On Hegel's 'Philosophy of Mind': the self-knowing, actual Idea - part sixteen.

'Psyche; or, the legend of Love'

by Mary Tighe (1772 – 1810)

CANTO II. (continued)

"Oh! how shall we declare the fatal truth? 

"How wound thy tender bosom with alarms? 

"Tell how the graces of thy blooming youth, 

"Thy more than mortal, all-adored charms 

"Have lain enamoured in a sorcerer's arms? 

"Oh, Psyche! seize on this decisive hour, 

"Escape the mischief of impending harms! 

"Return no more to that enchanted bower, 

"Fly the magician's arts, and dread his cruel power. 

"If, yet reluctant to forego thy love, 

"Thy furtive joys and solitary state, 

"Our fond officious care thy doubts reprove, 

"At least let some precaution guard thy fate, 

"Nor may our warning love be prized too late; 

"This night thyself thou mayst convince thine eyes, 

"Hide but a lamp, and cautiously await 

"Till in deep slumber thy magician lies, 

"This ring shall then disclose his foul deformities. 

"That monster by the oracle foretold, 

"Whose cursed spells both gods and men must fear, 

"In his own image thou shalt then behold, 

"And shuddering hate what now is prized so dear; 

"Yet fly not then, though loathsome he appear, 

"But let this dagger to his breast strike deep; 

"Thy coward terrors then thou must not hear, 

"For if with life he rouses from that sleep 

"Nought then for thee remains, and we must hopeless weep." 

Oh! have you seen, when in the northern sky 

The transient flame of lambent lightning plays, 

In quick succession lucid streamers fly, 

Now flashing roseate, and now milky rays, 

While struck with awe the astonished rustics gaze? 

Thus o'er her cheek the fleeting signals move, 

Now pale with fear, now glowing with the blaze 

Of much indignant, still confiding love, 

Now horror's lurid hue with shame's deep blushes strove. 

On her cold, passive hand the ring they place, 

And hide the dagger in her folding vest; 

Pleased the effects of their dire arts to trace 

In the mute agony that swells her breast, 

Already in her future ruin blest: 

Conscious that now their poor deluded prey 

Should never taste again delight or rest, 

But sickening in suspicion's gloom decay,

Or urged by terrors rash their treacherous will obey. 

While yet irresolute with sad surprise, 

Mid doubt and love she stands in strange suspense, 

Lo! gliding from her sisters wondering eyes 

Returning Zephyrs gently bear her thence; 

Lost all her hopes, her joys, her confidence, 

Back to the earth her mournful eyes she threw, 

As if imploring pity and defence; 

While bathed in tears her golden tresses flew, 

As in the breeze dispersed they caught the precious dew. 

Illumined bright now shines the splendid dome, 

Melodious accents her arrival hail: 

But not the torches' blaze can chase the gloom, 

And all the soothing powers of music fail; 

Trembling she seeks her couch with horror pale, 

But first a lamp conceals in secret shade, 

While unknown terrors all her soul assail. 

Thus half their treacherous counsel is obeyed, 

For still her gentle soul abhors the murderous blade. 

And now, with softest whispers of delight, 

Love welcomes Psyche still more fondly dear; 

Not unobserved, though hid in deepest night, 

The silent anguish of her secret fear. 

He thinks that tenderness excites the tear 

By the late image of her parents' grief, 

And half offended seeks in vain to cheer, 

Yet, while he speaks, her sorrows feel relief, 

Too soon more keen to sting from this suspension brief! 

Allowed to settle on celestial eyes 

Soft Sleep exulting now exerts his sway, 

From Psyche's anxious pillow gladly flies 

To veil those orbs, whose pure and lambent ray 

The powers of heaven submissively obey. 

Trembling and breathless then she softly rose 

And seized the lamp, where it obscurely lay, 

With hand too rashly daring to disclose 

The sacred veil which hung mysterious o'er her woes.

'Woman in a yellow dress', 1907, Maximilian Franz Viktor Zdenko Marie Kurzweil

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 –1831). 'Philosophy of mind'. 'Subjective mind'.

(y) Habit

§409

'Self-feeling, immersed in the particularity of the feelings (of simple sensations, and also desires, urges, passions, and their gratifications) , is not distinguished from them. Bur the self is implicitly a simple relation of ideality to itself, formal universality, and this is the truth of the particular; in this life of feeling the self is to be posited as this universality; thus it is the universality that distinguishes itself from particularity, the universality that is for itself. This universality is not the content-packed truth of the determinate sensations, desires, etc., for their content does not yet come into consideration here. Particularity is, in this determination, just as formal; it is only the particular being or immediacy of the soul in contrast to its equally formal, abstract being-for-self. This particular being of the soul is the moment of its bodiliness; here it breaks with this bodiliness, distinguishing from it itself as its simple being and becomes the ideal, subjective substantiality of this bodiliness, j ust as in its implicit concept (§389) it was the only the unqualified substance of bodiliness'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

With self-feeling (consult §407) the self is not distinguished from its particular feelings. and yet implicitly or in itself, the self is not just a particular feeling or a collection of particular feelings but a simple relation of ideality to itself ’. On ideality, consult §379,and §398 on a self-relation mediated by opposition, and §401 on light as simple self-relation. The self-relation is simple since the self does not relate to itself by way of mastering or negating its feelings, it merely withdraws from its feelings and communes with itself and upon doing so it is universality for itself, this universality is the truth of the feelings; it is the realization of their nature: consult §379. The feelings and their satisfaction have become familiar and habitual as we saw in§410 and for this reason the self can withdraw from them and yet the universality is not their content-packed (gehaltvolle) truth, because the content’ of the feelings is left as it was. The soul now consists of two components, the self as abstract being-for-self and the feelings as the soul’s particular being or immediacy. Feelings are essentially bodily and so in distinguishing itself from its feelings, the self is distinguishing itself from its body. In §389 the soul was merely the substance of the body but now it is more, it is the ‘ideal, subjective substantiality of the body. Indeed in §389 Hegel in addition describes the soul as ideality but there the soul is conceived as uniformly animating the body without distinguishing itself from it or, as it is beginning to do here contracting into a single centre of consciousness.

'[Remark] This abstract being-for-self of the soul in its bodiliness is not yet I, not the existence of the universal that is for the universal. It is bodiliness reduced to its pure ideality, and bodiliness thus pertains to the soul as such. That is, j ust as space and time as abstract asunderness, as, therefore, empty space and empty time, are only subjective forms, pure intuition; so that pure being, which, owing to the sublation in it of the particularity of bodiliness, i.e. of immediate bodiliness as such, is being-for-self, is the entirely pure intuition, unconscious, bur the foundation of consciousness. It proceeds within itself to consciousness, since it has sublated within itself the bodiliness, of which it is the subjective substance, and which is still for it and constitutes a barrier. And thus it is posited as a subject for itself'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The I or ego is ‘the universal that is for the universal, consult §387, the soul has not yet reached this stage, it still involves the body in a manner in which the I does not yet the body is reduced to its pure ideality, a form in which it can belong to the soul without disturbing the soul’s universality. An account is given of space and time similar to Kant’s but limits it to empty space and time, as abstract asunderness (Aussereinander). Each is pure intuition (Anschauen) and by analogy the pure being (Sein) of the soul is entirely pure intuition. This differentiates it from the I and from consciousness. Space and time are, for Kant, quite distinct from the ‘I’ or the ‘I think’, which neither he nor Hegel regard as an ‘intuition’ and yet after the sublation of its bodiliness the soul is well on the way to consciousness and thus to egohood. Consciousness and the I are correlative, an I must be conscious and only an I can be consciouswhile by contrast a subject might but need not be conscious. Consult cf. §381.

