On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Mind’: the self-knowing, actual Idea — part fourteen.

‘Psyche; or, the legend of Love’

by Mary Tighe (1772–1810)

CANTO I. (end)

Once more she hears the hymeneal strain;

Far other voices now attune the lay;

The swelling sounds approach, awhile remain,

And then retiring faint dissolved away:

The expiring lamps emit a feebler ray,

And soon in fragrant death extinguished lie:

Then virgin terrors Psyche’s soul dismay,

When through the obscuring gloom she nought can spy,

But softly rustling sounds declare some Being nigh.

Oh, you for whom I write! whose hearts can melt

At the soft thrilling voice whose power you prove,

You know what charm, unutterably felt,

Attends the unexpected voice of Love:

Above the lyre, the lute’s soft notes above,

With sweet enchantment to the soul it steals

And bears it to Elysium’s happy grove;

You best can tell the rapture Psyche feels

When Love’s ambrosial lip the vows of Hymen seals.

‘˜Tis he, ’tis my deliverer! deep imprest

‘Upon my heart those sounds I well recal,

‘The blushing maid exclaimed, and on his breast

A tear of trembling ecstasy let fall.

But, ere the breezes of the morning call

Aurora from her purple, humid bed,

Psyche in vain explores the vacant hall,

Her tender lover from her arms is fled,

While sleep his downy wings had o’er her eye-lids spread.

Again the band invisible attend,

And female voices sooth the mournful bride;

Light hands to braid her hair assistance lend,

By some she sees the glowing bracelet tied,

Others officious hover at her side,

And each bright gem for her acceptance bring,

While some, the balmy air diffusing wide,

Fan softer perfumes from each odorous wing

Than the fresh bosom shed of earliest, sweetest spring.

With songs divine her anxious soul they cheer,

And woo her footsteps to delicious bowers,

They bid the fruit more exquisite appear

Which at her feet its bright profusion showers:

For her they cull unknown, celestial flowers;

The gilded car they bid her fearless guide,

Which at her wish self-moved with wondrous powers,

The rapid bird’s velocity defied,

While round the blooming isle it rolled with circuit wide.

Again they spread the feast, they strike the lyre,

But to her frequent questions nought reply,

Her lips in vain her lover’s name require,

Or wherefore thus concealed he shuns her eye.

But when reluctant twilight veils the sky,

And each pale lamp successively expires;

Again she trembling hears the voice of joy,

Her spouse a tender confidence inspires,

But with a fond embrace ere dawn again retires.

To charm the languid hours of solitude

He oft invites her to the Muse’s lore,

For none have vainly e’er the Muse pursued,

And those whom she delights, regret no more

The social, joyous hours, while rapt they soar

To worlds unknown, and live in fancy’s dream:

Oh, Muse divine! thee only I implore,

Shed on my soul thy sweet inspiring beams,

And pleasure’s gayest scene insipid folly seems!

Silence and solitude the Muses love,

And whom they charm they can alone suffice;

Nor ever tedious hour their votaries prove:

This solace now the lonely Psyche tries,

Or, while her hand the curious needle plies,

She learns from lips unseen celestial strains;

Responsive now with their soft voice she vies,

Or bids her plaintive harp express the pains

Which absence sore inflicts where Love all potent reigns.

But melancholy poisons all her joys,

And secret sorrows all her hopes depress,

Consuming languor every bliss destroys,

And sad she droops repining, comfortless.

Her tender lover well the cause can guess,

And sees too plain inevitable fate

Pursue her to the bowers of happiness.

‘Oh, Psyche! most beloved, ere yet too late,

‘Dread the impending ills and prize thy tranquil state.

‘In vain his weeping love he thus advised;

She longs to meet a parent’s sweet embrace,

‘Oh, were their sorrowing hearts at least apprised

‘How Psyche’s wondrous lot all fears may chase;

‘For whom thy love prepared so fair a place!

‘Let but my bliss their fond complaints repress,

‘Let me but once behold a mother’s face,

‘Oh, spouse adored! and in full happiness

‘This love-contented heart its solitude shall bless.

‘Oh, by those beauties I must ne’er behold!

‘The spicy-scented ringlets of thine hair:

‘By that soft neck my loving arms enfold,

‘Crown with a kind consent thy Psyche’s prayer!

‘Their dear embrace, their blessing let me share;

‘So shall I stain our couch with tears no more:

‘But, blest in thee, resign each other care,

‘Nor seek again thy secret to explore,

‘Which yet, denied thy sight, I ever must deplore.

‘Unable to resist her fond request,

Reluctant Cupid thus at last complied,

And sighing clasped her closer to his breast

‘Go then, my Psyche! go, my lovely bride!

‘But let me in thy faith at least confide,

‘That by no subtle, impious arts betrayed,

‘Which, ah! too well I know will all be tried,

‘Thy simply trusting heart shall e’er be swayed

‘The secret veil to rend which fate thy screen hath made.

‘For danger hovers o’er thy smiling days,

‘One only way to shield thee yet I know;

‘Unseen I may securely guard thy ways

‘And save thee from the threatened storm of woe;

‘But forced, if known, my Psyche to forego,

‘Thou never, never must again be mine!

‘What mutual sorrows hence must ceaseless flow!

‘Compelled thy dear embraces to resign,

‘While thou to anguish doomed for lost delights shalt pine.

‘Solace thy mind with hope of future joy!

‘In a dear infant thou shalt see my face;

‘Blest mother soon of an immortal boy,

‘In him his father’s features thou shalt trace!

‘Yet go! for thou art free, the bounds of space

‘Are none for thee: attendant Zephyrs stay,

‘Speak but thy will, and to the wished for place

‘Their lovely mistress swift they shall convey:

‘Yet hither ah! return ere fades the festive day.

‘’Light of my soul, far dearer than the day!’

(Exulting Psyche cries in grateful joy)

‘Me all the bliss of earth could ill repay

‘For thy most sweet, divine society;

‘To thee again with rapture will I fly,

‘Nor with less pleasure hail the star of eve

‘Than when in tedious solitude I sigh;

‘My vows of silent confidence believe,

‘Nor think thy Psyche’s faith will e’er thy love deceive.

‘Her suit obtained, in full contentment blest,

Her eyes at length in placid slumbers close.

Sleep, hapless fair! sleep on thy lover’s breast!

Ah, not again to taste such pure repose!

Till thy sad heart by long experience knows

How much they err, who to their interest blind,

Slight the calm peace which from retirement flows;

And while they think their fleeting joys to bind,

Banish the tranquil bliss which heaven for man designed!

‘A Young Woman Seated on a Wooded Path’, 1908, Albert Auguste Fourie

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). ‘Philosophy of Mind’. ‘Subjective Mind’.

§406

‘(2) The life of feeling, when it becomes a form, a state, of the self-conscious, educated, sober human being, is a disease, in which the individual stands in unmediated relationship with the concrete content of its own self and has its sober consciousness of itself and of the intelligibly ordered world as a state distinct from its feeling-life. This is seen in magnetic somnambulism and related states’ .

‘[Remark] In this summary encyclopaedic exposition it is impossible to supply what would need to be supplied for a proof of the determination we have given of the remarkable state aroused chiefly by animal magnetism, to show, in other words, that the experiences correspond to it. For this the phenomena, intrinsically so complex and so very different one from another, would have first of all to be brought under their universal points of view. The facts, it might seem, are above all in need of verification. But such a verification would, after all, be superfluous for those on whose behalf it was needed; for they make the inquiry extremely easy for themselves by flatly declaring the accounts- infinitely numerous though they be and authenticated by the education, character, etc., of the witnesses-to be mere deception and imposture. They are so fixed in their a priori intellect that no authentication can make any headway against it, and they have even denied what they have seen with their own eyes. In order to believe in this area even what one sees with one’s own eyes, and still more to comprehend it, the first requisite is not to be in bondage to the categories of the intellect’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Here is an account of the second phase of feeling soul, foreshadowed in §405. ‘Magnetic somnambulism’ is sleepwalking induced by mesmerism, consult §379. Upon the subject awakening he or she has no memory of the events that occurred in the trance. A follower of Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) was Amand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de Puységur, (1751–1825), who is said to have given the first account of such post-hypnotic amnesia:

‘I believe in the existence within myself of a power’.

‘From this belief derives my will to exert it. The entire doctrine of Animal Magnetism is contained in the two words: Believe and Want. I believe that I have the power to set into action the vital principle of my fellow-men; I want to make use of it; this is all my science and all my means’.

‘Believe and want, Sirs, and you will do as much as I’.

- from Puységur taught a course in animal magnetism to a local Masonic society, 1785.

