In a foot-note concerning his view of the relation of mind and
nature, Beiser refers to Werke X, 43-199, paragraphs 388-411.
I believe he is referring to Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. But
unless the German book is very different from the English, the
reference must be a mistake. Hegel says nothing at all about
the relation of mind and nature in paragraphs 388-411. He does,
though, address this question in the Introduction which is in
paragraphs 377-386. Below is a good deal of what Hegel has to
say on this matter in the Introduction.

In the sixth quote from the zusatz of #381, by the way, Hegel
argues that Nature is derived from Mind rather than the other
way around.

But really it is hard to see how Beiser came up with his views
based on the below. In an earlier post Ioannis provided
quotes from Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. I was not able
to tell whether he had provided the quotes to refute Beiser or
to prove Beiser right.



The aim of all genuine science is just this, that mind
shall recognize itself in everything in heaven and on
earth. An out-and-out Other simply does not exist for
mind. (#377, zusatz)

Mind is not an inert being but, on the contrary,
absolutely restless being, pure activity, the negating
or ideality of every fixed category of the abstractive
intellect; not abstractly simple but, in its simplicity,
at the same time a distinguishing of itself from itself;
not an essence that is already finished and complete
before its manifestation, keeping itself aloof behind
its host of appearances, but an essence which is
truly actual only through the specific forms of its
necessary self-manifestation. (#378, zusatz)

External Nature, too, like the mind, is rational, divine,
a representation of the Idea. But in Nature, the Idea
appears in the element of asunderness, is external
not only to mind but also to itself. (#381, zusatz)

We know that natural things are spatial and temporal,
that in Nature one thing exists alongside another,
that one thing follows another, in brief, that in Nature
all things are mutually external, ad infinitum; further,
that matter, this universal basis of every existent form
in Nature, not merely offers resistance to us, exists
apart from our mind, but holds itself asunder against
its own self, divides itself into concrete points, into
material atoms, of which it is composed. The differences
into which the Notion of Nature unfolds itself are more
or less mutually independent existences; true, through
their original unity they stand in mutual connection, so
that none can be comprehended without the others;
but this connection is in a greater or less degree
external to them. (#381, zusatz)

Every activity of mind is nothing but a distinct mode
of reducing what is external to the inwardness which
mind itself is, and it is only by this reduction, by this
idealization or assimilation, of what is external that it
becomes and is mind. (#381, zusatz)

But this ideality is first authenticated in the relation
of the 'I' to the infinitely manifold material confronting
it. This material, in being seized by the 'I', is at the
same time poisoned and transfigured by the latter's
universality; it loses its isolated, independent existence
and receives a spiritual one. So far, therefore, is mind
from being forced out of its simplicity, its being-with-
itself, by the endless multiplicity of its images and
ideas, into a spatial asunderness, that, on the contrary,
its simple self, in undimmed clarity, pervades this
multiplicity through and through and does not let it
reach an independent existence. (#381, zusatz)


Philosophical thinking knows that Nature is idealized
not merely by us, that Nature's asunderness is not an
absolutely insuperable barrier for Nature itself, for its
Notion; but that the eternal Idea immanent in Nature
or, what is the same thing, the essence of mind itself
at work within Nature brings about the idealization,
the triumph over the asunderness, because this form
of mind's existence conflicts with the inwardness of
its essence. (#381, zusatz)

The procession of mind or spirit from Nature must
not be understood as if Nature were the absolutely
immediate and the prius, and the original positing
agent, mind, on the contrary, were only something
posited by Nature; rather is it Nature which is posited
by mind, and the latter is the absolute prius. (#381,
zusatz)

The transition from Nature to mind is not a transition
to an out-and-out Other, but is only a coming-to-itself
of mind out of its self-externality in Nature. (#381,
zusatz)

The entire development of the Notion of mind
represents only mind's freeing of itself from all its
existential forms which do not accord with its Notion:
a liberation which is brought about by the
transformation of these forms into an actuality
perfectly adequate to the Notion of mind. (#382,
zusatz)

Absolute mind knows that it posits being itself, that
it is itself the creator of its Other, of Nature and finite
mind, so that this Other loses all semblance of
independence in face of mind, ceases altogether to
be a limitation for mind and appears only as a means
whereby mind attains to absolute being-for-itself, to
the absolute unity of what it is in itself and what it is
for itself, of its Notion and its actuality. The highest
definition of the Absolute is that it is not merely mind
in general but that it is mind which is absolutely manifest
to itself, self-conscious, infinitely creative mind. (# 384,
zusatz)

As long as mind stands related to itself as to an Other,
it is only subjective mind, originating in Nature and at first
itself natural mind. But the entire activity of subjective mind
is directed to grasping itself as its own self, proving itself
to be the ideality of its immediate reality. When it has
attained to a being-for-itself, then it is no longer merely
subjective, but objective mind. Whereas subjective mind on
account of its connection with an Other is still unfree or,
what is the same thing, is free only in principle, in objective
mind there comes into existence freedom, mind's knowledge
of itself as free. Mind that is objective is a person, and as
such has a reality of its freedom in property; for in property,
the thing is posited as what it is, namely, something lacking
a subsistence of its own, something which essentially has
the significance of being only the reality of the free will of
a person, and for that reason, of being for any other person
inviolable. Here we see a subjective mind that knows itself
to be free, and, at the same time, an external reality of
this freedom; here, therefore, mind attains to a being-for-
itself, the objectivity of mind receives its due. Thus mind
has emerged from the form of mere subjectivity. But the
full realization of that freedom which in property is still
incomplete, still only formal, the consummation of the
realization of the Notion of objective mind, is achieved
only in the State, in which mind develops its freedom
into a world posited by mind itself, into the ethical world.
Yet mind must pass beyond this level too. The defect of
this objectivity of mind consists in its being only posited.
Mind must again freely let go the world, what mind has
posited must at the same time be grasped as having an
immediate being. This happens on the third level of mind,
the standpoint of absolute mind, i.e. of art, religion, and
philosophy. (#385, zusatz)

The two first parts of the doctrine of Mind embrace the
finite mind. Mind is the infinite Idea, and finitude here means
the disproportion between the concept and the reality - but
with the qualification that it is a shadow cast by the mind's
own light - a show or illusion which the mind implicitly imposes
as a barrier to itself, in order, by its removal, actually to
realize and become conscious of freedom as its very being,
i.e. to be fully manifested. The several steps of this activity,
on each of which, with their semblance of being, it is the
function of the finite mind to linger, and through which it
has to pass, are steps in its liberation. In the full truth of
that liberation is given the identification of the three stages -
finding a world presupposed before us, generating a world as
our own creation, and gaining freedom from it and in it. To
the infinite form of this truth the show purifies itself till it
becomes a consciousness of it. (#386)


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