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

David Proud

24 min readJun 17, 2024

‘Ode to Psyche’

by John Keats (1795–1821)

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung

By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,

And pardon that thy secrets should be sung

Even into thine own soft-conched ear:

Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?

I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,

And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,

Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side

In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof

Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran

A brooklet, scarce espied:

Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,

They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass;

Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;

Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,

As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:

The winged boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?

His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far

Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!

Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-region’d star,

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,

Nor altar heap’d with flowers;

Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan

Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet

From chain-swung censer teeming;

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat

Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,

Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,

When holy were the haunted forest boughs,

Holy the air, the water, and the fire;

Yet even in these days so far retir’d

From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,

Fluttering among the faint Olympians,

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir’d.

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan

Upon the midnight hours;

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet

From swinged censer teeming;

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;

And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep;

And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,

Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:

And there shall be for thee all soft delight

That shadowy thought can win,

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,

To let the warm Love in!

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**‘The Woman Clothed With The Sun’, John Collier, (1850–1934)**

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

§390 The soul is at first:

(a) in its immediate natural determinacy- the natural soul, which only is;

(b) as individual, it enters into relationship with its immediate being, and, in the determinacies of that being, is abstractly for itself-feeling soul;

Zusatz. The first part of Anthropology indicated in this Paragraph, which comprises the natural soul, the soul that simply is, in turn splits up into three sections. In the first section we have initially to deal with the still entirely universal, immediate substance of mind, with the simple pulsation, the mere inward stirring, of soul. In this first mental life no distinction is yet posited, either of individuality in contrast to universality or of soul in contrast to the natural. This simple life has its explication in nature and in mind; it itself as such just is, it has as yet no reality, no determinate being, no particularization, no actuality. But just as, in logic, being must pass over into determinate being, so soul too necessarily progresses from its indeterminacy to determinacy. This determinacy initially has, as already noted earlier, the form of naturalness. But the natural determinacy of soul is to be conceived as a totality, as a copy of the concept. The first stage here is therefore the entirely universal, qualitative determinations of soul. Here belong especially the racial differences, both physical and mental, of humanity and also the differences of national mentality.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

On the three stages of soul, this was covered previously. To say off the natural soul it only is implies that it involves no opposition and hence does not sense or feel anything. At the second stage the soul is related to the soul of the first stage, its immediate being (Sein) which has determinacies that produce feelings. And so the soul is abstractly for itself, which is to say it has a hazy self-awareness. At the second stage the soul takes over its body and makes it its own and because it is expressed by the body it is now actual and not merely potential. The natural soul, the first stage, itself undergoes a development which Hegel divides into three phases, following the pattern of unity — opposition -restored unity. The first phase of the first stage falls into two, first, a wholly universal, undifferentiated, un-individualized soul, with its explication in nature and in mind: (see §391) is expression. It corresponds to pure being in the ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’ (§86). And second, soul with ‘universal, qualitative determinations’, they correspond to the reality or ‘determinate being’ (Dasein) to which ‘being’ (Sein) passes over in the Encyclopaedia Logic (§89). Racial and national differences belong since they are deep, subconscious differences between types of soul, and not between, or within, individual souls. (§392–5).

Hegel puts together two alternative accounts of the transition from the first phase to the second phase of the first stage. The first suggestion is that it follows the pattern: unity (phase I: the ‘universal natural soul’) — opposition (transition: ‘divergent universal particularizations’) — restored unity (phase II: the particularizations taken back into the soul, which is then individual). Such is implied by the correspondence to the Logic or Concept, and yet the second suggestion is that the ‘universal natural soul’ directly splinters into individual souls without any assistance from any mediating ‘particularizations’, which does seem more likely for one wonders how racial or national differences could mediate the division of the universal soul into individual souls.