A couple of problems here:

Is the determination or definition of magnetic somnambulism (altered state of consciousness, in which diseases are cured), given in the paragraph from Hegel accurate? Does it match up with the reported experiences? This problem is left somewhat hanging and yet in the context the rest of the Remark and in the Addition wherein he endeavours to bring the phenomena under their universal points of view, which is to say to describe their general features. Does magnetic somnambulism actually occur? Hegel has nothing more to say concerning this issue but assumes that the number and authority of the reports establish its occurrence beyond reasonable doubt while sceptics are in thrall to the intellect and its rigid categories. Consult §378.

‘To the concrete being of an individual belongs the entirety of his fundamental interests, the essential and the particular empirical relationships in which he stands to other men and to the world at large. This totality constitutes his actuality, in the sense that it is immanent in him; just now we called it his genius. This genius is not the free mind that wills and thinks; the form of feeling, in which the individual under consideration here is immersed, is, on the contrary, a surrender of his existence as mental self-possession. The first conclusion to be drawn from the account we have given bears on the content: in somnambulism only the sphere of the individually determined world, of particular interests and restricted relationships, enter into consciousness. Scientific discoveries or philosophical concepts and universal truths require a different terrain, thinking that has developed out of the haze of feeling life to free consciousness. It is foolish to expect revelations about Ideas from the somnambulist state’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

On the individually determined world consult §402. On this sense of genius consult §405 and see my previous article.

‘The man of sound sense and intellect is aware in a self-conscious, intelligent way of this actuality of his which makes up the concrete fulfilment of his individuality; he has an alert awareness of it in the form of the interconnection between himself and the determinations of that actuality as an external world distinct from himself, and he is similarly aware of this world as a network of intelligible interconnections. In his subjective ideas and plans he has also before his eyes these intelligible interconnections of his world and the mediation of his ideas and purposes with the objective existences, which are thoroughly mediated among themselves (c£ §398 Remark) . At the same time, this world outside him has its threads in him in such a way that what he actually is for himself, consists of these threads; so that he too would die away internally together with the disappearance of these externalities, unless religion, subjective reason, and character make him more expressly self-supposing and independent of them. In this case he is less susceptible to the form of the state of which here we speak. For the phenomenon of that identity we can recall the effect that the death of beloved relatives, friends, etc. can have on those left behind, so that the one dies or fades away with the loss of the other. (Thus Cato, after the downfall of the Roman republic, could live no longer: his inner actuality was neither wider nor higher than it.) Compare home-sickness, and the like’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

The non-somnambulist is aware in a rational, self-conscious way of the world in which the somnambulist is wholly and unreflectively absorbed and this world is seen as intelligibly ordered and distinct from, albeit connected to, oneself and one’s subjective ideas [Vorstellungen] and plans. Consult §398 on the world of waking consciousness. Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (95–45 BC) was a Stoic hostile to Julius Caesar who killed himself at Utica after the battle of Thapsus. Hegel mentions him elsewhere as having said to hell with Caesar’s virtues they have ruined his country:

‘In this way the world-wide sovereignty of Rome became the property of a single possessor. This important change must not be regarded as a thing of chance; it was necessary -postulated by the circumstances. The democratic constitution could no longer be really maintained in Rome, but only kept up in appearance . Cicero, who had procured himself great respect through his high oratorical talent , and whose learning acquired him considerable influence, always attributes the corrupt state of the republic to individuals and their passions. Plato, whom Cicero professedly followed, had the full consciousness that the Athenian state, as it presented itself to him , could not maintain its existence, and there tore sketched the plan of a perfect constitution accordant with his views . Cicero, on the contrary, does not consider it impossible to preserve the Roman Republic, and only desiderates some temporary assistance for it in its adversity. The nature of the State, and of the Roman State in particular, transcends his comprehension . Cato , too, says of Cæsar : ‘ His virtues be execrated, for they have ruined my country!’

- ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of History’

________________

‘But when the fulfilment of consciousness, its external world and its relationship to that world, is under a veil, and the soul is thus sunk in sleep (in magnetic sleep, catalepsy, and other diseases, for example, those connected with female development, or at the approach of death, etc.) , then that immanent actuality of the individual remains the same substantial totality in the form of a life of feeling, which is inwardly seeing, inwardly aware. Because it is the developed, adult, educated consciousness which is reduced to this state of feeling, it does retain along with its content the formality of its being-for-self, a formal intuition and awareness, which, however, does not get as far as the judgement of consciousness by which the content of consciousness, when it is healthy and awake, presents itself to it as outer objectivity. The individual is thus a monad which is inwardly aware of its actuality, the self-intuition of the genius. Thus the characteristic feature in such awareness is that the individual can be immediately aware of, intuit, the content in this immanence-the very same content which is objective for healthy consciousness as intelligible actuality, and to be aware of which consciousness in its sober state needs intelligible mediation in the whole of its real expansion. This intuition is a son of clairvoyance; for it is awareness in the unseparated substantiality of the genius, and is situated in the essential core of the interconnexion, and so is not subject to the series of mediating conditions, external one to another, which sober consciousness has to go through and in view of which it is restricted in its own external individuality. But such clairvoyance, because, in its hazy obscurity, the content is not set out in an intelligible interconnection, is at the mercy of all its own contingency of feeling, of imagining, etc., not to mention that ideas of others (see below) intrude into its vision. It is thus impossible to make out whether clairvoyants see correctly more than they get wrong, or vice versa.- But it is absurd to regard this visionary state as an elevation of the mind and as a more genuine state, inherently capable of discovering universal truths’.

On the state of mind described here consult §379. Anyone in this state is at some level aware of the world inhabited by the normal person and yet deprived of its normal intelligible structure, and the somnambulist since he or she he has been an adult consciousness does not merely revert to the condition of the embryo but he or she retains the formality (das Formelle) of being-for-self and yet he or she draws no distinction between him or herself and the world, between the subjective and the objective, and so he or she is a self-enclosed monad aware only of its own actuality, consult §402. He or she discerns none of the usual rational interconnections of things and so what we know only by inference and conjecture the somnambulist knows directly. Clairvoyance (Hellsehen) is the capacity to acquire information that is not at the time known to anyone else and is not accessible to the senses as we know them. For instance we ordinarily learn of a storm brewing from the behaviour of animals, or from weather reports, and yet a clairvoyant may well know of it directly and in what way can he or she do that if we cannot observe atmospheric disturbances and if his or her world is the same as ours, other than that it is compressed into uniform subjectivity? We may suppose the reason to be he or she like other animals senses stimuli that are below the threshold of our conscious awareness. Consult 380 and 401.

‘Girl in Blue Arranging Flowers’, 1915, Frederick Carl Frieseke

Hegel gives some citations from Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ which I understand to be inaccurate even in quotation marks so I have been tracking down the original. He is summarising.

‘Plato had a better understanding of the relationship of prophecy in general to sober conscious awareness than do many modems, who were quick to suppose that in Platonic conceptions of enthusiasm they had found an authority for their belief in the sublimity of the revelations of somnambulistic vision. In the Timaeus (Stephanus edition, Ill, pp. 71 f), Plato says that to give the irrational part of the soul also some degree of participation in the truth, God created the liver and gave it manteia, the capacity for having apparitions. Of God’s having given this power of prophecy to human irrationality, there is, he adds, this sufficient proof: no man in his right mind is blessed with a genuine apparition, unless his intellect is fettered in sleep or distracted by illness or an enthusiasm. ‘What was said long ago is correct: to play one’s own part and to know oneself is the privilege of sobriety’. Plato notes quite correctly the bodily aspect of such vision and awareness, and also the possibility of the truth of apparitions-but also their subordination to rational consciousness’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

‘For the authors of our being, remembering the command of their father when he bade them create the human race as good as they could, that they might correct our inferior parts and make them to attain a measure of truth, placed in the liver the seat of divination. And herein is a proof that God has given the art of divination not to the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man. No man, when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration ; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession. And he who would understand what he remembers to have been said, whether in a dream or when he was awake, by the prophetic and inspired nature, or would determine by reason the meaning of the apparitions which he has seen, and what indications they afford to this man or that, of past, present or future good and evil, must first recover his wits. But, while he continues demented, he cannot judge of the visions which he sees or the words which he utters ; the ancient saying is very true, that “only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself and his own affairs.” And for this reason it is customary to appoint interpreters to be judges of the true inspiration. Some persons call them prophets ; they are quite unaware that they are only the expositors of dark sayings and visions, and are not to be called prophets at all, but only interpreters of prophecy. Such is the nature of the liver, which is placed as we have described in order that it may give prophetic intimations. During the life of each individual these intimations are plainer, but after his death the liver becomes blind, and delivers oracles too obscure to be intelligible. The neighbouring organ [the spleen] is situated on the left-hand side, and is constructed with a view of keeping the liver bright and pure — like a napkin, always ready prepared and at hand to clean the mirror. And hence, when any impurities arise in the region of the liver by reason of disorders of the body, the loose nature of the spleen, which is composed of a hollow and bloodless tissue, receives them all and dears them away, and when filled with the unclean matter, swells and festers, but, again, when the body is purged, settles down into the same place as before, and is humbled’.

