Philosophy proper commences in the West. It is in the West that this freedom of self-consciousness first comes forth; the natural consciousness, and likewise Mind disappear into themselves. In the brightness of the East the individual disappears; the light first becomes in the West the flash of thought which strikes within itself, and from thence creates its world out of itself. The blessedness of the West is thus so determined that in it the subject as such endures and continues in the substantial; the individual mind grasps its Being as universal, but universality is just this relation to itself. This being at home with self, this personality and infinitude of the “I” constitutes the Being of Mind; it is thus and can be none else. For a people to know themselves as free, and to be only as universal, is for them to be; it is the principle of their whole life as regards morality and all else. To take an example, we only know our real Being in so far as personal freedom is its first condition, and hence we never can be slaves. Were the mere arbitrary will of the prince a law, and should he wish slavery to be introduced, we would have the knowledge that this could not be. To sleep, to live, to have a certain office, is not our real Being, and certainly to be no slave is such, for that has come to mean the being in nature. Thus in the West we are upon the soil of a veritable Philosophy. Because in desire I am subject to another, and my Being is in a particularity, I am, as I exist, unlike myself; for I am “I,” the universal complete, but hemmed in by passion. This last is self-will or formal freedom, which has desire as content. Amongst the Greeks we first find the freedom which is the end of true will, the equitable and right, in which I am free and universal, and others, too, are free, are also “I” and like me; where a relationship between free and free is thus established with its actual laws, determinations of the universal will, and justly constituted states. Hence it is here that Philosophy began.