IX. THIRD SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC
THE DOCTRINE OF THE NOTION

§ 160
The Notion is the principle of freedom, the power of substance self-
realised. It is a systematic whole, in which each of its constituent functions 
is the very total which the notion is, and is put as indissolubly one with it. 
Thus in its self-identity it has original and complete determinateness.
§ 160n
The position taken up by the notion is that of absolute idealism. Philosophy 
is a knowledge through notions because it sees that what on other grades of 
consciousness is taken to have Being, and to be naturally or immediately 
independent, is but a constituent stage in the Idea. In the logic of 
understanding, the notion is generally reckoned a mere form of thought, 
and treated as a general conception. It is to this inferior view of the notion 
that the assertion refers, so often urged on behalf of the heart and 
sentiment, that notions as such are something dead, empty, and abstract. 
The case is really quite the reverse. The notion is, on the contrary, the 
principle of all life, and thus possesses at the same time a character of 
thorough concreteness. That it is so follows from the whole logical 
movement up to this point, and need not be here proved. The contrast 
between form and content, which is thus used to criticise the notion when it 
is alleged to be merely formal, has, like all the other contrasts upheld by 
reflection, been already left behind and overcome dialectically or through 
itself. The notion, in short, is what contains all the earlier categories of 
thought merged in it. It certainly is a form, but an infinite and creative form 
which includes, but at the same time releases from itself, the fullness of all 
content. And so too the notion may, if it be wished, be styled abstract, if the 
name concrete is restricted to the concrete facts of sense or of immediate 
perception. For the notion is not palpable to the touch, and when we are 
engaged with it, hearing and seeing must quite fail us. And yet, as it was 
before remarked, the notion is a true concrete; for the reason that it 
involves Being and Essence, and the total wealth of these two spheres with 
them, merged in the unity of thought. 
If, as was said at an earlier point, the different stages of the logical idea are 
to be treated as a series of definitions of the Absolute, the definition which 
now results for us is that the Absolute is the Notion. That necessitates a 
higher estimate of the notion, however, than is found in formal 
conceptualist Logic, where the notion is a mere form of our subjective 
thought, with no original content of its own. But if Speculative Logic thus 
attaches a meaning to the term notion so very different from that usually 
given, it may be asked why the same word should be employed in two 
contrary acceptations, and an occasion thus given for confusion and 
misconception. The answer is that, great as the interval is between the 
speculative notion and the notion of Formal Logic, a closer examination 
shows that the deeper meaning is not so foreign to the general usages of 
language as it seems at first sight. We speak of the deduction of a content 
from the notion, e.g. of the specific provisions of the law of property from 
the notion of property; and so again we speak of tracing back these material 
details to the notion. We thus recognise that the notion is no mere form 
without a content of its own: for if it were, there would be in the one case 
nothing to deduce from such a form, and in the other case to trace a given 
body of fact back to the empty form of the notion would only rob the fact 
of its specific character, without making it understood.
§ 161 - Development
The onward movement of the notion is no longer either a transition into, or 
a reflection on something else, but Development. For in the notion, the 
elements distinguished are without more ado at the same time declared to 
be identical with one another and with the whole, and the specific character 
of each is a free being of the whole notion.
§ 161n
Transition into something else is the dialectical process within the range of 
Being: reflection (bringing something else into light), in the range of 
Essence. The movement of the Notion is development: by which that only 
is explicit which is already implicitly present. In the world of nature it is 
organic life that corresponds to the grade of the notion. Thus e.g. the plant 
is developed from its germ. The germ virtually involves the whole plant, 
but does so only ideally or in thought: and it would therefore be a mistake 
to regard the development of the root, stem, leaves, and other different 
parts of the plant, as meaning that they were realiter present, but in a very 
minute form, in the germ. That is the so-called 'box-within-box' hypothesis; 
a theory which commits the mistake of supposing an actual existence of 
what is at first found only as a postulate of the completed thought. The 
truth of the hypothesis on the other hand lies in its perceiving that in the 
process of development the notion keeps to itself and only gives rise to 
alteration of form, without making any addition in point of content. It is 
this nature of the notion-this manifestation of itself in its process as a 
development of its own self-which is chiefly in view with those who 
speak of innate ideas, or who, like Plato, describe all learning merely as 
reminiscence. Of course that again does not mean that everything which is 
embodied in a mind, after that mind has been formed by instructions had 
been present in that mind beforehand, in its definitely expanded shape.
The movement of the notion is as it were to be looked upon merely as plan: 
the other which it sets up is in reality not an other. Or, as it is expressed in 
the teaching of Christianity: not merely has God created a World which 
confronts him as an other; he has also from all eternity begotten a Son in 
whom he, a Spirit, is at home with himself.
§ 162
The doctrine of the notion is divided into three parts. (1) The first is the 
doctrine of the Subjective or Formal Notion. (2) The second is the doctrine 
of the notion invested with the character of immediacy, or of Objectivity. 
(3) The third is the doctrine of the Idea, the subject-object, the unity of 
notion and objectivity, the absolute truth.
The Common Logic covers only the matters which come before us here as 
a portion of the third part of the whole system, together with the so-called 
Laws of Thought, which we have already met; and in the Applied Logic it 
adds a little about cognition. This is combined with psychological, 
metaphysical, and all sorts of empirical materials, which were introduced 
because, when all was done, those forms of thought could not be made to 
do all that was required of them. But with these additions the science lost 
its unity of aim. Then there was a further circumstance against the 
Common Logic. Those forms, which at least do belong to the proper 
domain of Logic, are supposed to be categories of conscious thought only, 
of thought too in the character of understanding, not of reason.
The preceding logical categories, those viz. of Being and Essence, are, it is 
true, no mere logical modes or entities: they are proved to be notions in 
their transition or their dialectical element, and in their return into 
themselves and totality. But they are only in a modified form notions (cf. 
§§ 84 and 112), notions rudimentary, or, what is the same thing, notions for 
us. The antithetical term into which each category passes, or in which it 
shines, so producing correlation, is not characterised as a particular. The 
third,  in which they return to unity, is not characterised as a subject or a 
individual: nor is there any explicit statement that the category is identical 
in its antithesis - in other words, its freedom is not expressly stated: and all 
this because the category is not universality. What generally passes current 
under the name of a notion is a mode of understanding, or even a mere 
general representation, and therefore, in short, a finite mode of thought (cf. 
§ 62).
The Logic of the Notion is usually treated as a science of form only, and 
understood to deal with the form of notion, judgement, and syllogism as 
form, without in the least touching the question whether anything is true. 
The answer to that question is supposed to depend on the content only. If 
the logical forms of the notion were really dead and inert receptacles of 
conceptions and thoughts, careless of what they contained, knowledge 
about them would be an idle curiosity which the truth might dispense with. 
