“Mind has defined itself as the truth of soul and consciousness – the former a simple immediate totality, the latter now an infinite form which is not, like consciousness, restricted by that content, and does not stand in mere correlation to it as to its object, but is an awareness of this substantial totality, neither subjective nor objective. Mind, therefore, starts only from its own being and is in correlation only with its own features.”
“Mind is just this elevation above nature and physical modes, and above the complication with an external object – in one word, above the material, as its concept has just shown.”
“All it has now to do is to realise this notion of its freedom, and get rid of the form of immediacy with which it once more begins.”
“The content which is elevated to intuitions is its sensations: it is its intuitions also which are transmuted into representations, and its representations which are transmuted again into thoughts, etc.”
“The soul is finite, so far as its features are immediate or connatural.”
“Consciousness is finite, in so far as it has an object.”
“Mind is finite, in so far as, though it no longer has an object, it has a mode in its knowledge; i.e. it is finite by means of its immediacy, or, what is the same thing, by being subjective or only a notion.”
“Hence the finitude of mind is to be placed in the (temporary) failure of knowledge to get hold of the full reality of its reason, or, equally, in the (temporary) failure of reason to attain full manifestation in knowledge.”
“Reason at the same time is only infinite so far as it is ‘absolute’ freedom; so far, that is, as presupposing itself for its knowledge to work upon, it thereby reduces itself to finitude, and appears as everlasting movement of superseding this immediacy, of comprehending itself, and being a rational knowledge.”
“The progress of mind is development, in so far as its existent phase, viz. knowledge, involves as its intrinsic purpose and burden that utter and complete autonomy which is rationality; in which case the action of translating this purpose into reality is strictly only a nominal passage over into manifestation, and is even there a return into itself.”
“Similarly, if the activities of mind are treated as mere manifestations, forces, perhaps in terms stating their utility or suitability for some other interest of head or heart, there is no indication of the true final aim of the whole business. That can only be the intelligible unity of mind, and its activity can only have itself as aim; i.e. its aim can only be to get rid of the form of immediacy or subjectivity, to reach and get hold of itself, and to liberate itself to itself.”
“As consciousness has for its object the stage which preceded it, viz. the natural soul (§ 413), so mind has or rather makes consciousness its object: i.e. whereas consciousness is only the virtual identity of the ego with its other (§ 415), the mind realises that identity as the concrete unity which it and it only knows. Its productions are governed by the principle of all reason that the contents are at once potentially existent, and are the mind’s own, in freedom. Thus, if we consider the initial aspect of mind, that aspect is twofold – as being and as its own: by the one, the mind finds in itself something which is, by the other it affirms it to be only its own.”
“The way of mind is therefore”
“(a) to be theoretical: it has to do with the rational as its immediate affection which it must render its own: or it has to free knowledge from its presupposedness and therefore from its abstractness, and make the affection subjective. When the affection has been rendered its own, and the knowledge consequently characterised as free intelligence, i.e. as having its full and free characterisation in itself, it is”
“(b) Will: practical mind, which in the first place is likewise formal – i.e. its content is at first only its own, and is immediately willed; and it proceeds next to liberate its volition from its subjectivity, which is the one-sided form of its contents, so that it”
“(c) confronts itself as free mind and thus gets rid of both its defects of one-sidedness.”