which has been brought to pass as containing the element of

subjective individuality and its action, this is what is called the

_interest_. Nothing therefore is brought about without interest.

An action is an aim of the subject, and it is his agency too which

executes this aim: unless the subject were in this way in the most

disinterested action, i.e. unless he had an interest in it, there would be

no action at all.—The impulses and inclinations are sometimes depreciated

by being contrasted with the baseless chimera of a happiness, the free

gift of nature, where wants are supposed to find their satisfaction

without the agent doing anything to produce a conformity between immediate

existence and his own inner requirements. They are sometimes contrasted,

on the whole to their disadvantage, with the morality of duty for duty’s

sake. But impulse and passion are the very life-blood of all action: they

are needed if the agent is really to be in his aim and the execution

thereof. The morality concerns the content of the aim, which as such is

the universal, an inactive thing, that finds its actualising in the agent;

and finds it only when the aim is immanent in the agent, is his interest

and—should it claim to engross his whole efficient subjectivity—his

passion.

§ 476. The will, as thinking and implicitly free, distinguishes itself

from the particularity of the impulses, and places itself as simple

subjectivity of thought above their diversified content. It is thus

“reflecting” will.

§ 477. Such a particularity of impulse has thus ceased to be a mere datum:

the reflective will now sees it as its own, because it closes with it and

thus gives itself specific individuality and actuality. It is now on the

standpoint of _choosing_ between inclinations, and is option or _choice_.

§ 478. Will as choice claims to be free, reflected into itself as the

negativity of its merely immediate autonomy. However, as the content, in

which its former universality concludes itself to actuality, is nothing

but the content of the impulses and appetites, it is actual only as a

subjective and contingent will. It realises itself in a particularity,

which it regards at the same time as a nullity, and finds a satisfaction

in what it has at the same time emerged from. As thus contradictory, it is

the process of distracting and suspending one desire or enjoyment by

another,—and one satisfaction, which is just as much no satisfaction, by

another, without end. But the truth of the particular satisfactions is the

universal, which under the name of _happiness_ the thinking will makes its

aim.

(γ) Happiness(148).

§ 479. In this idea, which reflection and comparison have educed, of a

universal satisfaction, the impulses, so far as their particularity goes,

are reduced to a mere negative; and it is held that in part they are to be

sacrificed to each other for the behoof that aim, partly sacrificed to

that aim directly, either altogether or in part. Their mutual limitation,

on one hand, proceeds from a mixture of qualitative and quantitative

considerations: on the other hand, as happiness has its sole _affirmative_

contents in the springs of action, it is on them that the decision turns,

and it is the subjective feeling and good pleasure which must have the

casting vote as to where happiness is to be placed.

§ 480. Happiness is the mere abstract and merely imagined universality of

things desired,—a universality which only ought to be. But the

particularity of the satisfaction which just as much _is_ as it is

abolished, and the abstract singleness, the option which gives or does not

give itself (as it pleases) an aim in happiness, find their truth in the

intrinsic _universality_ of the will, i.e. its very autonomy or freedom.

In this way choice is will only as pure subjectivity, which is pure and

concrete at once, by having for its contents and aim only that infinite

mode of being—freedom itself. In this truth of its autonomy, where concept

and object are one, the will is an _actually free will_.

Free Mind(149).

§ 481. Actual free will is the unity of theoretical and practical mind: a

free will, which realises its own freedom of will now that the formalism,

fortuitousness, and contractedness of the practical content up to this

point have been superseded. By superseding the adjustments of means

therein contained, the will is the _immediate individuality_

self-instituted,—an individuality, however, also purified of all that

interferes with its universalism, i.e. with freedom itself. This

universalism the will has as its object and aim, only so far as it thinks

itself, knows this its concept, and is _will_ as free _intelligence_.

§ 482. The mind which knows itself as free and wills itself as this its

object, i.e. which has its true being for characteristic and aim, is in

the first instance the rational will in general, or _implicit_ Idea, and

because implicit only the _notion_ of absolute mind. As _abstract_ Idea

again, it is existent only in the _immediate_ will—it is the _existential_

side of reason,—the _single_ will as aware of this its universality

constituting its contents and aim, and of which it is only the formal

activity. If the will, therefore, in which the Idea thus appears is only

finite, that will is also the act of developing the Idea, and of investing

its self-unfolding content with an existence which, as realising the idea,

is _actuality_. It is thus “Objective” Mind.

No Idea is so generally recognised as indefinite, ambiguous, and open to

the greatest misconceptions (to which therefore it actually falls a

victim) as the idea of Liberty: none in common currency with so little

appreciation of its meaning. Remembering that free mind is _actual_ mind,

we can see how misconceptions about it are of tremendous consequence in

practice. When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the

abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its

uncontrollable strength, just because it is the very essence of mind, and

that as its very actuality. Whole continents, Africa and the East, have

never had this idea, and are without it still. The Greeks and Romans,

Plato and Aristotle, even the Stoics, did not have it. On the contrary,

they saw that it is only by birth (as e.g. an Athenian or Spartan

citizen), or by strength of character, education, or philosophy (—the sage

is free even as a slave and in chains) that the human being is actually

free. It was through Christianity that this idea came into the world.

According to Christianity, the individual _as such_ has an infinite value

as the object and aim of divine love, destined as mind to live in absolute

relationship with God himself, and have God’s mind dwelling in him: i.e.

man is implicitly destined to supreme freedom. If, in religion as such,

man is aware of this relationship to the absolute mind as his true being,

he has also, even when he steps into the sphere of secular existence, the

divine mind present with him, as the substance of the state of the family,

&c. These institutions are due to the guidance of that spirit, and are

constituted after its measure; whilst by their existence the moral temper

comes to be indwelling in the individual, so that in this sphere of

particular existence, of present sensation and volition, he is _actually_

free.

If to be aware of the idea—to be aware, i.e. that men are aware of freedom

as their essence, aim, and object—is matter of _speculation_, still this

very idea itself is the actuality of men—not something which they _have_,

as men, but which they _are_. Christianity in its adherents has realised

an ever-present sense that they are not and cannot be slaves; if they are

made slaves, if the decision as regards their property rests with an

arbitrary will, not with laws or courts of justice, they would find the

very substance of their life outraged. This will to liberty is no longer

an _impulse_ which demands its satisfaction, but the permanent

character—the spiritual consciousness grown into a non-impulsive nature.

But this freedom, which the content and aim of freedom has, is itself only

a notion—a principle of the mind and heart, intended to develope into an

objective phase, into legal, moral, religious, and not less into

scientific actuality.