3. This new world has therefore, however, to be adopted by a new race of men, by Barbarians; for it is characteristic of barbarians to apprehend the spiritual in a sensuous way. And it must be by northern barbarians, for it is the northern self-containedness alone that is the immediate principle of this new world-consciousness. With this self-consciousness of the intelligible world as a world immediately actual, mind, having regard to what it has in itself become, is higher than before, but, on the other side, in respect of its consciousness it is thrown quite back to the beginning of culture, and this consciousness had to commence from the beginning again. What it had to overcome was on the one hand this sensuous immediacy of its intelligible world, and secondly the opposed sensuous immediacy of actuality, by its consciousness held as null. It excludes the sun, replaces it with tapers, is furnished with images merely; it is in itself alone, and inward, not reconciled for consciousness—to self-consciousness a sinful, wicked world is present. For the intelligible world of Philosophy had not yet completed in itself the task of making itself the actual world—of recognizing the intelligible in the actual, as well as the actual in the intelligible. It is one thing to have the Idea of Philosophy, to recognize absolute essence as absolute essence, and quite another thing to recognize it as the system of the universe, of nature, and of individual self-consciousness, as the whole development of its reality. The Neo-Platonists had found that principle of realization—namely, this real substance which again places itself in quite opposed, though in themselves real determinations—but having got so far they did not find the form, the principle of self-consciousness.
On the Teutonic nations the world-spirit imposed the task of developing an embryo into the form of the thinking man. What comes first is the mind as apprehended, and to that is opposed the subjectivity of will which has not been taken up into mind; the kingdom of truth and that of the world are bound together and at the same time evidently divided. An intelligible world has thus in the conception of men established itself in the mode of this same actuality, like a far-away land that is just as really conceived of by us, peopled and inhabited, as the world we see, but which is hidden from us as though by a mountain. It is not the Greek or any other world of gods and of mythology—a simple, undivided faith; for there is likewise present in it the highest negativity, that is, the contradiction between actuality and that other world. This intellectual world expresses the nature of real absolute existence. It is on it that Philosophy tries its powers, and on it that thought also moils and toils. We have in general outline to deal with these not very pleasing manifestations.
Our first view of Philosophy, as revealed in Christianity (pp. 10-21) is that of a dim groping which is carried on within the depths of the Idea—as being the forms assumed by the same, which constitute its moments; we see a hard struggle made by reason, which cannot force its way out of the imagination and popular conceptions to the Notion. There is no venture too rash for the imagination to undertake, because, impelled by reason, it cannot satisfy itself with beautiful images, but has to pass beyond them. There is likewise no extravagance of reason into which it does not fall, because it cannot obtain the mastery of the image, but within this element is merely in the act of warfare with it. Later on than this Western self-immersion, there arose in the East expansion, negation of all that is concrete, abstraction from all determinations; this pure contemplation or pure thought present in Mohammedanism corresponds to the Christian descent into self. Within Christianity itself, however, the intellectual world is set in opposition to that first Cabalistic principle; in it pure conceptions rule which constitute the ideas present in thought, and with this we enter upon the Scholastic philosophy. Philosophy, like the arts and sciences, when, through the rule of the Barbarians of Germany, they became dumb and lifeless, took refuge with the Arabians, and there attained a wonderful development; they were the first sources from which the West obtained assistance. Through the presupposition of the immediately present and accepted truth, thought had lost its freedom and the truth its presence in conceiving consciousness; and philosophy sank into a metaphysics of the understanding and into a formal dialectic. We have thus in this period first of all to consider philosophy in the East, and secondly in the West; that is, the philosophy of the Arabians first, and subsequently the philosophy of the Schools. The Schoolmen are the principal figures in this period; they represent European philosophy in the European Middle Ages. The third stage is the dissolution of what is upheld in the scholastic philosophy; new meteor-like apparitions are now seen, which precede the third period, the genuine revival of free Philosophy.
SECTION ONE
Arabian Philosophy
In the West the Germanic tribes had obtained possession of what had hitherto formed a section of the Roman Empire, and their conquests were attaining to shape and solidity, when another religion dawned in the East, namely the Mohammedan. The East purified itself of all that was individual and definite, while the West descended into the depths and actual presence of spirit. As quickly as the Arabians with their fanaticism spread themselves over the Eastern and the Western world, so quickly were the various stages of culture passed through by them, and very shortly they advanced in culture much farther than the West. For in Mohammedanism, which quickly reached its culminating point, both as regards external power and dominion and also spiritual development, Philosophy, along with all the other arts and sciences, flourished to an extraordinary degree, in spite of its here not displaying any specially characteristic features. Philosophy was fostered and cherished among the Arabians; the philosophy of the Arabians must therefore be mentioned in the history of Philosophy. What we have to say, however, chiefly concerns the external preservation and propagation of Philosophy. The Arabians became acquainted with Greek philosophy mainly through the medium of the Syrians in Western Asia, who had imbibed Greek culture, and who were under the Arabian sway. In Syria, which formed a Greek kingdom, at Antioch, especially in Berytus and Edessa, there were great institutes of learning; and thus the Syrians constituted the connecting link between Greek philosophy and the Arabians. Syrian was the language of the people even in Bagdad.[3]