On the contrary they really are, as forms of the notion, the vital spirit of the 
actual world. That only is true of the actual which is true in virtue of these 
forms, through them and in them. As yet, however, the truth of these forms 
has never been considered or examined on their own account any more 
than their necessary interconnection.

A. THE SUBJECTIVE NOTION
(a) The Notion as Notion

§ 163
The Notion as Notion contains the three following 'moments' or functional 
parts. (I) The first is Universality-meaning that it is in free equality with 
itself in its specific character. (2) The second is Particularity-that is, the 
specific character, in which the universal continues serenely equal to itself. 
(3) The third is Individuality-meaning the reflection-into-self of the 
specific characters of universality and particularity; which negative self-
unity has complete and original determinateness, without any loss to its 
self-identity or universality.
Individual and actual are the same thing: only the former has issued from 
the notion, and is thus, as a universal, stated expressly as a negative identity 
with itself. The actual, because it is at first no more than a potential or 
immediate unity of essence or existence, may possibly have effect: but the 
individuality of the notion is the very source of effectiveness, effective 
moreover no longer as the cause is, with a show of effecting something 
else, but effective of itself. Individuality, however, is not to be understood 
to mean the immediate or natural individual, as when we speak of 
individual things or individual men: for that special phase of individuality 
does not appear till we come to the judgement. Every function and 
'moment' of the notion is itself the whole notion (§ 160); but the individual 
or subject is the notion expressly put as a totality.
§ 163n1
(1) The notion is generally associated in our minds with abstract generality, 
and on that account it is often described as a general conception. We speak, 
accordingly, of the notions of colour, plant, animal, etc. They are supposed 
to be arrived at by neglecting the particular features which distinguish the 
different colours, plants, and animals from each other, and by retaining 
those common to them all. This is the aspect of the notion which is familiar 
to understanding; and feeling is in the right when it stigmatises such hollow 
and empty notions as mere phantoms and shadows. But the universal of the 
notion is not a mere sum of features sermon to several things, confronted 
by a particular which enjoys an existence of its own. It is, on the contrary, 
self-particularising or self-specifying, and with undimmed clearness finds 
itself at home in its antithesis. For the sake both of cognition and of our 
practical conduct, it is of the utmost importance that the real universal 
should not be confused with what is merely held in common. All those 
charges which the devotees of feeling make against thought, and especially 
against philosophic thought, and the reiterated statement that is is 
dangerous to carry thought to what they call too great lengths, originate in 
the confusion of these two things.
The universal in its true and comprehensive meaning is a thought which, as 
we know, cost thousands of years to make it enter into the consciousness of 
men. The thought did not gain its full recognition till the days of 
Christianity. The Greeks, in other respects so advanced, knew neither God 
nor even man in their true universality. The gods of the Greeks were only 
particular powers of the mind; and the universal God, the God of all 
nations, was to the Athenians still a God concealed. They believed in the 
same way that an absolute gulf separated themselves from the barbarians. 
Man as man was not then recognised to be of infinite worth and to have 
infinite rights. The question has been asked, why slavery has vanished from 
modern Europe. One special circumstance after another has been adduced 
in explanation of this phenomenon. But the real ground why there are no 
more slaves in Christian Europe is only to be found in the very principle of 
Christianity itself, the religion of absolute freedom. Only in Christendom is 
man respected as man, in his infinitude and universality. What the slave is 
without, is the recognition that he is a person: and the principle of 
personality is universality. The master looks upon his slave not as a person, 
but as a selfless thing. The slave is not himself reckoned an 'I'-his 'I' is his 
master.
The distinction referred to above between what is merely in common, and 
what is truly universal, is strikingly expressed by Rousseau in his famous 
Contract social, when he says that the laws of a state must spring from the 
universal will (volonte generale), but need not on that account be the will 
of all (volonte de tous). Rousseau would have made a sounder contribution 
towards a theory of the state, if he had always kept this distinction in sight. 
The general will is the notion of the will: and the laws are the special 
clauses of this will and based upon the notion of it.
§ 163n2
(2) We add a remark upon the account of the origin and formation of 
notions which is usually given in the Logic of Understanding. It is not we 
who frame the notions. The notion is not something which is originated at 
all. No doubt the notion is not mere Being, or the immediate: it involves 
mediation, but the mediation lies in itself. In other words, the notion is 
what is mediated through itself and with itself. It is a mistake to imagine 
that the objects which form the content of our mental ideas come first and 
that our subjective agency then supervenes, and by the aforesaid operation 
of abstraction, and by colligating the points possessed in common by the 
objects, frames notions of them. Rather the notion is the genuine first; and 
things are what they are through the action of the notion, immanent in 
them, and revealing itself in them. In religious language we express this by 
saying that God created the world out of nothing. In other words, the world 
and finite things have issued from the fullness of the divine thoughts and 
the divine decrees. Thus religion recognises thought and (more exactly) the 
notion to be the infinite form, or the free creative activity, which can 
realise itself without the help of a matter that exists outside it.
§ 164
The notion is concrete out and out: because the negative unity with itself, 
as characterisation pure and entire, which is individuality, is just what 
constitutes its self-relation, its universality. The functions or 'moments' of 
the notion are to this extent indissoluble. The categories of 'reflection' are 
expected to be severally apprehended and separately accepted as current, 
apart from their opposites. But in the notion, where their identity is 
expressly assumed, each of its functions can be immediately apprehended 
only from and with the rest.
Universality, particularity, and individuality are, taken in the abstract, the 
same as identity, difference, and ground. But the universal is the self-
identical, with the express qualification, that it simultaneously contains the 
particular and the individual. Again, the particular is the different or the 
specific character, but with the qualification that it is in itself universal and 
is as an individual. Similarly the individual must be understood to be a 
subject or substratum, which involves the genus and species in itself and 
possesses a substantial existence. Such is the explicit or realised 
inseparability of the functions of the notion in their difference (§ 160)-
what may be called the clearness of the notion, in which each distinction 
causes no dimness or interruption, but is quite as much transparent.
No complaint is oftener made against the notion than that it is abstract. Of 
course it is abstract, if abstract means that the medium in which the notion 
exists is thought in general and not the sensible thing in its empirical 
concreteness. It is abstract also, because the notion falls short of the idea. 
To this extent the subjective notion is still formal. This however does not 
mean that it ought to have or receive another content than its own. It is 
itself the absolute form, and so is all specific character, but as that 
character is in its truth. Although it be abstract therefore, it is the concrete, 
concrete altogether, the subject as such. The absolutely concrete is the 
mind (see end of § 159)-the notion when it exists as notion distinguishing 
itself from its objectivity, which notwithstanding the distinction still 
continues to be its own. Everything else which is concrete, however rich it 
be, is not so intensely identical with itself and therefore not so concrete on 
its own part-least of all what is commonly supposed to be concrete, but is 
only a congeries held together by external influence. What are called 
notions, and in fact specific notions, such as man, house, animal, etc., are 
simply denotations and abstract representations. These abstractions retain 
out of all the functions of the notion only that of universality; they leave 
particularity and individuality out of account and have no development in 
these directions. By so doing they just miss the notion.