§410

That the

'That the soul thus makes itself into abstract universal being, and reduces the particularity of feelings (of consciousness too) to a determination in it that just is, is habit. In this way the soul has the content in possession, and contains it in such a way that in such determinations it is not actually sentient, it does not stand in relationship to them by distinguishing itself from them, nor is it absorbed in them, but it has them in itself and moves in them, without sensation or consciousness. The soul is free of them, in so far as it is not interested in or occupied with them; while it exists in these forms as its possessions, it is at the same time open to other activity and occupations, in the sphere of sensation and the mind's consciousness in general. This self-incorporation of the particularity or bodiliness of the determinations of feeling into the being of the soul appears as a repetition of them, and the production of habit appears as practice. For, since this being is, in relation to the natural-particular material that is put into this form, abstract universality, it is universality of reflexion (§ 175): one and the same item, as an external plurality of sensation, is reduced to its unity, and this abstract unity is posited'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Habit is Gewohnheit and it reduces feelings of for instance the normal temperature of the room or things one is conscious of for instance one’s right arm to a determination that just is (seienden). Here the force of seienden, the present participle of sein, ‘to be’, is that the feature unobtrusively is, and does not intrude into one’s sensation or consciousness. (consult. §408 for an alternative use of seiend.) Therefore it leaves the soul free for other things.

One may compare other accounts in the philosophy of habit:

'The moment one tries to define what habit is, one is led to the fundamental properties of matter. The laws of Nature are nothing but the immutable habits which the different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions and reactions upon each other. In the organic world, how ever, the habits are more variable than this. Even instincts vary from one individual to another of a kind; and are modified in the same individual, as we shall later see, to suit the exigencies of the case. The habits of an elementary particle of matter cannot change (on the principles of the atomistic philosophy), because the particle is itself an unchangeable thing ; but those of a compound mass of matter can change, because they are in the last instance due to the structure of the compound, and either outward forces or inward tensions can, from one hour to another, turn that structure into something different from what it was. That is, they can do so if the body be plastic enough to maintain its integrity, and be not disrupted when its structure yields.... But the philosophy of habit is thus, in the first instance, a chapter in physics rather than in physiology or psychology. That it is at bottom a physical principle is admitted by all good recent writers on the subject. They call attention to analogues of acquired habits exhibited by dead matter'.

- William James, 'Habit', in Popular Science Monthly, February 1887.

'Every one knows how a garment, after having been worn a certain time, clings to the shape of the body better than when it was new; there has been a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit of cohesion. A lock works better after being used some time; at the out set more force was required to overcome certain roughnesses in the mechanism. The overcoming of their resistance is a phenomenon of habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been folded already. This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required. The sounds of a violin improve by use in the hands of an able artist, because the fibres of the wood at last contract habits of vibration conformed to harmonic relations. This is what gives such inestimable value to instruments that have belonged to great masters. Water, in flowing, hollows out for itself a channel, which grows broader and deeper; and, after having ceased to flow, it resumes, when it flows again, the path traced by itself before. Just so, the impressions of outer objects fashion for themselves in the nervous system more and more appropriate paths, and these vital phenomena recur under similar excitements from without, when they have been interrupted a certain time'.

- Léon Dumont, 'De l'habitude', 1876.

Constant repetition of the same feeling or sensation makes it habitual and incorporates it into the being of the soul. Self-incorporation is Sicheinbilden which would normally mean imagining but Hegel frequently emphasises its derivation from bilden, to form, mould, etc. and gives it the sense of building or moulding itself [sich] into [ein]’. In 'Encyclopaedia Logic §175, Hegel discourses upon the judgement of reflexion, the third form of which is a universal judgment such as ‘All men and omen are mortal’. Universality of reflexion (Reflexions-Allgemeinheit) is therefore the sort of universality that applies to all the members of a given class. For instance, humanity applies to all men. This universality owes its name in part to the fact that the diverse entities to which the universal applies are collected together by our reflection upon them and do not spontaneously form themselves into a group. Hegel makes no distinction between a universal such as man or woman that constitutes the individuals to which it belongs such that they would not exist without it, and a universal such as having big toes that albeit it may be possessed by all men and women does not constitute them, they would still be distinct individuals, even men and women, if they lacked big toes. Universality of reflexion is distinct from merely abstract universality that need not be applied to the natural particular material (das Natürlich-Besondere). The being of the soul is in itself abstract universality, the intrinsically indeterminate recipient of a variety of sensations. A type of sensation for instance the sensation of room temperature or of one’s arm is repeated many times, this is the natural-particular material and, before it becomes habitual, an external plurality of sensation (Aüsserlich-Vieles des Empfindens), that is, each sensation is distinct from the others, even though qualitatively similar to them but repetition brings out or posits the unity of these sensations and in this form they are incorporated into the being of the soul, this is universality of reflexion. Consult §410.

Memory (Gedäachtnis), like habit, is ‘echanical’ or automatic, I just remember for instabce a word without thinking about it yet memory is more intellectual and objective than habit, one remembers words but is in the habit of brushing one’s teeth. On memory consult §§461. Mechanism (Mechanismus) implies being mechanical; in 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §§195 mechanism is distinguished from chemism (consult §§200) and teleology (consult §§204). Ageing, sleeping and waking are immediately natural, not made natural by habituation. On self-feeling consult §§402. Intelligence and will are involved in habitual actions such as brushing one’s teeth and cleaning them in a certain way. One acquires certain habits of thinking and willing that belong to self-feeling or are embodied in so far as they are idiosyncratic, not determined by the objective nature of things. Habit is a second nature was said by Montaigne (1533–92) in his 'Essays'.

'Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and costly articles carried in pomp through his city, said: 'How many things I do not desire!' Metrodorus lived on twelve ounces a day, Epicurus on less; Metrocles slept in winter with the sheep, in summer in the cloisters of the churches. 'Nature supplies what it demands [Seneca]. Cleanthes lived by his hands and boasted that Cleanthes, if he wanted, could feed still another Cleanthes. If what Nature flatly and originally demands of us for the preservation of our being is too little—as indeed, there is no better way of expressing how little that is and how cheaply our life can be maintained than by this consideration, that it is so little as to escape the grasp and shock of fortune by its very littleness—then let us grant ourselves something further: let us also call the habits and condition of each of us nature; let us rate and treat ourselves according to this measmre, let us stretch our appurtenances and our accounts that far. For in going thus far we certainly seem to me to have some justification. Habit is a second nature, and no less powerful. What my habit lacks, I hold that I lack. And I would almost as soon be deprived of life as have it reduced and cut down very far from the state in which I have hved it for so long'.

- Montagne, 'Of husbanding your will'.