- Plato, ‘Timaeus’

{Not sure my liver is up to any of that, it barely does what it is supposed to]. Sobriety’translates den Besonnenen, which translates Plato’s sophrosyne. Consult §377. The somnambulist spoken of here is not a sleepwalker in particular but anyone in a hypnotic, or quasi-hypnotic, state. Hegel rrequently uses Somnambulismus in a general way while Schlafwandeln applies precisely to‘sleepwalking. Genius is used in two senses, when it first appears it denotes the conscious, self-aware person, the magnetizer or hypnotist comparable to the pregnant woman in contrast to the embryo in §405, and yet the two genii with which the somnambulist is in relationship are the deep feeling-lives of the somnambulist and the magnetizer. Concerning this ambiguity consult §405. Hegel takes the substantial identity established between the two souls as evidence for the immateriality of the soul. The argument runs as follows:

1. The souls merge into one.
2. Their respective bodies remain distinct.
3. So the soul is distinct from its body.

Nonetheless it is not so evident why the relationship between somnambulist and magnetizer have to differ on an important way from the relationship between a computer and its operator. There may also be a conflation of two arguments against the reliability and/or extraordinariness of the somnambulist’s pronouncements. First, it is not evident whether the pronouncements stem from the somnambulist or the magnetizer and second, the pronouncements vary in accordance with the culture of the somnambulist. This would raise doubts concerning the authority and extraordinariness of the pronouncements even if no magnetizer were involved, although the problem may be tackled through observing what occurs if the somnambulist and the magnetizer are of different cultures.

‘In this feeling substantiality the contrast to external objectivity is absent. Similarly within itself the subject has a unity, in which the particularities of feeling have disappeared, so that, when the activity of the sense-organs is asleep, the common feeling adapts itself to the particular functions; one sees, hears, etc. with the fingers, and especially with the pit of the stomach’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’,

In feeling substantiality barriers come down and oppositions are eradicated and there is no contrast between oneself and the external world and the usual contrast between different senses also vanishes. The senses are usually allocated to distinct sense-organs, we see with our eyes, not with our ears or our fingers, and so on, and yet the sense-organs are now in abeyance, and their role is assumed by the common feeling (Gemeingefühl), which employs various unusual parts of the body for this purpose. The common feeling is a descendant of the common sense organ of all the sense-organs postulated by Aristotle in ‘On Youth and Old Age’, ‘On Life and Death’, ‘On Sleep and Waking’, and ‘De Anima, which unites and coordinates the perceptions of the special senses.

‘Further, there cannot be a special sense-organ for the common sensibles either, i.e. the objects which we perceive incidentally through this or that special sense, e.g. movement, rest, figure, magnitude, number, unity; for all these we perceive by movement, e.g. magnitude by movement, and therefore also figure (for figure is a species of magnitude), what is at rest by the absence of movement: number is perceived by the negation of continuity, and by the special sensibles; for each sense perceives one class of sensible objects. So that it is clearly impossible that there should be a special sense for any one of the common sensibles, e.g. movement; for, if that were so, our perception of it would be exactly parallel to our present perception of what is sweet by vision. That is so because we have a sense for each of the two qualities, in virtue of which when they happen to meet in one sensible object we are aware of both contemporaneously. If it were not like this our perception of the common qualities would always be incidental, i.e. as is the perception of Cleon’s son, where we perceive him not as Cleon’s son but as white, and the white thing which we really perceive happens to be Cleon’s son. But in the case of the common sensibles there is already in us a general sensibility which enables us to perceive them directly; there is therefore no special sense required for their perception: if there were, our perception of them would have been exactly like what has been above described. The senses perceive each other’s special objects incidentally; not because the percipient sense is this or that special sense, but because all form a unity: this incidental perception takes place whenever sense is directed at one [425b] and the same moment to two disparate qualities in one and the same object, e.g. to the bitterness and the yellowness of bile, the assertion of the identity of both cannot be the act of either of the senses; hence the illusion of sense, e.g. the belief that if a thing is yellow it is bile. It might be asked why we have more senses than one. Is it to prevent a failure to apprehend the common sensibles, e.g. movement, magnitude, and number, which go along with the special sensibles? Had we no sense but sight, and that sense no object but white, they would have tended to escape our notice and everything would have merged for us into an indistinguishable identity because of the concomitance of colour and magnitude. As it is, the fact that the common sensibles are given in the objects of more than one sense reveals their distinction from each and all of the special sensibles’.

- ‘De Anima’

Aristotle locates it in the heart and it is in particular associated with the sense of touch or feeling because this sense is presupposed by the other senses as he explains in ‘On Sleep and Waking’ and ‘De Anima’. So Hegel is entitled to refer to it as the common feeling albeit in the Zusatz he calls it the common sense. See below, §406.

‘To comprehend means, for intellectual reflexion, to recognize the series of mediations between a phenomenon and another reality with which it is connected, to discern what is called the course of nature, i.e. in accordance with the laws and relationships of the intellect, for example, causality, grounds, etc. The life of feeling, even when it still retains a merely formal awareness, as in the diseased states mentioned, is just that form of immediacy, in which the distinctions of the subjective and objective, of intelligent personality in contrast to an external world, and those relationships of finitude between them, are absent. The comprehension of this interconnexion, devoid of relationships and yet completely fulfilled, is made intrinsically impossible by the presupposition of independent personalities, contrasting with each other and with the content in the form of an objective world, and by the presupposition of the absoluteness of spatial and material asunderness in general’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Comprehend is begreifen a verb giving birth to Begriff, concept, notion. consult §378. Begreifen means tracing the connections between one phenomenon and another but only for intellectual reflection (die verständige Reflexion), not necessarily for speculative reason. On the intellect consult §378. On Reflection consult §§384 389. This account of comprehension bears upon somnambulism in two ways, first the somnambulist cannot comprehend anything because for him or her no phenomenon, for instance rain, is related to another, for instance clouds, by a series of mediations. And second as non-somnambulists we cannot comprehend the somnambulist, because he or she is not related to anything else by mediations. The external world and everything in it is available to him or her immediately and directly. It may be objected that it is only from his or her own point of view that the somnambulist is related immediately to everything to which he or she is related. For the somnambulist the magnetizer is a part of him or herself, not something related to him or her, but we can see that the magnetizer is distinct from the somnambulist, causally affecting him or her by his words and gestures. A question arises as to why we cannot comprehend the somnambulist from outside, in terms of his or her intellectual relationship to the magnetizer, but the answer is, as Hegel implies, the laws and relationships of the intellect, relationships of finitude, that is external relations between things that are distinct from each other and hence bounded or finite cannot do what we require of them. Entities distinct from and outside the somnambulist cannot explain how he or she is immediately aware of all of them, to comprehend the somnambulist we must ditch the assumption that such things, personalities, the objective world, actually are quite distinct from and independent of him or her, and this kind of comprehending will then be quite different from the comprehending of intellectual reflection. See below.

