endency toward
a central point. It is essentially composite, consisting of parts that
_exclude_ one another. It seeks its unity; and therefore exhibits itself
as self-destructive, as verging toward its opposite--an indivisible point.
If it could attain this, it would be Matter no longer; it would have
perished. It strives after the realization of its Idea; for in unity it
exists ideally. Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has
its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already
found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of
itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now
this is freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to
something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something
external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon
myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than
self-consciousness-consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be
distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact _that I know_;
secondly, _what I know_. In self-consciousness these are merged in
one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own
nature, as also an energy enabling it to realize itself; to make itself
actually what it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it
may be said of universal history that it is the exhibition of Spirit in
the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially.
And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree and the taste
and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain
the whole of that history. The Orientals have not attained the knowledge
that Spirit--Man _as such_--is free; and because they do not know
this, they are not free. They only know that one is free; but on this
very account, the freedom of that one is only caprice; ferocity--brutal
recklessness of passion, or a mildness and tameness of the desires, which
is itself only an accident of nature--is mere caprice like the former.
That _one_ is therefore only a despot, not a _free man_. The
consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they
were free; but they, and the Romans likewise, knew only that _some_ are
free, not man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. The
Greeks, therefore, had slaves, and their whole life and the maintenance
of their splendid liberty was i