§ 165
It is the element of Individuality which first explicitly differentiates the 
elements of the notion. Individuality is the negative reflection of the notion 
into itself, and it is in that way at first the free differentiating of it as the 
first negation, by which the specific character of the notion is realised, but 
under the form of particularity. That is to say, the different elements are in 
the first place only qualified as the several elements of the notion, and, 
secondly, their identity is no less explicitly stated, the one being said to be 
the other. This realised particularity of the notion is the Judgement.
The ordinary classification of notions, as clear, distinct, and adequate, is no 
part of the notion; it belongs to psychology. Notions, in fact, are here 
synonymous with mental representations; a clear notion is an abstract 
simple representation: a distinct notion is one where, in addition to the 
simplicity, there is one 'mark' or character emphasised as a sign for 
subjective cognition. There is no more striking mark of the formalism and 
decay of Logic than the favourite category of the 'mark'. The adequate 
notion comes nearer the notion proper, or even the Idea: but after all it 
expresses only the formal circumstance that a notion or representation 
agrees with its object, that is, with an external thing. The division into what 
are called subordinate and coordinate notions implies a mechanical 
distinction of universal from particular which allows only a mere 
correlation of them in external comparison. Again, an enumeration of such 
kinds as contrary and contradictory, affirmative and negative notions, etc., 
is only a chance-directed gleaning of logical forms which properly belong 
to the sphere of Being or Essence (where they have been already examined) 
and which have nothing to do with the specific notional character as such. 
The true distinctions in the notion, universal, particular, and individual, 
may be said also to constitute species of it, but only when they are kept 
severed from each other by external reflection. The immanent 
differentiating and specifying of the notion come to sight in the judgement: 
for to judge is to specify the notion.

(b) The Judgement
§ 166
The Judgement is the notion in its particularity, as a connection which is 
also a distinguishing of its functions, which are put as independent and yet 
as identical with themselves not with one another.
One's first impression about the Judgement is the independence of the two 
extremes, the subject and the predicate. The former we take to be a thing or 
term per se, and the predicate a general term outside the said subject and 
somewhere in our heads. The next point is for us to bring the latter into 
combination with the former, and in this way frame a Judgement. The 
copula 'is', however, enunciates the predicate of the subject, and so that 
external subjective e subsumption is again put in abeyance, and the 
Judgement taken as a determination of the object itself. The etymological 
meaning of the Judgement ( Urtheil) in German goes deeper, as it were 
declaring the unity of the notion to be primary, and its distinction to be the 
original partition. And that is what the Judgement really is.
In its abstract terms a Judgement is expressible in the proposition: 'The 
individual is the universal.' These are the terms under which the subject and 
the predicate first confront each other, when the functions of the notion are 
taken in their immediate character or first abstraction. (Propositions such 
as, 'The particular is the universal', and 'The individual is the particular', 
belong to the further specialisation of the judgement.) It shows a strange 
want of observation in the logic-books, that in none of them is the fact 
stated, that in every judgement there is still a statement made, as, the 
individual is the universal, or still more definitely, The subject is the 
predicate (e.g. God is absolute spirit). No doubt there is also a distinction 
between terms like individual and universal, subject and predicate: but it is 
none the less the universal fact, that every judgement states them to be 
identical.
The copula 'is' springs from the nature of the notion, to be self-identical 
even in parting with its own. The individual and universal are its 
constituents, and therefore characters which cannot be isolated. The earlier 
categories (of reflection) in their correlations also refer to one another: but 
their interconnection is only 'having' anal not 'being', i.e. it is not the 
identity which is realised as identity or universality. In the judgement, 
therefore, for the first time there is seen the genuine particularity of the 
notion: for it is the speciality or distinguishing of the latter, without thereby 
losing universality.
§ 166n
Judgements are generally looked upon as combinations of notions, and, be 
it added, of heterogeneous notions. This theory of judgement is correct, so 
far as it implies that it is the notion which forms the presupposition of the 
judgement, and which in the judgement comes up under the form of 
difference. But on the other hand, it is false to speak of notions differing in 
kind. The notion, although concrete, is still as a notion essentially one, and 
the functions which it contains are not different kinds of it. It is equally 
false to speak of a combination of the two sides in the judgement, if we 
understand the term 'combination' to imply the independent existence of the 
combining members apart from the combination. The same external view 
of their nature is more forcibly apparent when judge moments are 
described as produced by the ascription of a predicate to the subject. 
Language like this looks upon the subject as self-subsistent outside, and the 
predicate as found somewhere in our head. Such a conception of the 
relation between subject and predicate however is at once contradicted by 
the copula 'is'. By saying 'This rose is red', or 'This picture is beautiful', we 
declare, that it is not we who from outside attach beauty to the picture or 
redness to the rose, but that these are the characteristics proper to these 
objects. An additional fault in the way in which Formal Logic conceives the 
judgement is, that it makes the judgement look as if it were something 
merely contingent, and does not offer any proof for the advance from 
notion on to judgement. For the notion does not, as understanding 
supposes, stand still in its own immobility. It is rather an infinite form, of 
boundless activity, as it were the punctum sapiens of all vitality, and 
thereby self-differentiating. This disruption of the notion into the difference 
of its constituent functions-a disruption imposed by the native act of the 
notion-is the judgement. A judgement therefore means the particularising 
of the notion. No doubt the notion is implicitly the particular. But in the 
notion as notion the particular is not yet explicit, and still remains in 
transparent unity with the universal. Thus, for example, as we remarked 
before (§ 160n), the germ of a plant contains its particular, such as root, 
branches, leaves, etc.: but these details are at first present only potentially, 
and are not realised till the germ uncloses. This unclosing is, as it were, the 
judgement of the plant. The illustration may also serve to show how neither 
the notion nor the judgement are merely found in our head, or merely 
framed by us. The notion is the very heart of things, and makes them what 
they are. To form a notion of an object means therefore to become aware of 
its notion: and when we proceed to a criticism or judgement of the object, 
we are not performing a subjective act, and merely ascribing this or that 
predicate to the object. We are, on the contrary, observing the object in the 
specific character imposed by its notion.
§ 167
The Judgement is usually taken in a subjective sense as an operation and a 
form, occurring merely in self-conscious thought. This distinction, 
however, has no existence on purely by which the judgement is taken in the 
quite universal signification that all things are a judgement. That is to say, 
they are individuals which are a universality or inner nature in 
themselves-a universal which is individualised. Their universality and 
individuality are distinguished, but the one is at the same time identical 
with the other.
