The content and form of the _third_ chapter may be generally indicated as the _formal consistency of character._ In other words, if the subjective life has been so far concentrated, that spiritual independence is its essential characteristic, it follows also that the _particular_ content, with which such independence is associated as with what is strictly its own, will also partake of such a character; this self-subsistence, however, inasmuch as it does not, as was the case in the sphere appertinent to essential and explicit religious truth, repose in the substantive core of its life, is only able to reach a formal type. Conversely the configuration of external conditions, situations, and events is now also independently free, and is involved consequently in every sort of capricious adventure. For this reason we find, to put it in general terms, as the termination of the romantic, the contingency of the exterior condition and internal life, and a falling asunder of the two aspects, by reason of which Art commits an act of suicide, and betrays the fact that conscious life must now secure forms of loftier significance, than Art alone is able to offer, in which to grasp and retain truth. [Footnote 206: Throughout, of course, the German word translated in these paragraphs as mind or spirit is _Geist._] [Footnote 207: Absolute ideality may perhaps interpret the text more intelligibly.] [Footnote 208: It is so because as self-identity it distinguishes itself from everything to which it is related.] [Footnote 209: _Das wirkliche Subjekt_, Hegel means, of course, individual man.] [Footnote 210: "Most intimate" would perhaps express the meaning more clearly.] [Footnote 211: Hegel here gives expression to what is perhaps not wholly defensible logic, though it may be truly poetic mysticism.] [Footnote 212: I would refer any reader who is inclined to gasp at this interpretation of Christian revelation to some useful remarks of Professor Bosanquet in his Preface to his translation, p. XXVIII.] [Footnote 213: _Die Ausbreitung dieses Selbstanschauens, In-sich-und-Bei-sich-seyns_ _des Geistes ist der Frieden._ One of Hegel's terrors for the translator, though the sense is obvious enough.] [Footnote 214: The analysis no doubt has its interest. But among other difficulties it is not easy to see how the argument, based as it is on rational grounds, makes for anything but annihilation. Death is a negation--it, according to the argument, puts an end to the "process"--what remains then is apparently the evanescence of the finite spirit. This reference to "happiness" assumes that conscious individual life continues, which is a mere _pelitio principii._ If it continues the former dual aspect would seem to be implied in it. The analysis of the actual significance of death for Christendom and Greek paganism retains, of course, its validity.]