the latter does not last there, and maintains no permanence : only self-consciousness is what is recognised and gains concrete reality. Here again,* then, we see Language to be the form in which spirit finds existence. Language is the way self-consciousness exists for others ; it is self-consciousness which is there immediately present as such, and in the form of this actual universal self-consciousness. Language is self separating itself from itself, which comes objectively before itself as the pure ego identical with ego, which at once maintains itself in this objective form as this actual self, and at the same time fuses directly with others and is their self-consciousness. The self perceives itself at the same time that it is perceived by others : and this perceiving is just existence which has become a self. The content, which language has here obtained, is no longer the self we found in the world of culture, perverted, perverting, and distraught. It is spirit which, having returned to itself, is certain of itself, certain in itself of its truth, of its own act of recognition, and of being recognised as this knowledge. The language of the ethical spirit of society is law, and simple command and complaint, which is but a tear shed over necessity. Moral consciousness, on the other hand, remains dumb, shut up within its inner life ; for self has no existence as yet in its case : rather existence and self there stand, in the first instance, in external relation to each other. Language, however, comes forward merely as the mediating element between independent self-consciousnesses recognised and acknowledged ; and the existent self means immediately universal recognition, means recognition in manifold ways and in this very manifoldness simple recognition. What the language of conscience contains is the self knowing itself as essential reality. This alone is what that language expresses, and this expression is the true realisation of " doing " anything, and renders the act valid and acceptable. Consciousness expresses its conviction : in this conviction alone is the action duty : it holds good as duty, too, solely by the conviction being expressed. For universal self-consciousness stands detached from the specific act which merely exists : the act qua existence means nothing to it : what it holds of importance is the conviction that the act is a duty ; and this appears concretely in language. To realise the act means here not translating its content from the form of purpose, or subjectivity, into the form of abstract reality : it means translating it from the form of immediate certainty of self, which takes