‘These divergent universal particularizations or varieties are then-and this forms the transition to the second section-taken back into the unity of soul or, what is the same thing, promoted to individualization. Just as light splinters into an infinite host of stars, so too the universal natural soul splinters into an infinite host of individual souls, only with the difference, that whereas light has the semblance of a subsistence independent of the stars, the universal natural soul attains actuality only in the individual souls. Now since the diverging universal qualities considered in the first section, are taken back, as we said above, into the unity of the individual human soul, instead of the form of externality they acquire the shape of natural alterations of the individual subject who persists in them. These alterations, which are also both mental and physical, emerge in the course of the stages of life. Here the difference ceases to be an external one. But it is in the sexual relationship that the difference becomes actual particularization, real opposition of the individual to itself. From this point on, the soul in general enters into opposition to its natural qualities, to its universal being, which, by this very fact, is reduced to the Other of the soul, to a mere aspect, to a transitory state, namely, to the state of sleep. Thus originates natural waking, the opening out of the soul. But here in Anthropology we have not yet to consider the fulfilment that accrues to waking consciousness but waking only in so far as it is a natural state’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

On the stars, in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ Hegel said: ‘This eruption of light is as little worthy of wonderment as an eruption on the skin or a swarm of flies’.

Three phenomena belong to the first phase. First, the particularizations no longer characterize different types of soul, but different stages, or alterations, in the life of a single, persisting subject: cf. §396. Second, individuals are of different sexes and here difference becomes actual particularization since the sexes are opposite to each other in a way that different races and different ages are not (cf. §397). Individuals are explicitly distinguished from albeit related to, each other. Third, the soul is opposed to its natural qualities, that is to say the first stage, and demotes it to the sleeping state. The third phase reunites the opposition that opened up in the second phase, in the latter the soul’s other was a state (Zustand), sleep, in opposition to the waking state, and now the other is made ideal, that is, the object of the soul’s ‘sensation’ (Empfindung): (cf. §399). Empfindung is frequently closer to feeling than to sensation but it is translated as sensation to distinguish it from Gefühl in the second stage, the feeling soul, the subject of the second part of ‘Anthropology’ (§403). Gefühlen, feeling; to feel, are close to Empfindung; empfinden, yet not synonymous, they are distinguished in §402. The boding soul, ahnenden Seele, appears as the feeling soul in its immediacy in §402. and §405, the verb ahnen is to foresee, suspect, and such like, and suggests here a vague awareness of one’s surroundings and not necessarily of future events.

‘From this relationship of opposition, or of real particularization, soul now returns, in the third section, to unity with itself, by removing from its Other too the fixity of a state, and dissolving the Other in the soul’s ideality. Soul has thus progressed from merely universal individuality, which is only in itself, to actual individuality that is for itself; and in doing this it has progressed to sensation. Initially, we have to deal here only with the form of sensing. What the soul senses is to be specified only in the second part of Anthropology. The transition to this part is formed by the expansion of sensation within itself to the boding soul’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

**Women Turned towards the Sun, 1912/13, Edvard Munch**

§391 The universal soul must not be fixed, in the form of a world-soul, as a sort of subject; for the universal soul is only the universal substance, which has its actual truth only as individuality, subjectivity. Thus it presents itself as an individual soul, but immediately only as a soul which just is, with natural determinacies in it. These determinacies have, so to speak, behind their ideality a free existence: i.e. they are natural objects for consciousness, though the soul as such does not respond to them as external objects. Rather, these determinations are natural qualities which it has in itself.

Zusatz. The soul, when contrasted with the macrocosm of nature as a whole, can be described as the microcosm into which the macrocosm compresses itself and thereby sublates its asunderness. Accordingly the same determinations which in outer nature appear as freely disengaged spheres, as a series of independent shapes, are in the soul demoted to mere qualities. The soul stands midway between the nature which lies behind it, on the one hand, and the world of ethical freedom which extricates itself from natural mind, on the other hand. The simple determinations of soul-life have their dispersed counterpart in the universal life of nature; similarly, that which in the individual man has the form of subjectivity, of a particular urge, and is within him unconsciously, as simply something he is, unfolds in the political state into a system of distinct spheres of freedom, into a world created by self-conscious human reason.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Were we to designate the universal soul a world soul we regard it it as a subject, but it is not a subject,it is but the universal substance that in essence requires completion in individual subjects, somewhat like prime matter in medieval philosophy, wholly indeterminate matter that cannot exist in isolation but only as constituting some specific kind of matter. Upon becoming an individual it is not aware of anything other than itself, it just is, and the natural determinacies that it has in it play a double role. First, they have a free existence as natural features which can be objects of our consciousness, (see §413). Second, in the soul they are ideal, that is qualities in the soul itself. The soul cannot perceive them as external yet is affected by them as qualities impressed upon it.