On the other hand:

'That man seems to me to have very well understood the power of habit who first invented this story: that a village woman, having learned to pet and carry in her arms a calf from the hour of its birth, and continuing always to do so, gained this by habit, that even when he was a great ox she still could carry him. For in truth habit is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She establishes in us, little by little, stealthily, the foothold of her authority; but having by this mild and humble beginning settled and planted it with the help of time, she soon uncovers to us a furious and tyrannical face against which we no longer have the hberty of even raising our eyes. We see her at every turn forcing the rules of nature. Habit is the most effective teacher of all things [Pliny]. For this I hold with Plato's cave in his Republic, and I trust the doctors who so often abdicate the reasonings of their art to the authority of habit. I refer to that king who trained his stomach to feed on poison; and the girl whom Albertus reports as having accustomed herself to live on spiders. And in that world of the new Indies there were found great nations, and in very varied climates, who lived on spiders, made provision of them, and raised and fattened them, as they did also with grasshoppers, ants, lizards, and bats; and a toad was sold for six crowns during a food shortage. They cook them and prepare them with various sauces. Other nations were found to whom our meats and foods were fatally poisonous. The force of habit is great. Hunters spend the night in the snow; they endure the burning sun in the mountains. Boxers bruised by the cestuscs do not even groan [Cicero]....Plato scolded a child who was playing at cobnuts. He answered him: 'You scold me for a small matter'. 'Habit', replied Plato, 'is no small matter'.

- Montagne, 'Of custom, and not easily changing an accepted law'.

'Woman with mirror in yellow dress', Agapit Pierre Jean Joseph Stevens, (1848 – 1924)

What I do out of habit I do unfreely in the sense that it just comes naturallyand I do not deliberately decide to do it and do not consciously control my performance, I do it freely in so far as what I do for instance walking, teeth-cleaning or experience for instance room temperature has become a part of myself, my being (Sein) so that I am not determined by something, a sensation, a requirement, a practice, and so on, different from myself but act of my own accord. Hegel employs Differenz meaning both difference and non-indifference, an ambiguity which we can get across with ‘no longer different from it, is indifferent to it’. As a consequence habitual action or experience does not engage my interest or attention, habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed, said William James:

'The next result is that habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed. One may state this abstractly thus : If an act require for its execution a chain, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., of successive nervous events, then in the first performances of the action the conscious will must choose each of these events from a number of wrong alternatives that tend to present them selves ; but habit soon brings it about that each event calls up its own appropriate successor without any alternative offering itself, and without any reference to the conscious will, until at last the whole chain, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, rattles itself off as soon as A occurs, just as if A and the rest of the chain were fused into a continuous stream. When we are learning to walk, to ride, to swim, skate, fence, write, play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves at every step by unnecessary movements and false notes. When we are proficients, on the contrary, the results not only follow with the very minimum of muscular action requisite to bring them forth, they also follow from a single instantaneous cue. The marksman sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. A gleam in his adversary's eye, a momentary pressure from his rapier, and the fencer finds that he has instantly made the right parry and return. A glance at the musical hieroglyphics, and the pianist's fingers have rippled through a cataract of notes. And not only is it the right thing at the right time that we thus involuntarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it be an habitual thing. Who is there that has never wound up his watch on taking off his waistcoat in the daytime, or taken his latchkey out on arriving at the door-step of a friend ? Very absent-minded persons in going to their bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after another and finally to get into bed, merely because that was the habitual issue of the first few movements when performed at a later hour. The writer well remembers how, on revisiting Paris after ten years' absence, and, finding himself in the street in which for one winter he had attended school, he lost himself in a brown study, from which he was awakened by finding himself upon the stairs which led to the apartment in a house many streets away in which he had lived during that earlier time, and to which his steps from the school had then habitually led'.

- 'Principles of Psychology'.

The unfreedom in habit is formal, it concerns the form of what I do, but not its content, what I do is done automatically because it pertains to the being of my soul but what I do out of habit for instance obey the law, brush my teeth, need not differ in content from what I would, or should, do even if I had not formed such a habit. And so unfreedom only becomes serious, when the content of the habit is bad or at odds with another purpose of mine.

Conrad Schnitzler 'Gelb'

Forms of habit.

'(a) The immediate sensation is posited as negated, as indifferent. Hardening against external sensations (frost, heat, weariness of the limbs, etc., pleasant tastes, etc.), as well as hardening of the hean against distress, is a strength by which affection by such things as frost, etc.and distress, though it is of course sensed by man, is just reduced to an externality and immediacy; the soul's universal being maintains its abstract being-for-self in it, and self-feeling as such, consciousness, reflection, and other purposes and activity, are no longer involved in it'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The immediate sensation is the sensation as I feel it before I have become accustomed to it. When I harden myself against it, it is reduced to an externality and immediacy, that is to say, it no longer affects me conspicuously, it does not intrude into the abstract being-for-self of the soul’s universal being. It does not follow that the sensation is not incorporated into the being of the soul (consult §410). It is because the soul in some manner incorporates the sensation that it has become relatively indifferent to it.

'(b) Indifference towards satisfaction; desires, urges are dulled by the habit of their satisfaction. This is the rational liberation from them; monkish renunciation and forcible repression do not free us from them, nor are they rational in content. It goes without saying here that urges are kept in their natural place as finite determinacies, and that they, like their satisfaction, are subordinated to the rationality of the will as moments in it'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The first form of habit concerned our habituation to unpleasant sensations. This second form concerns our habituation to desires for pleasant things and to their satisfaction. Frequent satisfaction of a type of desire reduces the intensity of the desire and also of the pleasure of satisfying it. If we renounce the satisfaction, the desire remains intense and it is not, in any case, rational to forgo for instance sexual satisfaction completely, as long as we keep the desire a ‘finite determinacy’, and so not the dominant or exclusive principle of one’s life. An ascetic cannot become habituated to the satisfaction of desire since he or she does not experience the satisfaction but he or she may frequently experience the pain of unsatisfied desire and it is not evident why he cannot become habituated to this pain and according to the first form of habit attain liberation from it. Moderate consumption of vodka may be rational (this is my example) but it is not as Hegel’s argument suggests the only way to attain release from the desire to drink and be merry. Maybe we can distinguish between natural desires where one has the desire for x or to ϕ independently of getting x or ϕ-ing and artificial desires where the desire arises from getting x or ϕ-ing but the distinction is not sharp for sexual desire is often intensified and might even be acquired, by sexual activity, and conversely a desire to drink may be extinguished by actually drinking (it certainly does that). On monkish renunciation consult §552.

'(c) In habit as dexterity, the abstract being of the soul is supposed not only to be held on to for itself, but to be imposed as a subjective purpose within bodiliness, which is to become subjugated and entirely pervious to it. In contrast to such internal determination of the subjective soul, bodiliness is determined as immediate external being and a barrier-the more determinate breach of the soul, as simple being-for-self within itself, with its initial naturalness and immediacy; the soul is thus no longer in its initial immediate identity and, now that it is external, must first be reduced to such identity. The embodiment of determinate sensations is, moreover, itself a determinate embodiment (§401) , and the immediate bodiliness is a particular possibility (a particular aspect of its differentiated structure, a particular organ of its organic system) for a determinate purpose. The incorporation of such a purpose in the body means that the implicit ideality of the material in general, and of the determinate bodiliness, has been posited as ideality, so that the soul exists as substance in its bodiliness in accordance with the determinacy of its representing and willing. In dexterity bodiliness is then rendered pervious, made into an instrument, in such a way that as soon as the representation (e.g. a sequence of musical notes) is in me, the physical body too, unresistingly and fluently, has expressed it correctly?'