‘Woman in Blue Reading a Letter’, between 1663 and 1664, Johannes Vermeer

‘We therefore now have to consider the second form of that magical relationship, namely the real subjectivity of the feeling soul. We call this subjectivity real because here, instead of the inseparable, substantial soul-unity dominant in dreaming and also in the state of the foetus and in the relationship of the individual to his genius, there emerges an actually twofold soul-life, which releases its two sides to a peculiar reality of their own. The first of these two sides is the unmediated relationship of the feeling soul to its individual world and substantial actuality; the second side, by contrast, is the mediated relation of the soul to its objectively interconnected world. When these two sides diverge and break loose from their reliance on each other, this must be designated an illness, since this divergence, in contrast to the modes of formal subjectivity considered in the Zusatz to §405, does not constitute a moment of objective life itself. Just as bodily illness consists in the fixation of an organ or system in opposition to the universal harmony of the individual life and such obstruction and separation sometimes advances so far that the particular activity of a system makes itself into a centre concentrating into itself the rest of the organism’s activity, into a rampant growth, so too in the soul-life illness results if the merely soulful side of the organism, becoming independent of the power of mental consciousness, usurps the latter’s function and the mind, in losing control of the soulful component belonging to it, no longer remains in command of itself but itself sinks to the form of the soulful and in this way surrenders the objective relationship to the actual world essential to the sound mind, i.e. , the relationship mediated by sublation of what is externally posited. That it is possible for the soulful side to become independent in relation to the mind and even to usurp its function lies in the fact that the soulful is both distinct from the mind and in itself identical with it. When it separates from the mind and posits itself for itself, the soulful gives itself the semblance of being what the mind in truth is, namely, the soul that is for itself in the form of universality. But the illness of soul arising from that separation is not merely to be compared with bodily illness, but is more or less bound up with it, because when the soulful breaks loose from the mind, the bodiliness necessary for the empirical existence of the mind as well as of the soulful, is divided between these two diverging sides and accordingly itself becomes something separated within itself and therefore diseased’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

On magic consult and on the distinction between formal’ subjectivity and what is now called real subjectivity consult §405. In formal subjectivity, only the soulful side (das Seelenhafte) is involved, while the mind is that of another individual (the mother) if it is in play at all. In real subjectivity both the soul and the mind are initially in play but the soul supplants the mind. The healthy mind projects material from itself into the external world and then sublates, that is, abolishes and preserves, its externality, hence establishing a relationship between itself and an objective world distinct from itself. When the soul takes control the distinction between mind and world is eradicated and so too is the relationship between them and everything is dropped into one mix. On physical disease consult the ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’, §§371–4.

‘Now the diseased states in which such a separation of the soulful from mental consciousness emerges are very varied in kind; almost any illness can advance to the point of this separation. But here in the philosophical treatment of our subject we do not have to pursue this indeterminate multiplicity of diseased states but only to establish the main forms of the universal which shapes itself in them in various ways. Among the illnesses in which this universal earl appear are sleepwalking, catalepsy, the onset of puberty in young women, the state of pregnancy, also St Vitus s dance, and the moment of approaching death as well, if death brings about the relevant splitting of life into a weakening healthy, mediated consciousness and a soulful awareness approaching ever closer to complete ascendancy; but especially we must examine here the state which has been called animal magnetism, both when it develops by itself in an individual and when it is produced in a particular manner in the individual by another individual. Mental causes, particularly religious and political exaltation, can also bring about the relevant separation of soul-life. In the war of the Cevennes, for example, the free emergence of the soulful showed up as a prophetic gift present to a high degree in children, in girls and especially in old people. But the most remarkable example of such exaltation is the famous Jeanne d’Arc, in whom we earl see, on the one hand, the patriotic enthusiasm of a quite pure, simple soul and, on the other, a kind of magnetic state’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

The separation of the soul and the mind is a general or universal condition that appears in various forms such as catalepsy or catatonic schizophrenia in which the patient remains immobile for long periods, St Vitus’s dance, a disorder involving convulsive movements, and experiences associated with the approach of death, for instance, out of body experiences. On animal magnetism consult §379. The Cevennes are a range of mountains in southern France. The war of the Cevennes was an armed uprising in the early eighteenth century in the Bas-Languedoc and Cevennes regions in response to Louis XIV’s persecution of Protestants following his revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes which had guaranteed Protestants’ religious and civil liberties.

……

Tangerine Dream — ‘Jeanne D´Arc’:

…..

‘After these preliminary remarks we propose to consider here the main individual forms in which a divergence of the soulful and objective consciousness shows up. We hardly need recall here what we have already said about the difference between these two modes of man’s response to his world: namely, that objective consciousness is aware of the world as an objectivity external to it, infinitely manifold, but at all its points necessarily interconnected, containing nothing unmediated within it; and it responds to the world in a corresponding way, i.e., in an equally manifold, determinate, mediated, and necessary way, and is therefore able to enter into relation with a determinate form of external objectivity only by a determinate sense organ, for example, is able to see only with the ryes; whereas feeling, or the subjective mode of awareness, can dispense wholly, or at least in part, with the mediations and conditions indispensable to objective awareness, can, for example, perceive visible things without the aid of the eyes and without the mediation of light. This immediate awareness appears first and foremost in so-called metal and water-diviners. By this we understand people who in a fully waking state, without the mediation of the sense of sight, detect metal or water lying under the ground. The not infrequent occurrence of such people is beyond any doubt. Amoretti has, he assures us, discovered this peculiarity of feeling in more than four hundred individuals, some of them entirely healthy’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

This is the only time Hegel mentions Italian scholar Carlo Amoretti (1741–1816).

‘The second phenomenon to be considered here of immediate or feeling awareness, has this in common with the first just discussed: in both an object is sensed without the mediation of the specific sense to which the object is mainly related. But at the same time, this second phenomenon is distinguished from the first by the fact that in it a response takes place that is not so entirely unmediated as in the first, since the specific sense in question is replaced either by the common sense active mainly in the pit of the stomach, or by the sense of touch. Such feeling is displayed both in catalepsy in general, a state in which the organs are paralysed, and especially in sleep-walking, a kind of cataleptic state in which dreaming expresses itself not merely in speech bur also in walking about and gives rise to other actions, underlying which there is an often accurate feeling of the relationships of surrounding objects’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Common sense here is Gemeinsinn, not, as in the Remark, Gemeingefühl. See above. Hegel employs the expression in its original meaning of a central reserve into which the five senses pool their contributions so that the unification of their results can give rise to coherent perception. The expression stems from Aristotle’s ‘de Anima’ and the idea goes back to Plato’s ;Theaetetus’.

Socrates If, then, anyone should ask you, ‘By what does a man see white and black colors and by what does he hear high and low tones?’ you would, I fancy, say, ‘By his eyes and ears’.

Theaetetus Yes, I should.

Socrates The easy use of words and phrases and the avoidance of strict precision is in general a sign of good breeding; indeed, the opposite is hardly worthy of a gentleman, but sometimes it is necessary, as now it is necessary to object to your answer, in so far as it is incorrect. Just consider; which answer is more correct, that our eyes are that by which we see or that through which we see, and our ears that by which or that through which we hear?

Theaetetus I think, Socrates, we perceive through, rather than by them, in each case.

Socrates Yes, for it would be strange indeed, my boy, if there are many senses ensconced within us, as if we were so many wooden horses of Troy, and they do not all unite in one power, whether we should call it soul or something else, by which we perceive through these as instruments the objects of perception.

Theaetetus I think what you suggest is more likely than the other way.

- ‘Theaetetus’

‘The third phenomenon of immediate awareness is this. Without the involvement of any specific sense and without the common sense becoming active in an individual part of the body, an indeterminate sensation gives rise to an intimation or clairvoyance, a vision of something not sensibly near but distant in space or in time, of something future or past. Now though it is often difficult to distinguish merely subjective visions relating to non-existent objects from those visions which have something actual for their content, yet this distinction must be maintained here. The first kind of vision too does occur in somnambulism, but mostly in a predominantly physical state of illness, for example in the heat of a fever, even in waking consciousness. An example of such a subjective vision is Friedrich Nicolai, who, in a waking state, saw with perfectly clarity other houses in the street than those actually present there, and yet knew that this was an illusion. The predominantly physical ground of the poetic illusion of this otherwise thoroughly prosaic individual revealed itself when the illusion was dispelled by the application of leeches to the rectum’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811) was a writer, a champion of the Enlightenment and an opponent of Romanticism. Quite how Hegel can just drop in leeches to the rectum so matter-of-factly .. maybe it was normal medical practise .. thankfully we have moved on … just the idea of it brings water to my eyes.