The soul as the microcosm has compressed within it as qualities the phenomena that range freely in nature, the macrocosm, yet the microcosm, the little world, stands opposed not just to one grand world, nature, but in addition to the world of ethical freedo’. As natural phenomena are compressed in the soul, so urges and such like are compressed in the individual man or woman and these are developed in the political state into an ethical world that is as expansive and differentiated as nature. The soul or the individual man or woman is like a funnel, into one end of which is squeezed the natural world, while the ethical world emerges from out of the other end. On urges see §473. They are not in the adult unconscious but one supposes that an urge is not something one is conscious of as an object distinct from oneself, it is simply something he or she is (ein Sein).

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‘The Sun Rising’

by John Donne (1571 or 1572–1631)

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school boys and sour prentices,

Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong

Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine

Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She’s all states, and all princes, I,

Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world’s contracted thus.

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

‘The rags of time’ … now there’s a goodly phrase, a fine phrase …..

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**‘Woman Standing Behind The Sun’, between 1912 and 1915, Frances MacDonald McNair**

(a) Natural Qualities.

§392 ( 1 ) In its substance, in the natural soul, the mind takes part in the universal planetary life, feels the difference of climates, the changes of the seasons, the periods of the day, etc. In the mind this life of nature emerges only in occasional dark moods.

[Remark] In recent times a good deal has been said of the cosmic, sidereal, and telluric life of man. Animals essentially live in such a sympathy with nature: their specific characters and the particular ways in which they develop are connected with it, in many cases completely, and always to some extent. In the case of man, the more cultivated he is and the more his whole condition rests on a free, spiritual foundation, the less the significance that such connections have. World history is not connected with revolutions in the solar system, any more than the destinies of individuals are tied to the positions of the planets. Differences of climate involve a more solid and vigorous determinacy. But the response to changes of the seasons and hours of the day is found only in feeble moods, which can become especially prominent only in illnesses (including derangement) and in the depression of self-conscious life. Alongside popular superstitions and the aberrations of the feeble intellect, there are also to be found, among peoples less advanced in spiritual freedom and therefore living more in unison with nature, some actual cases of such connections, and, based on them, what seem to be marvellous prophetic visions of states of affairs and of events linked to them. But as freedom of mind gets a deeper grasp of itself, even these few and slight dispositions, based on participation in the life of nature, disappear. Animals and plants, by contrast, remain subject to such influences.

Zusatz. It is clear from §391 and its Zusatz that the universal life of nature is also the life of the soul, that the soul lives in sympathy with that universal life. But it would be a complete mistake to make this participation of the soul in the life of the whole universe into the highest object of the science of mind. For the activity of mind essentially consists just in raising itself above this entanglement in merely natural life, in grasping itself in its independence, subjecting the world to its thinking and creating it from the concept. In mind, therefore, the universal life of nature is only an entirely subordinate moment; the cosmic and telluric powers are dominated by mind, they can produce in it only an insignificant mood.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Man and woman’s susceptibility in general to his or her natural environment is now considered, and correspondingly §393 considers racial differences and §395 considers the temperament and such like of individuals. Climatic variations and such like affect the soul, yet in the mind for the most part produce only dark or possibly vague moods. On moods, see §401. Cosmic pertains to the universe as a whole, sidereal to the stars, and telluric (tellurischen, from the Latin tellus, ‘earth’) to the earth. ‘Cosmic’ perhaps refers more specifically to the solar system, in contrast to the earth and the stars. World-history is not the history of the planet Earth, but human history and, since it depends on the survival of written records, the history of relatively sophisticated humans who are fairly immune to planetary influences.

