"To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, the germ as affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree."
— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)
Author
Date
1830
Metaphor
"To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, the germ as affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree."
Metaphor in Context
(2) The image is of itself transient, and intelligence itself is as attention its time and also its place, its when and where. But intelligence is not only consciousness and actual existence, but qua intelligence is the subject and the potentiality of its own specializations. The image when thus kept in mind is no longer existent, but stored up out of consciousness.
To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, the germ as affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree. Inability to grasp a universal like this, which, though intrinsically concrete, still continues simple, is what has led people to talk about special fibres and areas as receptacles of particular ideas. It was felt that what was diverse should in the nature of things have a local habitation peculiar to itself. But whereas the reversion of the germ from its existing specializations to its simplicity in a purely potential existence takes place only in another germ—the germ of the fruit; intelligence qua intelligence shows the potential coming to free existence in its development, and yet at the same time collecting itself in its inwardness. Hence from the other point of view intelligence is to be conceived as this subconscious mine, i.e. as the existent universal in which the different has not yet been realized in its separations. And it is indeed this potentiality which is the first form of universality offered in mental representation.
(§ 453, p. 204)
To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, the germ as affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree. Inability to grasp a universal like this, which, though intrinsically concrete, still continues simple, is what has led people to talk about special fibres and areas as receptacles of particular ideas. It was felt that what was diverse should in the nature of things have a local habitation peculiar to itself. But whereas the reversion of the germ from its existing specializations to its simplicity in a purely potential existence takes place only in another germ—the germ of the fruit; intelligence qua intelligence shows the potential coming to free existence in its development, and yet at the same time collecting itself in its inwardness. Hence from the other point of view intelligence is to be conceived as this subconscious mine, i.e. as the existent universal in which the different has not yet been realized in its separations. And it is indeed this potentiality which is the first form of universality offered in mental representation.
(§ 453, p. 204)
Provenance
Reading Katrin Pahl, Tropes of Transport: Hegel and Emotion (Northwestern UP, 2012), 41. Text from Past Masters.
Citation
Hegel, G. W. F. Hegel's Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830). Trans William Wallace. Together with the Zusätze in Boumann's text (1845). Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1971.
Oxford University Press, 1971.
Date of Entry
04/22/2013