‘The soul is the all-pervading, not existing merely in a particular individual; for as we have already said earlier, the soul must be conceived as the truth, as the ideality, of everything material, as the entirely universal in which all differences are only ideal and which does not one-sidedly confront the Other, but overarches the Other. But the soul is, at the same time, an individual soul, determined in a particular way; it has therefore various determinations or particularizations within itself; these appear, for example, as urges and inclinations. These determinations, though distinct from each other, are nevertheless for themselves only something universal. Only in me as a determinate individual do they first acquire a determinate content. Thus, for example, love for parents, relatives, friends, etc. becomes individualized in me; for I cannot be a friend, etc. in general, I am necessarily this friend living with these friends in this place at this time and in this situation. All the universal soul-determinations individualized in me and experienced by me constitute my actuality, are therefore not left to my discretion but rather form the powers of my life and belong to my actual being just as much as my head or my breast belong to my living embodiment. I am this whole circle of determinations: they have coalesced with my individuality; each individual point in this circle- for example, the fact that I am now sitting here-shows itself exempt from the wilfulness of my representation by the fact that it is placed in the totality of my self-feeling as a link in a chain of determinations or, in other words, is embraced by the feeling of the totality of my actuality. But in so far as I am at first only a feeling soul, not yet waking, free self-consciousness, I am aware of this actuality of mine, of this world of mine, in a wholly immediate, quite abstractly positive manner, since, as already noted, at this standpoint I have not yet detached the world from myself, not yet posited it as an external entity, and my awareness of it is therefore not yet mediated by the opposition of the subjective and objective and by sublation of this opposition’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Consult §389 and §403 for the relationship of the feeling soul to the body. A grander claim is presented here, that the soul pervades not only its body but everything. If it pervaded only its body it may still exist only in a definite individual and this would not be sufficient to account for its awareness of remote events, and so on. Furthermore, there is in a way only one soul, and this too is required to account for such somnambulistic phenomena as the rapport between the magnetizer and his patient. But the Hegelian model for the all-pervading universal soul appears to be the relation of an individual soul to its body. My left ankle is distinct from my right elbow but pervaded by a single soul they belong to a single, unitary body. My body is other’ than my soul yet the soul overarches (consult §389) the body, animating it, controlling its movements, and feeling simultaneous pains, say, in my left elbow and my right ankle. In a not wholly dissimilar way the somnambulist feels the occurrence of far-off events. I also would feel them if only I did not establish the distinction between the subjective and the objective, myself and the world. On the soul as the entirely universal consult §406 below.

The soul as such is entirely universal (das ganz Allgemeine) and hence involves the two other moments or phases of the concept, particularity and individuality. First it involves determinations or particularizations such as love of friends. Love of friends is not universal in the way that the soul as such is because it is only one determination or particularization of the soul, distinct from others, such as love of parents, and yet such determinations are still universal, indefinite in their content and capable of exemplication by several individuals. The final step is to assign love of friends to a definite individual and then it is this person’s love of these friends, and so on. The assumption is that the individualization of love entails the individualization of its object. Love of parents is normally love of one’s own definite parents, love of women may be love of no definite women, but of women in general, and these individualized determinations constitute my actuality and are not‘left to my discretion. Even the fact that I am sitting here is exempt from the wilfulness of my representation [Vorstellens]. Can I not choose my friends or where to sit? Or imagine sitting somewhere else or having different friends? There are three points borne in mind here: First, consult §406 (ββ), threads connecting me to the external world make me what I am but this has application only to certain special relatives, friends, and so on, and to broad features of my world such as the fact that it is the Roman republic, not to such matters as the precise place at which I am sitting. Second, these determinations are linked together in a chain in such a way that if any one were different all the others would be different hence if I were not now sitting here then I would not have the friends that I do, and so on. Hence I cannot coherently suppose or imagine that I am not sitting here without supposing or imagining a radical change in my individual world, the world that makes me what I am. Third, the concern is with feeling. I can suppose or imagine that I am somewhere else, I can choose my friends and where to sit, and yet these capacities presuppose a higher level of mind than that of feeling, the detachment of myself as an I or ego from my surroundings and my relationships. I cannot do these things simply as a feeling soul, even when I become a self-conscious ego establishing an opposition of the subjective and objective and sublating it as I get to know more about the world, the level of feeling still persists, some changes in my world induce malaise in me, the collapse of my bed in which I do all my work perhaps, though not usually a change in its position, unless there is an earthquake, there was a tremor a while ago in the night that moved my bed ever so slightly, but I woke up thinking someone was in my room.

‘Lady in the Boudoir’, 1879, Gustav Holweg-Glantschnigg

‘The content of this clairvoyant awareness, we must now determine in more detail. (1) First, there are states in which the soul is aware of a content it had long since forgotten and which, in waking, it is no longer able to bring into consciousness. This phenomenon occurs in various illnesses. The most striking phenomenon of this kind is when, in illnesses, people talk in a language which, though they have studied it in early youth, they can no longer speak in their waking state. It also happens that common folk, who normally are used to speaking only Low German with ease, in the magnetic state speak in High German without effort. An equally indisputable case is where people in such a state recite with perfect facility something they had read a considerable time before, which they have never learned by rote and which has vanished from their waking consciousness. For instance, someone recited from Young’s Night Thoughts a long passage of which he no longer knew anything when awake. A particularly remarkable instance too is a boy who, while quite young, was operated on for a brain injury caused by a fall and gradually lost his memory until he no longer knew what he had done an hour earlier; when put into a magnetic state, however, he regained his memory so completely that he could state the cause of his illness, the instruments used in the operation he had undergone, and the persons who had participated in it.

Edward Young (1683–1765), The complaint, or Night-thoughts on life, death, & immortality (1742).

By Nature’s law, what may be, may be now;

There’s no prerogative in human hours:

In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,

Than man’s presumption on tomorrow’s dawn?

Where is tomorrow? In another world.

For numbers this is certain; the reverse

Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,

This peradventure, infamous for lies,

As on a rock of adamant we build

Our mountain hopes; spin out eternal schemes,

As we the fatal sisters would outspin,

And, big with life’s futurities, expire.

Not even Philander had bespoke his shroud;

Nor had he cause, a warning was denied;

How many fall as sudden, not as safe?

As sudden, though for years admonished home:

Of human ills the last extreme beware,

Beware, Lorenzo! a slow-sudden death.

How dreadful that deliberate surprise?

Be wise today, ’tis madness to defer;

Next day the fatal precedent will plead;

Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life:

Procrastination is the thief of time,

Year after year it steals, till all are fled,

And to the mercies of a moment leaves

The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

If not so frequent, would not this be strange?

That ’tis so frequent, this is stranger still.

Of man’s miraculous mistakes, this bears

The palm, “That all men are about to live,”

For ever on the brink of being born:

All pay themselves the compliment to think

They, one day, shall not drivel; and their pride

On this reversion takes up ready praise;

At least, their own; their future selves applauds;

How excellent that life they ne’er will lead?

Time lodged in their own hands is folly’s vails;

That lodged in Fate’s, to wisdom they consign;

The thing they can’t but purpose, they postpone;

’Tis not in folly, not to scorn a fool;

And scarce in human wisdom to do more:

All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage: when young, indeed,

In full content, we sometimes nobly rest,

Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise:

At thirty man suspects himself a fool;

Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;

At fifty chides his infamous delay,

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;

In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves, and re-resolves:then dies the same.

- ‘Night Thoughts’ (first night).

‘But what can seem even more wonderful than the awareness, just considered, of a content already deposited in the interior of the soul, is the unmediated awareness of events which are still external to the feeling subject. For with respect to this second content of the clairvoyant soul, we know that the existence of the external is tied to space and time, and our ordinary consciousness is mediated by these two forms of asunderness. First, as regards what is spatially distant from us, we can be aware of it in so far as we are waking consciousness only on condition that we sub late the distance in a mediated way. But this condition does not obtain for the clairvoyant soul. Space pertains not to the soul but to external nature; and this externality, in being apprehended by the soul, ceases to be spatial, since, transformed by the soul’s ideality, it remains external neither to itself nor to us. Consequently, when free intellectual consciousness sinks to the form of the merely feeling soul, the subject is no longer tied to space. Instances of this independence of the soul from space have occurred in great number. Here we must distinguish two cases. Either the events are absolutely external to the clairvoyant subject who is aware of them without any mediation; or, on the contrary, they have already begun to acquire for the subject the form of something internal, therefore of something non- alien to it, of something mediated, through being known in an entirely objective manner by another subject, between whom and the clairvoyant individual there subsists such a complete unity of souls that what is in the objective consciousness of the former also penetrates the soul of the latter. We have to consider the form of clairvoyance mediated by the consciousness of another subject only later, with the magnetic state proper. Here, however, we must deal with the first-mentioned case, that of thoroughly unmediated awareness of spatially remote, external events’.

-’Philosophy of Mind’

Space and time are forms of asunderness (Formen des Aussereinander) in that they separate one thing from another. Huddersfield and Newcastle are in a different places and because they are not adjacent they are separated by a spatial interval. I can see things happening at some distance from myself but if I am in Huddersfield I cannot know about small-scale events so far away as Newcastle, unless I sublate the distance by a mediation, for instance LinkedIn or almost simultaneously by YouTube. The clairvoyant [schauende] soul does not need to do this, it can be immediately aware of a remote event and this is possible because space, the medium that separates a normal person from remote events, pertains to external nature and not to the soul. Space does not pertain to the soul. Why not? When I feel or otherwise apprehend something at a distance it is in a manner of speaking no longer at a distance but in me. I am immediately aware of the position of my left arm and of a pain in it and as far as my soul extends its awareness is immediate. This can explain what such clairvoyance is like yet what of the extension of its immediate awareness beyond the confines of my body to remote places? My soul might have no exact location in my body but it is located where my body is. How can it if I am in Huddersfield feel events in London? The implication is that the soul is universal in a more substantial sense than that in which, say, blueness is universal. There is to begin with blueness and then there are specific or particular shades of blue. Finally there are individual blue things. Universal blueness does not exist apart from individual blue things. But universal soul does exist apart from individual souls, souls are made individual, in the case of humans at least, by free intellectual consciousness. Two individualized souls, one in Huddersfield, the other in Newcastle, are separated by the spatial interval yet if one of them sinks to the form of the merely feeling soul the barriers are down and it enters the network of the all-pervading universal soul. It can now feel events both in Huddersfield and in Newcastle, and maybe read the mind of the other soul even if the other soul is still restricted by intellectual consciousness.

