AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 239 



to formulate itself in our minds. On first view spirit 

 seems a vague universality. It bears the contradictory 

 aspect of an abstract reality. It appears abstract in so 

 far as it is understood only in the vague sense of some- 

 thing exclusively supersensuous. It appears real so far 

 as it presents the characteristics of a spontaneous power. 



Now this spontaneity is precisely the characteristic 

 which constitutes the internality of spirit. It is subjec- 

 tivity; and it is this in the first place as infinite concentra- 

 tion within itself. In this sense spirit seems wholly non- 

 material and to be merely a spontaneous power acting 

 from without upon matter. It is infinite impulse, a wish 

 or even mere vague presentiment. 



And yet the internality of spirit is but one of its two 

 necessarily complementary aspects or phases. The inter- 

 nal cannot be simply and solely internal. The subjective 

 cannot be merely subjective. The internal in its very 

 nature already involves external reference. The "inter- 

 nal " must be meaningless unless it be the internal of an 

 "external." And this outward reference is precisely the 

 measure of the reality of the internal. 



Spirit, then, as being spontaneous energy, is essen- 

 tially a self-externalizing internality. As subjective it 

 proves to be self-objectifying. It makes itself its own 

 object; or rather, as with each step of our inquiry it 

 becomes ever clearer, the World-Energy as Spirit is the 

 one infinite Subject for which there is and can be no other 

 object than just itself. 



The first phase of this self-externalization or self- 

 objectifying of spirit which our developing consciousness 

 seizes is, nevertheless, still a relatively abstract one. It 

 is the phase in which spirit appears as unfolded in a sys- 