‘Mind, as embodied, is indeed in a definite place and in a definite time; bur it is nevertheless elevated above space and time. Of course, the life of man is conditioned by a determinate measure of the distance of the earth from the sun; he could not live at either a greater or a lesser distance from the sun; but the influence of the position of the earth on mankind does not extend any further. Even the strictly terrestrial relationships-the annual revolution of the earth round the sun, the daily axial rotation of the earth, the inclination of the earth’s axis to the course of its movement round the sun-all these determinations belonging to the earth’s individuality, though not without influence on mankind, are unimportant for the mind as such. The Church itself has therefore rightly rejected as superstitious and unethical the belief in a power exercised over the human spirit by these terrestrial and cosmic relationships. Man should regard himself as free from such relationships of nature; bur in that superstition he regards himself as a natural entity. Accordingly, we must also brand as worthless the undertaking of those who have endeavoured to bring the evolutionary epochs of the earth into connection with the epochs of human history, to discover the origin of religions and their images in the realm of astronomy and then too in the physical realm, and have there hit upon the groundless and baseless notion that just as the equinox moved forward from the Bull to the Ram, Apis worship had necessarily to be followed by Christianity, by the worship of the Lamb’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

The soul shares in the life of the universe but the mind does not, the mind fights back and liberates itself from nature by subjecting it to concepts, but in primitive people and psychologically disturbed people the natural soul the persisting substratum of our personality that usually manifests itself only in unimportant moods rises to the surface in the form of intense moods, prophecy, and such like. On insanity or derangement see §408. On prophecy see §406. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, (1646–1716), held that the mind and the world mirror each other a doctrine also expounded by philosophers of nature such as Lorenz Oken (1779–1851) and by F. W. J. Schelling (1775–1854), in for example ‘On the World-Soul: A Hypothesis of the Higher Physics on the Explanation of the Universal Organism’, (1798). Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) was attracted by the idea, and so were Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Friedrich Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (1772–1829), and Novalis, (1772–1801).

‘But as regards the influence actually exerted by terrestrial relationships on man, here we can only mention the main factors, since the details belong to the natural history of man and the earth. In the seasons and the times of the day, the process of the motion of the earth acquires a physical significance. These alternations do, of course, affect man; the merely natural mind, the soul, lives in sympathy with the mood of the season and of the time of day. But whereas plants are completely bound to the alternation of the seasons and even animals are unconsciously dominated by it, being instinctively impelled to mate and some to migration, in the human soul this alternation does not produce any excitations to which man is involuntarily subjected. The disposition of winter is the disposition of withdrawal into oneself, of composing oneself, of family life, of the worship of the penates. In the summer, on the other hand, we feel particularly inclined to travel, we feel drawn into the open air, and the common people go off in a crowd on pilgrimages. Yet there is nothing merely instinctive about either this more intimate family life or these pilgrimages and journeys. The Christian festivals are linked with the alternation of the seasons; the festival of the birth of Christ is celebrated at the time when the sun seems to go forth again; the resurrection of Christ is placed at the beginning of spring, in the period of nature’s awakening. But similarly this association of the religious with the natural is one made consciously, not instinctively’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

Hegel rejects astrology because he rejects physical determinism. Entities are ranged in a hierarchy, the levels of which embody increasingly complex categories and are governed by increasingly complex laws, a higher level is determined by a lower only within a certain range, never fully, at the bottom are the planets, whose motion is free, determined solely by the concept of space and time, and nothing else. (See the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ §269, where Hegel expresses his support for Kepler and hostility to Newton). Above the planets is the physical individual and this does not change in the same way as the planets. The time taken by for example a crystal to form depends not upon the nature of time as such but upon the nature of the crystalline substance. The angles at which the faces of a crystal meet depend not upon space as such, but its chemical composition: (see ‘Philosophy of Nature’, §310 and 315). Higher still is the animal. On the course of fevers, see ‘Philosophy of Nature’ §372. And finally the mind is virtually exempt from the influence of abstract space and time albeit not from more concrete forms of them.

Two apparently distinct questions are connected. First, does the mind work upon the same principles as planetary movements? Second, is the mind influenced by planetary movements? If the mind did work on the same principles as the planets then even if it were not significantly influenced by them it would nevertheless keep in step with them and also there would be nothing apart from distance to insulate it against their influence, and conversely if the mind were significantly influenced by planetary movements then it would work on the same principles being determined at least indirectly by space and time as such. It is not so evident that our dependence upon a certain distance from the sun amounts to dependence on a merely spatial factor for what matters is not distance as such but warmth and energy, nonetheless it is a case of our dependence upon a lower level in the hierarchy.