Is this what Hegel is saying? Maybe,but if we accept the authenticity of the phenomena in question the theory is a reasonable way of explaining them. In §380 an alternative explanation is implied whereby people who sink from intellectual consciousness to the feeling soul are sensitive to stimuli which we usually overlook. Consult §380 and 406. This account would not be in need of a substantial universal soul, merely an acute, if usually latent, sensitivity of individual souls but it is a simple enough matter to doubt the authenticity of the phenomena and in particular Hegel s inclined to emphasis the successes of putative clairvoyants and to ignore their failures and ignores the issue whether or not their success-rate is of statistic significance.

‘… the clairvoyant soul also rises above the condition of time, just as it rises above the condition of space. We have already seen above that the soul in the state of clairvoyance can make present to itself again something completely removed from its waking consciousness by time gone by. A more interesting question, however, for representation is whether people are also able to be lucidly aware of what is separated from them by future time. To this question we have the following reply. First and foremost we can say that, just as representational consciousness errs when it holds the above-discussed clairvoyant vision of an individuality entirely removed by its spatial distance from the bodily eye, to be something better than the awareness of truths of reason, so representation is involved in a similar error when it imagines that a perfectly certain and intellectual awareness of the future would be something very sublime, and that we have to look around for grounds to console ourselves for our lack of such an awareness. On the contrary, it must be said that it would drive one to despair with boredom to be aware in advance of one’s fortunes with complete determinacy and then to live through them in each and every detail in succession. But a foreknowledge of this kind belongs among the impossibilities; for what is still only in the future and therefore something that is merely in itself, simply cannot become an object of perceptual intellectual consciousness, since only what exists, only what has attained to the individuality of sensory presence, is perceived. The human mind is, of course, able to rise above an awareness concerned exclusively with sensibly present individuality; but the absolute elevation over it only takes place in the conceptual cognition of the eternal; for the eternal, unlike the sensory individual, is not affected by the alternation of coming-to-be and passing-away and is, therefore, neither past nor future, but the absolutely present, raised above time and containing sublated within itself all distinctions of time’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Aside from recovery of buried past knowledge Hegel discusses three types of knowledge that transcend time.

‘An old song’, William John Hennessy (1839–1917)

First, perceptual acquaintance with a future event comparable in vivacity to our perception of present events. This would make life impossibly boring and in addition it cannot occur. A future event is merely in itself while only what exists can be properly perceived. Second, cognition of the eternal or of truths of reason, these one assumes include not only philosophical and mathematical truths but also general truths about for instance astronomy that enable us to predict future events. Such cognition occurs but not in the magnetic state. Third, the clairvoyant’s conditioned, that is limited to personal affairs, and vague awareness of future events. This also happens in particular in less than fully civilized yet not primitive, cultures such as prevailed in the Scottish Highlands.

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), writing from Scotland presents a sympathetic if somewhat credulous, account of second sight:

‘It is the common talk of the Lowland Scots, that the notion of the Second Sight is wearing away with other superstitions; and that its reality is no longer supposed, but by the grossest people. How far its prevalence ever extended, or what ground it has lost, I know not. The Islanders of all degrees, whether of rank or understanding, universally admit it, except the Ministers, who universally deny it, and are suspected to deny it, in consequence of a system, against conviction. One of them honestly told me, that he came to Sky with a resolution not to believe it. Strong reasons for incredulity will readily occur. This faculty of seeing things out of sight is local, and commonly useless. It is a breach of the common order of things, without any visible reason or perceptible benefit. It is ascribed only to a people very little enlightened; and among them, for the most part, to the mean and the ignorant. To the confidence of these objections it may be replied, that by presuming to determine what is fit, and what is beneficial, they presuppose more knowledge of the universal system than man has attained; and therefore depend upon principles too complicated and extensive for our comprehension; and that there can be no security in the consequence, when the premises are not understood; that the Second Sight is only wonderful because it is rare, for, considered in itself, it involves no more difficulty than dreams, or perhaps than the regular exercise of the cogitative faculty; that a general opinion of communicative impulses, or visionary representations, has prevailed in all ages and all nations; that particular instances have been given, with such evidence, as neither Bacon nor Bayle has been able to resist; that sudden impressions, which the event has verified, have been felt by more than own or publish them; that the Second Sight of the Hebrides implies only the local frequency of a power, which is nowhere totally unknown; and that where we are unable to decide by antecedent reason, we must be content to yield to the force of testimony. By pretension to Second Sight, no profit was ever sought or gained. It is an involuntary affection, in which neither hope nor fear are known to have any part. Those who profess to feel it, do not boast of it as a privilege, nor are considered by others as advantageously distinguished. They have no temptation to feign; and their hearers have no motive to encourage the imposture. To talk with any of these seers is not easy. There is one living in Sky, with whom we would have gladly conversed; but he was very gross and ignorant, and knew no English. The proportion in these countries of the poor to the rich is such, that if we suppose the quality to be accidental, it can very rarely happen to a man of education; and yet on such men it has sometimes fallen. There is now a Second Sighted gentleman in the Highlands, who complains of the terrors to which he is exposed. The foresight of the Seers is not always prescience; they are impressed with images, of which the event only shews them the meaning. They tell what they have seen to others, who are at that time not more knowing than themselves, but may become at last very adequate witnesses, by comparing the narrative with its verification. To collect sufficient testimonies for the satisfaction of the publick, or of ourselves, would have required more time than we could bestow. There is, against it, the seeming analogy of things confusedly seen, and little understood, and for it, the indistinct cry of national persuasion, which may be perhaps resolved at last into prejudice and tradition. I never could advance my curiosity to conviction; but came away at last only willing to believe’.

-’Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland’.

One difficulty with the third type of knowledge that transcends time is that the clairvoyant is elevated above time, this is why he or she can see future events yet a question arises as to how we or he or she can tell that the vision refers to a future event rather than a past event or a spatially remote present event. An answer may be that the vision has no temporal index, that from its intrinsic character we cannot tell whether it refers to a future event or not, yet we can search our memories and records to see whether such an event has occurred in the past, and wait to see whether it happens in the future. As it happens John William Dunne (1875–1949) in ‘An Experiment With Time’, 1927, and ‘The Serial Universe’, 1934, describes his endeavours to assess the predictive power of his dreams in such ways as this.

John William Dunne, who features in James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’.

‘… I congratulate myself, for the same and other reasons — as being again hopelessly vitiated by what I have now resolved to call the dime and cash diamond fallacy)’

[Dunne’s ‘An Experiment with Time’ describes ‘the great Time Fallacy’ (common man’s notion concerning time)]:-

;The tasks above are as the flasks below, saith the emerald canticle of Hermes and all’s loth and pleasestir, are we told, on excellent inkbottle authority, solarsystemised, seriolcosmically, in a more and more almightily expanding universe under one, there is rhymeless reason to believe, original sun. Securely judges orb terrestrial’.

[Dunne, ‘The Serial Universe’].

But according to Hegel the clairvoyant’s visions have a tincture of futurity, an intrinsic quality that points to, but does not explicitly indicate, its future occurrence and this is possible because in the concentrated state of the clairvoyant the ‘determinations of space and time are also contained, albeit under a veil but these confer on the experience only a certain temporal quality and not a quantum. That is to say, no definite date or period of time is attached to the vision. The distance in the future to which it refers must be inferred from the intensity of the vision in the way in which we can infer from the intensity of a fever how long it will last and the clairvoyant is able to make such an inference and to state the time of the event in terms intelligible to waking consciousness since he is a representer (ein Vorstellendes) as well as an intuitive feeler, and the fallibility of clairvoyants depends upon their interpretation of the vision rather than on the vision itself.

