Chapter I: Unconscious Symbolism (3)

A significance of this type--attempts at deciphering which are unquestionably nowadays carried too far for the reason that pretty nearly every kind of form is virtually set before us as symbolical in some relation--may very possibly from the point of view of the Egyptians themselves have been clear and intelligible as significance. But, as we insisted at the very entrance of our inquiry, the appropriate motto for the interpretation of Egyptian symbolism is _implicite multum nihil explicite._ There is a type of workmanship undertaken with the express endeavour that it shall carry its own interpretation on the forehead, but we only find there evidence of the effort; it stops short of the essential point of self-illumination. It is in this sense that we must fix our eyes on the works of Egyptian art. They contain riddles, the full solution of which is not merely withheld from ourselves, but was equally beyond the reach of the great majority of the artists who created them.

(_c_) The works of Egyptian art in their excessively mysterious symbolism are therefore riddles, let us rather say the objective riddle's self. And we may summarily define the _Sphinx_ as symbol of the real significance of the genius of Egypt. It stands as a symbol for symbolism itself. In countless numbers, set forth in rows of a hundred at a time, we come across these Sphinx-forms on Egyptian soil; they are hewn from the hardest stone, polished, covered with hieroglyphics, and in the vicinity of Cairo of such colossal dimensions that their lion-claws alone measure a man's height. Their animal bodies lie in repose, above which as bust a human body rears itself; now and again we find the head of a ram, but in the most common case it is that of a woman. Out of the obtuse strength and robustness of animality the spirit of man is fain to press forward, albeit still unable to attain the perfect representation of his own freedom, or a counterfeit of his body in motion; and this is inevitable, for he is still forced to remain blended in the company of that Other which confronts himself. This straining after self-conscious spirituality, which fails to grasp itself from the truth of its own substance in a form of external reality which is alone adequate to express it, and instead envisages and brings the same home to consciousness in that which is merely cognate with it, but also that which is equally foreign to it, is, in its general terms, the symbolical; and we find it here concentrated to a point as the riddle.

It is in this sense that the Sphinx in the Greek mythos, which itself again is open to symbolic interpretation, appears as the monster which propounds its riddle. The sphinx asked here the famous and problematical question: "Who is it, who walks in the morning on four legs, at noon upon two legs, and in the evening on three?" Oedipus discovered the simple answer that it was man himself, and hurled the sphinx from the rocks. The resolution of the symbol consists in the illumination of all that is implied in the significance of one word, Spirit, just as the famous Greek inscription cries out to mankind: "Know thyself." The light of consciousness is that clarity, which suffers its concrete content to shine all luminous through the form which is wholly adapted to unfold it, and in its positive form of existence simply reveals that which it is in truth.

[Footnote 37: _Bedeutung_.]

[Footnote 38: What Hegel means is that calling an aspect of sense bodily or natural itself implies a distinction from that which is spiritual, or only cognized by mind, and this distinction is not present to the earliest human cognition of Divine reality.]

[Footnote 39: _Das Lichtreine._]

[Footnote 40: Except in the conceptions of the Hebrew prophets this is only true subject to qualification even of the God of Israel. For he was evidently associated with the thunder, to take but one case--the deliverance of the tables of stone on Sinai.]

[Footnote 41: _Phantasie_ may often be translated by the word imagination, but here the element of caprice and dependence on sensuous image rather than creative impulse directed by a principle of selection is to be emphasized.]

[Footnote 42: _Ein Taumel_, _i.e._, the dance as of intoxication.]

[Footnote 43: This is obviously a difficult passage to follow. The main thing to remember is that Hegel is here describing the movement of a dialectical process, that is the purely objective, rather than the point of view of personal or even national experience. Such vivid expressions as _Taumel_ and _schamlos hineinrücken_ remind one of the Platonic dialectic.]

[Footnote 44: Hegel's editor has Brahman here, but according to a passage lower down (p. 59) it should rather be Brahmâ.]

[Footnote 45: _Hinaufschrauben_, lit., a screwing up to--a screwing that in fact crews the head off.]

[Footnote 46: _Verdumpfens._ Either Hegel wrote _Verdummens_, or more probably _Verdampfens._ The idea of "becoming mouldy" makes no sense.]

[Footnote 47: This I think is the sense, though Hegel expresses it by using words such as _das Personificieren und Vermenschlichen_, and lower down _das Subjektiviren._ But previously he has rather contrasted that false kind of personification which seeks for the significant in the expression of the subject, his deeds and acts, rather than in grasping the motive centre of personality, the subjective principle itself, and it appears more intelligible in a passage, which is sufficiently hard to follow in any ease, to preserve that contrast.]

[Footnote 48: There is apparently only one ring and sceptre, but the words used are capable of the interpretation that would attach one for each of the hands.]

[Footnote 49: Hegel cites Wilson's Lexicon, _s.v._ 2.]

[Footnote 50: _Dem Rhythmus nach_, that is, the Hindoo conception is entirely superficial, and expresses rather a rhythmic order than a profound spiritual truth which this number expresses, a truth which as Hegel has previously observed may be expressed under other determinations than the numerical.]

[Footnote 51: _Unstätigkeit_, instability, flightiness, detachment from a fundamental principle.]

[Footnote 52: That is Brahmâ apparently.]

[Footnote 53: The order of the words would strictly mean that the sons were in the pitchers and it is quite possible that this is the meaning.]

[Footnote 54: That is, in Greek cosmogony.]

[Footnote 55: What: _Centimanen_ refers to I do not know, possibly a name for Arges, Ceropes, and Brontes.]

[Footnote 56: The sense is "which is not merely (to take the obvious case of opposition which is, however, _not_ the one here described) totally outside the Absolute and incidental to," etc. Hegel's words would admit of the interpretation that this was part of the conception he is describing. But this is obviously not so, for, in that case, the negative would be ascribed to both the Absolute and the "other God."]

[Footnote 57: _Ist Unterscheiden_, is that which involves differentiation. To posit a quality is to distinguish from other qualities. A fundamental, aspect of Hegelian logic.]

[Footnote 58: _Glied_, part of one organic totality.]

[Footnote 59: Hegel uses an expression somewhat similar to Milton's "Among the faithless faithful only he." _Den Bisherigen_ refers primarily, of course, to the Persian and Hindoo peoples.]

[Footnote 60: _Wie des Innern überhaupt_, _i.e._, the Inward with its significance as the Absolute.]

[Footnote 61: _In seiner Abgeschiedenheit vom Leben_. In other words the corpse was preserved as still the only appropriate external form of Life. Though Hegel separates the two aspects of Egyptian belief they were necessary concomitants of each other.]

[Footnote 62: I have translated _Innerem_ here by "soul," but it expresses of course too much if taken strictly in its most personal sense.]

[Footnote 63: _Aberglaube_, not "superstition" so much as belief that is intuitive, not rationally deduced. The emphasis is on _ahnt._]

[Footnote 64: Hegel puts it in the rather obscure and contradictory way that the human figure is represented as "still _having_ the most unique form of subjective intensity (_Das eigenste Innre der Subjectivität_) outside it."]

[Footnote 65: That is, the mythological history of the God.]

[Footnote 66: Lit., "Which alone is able to apply itself (that is, to the work of interpretation) in a variety of directions."]