Preface

[13th Paragraph]

What is rational is actual;
and what is actual is rational.

|XX| Every naive consciousness stands in this conviction, as does philosophy, and from this philosophy proceeds in its consideration of the spiritual universe just as much as of the natural. If reflection, feeling, or whatever form subjective consciousness takes, regards the present as something vain, is beyond it and knows better, it finds itself in the vain, and since it has actuality only in the present, it is thus itself mere vanity. If, conversely, the idea counts as what is merely such an idea, a representation in an opining, philosophy by contrast grants the insight that nothing is actual but the idea. What matters then is to recognize in the appearance of the temporal and transient the substance which is immanent, and the eternal which is present. For the rational, which is synonymous with the idea, as it simultaneously enters into external existence in its actuality, emerges in an infinite richness of forms, appearances, and configurations and surrounds its kernel with the variegated rind in which consciousness at first dwells, which the concept first penetrates in order to find the inner pulse and to feel it still beating in the external configurations as well. The infinitely manifold relations, however, that form in this externality through the shining of the essence into it, this infinite material and its regulation is not the object of philosophy. |XXI| It would thereby meddle in matters that do not concern it; it can spare itself giving good advice on such things; Plato could have refrained from recommending to nurses never to stand still with children but always to rock them in their arms, and Fichte likewise from constructing, as it was called, the perfecting of the passport police to the point that suspects should have not only their description entered in their passports but their portrait painted there. In such elaborations, no trace of philosophy is to be seen any longer, and it can leave such ultra-wisdom all the more, as it should show itself most liberal precisely regarding this infinite multitude of objects. Science will thereby also show itself furthest removed from the hatred that the vanity of knowing better casts upon a multitude of circumstances and institutions—a hatred in which pettiness takes most pleasure, because only through it does it attain a feeling of self.

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