‘… when this rapport attains the highest degree of intimacy and strength, there occurs, fifthly, the phenomenon in which the clairvoyant subject knows, sees, and feels, not merely about, but in another subject and, without directly attending to the other individual, immediately shares his sensations of everything that happens to him, has within himself the sensations of the other’s individuality as his own. There are the most striking examples of this phenomenon. A French doctor, for instance, treated two women who had a deep affection for each other and who, although a considerable distance apart, sensed each other’s states of illness inside each other. We can also include here the case of the soldier whose mother had been tied up by thieves; although he was some distance away from her, he shared her sensation of anguish with such intensity that he felt an irresistible impulse to hasten to her without delay. The five phenomena discussed above are the principal moments of clairvoyant awareness. They all have in common the determination of always relating to the individual world of the feeling soul. This relation does not, however, establish such an inseparable connection among them that they must always all emerge in one and the same subject. Secondly, another feature common to these phenomena is that they can arise both as a result of physical illness and also, in otherwise healthy persons, in virtue of a certain particular disposition. In both cases these phenomena are immediate natural states; it is only as such that we have so far considered them. But they can also be evoked intentionally. When this happens they constitute animal magnetism proper, with which we now have to concern ourselves. In the first place, as regards the name ‘animal magnetism’, it originally arose from the fact that Mesmer began by using magnets to arouse the magnetic state. This name was subsequently retained because in animal magnetism too, as in inorganic magnetism, an immediate reciprocal relation of two existences occurs. In addition, the state in question has here and there been called mesmerism, solarism, and tellurism. However, the first of these three appellations tells us, for itself, nothing about the phenomenon, and the other two relate to an entirely different sphere from that of animal magnetism; the mental nature, to which animal magnetism lays claim, also contains within itself something entirely different from merely solar and telluric moments, from these entirely abstract determinations which we have already considered in §392 in the natural soul that has not yet developed into an individual subject’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

On Mesmer and his procedures consult §379. The name animal magnetism derives from Mesmer’s use of a single magnet. In inorganic magnetism two distinct existences, that is magnets, are immediately attracted to each other. In animal magnetism two distinct animals including human beings are immediately attracted to each other and because the patient and the hypnotist are immediately attracted or at least related to each other the state is still called animal magnetism regardless of the disuse of an actual magnet. Solarismus relates the phenomenon to the sun, Tellurismus relates it to the earth, in particular the earth is magnetized. On the sun consult §392. On the earth consult §392.

‘… if my soulful life separates from my intellectual consciousness and takes over its business, I forfeit my freedom rooted in intellectual consciousness, I lose the capacity to shut myself off from an alien power, I become subservient to it. Now just as the spontaneously arising magnetic state ends up as dependence on an alien power, so, conversely, an external power can also form the starting-point and-by catching hold of me at the separation, present in itself within me, between my feeling life and my thinking consciousness-bring this rupture within me into existence, and so the magnetic state can be produced artificially. However, as already indicated, only those individuals, in whom a particular disposition to this state is already present, can easily and regularly become epopts; whereas people who fall into this state only from a particular illness are never perfect epopts. The alien power that generates magnetic somnambulism in a subject is mainly another subject; there are, however, also medicines, especially henbane, also water or metal, able to exercise this power. Consequently, the subject with a disposition to magnetic somnambulism is able to put himself in that state by making himself dependent on such inorganic or vegetable substances. -Among the means for producing the magnetic state, particular mention must be made of the baquet. This consists of a vessel with iron rods which are touched by the persons to be magnetized, and forms the middle term between the magnetizer and these persons’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

An account of illness is expounded more fully in the first paragraph of this Zusatz … physical illness displays the finitude of the organism, that is its vulnerability to external forces and its ultimate mortality. Mental disease, even if the rupture between mind and soul occurs spontaneously similarly exposes the subject to an alien power not merely the events and objects to which the somnambulist is sensitive but also and primarily the hypnotist, who can manipulate the subject as he or she will because the subject’s intellectual consciousness and hence his or her freedom to resist are in abeyance. This rupture between mind and soul is latent in everyone and so the states that arise spontaneously can also be artificially induced by an alien power. Sometimes this is a power of the same type as that to which a spontaneous somnambulist can be subjected, such as a hypnotist, yet sometimes it is a power of a different kind, such as henbane, a poisonous and narcotic plant. The subject then becomes, albeit frequently only temporarily, an epopt [Epopt(en)]. The Greek word epoptes, originally a seer or overseer, was employed for an advanced initiate in the Eleusinian mysteries (consult §405), for Hegel it is a visionary. Baquet is, in French, a tub or bucket. This general account of mental illness maybe accounts for the hypnotism of humans yet it does not explain the hypnotism of animals. If an animal has merely a soul and no mind how could its hypnotized state differ from its normal state?

‘The shamam of the Mongols are already familiar with this; when they are going to prophesy they put themselves in the magnetic state by certain drinks. This happens even now among the Indians for the same purpose. Something similar probably took place with the oracle at Delphi where the priestess, sitting on a tripod over a cave, fell into an ecstasy, often gentle but sometimes very agitated, and in this state emitted more or less articulate sounds which were interpreted by the priests who lived in the intuition of the substantial conditions of the life of the Greek people.

The Mongolian Shamans are discussed in the ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of History’ and ‘Elements of the Philosophy of Right’. At Delphi in Phocis, at the foot of Mt Parnassus was an oracle of Apollo, mentioned in ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of History’. The priests who interpreted the utterances of the priestess were not themselves in a trance, a sober awareness or intuition of the realities of Greek life guided their interpretations.

‘As regards, secondly, the mode and manner of magnetising, this varies. Usually the magnetizer works by contact. Just as in galvanism the metals act on each other by immediate contact, so the magnetizer too acts immediately on the person to be magnetized. However, the magnetizing subject, being a self-contained subject capable of controlling his will, can only operate successfully on condition that he has the uncompromising will to communicate his power to the subject to be brought into the magnetic state, to put by the act of magnetizing the two animal spheres here confronting each other, as it were, into one sphere’.

‘The third point to be discussed here concerns the effects produced by magnetizing. As for these, after many various experiences of them, the matter is now so thoroughly cleared up that the occurrence of essentially new phenomena here is no longer to be expected. If one wishes to consider the phenomena of animal magnetism in their naivete then one must mainly stick to the older magnetizers. Among the French, men of the noblest sentiments and highest culture have concerned themselves with animal magnetism and have studied it with an open mind. Among these men, Lieutenant-General Puysegur especially deserves mention. If the Germans often make fun of the faulty theories of the French, it can be asserted, at least as regards animal magnetism, that the naive metaphysics employed by the French in considering it is much more satisfactory than the not uncommon dream-fantasies and the lame as well as distorted theorizing of German scholars. A serviceable, superficial classification of the phenomena of animal magnetism has been given by Kluge. Van Ghert, a reliable man rich in ideas and well versed in recent philosophy, has described magnetic cures in the form of a diary. Karl Schelling, a brother of the philosopher, has also published a pan of his magnetic experiences. So much for the relevant literature of animal magnetism and the scope of our knowledge of the subject’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Luigi Galvani (1737–98), an Italian anatomist, observed that the legs of a dead frog twitch when they come into contact with two different metals, for instance iron and brass. He supposed that the electricity came from the frog muscles, but Count Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) showed that it came from the metals alone, that two metals in contact set up an electric current (galvanism). Hegel compares the contact of patient and magnetizer to the immediate contact of two metals. Galvanism is discussed in ‘Philosophy of Nature’ §330. Armand Marie Jacques Puységur (1751–1825) was a follower of Mesmer, consult §406. Karl Alexander Ferdinand Kluge (1782–1844) published ‘Versuch einer Darstellung des animalischen Magnetismus als Heilmittel’ (‘An Attempt to Expound Animal Magnetism as a Cure’) in 1811. Pierre Gabriel van Ghert (1782–1852) was a Dutch politician and a friend of Hegel. Karl Eberhard von Schelling (1783–1854) was a senior medical officer of health and the brother of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.

______________

I foresee ages of chaos But my ordeal has just yet started, For these ominous signs are bound to plague me, Haunting for centuries to come. My healing incantations are destined for failure. My unremitting warnings and threats Will go unheeded; such is my curse. Why should it be incumbent upon me to redeem their faults? You, the one who spurns the past Are now but worthy to be last. Thy choices are errors- I shall thus abandon thou To thy gloomy fate. I can see the future in the light of the past. I cannot stop this ineluctable doom from raining over the world. Alas, this obnoxious portend Will turn out to be abiding truth. From time immemorial Man has taken refuge in oblivion. They’ve exchanged their future for their present enjoyment. Nothing will change; history has set her implacable march into motion. There will be no escape.