The interpretation of the judgement, according to which it is assumed to be 
merely subjective, as if we ascribed a predicate to a subject is contradicted 
by the decidedly objective expression of the judgement. The rose is red; 
Gold is a metal. It is not by us that something is first ascribed to them. A 
judgement is however distinguished from a proposition. The latter contains 
a statement about the subject, which does not stand to it in any universal 
relationship, but expresses some single action, or some state, or the like. 
Thus, 'Caesar was born at Rome in such and such a year waged war in Gaul 
for ten years, crossed the Rubicon, etc.', are propositions, but not 
judgements. Again it is absurd to say that such statements as 'I slept well 
last night' or 'Present arms!' maybe turned into the form of a judgement. 'A 
carriage is passing by' should be a judgement, and a subjective one at best, 
only if it were doubtful, whether the passing object was a carriage, or 
whether it and not rather the point of observation was in motion: in short, 
only if it were desired to specify a conception which was still short of 
appropriate specification.
§ 168
The judgement is an expression of finitude. Things from its point of view 
are said to be finite, because they are a judgement, because their definite 
being and their universal nature (their body and their soul), though united 
indeed (otherwise the things would be nothing), are still elements in the 
constitution which are already different and also in any case separable.
§ 169
The abstract terms of the judgement, 'The individual is the Universal', 
present the subject (as negatively self-relating) as what is immediately 
concrete, while the predicate is what is abstract, indeterminate, in short, the 
universal. But the two elements are connected together by an 'is': and thus 
the predicate (in its universality) must also contain the speciality of the 
subject, must, in short, have particularity: and so is realised the identity 
between subject and predicate; which, being thus unaffected by this 
difference in form, is the content.
It is the predicate which first gives the subject, which till then was on its 
own account a bare mental representation or an empty name, its specific 
character and content. In judgements like 'God is the most real of all 
things', or 'The Absolute is the self-identical', God and the Absolute are 
mere names; what they are we only learn in the predicate. What the subject 
may be in other respects, as a concrete thing, is no concern of this 
judgement. (Cf. § 31.)
§ 169n
To define the subject as that of which something is said, and the predicate 
as what is said about it, is mere trifling. It gives no information about the 
distinction between the two. In point of thought, the subject is primarily the 
individual, and the predicate the universal. As the judgement receives 
further development, the subject ceases to be merely the immediate 
individual, and the predicate merely the abstract universal: the former 
acquires the additional significations of particular and universal, the latter 
the additional significations of particular and individual. Thus while the 
same names are given to the two terms of the judgement, their meaning 
passes through a series of changes.
§ 170
We now go closer into the speciality of subject and predicate. The subject 
as negative self-relation (§§ 163, 166) is the stable sub-stratum in which the 
predicate has its subsistence and where it is ideally present. The predicate, 
as the phrase is, inheres in the subject. Further, as the subject is in general 
and immediately concrete, the specific connotation of the predicate is only 
one of the numerous characters of the subject. Thus the subject is ampler 
and wider than the predicate.
Conversely, the predicate as universal is self-subsistent, and indifferent 
whether this subject is or not. The predicate outflanks the subject, 
subsuming it under itself: and hence on its side is wider than the subject. 
The specific content of the predicate (§ 19) alone constitutes the identity of 
the two.

B. THE OBJECT
§ 194
The Object is immediate being, because insensible to difference, which in 
it has suspended itself. It is, further, a totality in itself, while at the same 
time (as this identity is only the implicit identity of its dynamic elements) it 
is equally indifferent to its immediate unity. It thus breaks up into distinct 
parts, each of which is itself the totality. Hence the object is the absolute 
contradiction between a complete independence of the multiplicity, and the 
equally complete non-independence of the different pieces.
The definition, which states that the Absolute is the Object, is most 
definitely implied in the Leibnizian Monad. The Monads are each an 
object, but an object implicitly 'representative', indeed the total 
representation of the world. In the simple unity of the Monad, all difference 
is merely ideal, not independent or real. Nothing from without comes into 
the monad: it is the whole notion in itself, only distinguished by its own 
greater or less development. None the less, this simple totality parts into the 
absolute multeity of differences, each becoming an independent monad. In 
the monad of monads, and the Pre-established Harmony of their inward 
developments, these substances are in like manner again reduced to 
'identity' and unsubstantiality. The philosophy of Leibniz, therefore, 
represents contradiction in its complete development.
§ 194n1
(1) As Fichte in modern times has especially and with justice insisted, the 
theory which regards the Absolute or God as the Object and there stops, 
expresses the point of view taken by superstition and slavish fear. No doubt 
God is the Object, and, indeed, the Object out and out, confronted with 
which our particular or subjective opinions and desires have no truth and 
no validity. As absolute object, however, God does not therefore take up 
the position of a dark and hostile power over against subjectivity. He rather 
involves it as a vital element in himself. Such also is the meaning of the 
Christian doctrine, according to which God has willed that all men should 
be saved and all attain blessedness. The salvation and the blessedness of 
men are attained when they come to feel themselves at one with God, so 
that God, on the other hand, ceases to be for them mere object, and, in that 
way, an object of fear and terror, as was especially the case with the 
religious consciousness of the Romans. But God in the Christian religion is 
also known as Love, because in his Son, who is one with him, he has 
revealed himself to men as a man among men, and thereby redeemed them. 
A11 which is only another way of saying that the antithesis of subjective 
and objective is implicitly overcome, and that it is our affair to participate 
in this redemption by laying aside our immediate subjectivity (putting off 
the old Adam), and learning to know God as our true and essential self.
Just as religion and religious worship consist in overcoming the antithesis 
of subjectivity and objectivity, so science too and philosophy have no other 
task than to overcome this antithesis by the medium of thought. The aim of 
knowledge is to divest the objective world that stands opposed to us of its 
strangeness, and, as the phrase is, to find ourselves at home in it: which 
means no more than to trace the objective world back to the notion - to 
our innermost self. We may learn from the present discussion the mistake 
of regarding the antithesis of subjectivity and objectivity as an abstract and 
permanent one. The two are wholly dialectical. The notion is at first only 
subjective: but without the assistance of any foreign material or stuff it 
proceeds, in obedience to its own action, to objectify itself. So, too, the 
object is not rigid and processless. Its process is to show itself as what is at 
the same time subjective, and thus form the step onwards to the idea. Any 
one who, from want of familiarity with the categories of subjectivity and 
objectivity, seeks to retain them in their abstraction will find that the 
isolated categories slip through his fingers before he is aware, and that he 
says the exact contrary of what he wanted to say.
§ 194n2
(2) Objectivity contains the three forms of Mechanism, Chemism, and 
Teleology. The object of mechanical type is the immediate and 
undifferentiated object. No doubt it contains difference, but the different 
pieces stand, as it were, without affinity to each other, and their connection 
is only extraneous. In chemism, on the contrary, the object exhibits an 
essential tendency to differentiation, in such a way that the objects are what 
they are only by their relation to each other: this tendency to difference 
constitutes their quality. The third type of objectivity, the teleological 
relation, is the unity of mechanism and chemism. Design, like the 
mechanical object, is a self-contained totality, enriched however by the 
principle of differentiation which came to the fore in chemism, and thus 
referring itself to the object that stands over against it. Finally, it is the 
realisation of design which forms the transition to the Idea.