Notes:; Apis was an Egyptian god in the form of a bull, and Hegel associates astrology with Egypt: ‘All astrological and sympathetic superstition may be traced to Egypt’ (‘Lectures on the History of Philosophy’). Not my area of expertise but I believe this is incorrect. Astrology probably originated Babylon in the third and second centuries BC and not in Egypt. The zodiac is a belt of the heavens outside which the sun, moon, and major planets do not pass, it is divided into twelve equal areas, each named after a constellation that once occupied it but no longer does. These names or signs are usually taken from animals. Zodiac comes from the Greek ζῷον, z’oon, animal, and means circle of animals. One such constellation is Taurus or the bull and this is one sign of the zodiac, another such sign is the adjacent Aries or the ram. I am a Pisces myself. The apparent course of the sun in relation to the zodiac changes owing to a wobble in the earth’s rotation on its axis and this is called the precession of the equinoxes because the outcome is a change in the positions of the equinoxes, the times at which the sun crosses the equator and day and night are of equal length. The equinoxes move back along the zodiac, traversing one constellation in 2,160 years and the whole zodiac in 25,920 years and nowadays the vernal or spring equinox is in Pisces or the fish. From about 4000 BC to 2000 BC it was in Taurus, and about 2000 BC it moved into Aries, remaining there until well into the Christian era. Hence the view that Hegel rejects is that the movement of the spring equinox from Taurus to Aries foretells the replacement of Egyptian bull-worship by Christian lamb-worship.

**‘Girl Under The Sun’, Konstantin Somov, (1869–1939)**

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‘As regards the phases of the moon, these have only a limited influence even on the physical nature of man. Such an influence has been observed on lunatics; but in them also the power of nature is dominant, not the free mind. Moreover the times of day, of course, bring with them a characteristic disposition of the soul. We are in different moods in the morning and evening. In the morning seriousness prevails, the mind is still more in identity with itself and with nature. The day belongs to opposition, to work. In the evening, reflection and fancy predominate. At midnight, mind retires into itself from the distractions of the day, is alone with itself and inclined to contemplation. Most people die after midnight; human nature is there unable to start yet another day. There is also a certain relation between the times of day and the public life of peoples. The ancients, who were more drawn to nature than we are, held their public assemblies in the morning; in England, on the contrary, in keeping with the introverted character of the English, parliamentary proceedings are started in the evening and sometimes continued far into the night. But these moods produced by the times of the day are modified by climate; in hot countries, for example, one feels at midday more disposed to rest than to activity’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

[‘…introverted character of the English’? … I thought it was just me. Being a philosopher though I hate early rising. Look what happened to René Descartes (1596–1650) … it killed him off]. ‘Lunatic’, from the Latin luna, ‘moon’, originally denoted a person subject to bouts of insanity supposedly influenced by phases of the moon but the German Wahnsinnigen involves no reference to the moon.

‘With respect to the influence of meteorological changes we can mention the following. Sensitivity to these phenomena is distinctly noticeable in plants and animals. Thus animals have presentiments of thunderstorms and earthquakes, i.e. they feel atmospheric changes which have not yet become apparent to us. Human beings, too, sense in wounds changes in the weather not yet indicated by the barometer; the weak spot formed by the wound allows the power of nature to become more noticeable. What is thus determining for the organism has also a significance for weak minds and is sensed as an effect. Indeed whole peoples, the Greeks and Romans, made their decisions depend on natural phenomena which to them seemed to be connected with meteorological changes. As we know, they consulted not only the priests, but also the entrails and feed of animals, for advice on affairs of state. On the day of the battle of Plataea, for example, when the freedom of Greece, perhaps of the whole of Europe, the repulse of oriental despotism, was at stake, Pausanias tortured himself the whole morning about good signs from sacrificial animals. This seems to stand in complete contradiction with the mindfulness of the Greeks in art, religion, and science, but it can be very well explained from the standpoint of the Greek mind. It is characteristic of modems, in everything which prudence declares advisable in such and such circumstances, to make a decision for themselves; private persons as well as princes take their decisions for themselves; with us the subjective will cuts off all grounds of deliberation and determines itself to the deed. The ancients, by contrast, who had not yet attained to this power of subjectivity, to this strength of self-certainty, let their affairs be determined by oracles, by external phenomena, in which they sought confirmation and verification of their plans and intentions’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