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

In the first and second forms of habit the abstract being of the soul was retained in the face of bodily pain and desire for pleasure and habituation of the body was not in essence involved, indeed the unresponsiveness of one’s body to one’s wishes may be one of the pains to which one becomes habituated. In this third form the soul does not merely remain insulated from bodily intrusions, it takes over the body in a process that has three stages. First, the soul has ‘being-for-self within itself ’, its ‘initial naturalness and immediacy’, its ‘initial immediate identity’, in which it is entirely contented with its self-enclosed condition. Second, it loses this immediate identity when it forms a ‘subjective purpose’ or ‘internal determination’ that is frustrated by the body One wants, for instance, to take hold of something over there but one’s arms and legs will not cooperate. This is the ‘more determinate breach’, more determinate, that is, than the breach that occurred in the first and second forms of habit with its naturalness and immediacy. Third, the soul subjugates the body and incorporates its purpose in it, it learns to move its arms at will, to take hold of things, to amble, to hum a melody, and so on. This restores the ‘identity’ that it lost at the second stage. Specific purposes are ‘incorporated’ in specific parts of the bodily organism. I walk with my legs and feet, grasp with my hands, whistle with my lips, and so on. Prior to learning to do such things, the ‘material’, that is my corporeal body and its parts, has ‘implicit’ or potential ‘ideality’ and afterwards the ideality is ‘posited’ or actualized. On ‘ideality’, consult §§379, 381, 385, 403. The soul then ‘exists as substance’ in the body, 'exists’ (existiere) is employed in accordance with its Latin prototype, exsistere, ‘to step forth’ (consult §403), the soul does not simply reside in the body but expresses itself in its bearing and movements. Th discourse continues on the embodiment of ‘sensations’ or feelings (Empfindungen) albeit they do not appear to play a prominent role. The reasons for this are first sensations figure prominently in the first and second forms of habit, second at this early stage of the mind the soul is not yet ready to be handed over to the will and its purposes, and third sensations do play a role in habitual activities. Sensations are involved in walking, grasping, etc, since these activities become habitual the sensations are quite noticeable and when habit sets in they become less noticeable but they do not disappear completely, walking or grasping with numb legs or hands is very different from ordinary walking or grasping. Fourth, in some habitual activities sensations play another role. Humming and singing involve the production of sounds that give rise to auditory sensations both in the hummer and in his or her audience and these are not the only sensations felt by the hummer. The sensation of vibration of the vocal chords in the mouth is not a part of his or her performance and belongs under the third proposition and such cases have the consequence of granting sensations prominence in this form of habit.

On our upright posture, consult §§396, 411. On sight and other senses consult §401. If I am not accustomed to thinking or I am thinking about unfamiliar topics my thought is impeded not pervaded, I do not know my way around in it, not really my own property or ‘possession’ (Eigentum), because it feels strange and alien to me and when I overcome this by increasing habituation I ‘exist for myself as thinking’, I am entirely familiar with my own thoughts and thinking. This is the ‘immediacy of thinking togetherness-with-oneself ’, immediate, since I do not have laboriously to work things out or find my way around and together with oneself since I am completely at home in my own thinking. The claim that habit makes thinking the property of my ‘individual self’ appears to clash with what we read elsewhere, for instance 'ncyclopaedia Logic' §§20 and 24, that thoughts are not really my own individual thoughts, for the reason among others that I cannot denot, in terms of pure thought at least, myself as an individual I, but the two claims are not incompatible. A system of thoughts, for instance arithmetic, is not mine or anyone’s in particular, and not only since I cannot express my own determinate individuality in arithmetical terms but I as an individual need to habituate myself to it and make it my own ‘possession’. The fact that it is now my property does not exclude others from at the same time making it their property. Once I have made it my property my own determinate individuality recedes, my individuality is more prominent in my defective thinking than when I have perfected it. On ‘recollection’, consult §§452 ff., and on ‘memory’, §§461 ff.

'Habit is often spoken of disparagingly and taken to be a lifeless, contingent and particular thing. Entirely contingent content can of course, like every other content, take the form of habit, and it is the habit ofliving which brings on death, or, albeit in a wholly abstract way, is death itself. Yet at the same time habit is the most essential feature of the existence of all mental life in the individual subject, enabling the subject to be concrete immediacy, to be soulfol ideality, enabling the content, religious content, moral content, etc., to belong to it as this self, as this soul, not in it merely implicitly (as predisposition) , nor as a transient sensation or representation, nor as abstract inwardness, cut off from action and actuality, but in its very being. In scientific studies of the soul and the mind, habit is usually passed over, either as something contemptible or rather also because it is one of the most difficult determinations'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Habit is lifeless, if I do something out of habit, my heart is not really in it, it is contingent, almost anything can become a habit, it is particular (Partikuläres), what is habitual need not be what is essential to everyone, for instance morality, religion, but the customs of a particular region or tribe, the peculiar habits of an individual, perhaps ‘particularist’. Consult §396, on death as the result of habituation to life, an example of a bad, or at least strange, habit, albeit a habit most of us eventually acquire. Existence, with the suggestion of stepping forth (consult §410), contrasts with ‘implicitly’, ‘predisposition’ (Anlage: consult §395, where, however, ‘predisposition’ translates Naturell), and so on. Habit makes the subject a ‘concrete immediacy’. My ability for instance to speak English is immediate, I do not normally have to search for words and constructions as I do when I speak for instance German, they come to me, so to peak, naturally, and concrete. I know a goo deal of English not just the odd word and it is not only a predisposition needing development,such as an infant has, habit makes me a soulful ideality. On ‘ideality’, consult §§379, 410. But the emphasis here is on soulful or psychical (seelische, pertaining to the soul) rather than ‘ideality’, the habitual is part of my second nature, not something I need to work out by explicit deliberation.

'Sur le balcon', Agapit Pierre Jean Joseph Stevens, (1848 – 1924)

On mania (Wahnsinn) consult §408. On ‘absolute ideality’, consult §401Z. In mania the subject is endeavouring to overcome a contradiction between its objective consciousness and a fixed representation or idea for instance the groundless belief that everyone is persecuting me. In itself the soul is absolute ideality that does not allow any such stubborn fixations so the concept of the soul requires it to overcome the idea and the contradiction, albeit it may fail in the endeavour. On genius (Genius), consult §§405 and 406. The genius is an individual outside the soul, initially the mother of the embryo, then the hypnotist or magnetizer, the genius is rational and self-aware, and so supplies the dominated soul’s being-for-self. Habit is presented as a state of sanity, being-for-self and being-together-with-one’s-own-self, emerging from the overcoming of the contradiction or disruption involved in madness or derangement. Hence our condition before the formation of habit is compared to madness and more specifically mania. Prior to habituation a representation, sensation, or whatever absorbs one’s attention, since it is excessively painful, pleasant, desirable, or interesting. The soul loses itself in it, is evicted by it from the centre of its concrete actuality, in something like the way in which a maniac is engrossed by his or her fixed idea. (Consult §§381,382, and also Martin Heidegger’s, (1889 – 1976), account of an animal’s Benommenheit, captivation, by stimuli in contrast to our own freedom in relation to them.