(a) Mechanism
§ 195
The object (1) in its immediacy is the notion only potentially; the notion as 
subjective is primarily outside it; and all its specific character is imposed 
from without. As a unity of differents, therefore, it is a composite, an 
aggregate; and its capacity of acting on anything else continues to be an 
external relation. This is Formal Mechanism. Notwithstanding, and in this 
connection and non-independence, the objects remain independent and 
offer resistance, external to each other.
Pressure and impact are examples of mechanical relations. Our knowledge 
is said to be mechanical or by rote, when the words have no meaning for 
us, but continue external to sense, conception, thought; and when, being 
similarly external to each other, they form a meaningless sequence. 
Conduct, piety, etc., are in the same way mechanical, when a man's 
behaviour is settled for him by ceremonial laws, by a spiritual adviser, etc.; 
in short, when his own mind and will are not in his actions, which in this 
way are extraneous to himself.
§ 195n
Mechanism, the first form of objectivity, is also the category which 
primarily offers itself to reflection, as it examines the objective world. It is 
also the category beyond which reflection seldom goes. It is, however, a 
shallow and superficial mode of observation, one that cannot carry us 
through in connection with Nature and still less in connection with the 
world of Mind. In Nature it is only the veriest abstract relations of matter in 
its inert masses which obey the law of mechanism. On the contrary the 
phenomena and operations of the province to which the term 'physical' in 
its narrower sense is applied, such as the phenomena of light, heat, 
magnetism, and electricity, cannot be explained by any mere mechanical 
processes, such as pressure, impact, displacement of parts, and the like.
Still less satisfactory is it to transfer these categories and apply them in the 
field of organic nature; at least if it be our aim to understand the specific 
features of that field, such as the growth and nourishment of plants, or, it 
may be, even animal sensation. It is at any rate a very deep-seated, and 
perhaps the main, defect of modern researches into nature, that, even where 
other and higher categories than those of mere mechanism are in operation, 
they still stick obstinately to the mechanical laws; although they thus 
conflict with the testimony of unbiased perception, and foreclose the gate 
to an adequate knowledge of nature. But even in considering the formations 
in the world of Mind, the mechanical theory has been repeatedly invested 
with an authority which it has no right to. Take as an instance the remark 
that man consists of soul and body. In this language, the two things stand 
each self-subsistent, and associated only from without. Similarly Be find 
the soul regarded as a mere group of forces and faculties, subsisting 
independently side by side. 
Thus decidedly must we reject the mechanical mode of inquiry when it 
comes forward and arrogates to itself the place of rational cognition in 
general, and seeks to get mechanism accepted as an absolute category. But 
we must not on that account forget expressly to vindicate for mechanism 
the right and import of a general logical category. It would be, therefore, a 
mistake to restrict it to the special physical department from which it 
derives its name. There is no harm done, for example, in directing attention 
to mechanical actions, such as that of gravity, the lever, etc., even in 
departments, notably in physics and in physiology, beyond the range of 
mechanics proper. It must however be remembered that within these 
spheres the laws of mechanism cease to be final or decisive, and sink, as it 
were, to a subservient position. To which may be added that in Nature, 
when the higher or organic functions are in any way checked or disturbed 
in their normal efficiency, the otherwise subordinate category of 
mechanism is immediately seen to take the upper hand. Thus a sufferer 
from indigestion feels pressure on the stomach, after partaking of certain 
food in slight quantity; whereas those whose digestive organs are sound 
remain free from the sensation, although they have eaten as much. The 
same phenomenon occurs in the general feeling of heaviness in the limbs, 
experienced in bodily indisposition. Even in the world of Mind, mechanism 
has its place; though there, too, it is a subordinate one. We are right in 
speaking of mechanical memory, and all sorts of mechanical operations, 
such as reading, writing, playing on musical instruments, etc. In memory, 
indeed, the mechanical quality of the action is essential: a circumstance of 
which the neglect has not unfrequently caused great harm in the training of 
the young, from the misapplied zeal of modern educationalists for the 
freedom of intelligence. It would betray bad psychology, however, to have 
recourse to mechanism for an explanation of the nature of memory, and to 
apply mechanical laws straight off to the soul. The mechanical feature in 
memory lies merely in the fact that certain signs, tones, etc., are 
apprehended in their purely external association, and then reproduced in 
this association, without attention being expressly directed to their meaning 
and inward association. To become acquainted with these conditions of 
mechanical memory requires no further study of mechanics, nor would that 
study tend at all to advance the special inquiry of psychology.
§ 196
The want of stability in itself which allows the object to suffer violence, is 
possessed by it (see preceding §) only in so far as it has a certain stability. 
Now as the object is implicitly invested with the character of notion, the 
one of these characteristics is not merged into its other; but the object, 
through the negation of itself (its lack of independence), closes with itself, 
and not till it so closes, is it independent. Thus at the same time in 
distinction from the outwardness, and negativing that outwardness in its 
independence, 
does this independence form a negative unity with self - Centrality 
(subjectivity). So conceived, the other itself has direction and reference 
towards the external. But this external object is similarly central in itself, 
and being so, is no less only referred towards the other centre; so that it no 
less has its centrality in the other. This is (2) Mechanism with Affinity 
(with bias, or 'difference'), and may be illustrated by gravitation, appetite, 
social instinct, etc.
§ 197
This relation, when fully carried out, forms a syllogism. In that syllogism 
the immanent negativity, as the central individuality of an object (abstract 
centre) relates itself to non-independent objects, as the other extreme, by a 
mean which unites the centrality with the non-independence of the objects 
(relative centre). This is (3) Absolute Mechanism.
§ 198
The syllogism thus indicated (I  -  P  -  U) is a triad of syllogisms. The 
wrong individuality of non-independent objects, in which formal 
Mechanism is at home, is, by reason of that non-independence, no less 
universality, though it be only external. Hence these objects also form the 
mean between the absolute-and the relative centre (the form of syllogism 
being U - I - P): for it is by this want of independence that those two are 
kept asunder and made extremes, as well as related to one another. 
Similarly absolute centrality, as the permanently underlying universal 
substance (illustrated by the gravity which continues identical), which as 
pure negativity equally includes individuality in it, is what mediates 
between the relative centre and the non-independent objects (the form of 
syllogism being P - U - I). It does so no less essentially as a 
disintegrating force, in its character of immanent individuality, than in 
virtue of universality, acting as an identical bond of union and tranquil self-
containedness.  Like the solar system, so for example in the practical 
sphere the state is a system of three syllogisms. 