The Spartan Pausanias, acting as regent for his child-cousin Pleistarchus, led a force of Spartans, Athenians, and their allies against a Persian force led by Mardonius, they encountered at Plataea in August 479 BC, and when the Persians attacked the Greeks hesitated because the sacrificial animals were unfavourable. Pausanias eventually turned towards the temple of Hera, prayed to her, and after this favourable omens were obtained. Such superstition was not confined to Spartans of course, the Athenian general Nicias postponed his departure from Sicily, with disastrous consequences, owing to a lunar eclipse on 27 August 413 BC. The point is not that the moderns can invariably discover by rational argument what to do and when to do it, but that even in cases of uncertainty we make our own decisions and do not leave it to entrails, or such like. Frequently there are grounds or reasons for doing something and reasons for not doing it but the subjective will curtails them and decides to act and the ancients were not prepared to do this for even when they did seem to have overwhelming reasons for doing something they still paid heed to omens, frequently like Pausanias repeating the sacrifices to get the right result but abandoning the project if they could not do so. As for Hegel’s account of sacrifices, the morale of ancient soldiers was crucial and it depended upon external conditions the effects of which are more easily discernible in animals, but they still made too much of entrails owing to their superstition.

‘Now as regards the case of battle in particular, it depends not merely on the ethical disposition but also on the mood of buoyancy, on the feeling of physical strength. But with the ancients, this disposition was of far greater importance than it is with the moderns, with whom the main thing is the discipline of the army and the talent of the commander, whereas with the ancients, who still lived more in unity with nature, the bravery of individuals, the courage that always has something physical as its source, made the largest contribution to the decision of the battle. Now the mood of courage is connected with other physical dispositions, e.g. with the disposition of the region, of the atmosphere, of the season, of the climate. But the sympathetic moods of ensouled life become more visibly apparent in animals than in human beings, since animals live in an even closer unity with nature. For this reason the Greek commander only went into battle when he believed he had found in the animals healthy dispositions, which seemed to permit an inference to good dispositions of men. Thus Xenophon, who conducts himself so shrewdly in his famous retreat, sacrifices daily and determines his military measures in accordance with the result of the sacrifice. But the ancients took this search for a connection between the natural and the spiritual too far. Their superstition saw more in the animals’ entrails than is there to be seen. In this, the I surrendered its independence, subjected itself to the circumstances and determinations of externality, made them into determinations of mind’.

- ‘Philosophy of Mind’

In 401 BC Xenophon, an Athenian, led ten thousand Greek mercenaries to help Cyrus’s rebellion against his elder brother, Artaxerxes, the Persian emperor. He told the story of the expedition and the retreat in his Anabasis or ‘Up-going’, that is, an expedition up from the coast.

Θάλαττα! θάλαττα! Thálatta! Thálatta! ‘The Sea! The Sea!’

The cry of joy when the roaming ten thousand Greeks saw Euxeinos Pontos the Black Sea from Mount Theces Θήχης near Trebizond after participating in Cyrus the Younger’s failed march (so much for sacrifices but they served well in retreat anyway) against the Persian Empire in the year 401 BC, a mountain only a five-day march away from the friendly coastal city Trapezuz.

‘How glad you’ll be I waked you! My! How well you’ll feel! For ever after. First we turn by the vagurin here and then it’s gooder. So side by side, turn agate, weddingtown, laud men of Londub! I only hope whole the heavens sees us. For I feel I could near to faint away. Into the deeps. Annamores leep. Let me lean, just a lea, if you le, bowldstrong bigtider. Allgearls is wea. At times. So. While you’re adamant evar. Wrhps, that wind as if out of norewere! As on the night of the Apophanypes. Jumpst shootst throbbst into me mouth like a bogue and arrohs! Ludegude of the Lashlanns, how he whips me cheeks! Sea, sea! Here, weir, reach, island, bridge. Where you meet I’.

- James Joyce, ‘Finnegans Wake’, 1939.