Benommenheit, captivation, used to describe the confinement of an animal to its own behavior: 

'The captivation of the animal ... signifies, in the first place, essentially having every apprehending of something as something withheld from it. And furthermore: in having this withheld from it, the animal is precisely taken by things. Thus animal captivation characterizes the specific manner of being in which the animal relates itself to something else even while the possibility is withheld from it-or is taken away from the animal, as we might also say - of comporting and relating itself to something else as such and such at all, as something present at hand, as a being. And it is precisely because this possibility - apprehending as something that to which it relates - is withheld from it that the animal can find itself so utterly taken by something else. But this captivation should not be interpreted simply as a kind of rigid fixation on the part of the animal as if it were somehow spellbound. Rather this captivation makes possible and prescribes an appropriate leeway for its behaviour, i.e., a purely instinctual redirecting of the animal's driven activity in accordance with certain instincts in each case. ... we are also taken [hingenommen] by things, if not altogether lost in them, and often even captivated [] by them. Our activities and exploits become immersed [aufgehen] in something. When we get hold of something that occupies us, we scarcely have time for anything else. We are entirely tied up with it, and in such a way that even the very time that we use for it and waste on it is no longer there at all, and all that is at hand is whatever satisfies us. Being left empty and being satisfied are associated with our dealings with things. Being left empty is eliminated when things are at hand, at our disposal'.

- Martin Heidegger, 'Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics'

Habit universalizes and internalizes the external stimulus, so that one is no longer captivated by it and, in any case, one is now dealing with oneself rather or at least more than a series of external stimuli and is therefore free bcause freedom is self-determination (consult §382). The universality of reflection in which habit consists is still abstract universality in contrast to the concrete universal (dem . . . konkret Allgemeinen, literally, ‘the concretely universal’). Concrete is literally ‘grown together’ (consult §377, 396,). Hence the concrete universal grows together into internal complexity without direct reliance on external input and is therefore self-determining, recall the procedure of Hegelian logic. Habit involves both freedom and unfreedom, freedom in so far as it is posited by the soul, and an ideality of beings (Idealität des Seienden), that is beings, or what is, are taken up into the soul. Unfreedom, in so far as it is immediate, that is not simply posited, nature, and has the form of being. Being (Sein) is here contrasted with ideality as simply being, inexplicable and intellectually indigestible, consult §408.

Why did you do that?

No reason at all. It’s just a habit of mine.

I've got a really bad habit.

It's telling people my flaws.

‘I conceive it to be part of our constitution, that what we have been accustomed to do, we acquire, not only a facility, but a proneness to do on like occasions; so that it requires a particular will and effort to forebear it; but to do it, requires very often no will at all. Some habits produce only a facility of doing a thing, without any inclination to do it. . . . Other habits produce a proneness to do an action, without thought or intention. . . . There are other habits which produce a desire of a certain object, and an uneasy sensation, until it is obtained'.

- Thomas Reid, 'Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind'.

To put it crudely the facility increases our freedom while the proneness diminishes it.

'First of all, then, I have to maintain myself in this immediate harmony of my soul and my body; true, I do not have to make my body an end in itself as athletes and tightrope walkers do, but I must give my body its due, must take care of it, keep it healthy and strong, and must not therefore treat it with contempt or hostility. It is just by disregard or even maltreatment of my physical body that I would make my relationship to it one of dependence and of externally necessary connection; for in this way I would make it into something-despite its identity with me- negative towards me and consequently hostile, and would compel it to rise up against me, to take revenge on my mind. If, by contrast, I conduct myself in accordance with the laws of my bodily organism, then my soul is free in its physical body'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Here there are as in §410 three stages. First. When the soul is immediately identical with its body it has no objective consciousness of ‘a world it finds before it, it is aware only of its own bodily states and of the external stimuli that immediately impinge on its body. Second. It enters into opposition to the body, finding it alien and inadequate, it extrudes its bodiliness and releases it to immediacy, the body is seen as just there, unmediated by the soul. Third. It reclaims the body by habituating it to sensations, movements, etc., exerting the power of its ideality upon it. Eliminating the conspicuous obtrusiveness of the body enables the soul to acquire objective consciousness of the world as a whole. An Idea (Idee) is the unity of a concept (Begriff ) and its reality (here Dasein, but elsewhere Realität) (consult §394), albeit Idee is used informally as equivalent to Begriff. Here the soul is the concept, the body its reality, and so the body belongs to my Idea. An hostility towards the body is found in Plato’s 'Phaedo' but Hegel probably has Catholicism in mind, consult. §410. Two questions are brought together, would it be better if we did not have bodies with physical needs? And given that we do have bodies should we take care of them? We can consistently answer yes to both questions but Hegel answers the first with no and the seond with yes which is consistent with his disbelief in a disembodied afterlife Negative activity on the body is finite because it sets the soul apart from the body, sets up a boundary or limit between them, which a proper attitude towards the body obliterates and is thus infinite or unbounded, consult §§395, 399, 412. Recall that spirit and mind both translate Geist and that spiritual is the related adjective geistig.

'Nevertheless, the soul cannot remain in this immediate unity with its body. The form of immediacy of this harmony contradicts the concept of the soul, its determination of being ideality relating to its own self In order to come into correspondence to this its concept, the soul must do what at our standpoint it has not yet done, it must make its identity with its body into an identity posited or mediated by the mind, take possession of its body, form it into a pliant and skillful instrument of its activity, so transform it that in it soul relates to its own self and and that the body becomes an accident brought into accord with its substance, freedom. The body is the middle term by which I come together with the external world in general. So, if l want to actualize my aims, then I must make my physical body capable of carrying over this subjectivity into external objectivity. My body is not by nature fitted for this; on the contrary, it immediately does only what is appropriate to animal life'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'.

Nevertheless [Dennoch], coms out of the blue given that mention has been made of the habituation of the body, that is, the soul’s mediated unity with it, in the preceding paragraph, but the need to care for the body depends upon the soul’s immediate unity with the body not its mediated unity with it and even an unhabituated body needs to be looked after. So this new paragraph shifts to a theme different from its immediate predecessor, in the immediate unity the body is pervaded by the soul only in an indeterminately universal way, that is, the body is alive and moves but with insufficient precision for the soul’s purposes. In the preceding paragraph my concept required a body and now the concept of the soul requires the habituation of this body. The two cases differ, I or my soul could not exist at all without a body, I do not first exist as a soul and then acquire a body but I do first exist with an untrained body and one may conceivably live one’s whole life no doubt with the assistance of otherswith a more or less untrained body. The concept explains both why something is the case at any given time for instance the soul’s having a body and why something, albeit it is not always and invariably the case, tends over time to become the case, the soul’s having a trained body. To employ an Hegelian analogy the concept embodied in the seed explains both why seeds invariably have some material component and why seeds tend to develop into full-grown plants (consult §379). The body is to become an accident brought into accord with its substance, freedom, the body is not to be an independent substance nor an accident at odds with its substance, but a subordinate part of a coherent whole. Consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §§150-1 on substance and accidents. This whole is called freedom because we are thinking here of the facility involved in habit rather than the proneness, consult §410. But then while one is likely to do with facility what one is prone to do out of habit one need have no overwhelming proneness to do what one does with facility. The artistic talent (consult §395) might express itself only occasionally and reluctantly even though with facility.

'If the activities of the body to be performed in the service of mind are often repeated, they acquire an ever higher degree of adequacy, for the soul gains an ever greater familiarity with all the circumstances to be considered, hence becomes more and more at home in its expressions and consequently achieves a continually growing capacity for immediately embodying its inner determinations and accordingly transforms the body more and more into its own property, into its serviceable instrument; there thus arises a magical relationship, an immediate operation of mind on body'

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

On the magical relationship, consult §405. Here and in the previous paragraph habituation makes the body one’s own ‘possession’ or ‘property’. Hegel adopts John Locke’s (1632 – 1704) view of the acquisition of a property right, mixing one’s labour with a natural object, and he then applies this to one’s own body. In this case the property right is exclusive unlike the case discussed in §410, only one person can own each body, and furthermore I can only enter into possession of my own body, that is the body with which I am initially immediately identical, I cannot gain ownership of someone else’s body by mixing my labour with it much as I may like to depending on who it is.