(1) The Individual or person, through his particularity or physical or mental 
needs (which when carried out to their full development give civil society), 
is coupled with the universal, i.e. with society, law, right, government. 
(2) The will or action of the individuals is the intermediating force which 
procures for these needs satisfaction in society, in law, etc., and which 
gives to society, law, etc., their fulfilment and actualisation. 
(3) But the universal, that is to say the state, government, and law, is the 
permanent underlying mean in which the individuals and their satisfaction 
have and receive their fulfilled reality, intermediation, and persistence. 
Each of the functions of the notion, as it is brought by intermediation to 
coalesce with the other extreme, is brought into union with itself and 
produces itself: which production is self-preservation. It is only by the 
nature of this triple coupling, by this triad of syllogisms with the same 
terming that a whole is thoroughly understood in its organisation.
§ 199
The immediacy of existence, which the objects have in Absolute 
Mechanism, is implicitly negatived by the fact that their independence is 
derived from, and due to, their connections with each other, and therefore 
to their own want of stability. Thus the object must be explicitly stated as 
in its existence having an Affinity (or a bias) towards its other - as not-
indifferent. 
(b) Chemism
§ 200
The not-indifferent (biased) object has an immanent mode which 
constitutes its nature, and in which it has existence. But as it is invested 
with the character of total notion, it is the contradiction between this 
totality and the special mode of its existence. Consequently it is the 
constant endeavour to cancel this contradiction and to make its definite 
being equal to the notion.
Chemism is a category of objectivity which, as a rule, is not particularly 
emphasised, and is generally put under the head of mechanism. The 
common name of mechanical relationship is applied to both, in 
contradistinction to the teleological. There is a reason for this in the 
common feature which belongs to mechanism and chemism. In them the 
notion exists, but only implicit and latent, and they are thus both marked 
off from teleology where the notion has real independent existence. This is 
true: and yet chemism and mechanism are very decidedly distinct. The 
object, in the form of mechanism, is primarily only an indifferent reference 
to self, while the chemical object is seen to be completely in reference to 
something else. No doubt even in mechanism, as it develops itself, there 
spring up references to something else: but the nexus of mechanical objects 
with one another is at first only an external nexus, so that the objects in 
connection with one another still retain the semblance of independence. In 
nature, for example, the several celestial bodies, which form our solar 
system, compose a kinetic system, and thereby show that they are related to 
one another. Motion, however, as the unity of time and space, is a 
connection which is purely abstract and external. And it seems therefore as 
if these celestial bodies, which are thus externally connected with each 
other, would continue to be what they are, even apart from this reciprocal 
relation. The case is quite different with chemism. Objects chemically 
biased are what they are expressly by that bias alone. Hence they are the 
absolute impulse towards integration by and in one another.
§ 201
The product of the chemical process consequently is the Neutral object, 
latent in the two extremes, each on the alert. The notion or concrete 
universal, by means of the bias of the objects (the particularity), coalesces 
with the individuality (in the shape of the product), and in that only with 
itself. In this process too the other syllogisms are equally involved. The 
place of mean is taken both by individuality as activity, and by the concrete 
universal, the essence of the strained extremes; which essence reaches 
definite being in the product.
§ 202
Chemism, as it is a reflectional nexus of objectivity, has pre-supposed, not 
merely the bias or non-indifferent nature of the objects, but also their 
immediate independence. The process of chemism consists in passing to 
and fro from one form to another; which forms continue to be as external 
as before. In the neutral product the specific properties, which the extremes 
bore towards each other, are merged. But although the product is 
conformable to the notion, the inspiring principle of active differentiation 
does not exist in it; for it has sunk back to immediacy. The neutral body is 
therefore capable of disintegration. But the discerning principle, which 
breaks up the neutral body into biased and strained extremes, and which 
gives to the indifferent object in general its affinity and animation towards 
another; that principle, and the process as a separation with tension, falls 
outside of that first process.
 The chemical process does not rise above a conditioned and finite process. 
The notion as notion is only the heart and core of the process, and does not 
in this stage come to an existence of its own. In the neutral product the 
process is extinct, and the existing cause falls outside it.
§ 203
 Each of these two processes, the reduction of the biased (not-indifferent) 
to the neutral, and the differentiation of the indifferent or neutral, goes its 
own way without hindrance from the other. But that want of inner 
connection shows that they are finite, by their passage into products in 
which they are merged and lost. Conversely the process exhibits the 
nonentity of the presupposed immediacy of the not-indifferent objects. By 
this negation of immediacy and of externalism in which the notion as 
object was sunk, it is liberated and invested with independent being in face 
of that externalism and immediacy. In these circumstances it is the End 
(Final Cause).
The passage from chemism to the teleological relation is implied in the 
mutual cancelling of both of the forms of the chemical process. The result 
thus attained is the liberation of the notion, which in chemism and 
mechanism was present only in the germ, and not yet evolved. The notion 
in the shape of the aim or end thus comes into independent existence. 
(c) Teleology
§204
In the End the notion has entered on free existence and has a being of its 
own, by means of the negation of immediate objectivity. It is characterised 
as subjective, seeing that this negation is, in the first place, abstract, and 
hence at first the relation between it and objectivity still one of contrast. 
This character of subjectivity, however, compared with the totality of the 
notion, is one-sided, and that, be it added, for the End itself, in which all 
specific characters have been put as subordinated and merged. For it 
therefore even the object, which it presupposes, has only hypothetical 
(ideal) reality  - essentially no-reality. The End, in short, is a contradiction 
of its self-identity against the negation stated in it, i.e. its antithesis to 
objectivity, and being so, contains the eliminative or destructive activity 
which negates the antithesis and renders it identical with itself. This is the 
realisation of the End: in which, while it turns itself into the other of its 
subjectivity and objectifies itself, thus cancelling the distinction between 
the two, it has only closed with itself, and retained itself.
The notion of Design or End, while on one hand called redundant, is on 
another justly described as the rational notion, and contrasted with the 
abstract universal of understanding. The latter only subsumes the particular, 
and so connects it with itself: but has it not in its own nature. The 
distinction between the End or final cause, and the mere efficient cause 
(which is the cause ordinarily so called), is of supreme importance. Causes, 
properly so called, belong to the sphere of necessity, blind, and not yet laid 
bare. The cause therefore appears as passing into its correlative, and losing 
its primordiality there by sinking into dependency. It is only by implication, 
or for us, that the cause is in the effect made for the first time a cause, and 
that it there returns into itself. The End, on the other hand, is expressly 
stated as containing the specific character in its own self  - the effect, 
namely, which in the purely causal relation is never free from otherness. 
The End therefore in its efficiency does not pass over, but retains itself, i.e. 
it carries into effect itself only, and is at the end what it was in the 
beginning or primordial state. Until it thus retains itself, it is not genuinely 
primordial. The End then requires to be speculatively apprehended as the 
notion, which itself in the proper unity and ideality of its characteristics 
contains the judgement or negation  -  the antithesis of subjective and 
objective  - and which to an equal extent suspends that antithesis.
