attitudes of Scepticism express One Consciousness. This new Type of Consciousness is therefore explicitly aware of its own doubleness. It regards itself on the one hand as the Deliverer, changeless and self-possessed; on the other hand it regards itself as the absolutely confounded and contrary; and it is the awareness of this its own contradiction. - In Stoicism the Self owns itself in the simplicity of freedom. In Scepticism it gives itself embodiment, makes naught of other embodied reality, but, in the very act of so doing, renders itself the rather twofold and is now parted in twain. Hereby the same duplication that was formerly shared between two individuals, the Lord and the Slave, has now entered into the nature of one individual. The differentiation of the Self, which is the essential Law of the Spirit, is already present, but not as constituting an organic unity, and the CONTRITE CONSCIOUSNESS is this awareness of the Self as the divided Nature, wherein is only conflict.

This Contrite and Broken Consciousness, just because the conflict of its Nature is known as belonging to one person, must forever, in each of its two forms, have the other also present to it. Whenever, in either form, it seems to have come to victory and unity, it finds no rest there, but is forthwith driven over to the other. Its true home-coming, its true reconciliation with itself, will, however, display to us the law of the Spirit, as he will appear when, having come to life, he has entered the world of his manifestation. For it already belongs to the Contrite Consciousness to be one undivided soul in the midst of its doubleness. It is in fact the very gazing of one Self into another; it is both these selves; it has no nature save in so far as it unites the two. But thus far it knows not yet this its own real essence; it has not entered into possession of this unity.

For the first then, the Contrite Consciousness is but the unwon unity of the two selves. To its view the two are not one, but are at war together. And accordingly it regards one of them, viz., the simple, the Changeless Consciousness, as the True Self. The other, the multiform and fickle, it regards as the False Self. The Contrite Consciousness finds these two as mutually estranged. For its own part, because it is the aware

ness of this contradiction, it takes sides with the Changeless Consciousness, and calls itself the False Self. But since it is aware of the Changeless, i. e. of the True Self, its task must be one of self-deliverance, that is, the task of delivering itself from the unreality. For on the one hand it knows itself only as the fickle; and the changeless is far remote from it. And yet the Contrite Consciousness is in its genuine selfhood one with the simple and Changeless Consciousness; for therein lies its own true Self. But yet again it knows that it is not in possession of this true self. So long as the Contrite Consciousness assigns to the two selves this position, they cannot remain indifferent to each other; or, in other words, the Contrite Consciousness cannot itself be indifferent to the Changeless. For the Contrite Consciousness is, as a fact, of both kinds, and knows the relation of the changeless to the fickle as a relation of truth to falsehood. The falsehood must be turned to naught; but since the Contrite Consciousness finds both the false and the true alike necessary to it, and contradictory, there remains to it only the contradictory movement, wherein neither of the opposed elements can find repose in going over to its opponent but must create itself anew in the opponent's very bosom.

To win, then, in this strife against the adversary, is rather to be vanquished. To attain one goal, is rather to lose it in its opposite. The whole life, whatever it be, whatever it do, is aware only of the pain of this being and doing. For this Consciousness has no object besides its opposite, the true Self, and its own nothingness. In aspiration it strives hence towards the Changeless. But this aspiration is itself the Contrite Consciousness, and contains forthwith the knowledge of the opposite, namely of its own individuality. The Changeless, when it enters consciousness, is sicklied o'er with individuality, is present therewith; instead of being lost in the consciousness of the Changeless, individuality arises ever afresh therein.

But one thing the Contrite Consciousness thus learns, namely that individuality is made manifest in the Changeless, and that the Changeless is made manifest in individuality. It finds that in general individuality belongs to the changeless true Self, and

that in fact its own individuality also belongs thereto. For the outcome of this process is precisely the unity of this twofold consciousness. This unity, then, comes to light, but for the first only as an unity wherein the diversity of the two aspects plays the chief part. For the Contrite Consciousness there thus result three ways in which individuality and the Changeless are linked. First, it rediscovers itself as again banished into its opposition to the Changeless Self; and it is cast back to the beginning of the strife, which latter still remains the element of the entire relationship. In the second place, the Contrite Consciousness learns that individuality belongs to the very essence of the Changeless, is the incarnation of the Changeless; and the latter hereupon assumes the burden of this whole range of phenomena. In the third place, the Contrite Consciousness discovers itself to be the individual who dwells in the Changeless. In the first stage the Changeless appears to consciousness only as the remote Self, that condemns individuality. In passing through the second stage, consciousness learns that the Changeless is as much an incarnate individual as it is itself; and thus, in the third stage, consciousness reaches the grade of the Spirit, rejoices to find itself in the Spirit, and becomes aware that its individuality is reconciled with the Universal.