'But since the individual activities o f man acquire by repeated practice the character of habit, the form of something received into recollection, into the universality of the mental interior, the soul brings into its expressions a universal mode of acting to be handed on to others too, a rule. This universal is internally so concentrated to simplicity that in it I am no longer conscious of the particular differences between my individual activities. That this is so we see, for example, in writing. When we are learning to write we must direct our attention on every individual detail, on a vast number of mediations. By contrast, once the activity of writing has become a habit with us, then our self has so completely mastered all relevant individual details, has so infected them with its universality, that they are no longer present to us as individual details and we keep in view only their universal aspect. Thus we see, consequently, that in habit our consciousness is at the same time present in the matter-in-hand, interested in it, yet conversely absent from it, indifferent towards it; that our self just as much appropriates the matter-in-hand as, on the contrary, it withdraws from it, that the soul on the one hand completely penetrates into its expressions and on the other hand deserts them, thus giving them the shape of something mechanical, of a merely natural effect'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Recollection (Erinnerung) has the sense of internalization as well as recollection, consult §402. When I write by hand the letter z the z I produce will differ to some degree from every other z I produce and this makes no difference to me indeed normally I do not notice it. I do not usually notice it, my concern is to produce an adequate token of the universal type z and if I instruct someone else to write the letter z and not to imitate my handwriting I want him or her to produce acceptable tokens of the type z and not to produce marks that are exactly similar to some individual z of mine or even very similar to my z’s in general, his or her z's might resemble my z’s more than they do my z's, but that does not matter as long as his or script is legible and only if differences between individual tokens are ignored can I hand on a rule (Regel) to others and I cannot prescribe as a rule that others should write z’s exactly similar to some individual z of mine, even I cannot follow that rule, I may tell others to write their z’s in a similar way to mine, if I am teaching them to forge my handwriting, but more usually I give them greater latitude allowing a tolerable range of variation between their z’s and mine. Consciousness or the soul is absent from the inessential detail of handwriting and this makes it seem mechanical and ordinary handwriting differs in this respect from painting where the fine detail matters, an artist’s various paintings of the same theme, for instance Rembrandt's portraits of himself, are not expressions of a habit.

'Lady in Yellow', 1902, Susan Watkins, (1875–1913)

(c) THE ACTUAL SOUL

§411

'The soul, when its bodiliness has been thoroughly trained and made its own, becomes an individual subject for itself; and bodiliness is thus the externality as a predicate, in which the subject is related only to itself. This externality represents not itself, but the soul, of which it is the sign. As this identity of the inner with the outer, the outer being subjugated to the inner, the soul is actual; in its bodiliness it has its free shape, in which it feels Itself and makes itself felt, and which, as the soul's work of an, has human, pathognomic and physiognomic, expression'.

'[Remark] Human expression includes, e.g., the upright figure in general, the formation especially of the hand, as the absolute tool, of the mouth, laughter, weeping, etc., and the spiritual tone diffused over the whole, which at once announces the physical body as the externality of a higher nature. This tone is such a slight, indeterminate, and indescribable modification, because the figure in its externality is something immediate and natural, and can therefore only be an indeterminate and quite imperfect sign for the mind, unable to represent it in its universality for itself. For the animal, the human figure is the highest form in which the mind appears to it. But for the mind it is only its first appearance, and speech is straight away its more perfect expression. The figure is indeed the mind's proximate existence, but in its physiognomic and pathognomic determinacy it is at the same time a contingency for the mind. To want to raise physiognomy and especially cranioscopy to the rank of sciences, was therefore one of the most vacuous notions, even more vacuous than a signatura rerum, which supposed that we could recognize the healing power of a plant from its shape'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The soul is now actual (wirkliche) and not just potential since it has an adequate external expression in its trained body and that it is an individual subject for itself in addition suggests that it is actual rather than potential but for itself also conveys the ideas that it is aware of itself and that it is independent, a subject in its own right or by itself. Consult §383. Hegel shifts between the human subject frequently contrasted with an object and the subject of a predicate in a judgement or proposition, the predicate, here the body, is subordinate to and dependent on the subject. In 'Encyclopaeadia Logic' the account of inner and outer (§§138–41) is immediately followed by actuality (§142). Pathognomic’expression is expression of occurrent emotions and feelings, physiognomic expression is expression of dispositions, such as mental abilities, character, etc. Consult §411.

On signs consult §§401. On speech, consult §401. What the body primarily cannot express is our thoughts, the mind in its universality for itself, but it is also a contingency in its physiognomic and pathognomic determinacy, features of the body, in particular the face, are not an infallible indication of emotions and dispositions, which can be feigned, in particular by actors and confidence tricksters. The most famous endeavour to make a science of physiognomy was 'Physiognomische Fragmente' (1775–8) translated as 'Essays on Physiognomy', 1793, by Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801). Hegel criticizes physiognomy in the 'Phenomenology of Spirit', pp.185–95. The chief proponent of cranioscopy or phrenology, the art of reading character from bumps on the skull, was Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828). It depends upon three suspect assumptions. First, mental functions are located in specific regions of the brain. Second, the bigger the brain region, the more developed the mental function. Third, the shape of the skull corresponds to the shape of the brain. Hegel also attacked this theory in particular the first assumption, Phenomenology, pp.195–210. The signatura rerum (signature of things) refers to the external quality of things that indicates their inner nature, for instance the brainlike appearance of the walnut that indicates its benefits for the brain. Hegel mentions it in his 'Lectures on the Philosophy of Right', i. 280–1 and argues that animals and uncivilized peoples are more sensitive to the beneficial and harmful properties of plants than civilized human beings are. 'De signatura rerum' was also the title of a book written by Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) in 1622 and published in 1635, referring to the clues provided by the external qualities of things to their inner nature but Hegel in all likelihood not alluding to Böhme here, both because Böhme was a mystic more interested in the symbolism of natural entities than in their medicinal properties, and because Hegel has a respect for Böhme. In both versions, the signatura rerum is related to St Augustine’s view, influential in the Middle Ages and persisting into German Romanticism, that nature is, in addition to the Bible, a second form of divine revelation, a sort of book written in a script that we need to decipher. Compare Sir Thomas Browne, (1605 – 1682), 'Religio Medici' telling us to beware of philosophy being a precept not to be received in too large a sense for in this mass of nature etc.:

'Sect. 12.—There is no attribute that adds more difficulty to the mystery of the Trinity, where, though in a relative way of Father and Son, we must deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the world eternal, or how he could make good two eternities. His similitude, of a triangle comprehended in a square, doth somewhat illustrate the trinity of our souls, and that the triple unity of God; for there is in us not three, but a trinity of, souls; because there is in us, if not three distinct souls, yet differing faculties, that can and do subsist apart in different subjects, and yet in us are thus united as to make but one soul and substance. If one soul were so perfect as to inform three distinct bodies, that were a pretty trinity. Conceive the distinct number of three, not divided nor separated by the intellect, but actually comprehended in its unity, and that a perfect trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers. “Beware of philosophy,” is a precept not to be received in too large a sense: for, in this mass of nature, there is a set of things that carry in their front, though not in capital letters, yet in stenography and short characters, something of divinity; which, to wiser reasons, serve as luminaries in the abyss of knowledge, and, to judicious beliefs, as scales and roundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity. The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabrick'.