By End however we must not at once, nor must we ever merely, think of 
the form which it has in consciousness as a mode of mere mental 
representation. By means of the notion of Inner Design Kant has 
resuscitated the Idea in general and particularly the idea of life. Aristotle's 
definition of life virtually implies inner design, and is thus far in advance of 
the notion of design in modern Teleology, which had in view finite and 
outward design only.
Animal wants and appetites are some of the readiest instances of the End. 
They are the felt contradiction, which exists within the living subject, and 
pass into the activity of negating this negation which mere subjectivity still 
is. The satisfaction of the want or appetite restores the peace between 
subject and object. The objective thing which, so long as the contradiction 
exists, i.e. so long as the want is felt, stands on the other side, loses this 
quasi-independence, by its union with the subject. Those who talk of the 
permanence and immutability of the finite, as well subjective as objective, 
may see the reverse illustrated in the operations of every appetite. Appetite 
is, so to speak, the conviction that the subjective is only a half-truth, no 
more adequate than the objective. But appetite in the second place carries 
out its conviction. It brings about the supersession of these finites: it 
cancels the antithesis between the objective which would be and stay an 
objective only, and the subjective which in like manner would be and stay a 
subjective only.
As regards the action of the End, attention may be called to the fact, that in 
the syllogism, which represents that action, and shows the end closing with 
itself by the means of realisation, the radical feature is the negation of the 
termini That negation is the one just mentioned both of the immediate 
subjectivity appearing in the End as such, and of the immediate objectivity 
as seen in the means and the objects presupposed. This is the same 
negation as is in operation when the mind leaves the contingent things of 
the world as well as its own subjectivity and rises to God. It is the 'moment' 
or factor which (as noticed in the Introduction and § 192) was overlooked 
and neglected in the analytic form of syllogisms, under which the so-called 
proofs of the Being of a God presented this elevation.
§ 205
In its primary and immediate aspect the Teleological relation is external 
design, and the notion confronts a presupposed object. The End is 
consequently finite, and that partly in its content, partly in the circumstance 
that it has an external condition in the object, which has to be found 
existing, and which is taken as material for its realisation. Its self-
determining is to that extent in form only. The unmediatedness of the End 
has the further result that its particularity or content   -  which as form-
characteristic is the subjectivity of the End - is reflected into self, and so 
different from the totality of the form, subjectivity in general, the notion. 
This variety constitutes the finitude of Design within its own nature. The 
content of the End, in this way, is quite as limited, contingent, and given, as 
the object is particular and found ready to hand.
§ 205n
Generally speaking, the final cause is taken to mean nothing more than 
external design. In accordance with this view of it, things are supposed not 
to carry their vocation in themselves, but merely to be means employed and 
spent in realising a purpose which lies outside of them. That may be said to 
be the point of view taken by Utility, which once played a great part even 
in the sciences, but of late has fallen into merited disrepute, now that 
people have begun to see that it failed to give a genuine insight into the 
nature of things. It is true that finite things as finite ought in justice to be 
viewed as non-ultimate, and as pointing beyond themselves. This negativity 
of finite things however is their own dialectic, and in order to ascertain it 
we must pay attention to their positive content.
Teleological observations on things often proceed from a well-meant wish 
to display the wisdom of God as it is especially revealed in nature. Now in 
thus trying to discover final causes for which the things serve as means, we 
must remember that we are stopping short at the finite, and are liable to fall 
into trifling reflections: as, for instance, if we not merely studied the vine in 
respect of its well-known use for man, but proceeded to consider the cork-
tree in connection with the corks which are cut from its bark to put into the 
wine-bottles. Whole books used to be written in this spirit. It is easy to see 
that they promoted the genuine interest neither of religion nor of science. 
External design stands immediately in front of the idea: but what thus 
stands on the threshold often for that reason is least adequate.
§ 206
The teleological relation is a syllogism in which the subjective end 
coalesces with the objectivity external to it, through a middle term which is 
the unity of both. This unity is on one hand the purposive action, on the 
other the Means, i.e. objectivity made directly subservient to purpose. 
[Omitted: 206n, 207 - 211, mostly about Means and End]
§ 211
But what virtually happens in the realising of the End is that the one-sided 
subjectivity and the show of objective independence confronting it are both 
cancelled. In laying hold of the means, the notion constitutes itself the very 
implicit essence of the object. In the mechanical and chemical processes, 
the independence of the object has been already dissipated implicitly, and 
in the course of their movement under the dominion of the End, the show 
of that independence, the negative which confronts the Notion, is got rid of. 
But in the fact that the End achieved is characterised only as a Means and a 
material, this object, viz. the teleological, is there and then put as implicitly 
null, and only 'ideal'. This being so, the antithesis between form and content 
has also vanished. While the End by the removal and absorption of all 
form-characteristics coalesces with itself, the form as self-identical is 
thereby put as the content, so that the notion, which is the action of form, 
has only itself for content. Through this process, therefore, there is made 
explicitly manifest what was the notion of design: viz. the implicit unity of 
subjective and objective is non realised. And this is the Idea.
This finitude of the End consists in the circumstance, that, in the process of 
realising it, the material, which is employed as a means, is only externally 
subsumed under it and made conformable to it. But, as a matter of fact, the 
object is the notion implicitly: and thus when the notion, in the shape of 
End, is realised in the object, Be have but the manifestation of the inner 
nature of the object itself. Objectivity is thus, as it were, only a covering 
under which the notion lies concealed. Within the range of the finite we 
can never see or experience that the End has been really secured. The 
consummation of the infinite End, therefore, consists merely in removing 
the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. The Good, the 
absolutely Good, is eternally accomplishing itself in the world: and the 
result is that it need not wait upon us, but is already by implication, as well 
as in full actuality, accomplished. This is the illusion under which we live. 
It alone supplies at the same time the actualising force on which the 
interest in the world reposes. In the course of its process the Idea creates 
that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it; and its action consists in 
getting rid of the illusion which it has created. Only out of this error does 
the truth arise. In this fact lies the reconciliation with error and with 
finitude. Error or other-being, when superseded, is still a necessary 
dynamic element of truth: for truth can only be where it makes itself its 
own result

C. THE IDEA
§213
The Idea is truth in itself and for itself - the absolute unity of the notion 
and objectivity. Its 'ideal' content is nothing but the notion in its detailed 
terms: its 'real' content is only the exhibition which the notion gives itself in 
the form of external existence, while yet, by enclosing this shape in its 
ideality, it keeps it in its power, and so keeps itself in it.
