Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 13

While on the one hand the first manifestation of the new world is only the whole shrouded in its simplicity, or its general ground, on the other hand the wealth of the previous existence is still present in the remembrance of consciousness. The newly appearing shape yet misses the extension and particularization of content, but still more the development of form by which distinctions are determined with certainty and arranged in their precise relations. Without this development, science lacks general intelligibility [Verständlichkeit] and has the appearance of being an esoteric possession of a few individuals – esoteric, because in the first instance it is only found in its concept or its inwardness; a possession of few individuals, because its unextended appearance renders its existence particularistic. Only what is perfectly determinate is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible and capable of being learned and the property of everybody. The intelligible form of science is the road to it offered to all and made plain for all. To reach rational knowledge by our intelligence is the just demand of consciousness which comes to science. For understanding [Verstand] is thinking, the pure I in general; and what is intelligible [das Verständige] is something that from the first is familiar and common to science as well as to the unscientific mind, enabling the latter to gain direct entry into the former.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 12

But this new world is as little a perfected reality as is the new-born child, and it is essential to bear this in mind. The first appearance is only its immediacy or its concept. A building is not finished when its foundation is laid; and just as little is the attained concept of a whole the whole itself. When we want to see an oak with all its vigor of trunk, its spreading branches, and mass of foliage, we are not satisfied to be shown an acorn instead. In the same way science, the crowning glory of a world of spirit, is not found complete in its initial stages. The beginning of the new spirit is the outcome of an extensive revolution of manifold cultural forms, the price of an often tortuous path and just as frequent struggles and efforts. It is a whole which, from its successive stages and its extension, has returned back into itself; it is the resultant simple concept of itself. But the reality of this simple whole consists in those figurations, which have now become moments, developing anew and taking shape, albeit in their new elements, in terms of the meaning now attained.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 11

For the rest, it is not difficult to see that our time is a time of birth and transition to a new period. Spirit has broken with the hitherto-existing world of its existence and imaginations and is about to let all of that to sink into the past, and has begun the labor of its transformation. It is indeed never at rest, but engaged in ever-advancing movement. But here it is like the birth of a child; the long quiet period of nourishment is interrupted by the first breath – a qualitative change – and the child is born. In like manner the self-cultivating spirit slowly and quietly ripens the new form, dismantles one part after another of the structure of its previous world, the tottering of which is only indicated by isolated symptoms. Frivolity and ennui spreading in the established order of things, the undefined foreboding of something unknown, indicate that something other is approaching. This gradual crumbling away, which did not alter the general look and aspect of the whole, is interrupted by the emergence, which, in a flash, all at once situates the structure of the new world.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 10

Still less must this temperance which foregoes science take it upon itself to claim that such raving enthusiasm and obscurantism is something higher than science. These prophetic utterances pretend to occupy the very center and the depths, look askance at definiteness (the Horus), and deliberately hold back from the concept and necessity as being the sort of reflection which, they say, can only feel at home in finitude. But just as there is an empty expanse, there is also an empty depth, and as there is an extension of substance which overflows into finite multiplicity without the power of keeping the manifold together, in the same way we may have a content-less intensity which, maintaining itself as mere force without expansion, is the same thing as superficiality. The power of the mind is only as great as its expression, its depth only as deep as it dares  to expand and lose itself in its explanation. Likewise when this concept-less substantial knowledge pretends to have immersed the peculiarity of self in the essence, and to philosophize in truth and holiness, it hides from itself the fact that instead of devotion to God, it rather, by this contempt for all measure and definiteness, on the one hand simply attests in itself the fortuitous character of its content, and on the other endows God with its own caprice. When such minds commit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of substance, they think that, by putting a veil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all understanding, they are thus God’s own, to whom He gives His wisdom in their sleep. What they in fact do conceive and bring forth in sleep is, therefore, dreams.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 9

This temperance in receiving, or stinginess in giving, does not befit science. The man who only seeks edification, who wants to envelop in mist the earthly diversity of his existence and his thought, and craves after the vague enjoyment of this indeterminate divinity – he may look where he likes to find this: he will easily find the means to procure something he can congratulate himself on and puff himself up about. But philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 8

This demand accords with the strenuous effort, exhibiting itself as almost  heated and petulant, to rescue mankind from being sunken in what is sensuous, vulgar, and particular, and to raise men’s eyes to the stars; as if men had quite forgotten the divine, and were on the verge of finding satisfaction, like worms, in mud and water. Time was when man had a heaven decked out with an abundance of thoughts and images. The significance of everything that is lay in the thread of light by which it was attached to heaven; instead of dwelling in this present, the eye glanced away over the present to the divine being, away, so to speak, to a present in the hereafter. Spirit’s eye had to be directed under compulsion to what is earthly, and kept fixed there; and it has needed a long time to introduce that clearness, which only the otherworldly had, into the crassness and confusion shrouding the sense of earthly things, and to make it of interest and of value to pay attention to the immediate present as such, which was called experience. Now we apparently have the need for the opposite of all this; man’s mind and interest are so deeply rooted in the earthly that we require a like power to have them raised above that level. Spirit shows itself to be so poor that it seems to long for the paltry feeling of the divine in general, and to get refreshment from that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for the merest mouthful of water. By the little which can thus satisfy the needs of spirit, we can measure the extent of its loss.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 7

If we consider the appearance of a claim like this in its more general setting, and look at the stage at which self-conscious spirit at present stands, we shall find that it has gotten beyond the substantial life that it otherwise introduced in the element of thought – beyond this immediacy of its belief, beyond the satisfaction and security of certainty which consciousness possessed of being reconciled with the essence and its general presence, within as well as without. It has not merely passed beyond that to the opposite extreme of substance-less reflection of itself into itself, but beyond this too. It has not merely lost its essential life, it is also conscious of this loss and of the finitude characteristic of its content. Turning away from the husks it has to feed on, and confessing that it lies in wickedness and sin, it reviles itself for so doing, and now desires from philosophy not so much to bring it to a knowledge of what it is, as to obtain once again through philosophy the restoration of that solidity and substantiality of being which it has lost. Philosophy is thus expected not so much to meet this want by opening up the closed-ness of substance and elevating this to self-consciousness, not so much to bring chaotic consciousness back to thoughtful order and the simplicity of the concept, as to run together thought’s separations, to suppress the distinguishing concept and to restore the feeling of essence, to vouchsafe not so much insight as edification. The beautiful, the holy, the eternal, religion, love – these are the bait required to awaken the desire to bite: not the concept but ecstasy, not the advancing necessity of the matter but ferment and enthusiasm – these are to be the stance and onward expansion of the wealth of substance.