What is here set forth as the character and relationship of the Changeless has appeared as the experience that the divided consciousness obtains in its woe. This experience is to be sure not its own one-sided process; for it is itself the Changeless Consciousness, and the latter is also an individual consciousness; so that the process is all the while a process in the Changeless Consciousness, belonging to the latter quite as much as to the other. For the Changeless Consciousness passes through the three stages, being first the changeless as in general opposed to the individual, then becoming an individual over against another individual, and finally being united with the latter. But this observation, in so far as it is made from our own point of view as observers, is here premature; for thus far we have come to know the Changeless only in so far as consciousness has defined it. Not, as yet, the true Changeless, but the Changeless

as modified by the duality of consciousness, has come to our sight; and so we know not how the developed and self-possessed Changeless will behave. What has resulted from the foregoing is only this, that the mentioned characteristics appear, to the consciousness now under consideration, as belonging to the Changeless.

Consequently the Changeless Consciousness itself also preserves even in its incarnate form the character and principle of separation and isolation as against the individual consciousness. From the latter's point of view, the fact that the Changeless takes on the form of individuality appears as something which somehow comes to pass. The opposition to the Changeless is something, moreover, which the individual consciousness merely finds as a fact. The relation seems to it merely a result of its natural constitution. As for the final reconciliation, the individual consciousness looks upon this as in part its own deed, the result of its own individuality; but it also regards a part of the unity as due, both in origin and in existence, to the Changeless. The element of opposition thus remains even in the unity. In fact, in taking on its incarnate form, the Changeless has not only retained but actually confirmed its character of remoteness. For although, in assuming a developed and incarnate individuality, it seems on the one hand to have approached the individual, still, on the other hand, it now stands over against him as an opaque fact of sense, with all the stubbornness of the actual about it. The hope that the individual may become one with the Changeless must remain but hope, empty and distant; for between hope and fruition stand now the fatal chance and the lifeless indifference which have resulted from that very incarnation wherein lies the foundation of the hope. Because the Changeless has thus entered the world of facts, has taken on the garments of actuality, it follows necessarily that in the world of time it has vanished, that in space it is far away, and forever far remains.

If at the outset the mere notion of the divided consciousness demanded that it should undertake the destruction of its individuality, and the growth into the Changeless, the present

result defines the undertaking thus: That the individual should leave off its relation with the formless ideal, and should come only into relations with the Changeless as incarnate. For it is now the fact of the unity of the individual and the Changeless which has become the truth and the object for consciousness, as before, in the mere notion, only the abstract and disembodied Changeless was the essential object; and consciousness now finds the total separation of the notion as the relation which is to be forgotten. The thing which has now to be reduced to unity is the still external relation to the embodied Ideal, in so far as the latter is a foreign actuality.

The process whereby the unreal Self seeks to reach this unity is once more threefold, since it will be found to have a threefold relation to its incarnate but remote Ideal. In the first place it will appear as the Devout Consciousness; in the second place, as an individual, whose relation to the actuality will be one of aspiration and of service; in the third place it will reach the consciousness of self-possession. We must now follow these three states of being, to see how they are involved in the general relation, and are determined thereby.

Taking the first state, that of the Devout Consciousness, one finds indeed that the incarnate Changeless, as it appears to this consciousness, seems to be present in all the completeness of its being. But as a fact the fashion of the completed being of the Changeless has not yet been developed. Should this completed being be revealed to consciousness, the revelation would be, as it were, rather the deed of the Ideal than the work of the Devout Consciousness; and thus the revelation would come from one side alone, would be no full and genuine revelation, but would remain burdened with incompleteness and with duality.

Although the Contrite Consciousness still lacks the presence of its Ideal, it is nevertheless as we see [also] beyond the stage of pure thought, whether such thought were the mere abstract thinking of Stoicism, which forgets all individuality, or the merely restless thinking of Scepticism, which in fact embodies individuality in its ignorant contradictions and its ceaseless unrepose. Both of these stages the Contrite Consciousness has