______________

‘After these preliminaries let us now turn to a brief consideration of the magnetic phenomena themselves. The proximate universal effect of magnetizing is the sinking of the magnetic person into the state of his shrouded, undifferentiated natural life, i.e., into sleep. The onset of sleep indicates the beginning of the magnetic state. However, sleep is not entirely necessary; magnetic cures can be carried out without it. What must necessarily take place here is only the sentient soul’s becoming independent, its separation from the mediated, intellectual consciousness. The second point we have to consider here concerns the physiological side or basis of the magnetic state’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

On sleep consult §398.

‘… in this state the activity of the outward directed organs passes over to the inner organs, that the activity exercised by the brain in the waking and intellectual consciousness devolves upon the reproductive system during magnetic somnambulism, because in this state consciousness is demoted to the simple, internally undifferentiated naturalness of soul-life; bur this simple naturalness, this shrouded life, is contradicted by the sensibility directed outwards; whereas the inward turned reproductive system, which is dominant in the simplest animal organisms and forms animality in general, is absolutely inseparable from this shrouded soul-life. This then is the reason why, during magnetic somnambulism, the soul’s activity descends into the brain of the reproductive system, namely, into the ganglia, these variously nodulated nerves in the abdomen. That this is the case, was sensed by van Helmont after he had rubbed himself with henbane ointment and taken the juice of this herb. According to his description he felt as if his thinking consciousness was going from his head into his abdomen, especially into his stomach, and it seemed to him that with this transference his thinking became more acute and was associated with a particularly pleasant feeling. This concentration of the soul-life in the abdomen is considered by a famous French magnetizer to depend on the fact that during magnetic somnambulism the blood in the region of the pit of the stomach remains very fluid, even when in the other parts it is extremely thick. But the unusual arousal of the reproductive system occurring in the magnetic state is seen not only in the mental form of clairvoyance but also in the more sensory shape of the sex-drive awakening with greater or lesser vitality, especially in female persons’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

On the Repoduktionssystem consult, it is principally concerned with the self-maintenance of the organism rather than with breeding but it appears here to include sexuality. Jan Baptista van Helmont (1577–1644), a Flemish physician and alchemist heavily influenced by Paracelsus (1493–1541), coined the word gas from the Greek chaos and is sometimes called the father of biochemistry for his experiments on the growth of plants.

‘After this mainly physiological consideration of animal magnetism we have to determine more precisely the nature of this state with respect to the soul. As in the spontaneously occurring magnetic states previously considered, so too, in intentionally induced animal magnetism, the soul immersed in its inwardness intuits its individual world not outside itself, but within itself This sinking of the soul into its inwardness can, as already remarked, come to a halt half-way, so to speak; then sleep does not occur. But the further stage is that life is completely cut off from the outside by sleep. With this rupture, too, the course of the magnetic phenomena can come to a standstill. But the transition from magnetic sleep to clairvoyance is equally possible. Most magnetic persons will be in this clairvoyant state without recalling it. The presence of clairvoyance has often been shown only by chance; it mostly comes to light when the magnetic person is spoken to by the magnetizer; if he had not spoken, the person would perhaps only have gone on sleeping. Now though the answers of clairvoyants seem to come out of another world, yet these individuals can be aware of what they, as objective consciousness, are. Often, however, they speak of their intellectual consciousness too as if it were another person’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

On the individual world consult, consult §402,. A fully fledged magnetic experience has the following stages, first, Intellectual consciousness, second, sleep, third, clairvoyance, fourth, Interpretation of the clairvoyant’s visions by the clairvoyant and/or the magnetizer, fifth, the re-emergence of the clairvoyant to intellectual consciousness, when he or she does not, without special measures, remember anything about the second, third and fourth stages. ‘Most magnetic persons will be in this clairvoyant state [third stage)] without recalling it’. ‘Without recalling it’ translates ohne sich desselben erinnern. A. V. Miller (1899–1991) translates this phrase as ‘without remembering it afterwards’, so that it refers to the fifth stage and this is what sich erinnern would usually mean and it is a possible rendering here. And yet in the first place sich erinnern could mean become aware of something which need not be in the past and second the following sentence, ‘The presence . . . sleeping’ is concerned with the question how we know at the time of the third stage that the patient is in a clairvoyant state, And third, the question of subsequent recollection is dealt with at the end of the passage.

‘[Y]et these individuals can be aware of what they are as objective consciousness’, thus können diese Individuen doch von dem wissen, was sie als objektives Bewusstsein sind and Miller translated this as: ‘yet these individuals can only have knowledge of what they, qua objective consciousness, know’. This would imply that genuine clairvoyance does not occur but Hegel’s point is that clairvoyants at the third stage know about themselves at the first stage frequently speaking of themselves at the first stage as another person.

‘Here we want to emphasize only two more points; first, that what lies outside the context of the magnetic person’s substantia/ life is not contacted through the somnambulistic state, that consequently clairvoyance does not, for example, extend to foreseeing the winning numbers in a lottery, and in general cannot be used for selfish ends. Great world-events are by contrast in a different position from such contingent things. For instance it is recorded that a somnambulist on the eve of the battle at Belle-Alliance cried out in great exaltation: ‘Tomorrow, he who has done us so much harm will perish either by lightning or the sword.’ The second point still to be mentioned here is that since in clairvoyance the soul leads a life cut off from its intellectual consciousness, clairvoyants on awaking initially no longer have any awareness of what they have seen in the magnetic somnambulism, that they can however gain an awareness of it in a roundabout way, namely by dreaming about what they saw and then recalling the dreams on waking. Also partial recollection of what was seen can be deliberately produced, and, to be more precise, in the following way: the doctor sets the sick during their waking state the task of firmly resolving to retain what they have sensed in the magnetic state’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

++++

Ashra: Belle Alliance: Code Blue

The battle of Belle-Alliance is the battle of Waterloo. Belle-Alliance was a nearby farm, where Wellington and Blücher, the Prussian leader met after their victory over Napoleon.

The magnetized state is itself a disease and yet Hegel thinks that it can directly effect a cure of other diseases, physical and mental and such cures are distinct from those in which the subject clairvoyantly diagnoses his own illness and proposes a remedy for it. In the cases that Hegel looks at here clairvoyance takes on no no essential role. A disease is in Hegel’s view a separation between one part of the organism and the rest and this is the case also of the magnetized state that is itself a separation of the feeling soul from intellectual consciousness. So how then can the separation involved in one disease cure the separation involved in another? The feeling soul albeit only one aspect of the mind is associated with unity, with simple universality, while intellectual consciousness involves dispersal in the external world and hence the temporary suppression of intellectual consciousness tends to restore the unity of the mind or the body breaking down barriers within them. Once this has been achieved the subject can involve itself once more in separation and opposition, that is to say, engage in worldly affairs with intellectual consciousness and the magnetized state is a more effective cure than that of ordinary sleep.

‘Lady in Blue’, Jane de Montchenu (1857–1924)

Self-feeling.

§407

( 1 ) The feeling totality, as individuality, is essentially this: distinguishing itself within itself, and awakening to the judgement within itself, in virtue of which it has particular feelings and stands as a subject in respect of these determinations of itself. The subject as such posits them within itself as its feelings. It is immersed in this particularity of sensations, and at the same time, through the ideality of the particular, in them it joins together with itself as a subjective unit. In this way it is self-feeling, -and yet it is this only in the particular feeling’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

‘Judgement is Urteil which as in for instance §389 is here primarily a Teilung (division). Because the feeling totality is an individual it divides itself into particular feelings, on the one hand, and, on the other, a subject that posits them as its feelings. The feelings are ideal, that is, sublated or submerged in the subject hence the subject closes the rift opened up by the judgement and It returns out of the particular feelings to join together with itself as subjective unit and becomes self-feeling. It is self-feeling only in the particular feeling, that is self-feeling is itself a particular feeling, the subject has not yet attained a conception of itself as distinct from any feeling that it may have. Selbstgefühl, self-feeling, can also mean self-esteem and this sense is also in play here because madness frequently consists in a misconception about oneself in particular in overestimating one’s own importance.

__________

For my muse 💙 ✿ blue is the colour of intuition, creativity and inner tranquillity.

Blue velvet, woah-woah

She wore blue velvet (Woah-woah)

Bluer than velvet was the night (Woah-woah-woah)

Softer than satin was the light

From the stars

She wore blue velvet (Woah-woah)

Bluer than velvet were her eyes (Woah-woah-woah)

Warmer than May, her tender sighs

Love was ours

Ours, a love I held tightly

Feeling the rapture grow

Like a flame burning brightly

But when she left gone was the glow of

Blue velvet (Woah-woah)

But in my heart there’ll always be (Woah-woah-woah)

Precious and warm a memory

Through the years

And I still can see blue velvet through my tears

Coming up next:

More self-feeling (give me credit for not making a juvenile joke about that).

It may stop but it never ends.

,