Phenomenology of Spirit

With this appeal to universal experience, we may be permitted to anticipate some concerns in the practical sphere. In this respect, what one can say to those who make assertions about the truth and reality of sensuous objects is that they should be sent back to the most elementary school of wisdom, namely, to the old Eleusinian secrets of Ceres and Bacchus, and that they have yet to learn the secret of the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. This is so because the person who has been initiated into these secrets not only comes to doubt the being of sensuous things, but rather arrives at despair about them. In part he brings about their nothingness, and in part he sees them do it to themselves. Nor are the animals excluded from this wisdom. Instead they prove themselves to be the most deeply initiated into it, for they do not stand still in the face of sensuous things, as if those things existed in themselves. Despairing of the reality of those things and in the total certainty of the nullity of those things, they without any further ado simply help themselves to them and devour them. Just like the animals, all of nature celebrates these revealed mysteries which teach the truth about sensuous things.