2. The Greek Realm

This realm has that substantial unity of the finite and the infinite, but only as a mysterious foundation, thrust back into dull remembrance, into caves, and into images of tradition — a foundation which, born forth out of a self-differentiating spirit into individual spirituality and into the daylight of knowing, is tempered and transfigured into beauty and into a free and serene ethical life. In this determination, then, the principle of personal individuality arises, not yet caught up within itself, but still held within its ideal unity; hence the whole falls apart, in part, into a circle of particular national spirits, and in part, on the one hand, the ultimate decision of the will is not yet placed within the subjectivity of self-consciousness existing for itself, but in a power that is higher than and external to it (cf. § 279, Remark), while, on the other hand, the particularity that belongs to need has not yet been taken up into freedom, but is excluded and confined to a slave class.