- Sir Thomas Browne, 'Religio Medici'.

Aristotle described the hand as the tool of tools (organon . . . organön) in 'de Anima', III. 8, 432a1-2:

'Let us now summarize our results about soul, and repeat that the soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and sensation is in a way what is sensible: in what way we must inquire.Knowledge and sensation are divided to correspond with the realities, potential knowledge and sensation answering to potentialities, actual knowledge and sensation to actualities. Within the soul the faculties of knowledge and sensation are potentially these objects, the one what is knowable, the other what is sensible. They must be either the things themselves or their forms. The former alternative is of course impossible: it is not the stone which is present in the soul but its form. It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things.Since according to common agreement there is nothing outside and separate in existence from sensible spatial magnitudes, the objects of thought are in the sensible forms, viz. both the abstract objects and all the states and affections of sensible things. Hence (1) no one can learn or understand anything in the absence of sense, and (when the mind is actively aware of anything it is necessarily aware of it along with an image; for images are like sensuous contents except in that they contain no matter.Imagination is different from assertion and denial; for what is true or false involves a synthesis of concepts. In what will the primary concepts differ from images? Must we not say that neither these nor even our other concepts are images, though they necessarily involve them?'

- Aristotle, 'de Anima'.

These ‘looks and gestures’ are not signs, but have a symbolic nature because their relationship to their meaning is not purely conventional but depends upon an intrinsic resemblance between the gesture and the meaning. The body is a sign of the mind rather than a symbol. There is a later distinction between sign and symbol (cf. §457), so here the human body as a whole has no special resemblance to the mind albeit such a body is peculiar to humans and is specially suited for the production of gestures that do have a resemblance to their mental counterparts. On the animal’s absorption in its current sensation consult §381. Expressing a sensation or feeling immerses one in it rather than freeing one from it, though elsewhere Hegel suggests otherwise, for instance in 'Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics'. It is not so obvious if the superiority in this respect of speech consists in the fact that one does not usually express one’s feelings in language as readily and fully as one does in gestures or in the fact that linguistic expression of a feeling keeps it in its proper place and does not let it take over one’s entire reality (Dasein).

'Every man has a physiognomic aspect, appears at first sight as a pleasant or unpleasant, strong or weak, personality. According to this semblance one passes, from a certain instinct, a first universal judgement on others. However, it is easy to be mistaken in this, since this exterior, encumbered predominantly with the character of immediacy, does not perfectly correspond to the mind but only in a greater or lesser degree. Consequently, an unfavourable, like a favourable, exterior can have behind it something different from what that exterior initially leads one to suspect. The biblical saying: 'Beware of him whom God hath marked', is, therefore, often misused; and a judgement based on physiognomic expression has accordingly only the value of an immediate judgement, which can just as well be untrue as true. For this reason, people have rightly retreated from the exaggerated respect they formerly harboured for physiognomy, when Lavater created such a stir about it and when people had high hopes of a massive contribution from it to the highly regarded knowledge of human nature. Man is known much less by his outward appearance than by his actiom. Even language is exposed to the fate of serving just as much to conceal as to reveal human thoughts'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'.

On Lavater consult §§401. ‘Beware of him whom God hath marked’ (Hüte dich vor dem, den Gott gezeichnet hat) refers to Genesis, 4: 15, where God puts a mark on Cain, and Ezekiel, 9: 4–6, where he puts a mark on the foreheads of those who ‘sigh and cry for all the abominations’ perpetrated in Jerusalem. In both cases the mark is intended to protect its bearer from being killed. This mark is distinct from the mark of the beast of Revelation 16: 2, etc., albeit this is similarly designed to elicit favourable treatment from the beast, but not of course from God. And so the dictum is misapplied if it is taken to advocate mistrust of marked people, it is also misused, because no such mark is an infallible sign of the character of its bearer.

8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?

10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand;

12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

13 And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear.

14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.

15 And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

- 'Genesis', 4: 8 - 16.

'Young Lady in Yellow Dress', Pál Jávor, (1880–1923)

§412

'In itself matter has no truth within the soul; the soul, since it is for itself, cuts itself off from its immediate being, and places this being over against itself as bodiliness, which can offer no resistance to the soul's incorporation into it. The soul, which has set its being in opposition to itself, sublated it and determined it as its own, has lost the meaning of soul, of the immediacy of mind. The actual soul in the habit of sensation and of its concrete self-feeling is in itself the ideality of its determinacies, an ideality that is for itself; in its externality it is recollected into itself, and is infinite relation to itself. This being-for-self of free universality is the soul's higher awakening to the I, to abstract universality in so far as it is for abstract universality, which is thus thinking and subject for itself, and in fact determinately subject of its judgement in which the I excludes from itself the natural totality of its determinations as an object, as a world externaL to it, and relates itself to that world so that in it it is immediately reflected into itself: comciousness'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'.

This passage gives in summary the process described in §411 yet adds that the culmination of the process is a change from soul to consciousness (Bewusstsein). Consciousness involves two additional features. First, awareness of oneself as ‘I’. Second, awareness of an object (Objekt), a world, external to oneself, nonetheless the transition from the soul’s separation from and incorporation (Einbilden) into its body to the I’s consciousness of a world is not evident as we may ask whether someone or something could master their body without becoming an I or conscious of a world. Someone or something could be conscious of a world without being an I, or, conversely, be an I without being conscious of a world. The argument contains ambiguities. When the ‘ideality of [the soul’s] determinacies’ is said to be ‘for itself ’ (die für sich seiende Idealität ihrer Bestimmtheiten), this may mean that it is actual rather than potential as the two preceding occurrences of in itself which one supposes mean potentially suggest, or it may mean that the ideality is aware of itself, which at once brings in something like egohood. When this ideality is said to be recollected (erinnert: consult §401) in its externality and ‘infinite relation to itself ’ (consult §410 on finite), this mau merely mean that in its habituated body it is together with and related to itself, rather than that it is internalized into egohood. What is left in the soul once its determinate states have been extruded into the body can only be free universality which amounts to egohood and this awakening to the I is higher than the soul’s awakening from sleep of §398. On the judgement (Urteil) as original division (Ur-teil), and the corresponding conflation of the human subject with the subject of a judgement, consult §§389, 407, 411. One may suggest that habituation of one’s own body implies a distinction between one’s body and other external material over which one does not have a similar control.

An argument for the transition to egohood:

'Zusatz. The soul's pervasion of its bodiliness considered in the two previous Paragraphs is not absolute, does not completely sublate the difference of soul and body. On the contrary, the nature of the logical Idea, developing everything from itself, requires that this difference still be given its due. Something of bodiliness remains, therefore, purely organic and consequently withdrawn from the power of the soul, so that the soul's pervasion of its body is only one side of the body. The soul, when it comes to feel this limitation of its power, reflects itself into itself and expels bodiliness from itself as something alien to it. By this reflection-into-self the mind completes its liberation from the form of being, gives itself the form of essence and becomes the I. It is true that the soul, in so far as it is subjectivity or selfishness, is already in itself!. But the actuality of the I involves more than the soul's immediate, natural subjectivity; for the I is this universal, this simple entity that in truth exists only when it has itself as object, when it has become the being-for-self of the simple in the simple, the relation of the universal to the universal. The universal relating to itself exists nowhere save in the I. In external nature, as we have already said in the introduction to the theory of subjective mind, the universal only attains the highest activation of its power by annihilation of the individual reality, hence does not auain to actual being-for-self. The natural soul too is initially only the real possibility of this being-for-self. Only in the I does this possibility become actuality. Therefore, in the I an awakening ensues of a higher kind than the natural awakening confined to the mere sensation of what is individual; for the I is the lightning piercing through the natural soul and consuming its naturalness; in the I, therefore, the ideality of naturalness, and so the essence of the soul, becomes for the soul. The whole anthropological development of the mind presses on to this goal'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'.

