HEGEL

Only the rational will is that universal principle which independently determines and unfolds
its own being, and develops its successive elemental phases as organic members. These laws need
not concur with the desire of the individual, and the subjects are consequently like children, who
obey their parents without will or insight of their own. Light is vitalizing only in so far as it is
brought to bear on something distinct from itself, operating upon and developing that. It holds a
position of antithesis to Darkness, and this antithetical relation opens out to us the principle of
activity and life. Light admits, moreover, the signification of the Spiritual; it is the form of the Good
and True - the substantiality of knowledge and volition as well as of all natural things. Light puts
man in a position to be able to exercise choice; and he can only choose when he has emerged from
that which had absorbed him. But Light directly involves an Opposite, namely, Darkness; just as
Evil is the antithesis of Good. As man could not appreciate Good, if Evil were not; and as he can be
really good only when he has become acquainted with the contrary, so the Light does not exist
without Darkness. Sin is the discerning of Good and Evil as separation; but this discerning likewise
heals the ancient hurt, and is the fountain of infinite reconciliation. The discerning in question
brings with it the destruction of that which is external and alien in consciousness, and is
consequently the return of Subjectivity into itself. This, then, adopted into the actual self-
consciousness of the World is the Reconciliation of the World. From that unrest of infinite sorrow -
in which the two sides of the antithesis stand related to each other - is developed the unity of God
with Reality. History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the
development of the Idea in Space. We have already discussed the final aim of this progression - the
development of the one universal Spirit, which through them elevates and completes itself to a self-
comprehending totality. This necessarily implies that the present form of Spirit comprehends within
it all earlier steps. These have indeed unfolded themselves in succession independently; but what
Spirit is it has always been essentially; distinctions are only the development of this essential nature.
Reason is the substance of the Universe, that by which and in which all reality has its being and
subsistence. It supplies its own nourishment, and is the object of its own operations. While it is
exclusively its own basis of existence, and absolute final aim, it is also the energizing power
realizing this aim; developing not only in the phenomena of the Natural, but also of the Spiritual
Universe - the History of the World. What is the ultimate design of the World? And the expression
implies that the design is destined to be realized. That the truly good - the universal divine reason -
is not a mere abstraction, but a vital principle capable of realizing itself - the carrying out of its plan
is the History of the World. This plan philosophy strives to comprehend; for only that which has
been developed as the result of it, possesses bona fide reality. Before the pure light of this divine
Idea, the phantom of a world whose events are an incoherent concourse of fortuitous circumstances,
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utterly vanishes. Philosophy wishes to discover the substantial purport, the real side, of the
divine idea, and to justify the so much despised Reality of things; for Reason is the
comprehension of the Divine work. Only that which obeys law, is free: for it obeys itself - it is
independent and so free. When the subjective will of man submits to laws, the contradiction
between Liberty and Necessity vanishes. The Rational has necessary existence, as being the
reality and substance of things, and we are free in recognizing it as law, and following it as the
substance of our own being. The objective and the subjective will are then reconciled, and
present one identical homogeneous whole. Here we have to indicate that Spirit begins with a
germ of infinite possibility, but only possibility - containing its substantial existence in an
undeveloped form, as the object and goal which it reaches only in its resultant - full reality. In
actual existence Progress appears as an advancing from the imperfect to the more perfect; but
the former must not be understood abstractly as only the imperfect, but as something which
involves the very opposite of itself - that so-called perfect - as a germ of impulse. So -
reflectively, at least - possibility points to something destined to become actual. Thus the
Imperfect, as involving its opposite, is a contradiction, which certainly exists, but which is
continually annulled and solved; the instinctive movement - the inherent impulse in the life of
the soul - to break through the rind of mere nature, sensuousness, and that which is alien to it,
and to attain to the light of consciousness, i.e., to itself. For in the difference which is an inner
difference, the opposite is not merely one of two - if it were, it would simply be, without
being an opposite - but it is the opposite of an opposite, or the other is itself immediately
present within it. This simple infinity, or the absolute Notion, may be called the simple
essence of life, the soul of the world, the universal blood, whose omnipresence is neither
disturbed nor interrupted by any difference, but rather is itself every difference, as also their
supersession; it pulsates within itself but does not move, inwardly vibrates, yet is at rest. This
self-identical essence is therefore related only to itself; 'to itself' implies relationship to an
'other', and the relation-to-self is rather a self-sundering; or, in other words, that very self-
identicalness is an inner difference. These sundered moments are thus in and for themselves
each an opposite - of an other; thus in each moment the 'other' is at the same time expressed.
How, from this pure essence, how does difference or otherness issue forth from it? For the
division into two moments has already taken place. It is this spiritual unity, or the unity in
which the differences are present only as moments or as suspended, which has become
explicit for the picture-thinking consciousness in that reconciliation spoken of above; and
since this unity is the universality of self-consciousness, self-consciousness has ceased to
think in pictures: the movement has returned into self-consciousness.