First. Even habituation leaves a distinction between soul and body. The reference to the logical Idea may be to a particular phase of the logical Idea, for instance 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §§213–15 on the Idea, or §§216–21 on life, or more generally to the fact that the logical Idea is not flatly identical with what develops out of it, consult §§574–7. Second. ‘Therefore’ (daher) the body resists to some extent control by the soul. Third. The soul responds to this by a withdrawal into itself, a reflection-into-self, which makes it essence (Wesen), the I, rather than being. To simplify matters being is the outer surface of something, essence is its inner nature. On the complex relationship between being, essence, and reflection that Hegel associates with the reflection of light consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §§112–14.) The first proposition appears true.. The step from the first to the second appears plausible. Utilizing the analogy in §411, the habituated body as the ‘soul’s work of art’, presents a question, why is the artist distinct from his work? There are at least two possible answers. First, the artist has produced and will produce other works apart from this one, or at least other things and this is not relevant to the soul and its body because the soul has only one body and it does not have or produce anything else on a par with the body, its actions, utterances, etc. are all states of the body. Second. as soon as a work is embodied it has features out of the artist’s control, a huge painting is hard to carry, a song cannot be heard a hundred miles away, and so on. And furthermore,, the work is open to interpretation, misinterpretation, neglect, and so on. by others. (he latter is also true of the body albeit Hegel does not bring it up here. The second proposition is also true, the move from the second to the third is debateable. We can ask why the soul must withdraw into itself. The artist need not differentiate him or herself from his or her works, feeling that they are not a complete expression of him or herself. He or she might be content with his or her dispersal among products not fully in his or her own control. If the soul does withdraw into itself and thereby become the essence of the body or the living creature, we can ask why this has to amount to the I. The third proposition appears true more or less, but it does not follow from the first proposition and/or the second proposition. Animals also have a similar mixture of control and lack of control over their bodies but they do not become I’s so another premiss is required with regard to the peculiar response of an implicit mind to its imperfectly habituated body.

On selfishness consult §402. The I is universal since it is intrinsically featureless, simple, and exactly similar in everyone who is an I. Consult §396. Someone is an I if and only if they think of themselves as an I and soo the universal is related to the universal. In external nature the universal emerges as a universal with the death of an individual, in particular an animal, instantiating it. The universal does not become for itself, a cat is not aware of its felinity, only of individuals, yet in humans it emerges as a universal by being for itself without the death of the individual. Consult §381. The relationship between the I’s universality and the universality of felinity or animality in virtue of which they are both called universality is as follows, just as felinity disregards or abstracts from the particular and individual features that differentiate one cat from another so the I disregards features differentiating one person from another. Felinity and animality are not featureless or simple in the way that the I is, an animal for instance is a living being capable of sensation and movement. The I is like the universal being an entity which abandons any characteristic differentiating anything from anything else. Many things are entities without thinking of themselves as entities albeit none think of themselves as entities without being entities and so despite its intrinsic characterlessness the entity differs from the I. Natural awakening is awakening from sleep. Consult §§398 and 412.

The human soul transcends sensation in two ways. First, in habit it universalizes individual sensations, etc., makes them into a being (zu einem Sein: a verbal noun). Second, by becoming an I, it distances itself from its sensations, even habitual sensations, it is no longer wholly absorbed in each sensation but has posited it ‘ideally (ideell, consult §403). As an I, the soul is an empty space with no determinate content of its own but it fills this with a universal content, one supposes the world external to it, consult §412, which is universal both since it is objective and hence shared by all I’s, and since it, and our consciousness of it, involve universal thoughts, consult §375. The soul is therefore an ‘individually [individuell] determined’ universal because it has its own perspective on the world and its own body. In the case of the sentient soul ‘the self ’ (das Selbst: here more or less equivalent to the I) was the ‘genius’ acting upon it ‘only from outside’ and ‘only from within’. On the duality of the genius, consult §§405 and 406. The idea is that if the controlling genius (the embryo’s mother, the mesmerizer) is only outside the soul it is also inside the soul yet deep inside it so that it does not manifest itself in the outer behaviour of the organism. Howeve now the self enters into the soul’s body and posits ‘being’ in itself so the self is now unitary. On ‘being’ (das Sein), consult §§408, 410, 412. Sein indicated sheer givenness, intellectual or psychical indigestibility. In §412 Sein indicated stability of habit in contrast to the fleeting sensation and the filling required by emptiness but this variation depends upon whether or not the soul is an I or not, the mere soul cannot manage being without expelling it whereas the I can accommodate being while keeping it at a distance. On the I’s ‘self-intuiting’ in ‘its Other’ consult §§413, 457.

'The whole anthropological development of the mind presses on to this goal. As we here look back on this development, we recall how the human soul, in contrast to the animal soul which remains sunk in the individuality and limitation of sensation, has raised itself above the limited content of what is sensed, a content that contradicts its implicitly infinite nature, has posited this content ideally, and particularly in habit has made it into something universal, recollected, total, into a being. But we also recall how just in this way it has filled the initially empty space of its inwardness with a content appropriate to it because of its universality, has posited being within itself, just as, on the other hand, it has transformed its body into the image of its ideality, of its freedom, and thus has reached the point of being the self-related, individually determined universal present in the I, an abstract totality that is for itself and freed from bodiliness. Whereas in the sphere of the merely sentient soul the self appears, in the shape of the genius, as a power acting on the embodied individuality only from outside and at the same time only from within, at the stage of the soul's development now reached, by contrast, the self has, as we showed earlier, actualized itself in the soul's reality, in its bodiliness, and, conversely, has posited being within itself; so that now the self or the I intuits its own self in its Other and is this self-intuiting'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

______________________

For my lovely One. 💛

I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I'm not enough Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up

Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low Remind me once again just who I am because I need to know Ooh-oh

You say I am loved when I can't feel a thing You say I am strong when I think I am weak And you say I am held when I am falling short And when I don't belong, oh You say I am Yours And I believe (I) Oh, I believe (I) What You say of me (I) I believe

The only thing that matters now is everything You think of me In You I find my worth, in You I find my identity Ooh-oh

You say I am loved when I can't feel a thing You say I am strong when I think I am weak And you say I am held when I am falling short When I don't belong, oh You say I am Yours And I believe (I) Oh, I believe (I) What You say of me (I) Oh, I believe

Taking all I have, and now I'm laying it at Your feet You have every failure, God, You have every victory Ooh-oh

You say I am loved when I can't feel a thing You say I am strong when I think I am weak You say I am held when I am falling short When I don't belong, oh You say I am Yours And I believe (I) Oh, I believe (I) What You say of me (I) I believe

Oh, I believe (I) Yes, I believe (I) What You say of me (I) I believe

Lauren Daigle - You Say

Coming up next:

CONSCIOUSNESS.

It may stop but it never ends.