The definition, which declares the Absolute to be the Idea, is itself 
absolute. All former definitions come back to this. The Idea is the Truth: 
for Truth is the correspondence of objectivity with the notion-not of 
course the correspondence of external things with my conceptions, for 
these are only correct conceptions held by me, the individual person. In the 
idea we have nothing to do with the individual, nor with figurate 
conceptions, nor with external things. And yet, again, everything actual, in 
so far as it is true, is the Idea, and has its truth by and in virtue of the Idea 
alone. Every individual being is some one aspect of the Idea: for which, 
therefore, yet other actualities are needed, which in their turn appear to 
have a self-subsistence of their own. It is only in them altogether and in 
their relation that the notion is realised.
The individual by itself does not correspond to its notion. It is this 
limitation of its existence which constitutes the finitude and the ruin of the 
individual.
The Idea itself is not to be taken as an idea of something or other, any more 
than the notion is to be taken as merely a specific notion. The Absolute is 
the universal and one idea, which, by an act of 'judgement', particularises 
itself to the system of specific ideas; which after all are constrained by their 
nature to come back to the one idea where their truth lies. As issued out of 
this 'judgement' the Idea is in the first place only the one universal 
substance: but its developed and genuine actuality is to be as a subject and 
in that way as mind.
Because it has no existence for starting-point and point d'appui, the Idea is 
frequently treated as a mere logical form. Such a view must be abandoned 
to those theories which ascribe so-called reality and genuine actuality to the 
existent thing and all the other categories which have not yet penetrated as 
far as the Idea. It is no less false to imagine the Idea to be mere abstraction. 
It is abstract certainly, in so far as everything untrue is consumed in it: but 
in its own self it is essentially concrete, because it is the free notion giving 
character to itself, and that character, reality. It would be an abstract form, 
only if the notion, which is its principle, were taken as an abstract unity, 
and not as the negative return of it into self and as the subjectivity which it 
really is. 
§213n
Truth is at first taken to mean that I know how something is. This is truth, 
however, only in reference to consciousness; it is formal truth, bare 
correctness. Truth in the deeper sense Consists in the identity between 
objectivity and the notion. It is in this deeper sense of truth that we speak of 
a true state, or of a true work of art. These objects are true, if they are as 
they ought to be, i.e. if their reality corresponds to their notion. When thus 
viewed, to be untrue means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an 
untrue man, a man who does not behave as his notion or his vocation 
requires. Nothing however can subsist, if it be wholly devoid of identity 
between the notion and reality. Even bad and untrue things have being, in 
so far as their reality still, somehow, conforms to their notion. Whatever is 
thoroughly bad or contrary to the notion is for that very reason on the way 
to ruin. It is by the notion alone that the things in the world have their 
subsistence; or, as it is expressed in the language of religious conception, 
things are what they are, only in virtue of the divine and thereby Creative 
thought which dwells within them.
When we hear the Idea spoken of, we need not imagine something far away 
beyond this mortal sphere. The Idea is rather what is completely present: 
and it is found, however confused and degenerated, in every consciousness. 
We conceive the works to ourselves as a great totality which is created by 
God, and so created that in it God has manifested himself to us. We regard 
the world also as ruled by Divine Providence: implying that the scattered 
and divided parts of the world are continually brought back, and made 
conformable, to the unity from which they have issued.
The purpose of philosophy has always been the intellectual ascertainment 
of the Ideal; anal everything deserving the name of philosophy has 
constantly been based on the consciousness of an absolute unity where the 
understanding sees and accepts only separation. It is too late now to ask for 
proof that the Idea is the truth. The proof of that is contained in the whole 
deduction and development of thought up to this point. The Idea is the 
result of this course of dialectic. Not that it is to he supposed that the idea 
is mediate only, i.e. mediated through something else than itself. It is rather 
its own result, and being so, is no less immediate than mediate.
The stages hitherto considered, viz. those of Being and Essence, as well as 
those of Notion and of Objectivity, are not, when so distinguished, 
something permanent, resting upon themselves. They have proved to be 
dialectical; and their only truth is that they are dynamic elements of the 
idea. 
§ 214
The Idea may be described in many Ways. It may be called reason; (and 
this is the proper philosophical signification of reason); subject-object; the 
unity of the ideal and the real, of the finite and the infinite, of soul and 
body; the possibility which has its actuality in its own self; that of which 
the nature can be thought only as existent, etc. All these descriptions apply, 
because the Idea contains all the relations of understanding, but contains 
them in their infinite self-return and self-identity.
It is easy work for the understanding to show that everything said of the 
Idea is self-contradictory. But that can quite as well be retaliated, or rather 
in the Idea the retaliation is actually made And this work, which is the 
work of reason, is certainly not so easy as that of the understanding. 
Understanding may demonstrate that the Idea is self-contradictory: because 
the subjective is subjective only and is always confronted by the objective; 
because being is different from notion and therefore cannot be picked out 
of it; because the finite is finite only, the exact antithesis of the infinite, and 
therefore not identical with it; and so on with every term of the description. 
The reverse of all this however is the doctrine of Logic. Logic shows that 
the subjective which is to be subjective only, the finite which would be 
finite only, the infinite which would be infinite only, and so on, have no 
truth, but contradict themselves, and pass over into their opposites. Hence 
this transition, and the unity in which the extremes are merged and become 
factors, each with a merely reflected existence, reveals itself as their truth.
The understanding, which addresses itself to deal with the Idea, commits a 
double misunderstanding. It takes first the extremes of the Idea (be they 
expressed as they will, so long as they are in their unity), not as they are 
understood when stamped with this concrete unity, but as if they remained 
abstractions outside of it. It no less mistakes the relation between them, 
even when it has been expressly stated. Thus, for example, it overlooks 
even the nature of the copula in the judgement, which affirms that ; the 
individual, or subject, is after all not individual, but universal.
But, in the second place, the understanding believes its 'reflection' that the 
self-identical Idea contains its own negative, or contains contradiction-to 
be an external reflection which does not lie within the Idea itself. But the 
reflection is really no peculiar cleverness of the understanding. The idea 
itself is the dialectic which for ever divides and distinguishes the self-
identical from the differentiated, the subjective from the objective, the 
finite from the infinite, soul from body. Only on these terms is it an eternal 
creation, eternal vitality, and eternal spirit. But while it thus passes or 
rather translates itself into the abstract understanding, it for ever remains 
reason. The Idea is the dialectic which again makes this mass of 
understanding and diversity understand its finite nature and the pseudo-
independence in its productions, and which brings the diversity back to 
unity. Since this double movement is not separate or distinct in time, nor 
indeed in any other way-otherwise it would be only a repetition of the 
abstract understanding-the Idea is the eternal vision of itself in the other, 
notion which in its objectivity has carried out itself, object which is inward 
design, essential subjectivity.
The different modes of apprehending the Idea as unity of ideal and real, of 
finite and infinite, of identity and difference. etc, are more or less formal. 
They designate some stage of the specific notion. Only the notion itself, 
however, is free and the genuine universal: in the Idea, therefore, the 
specific character of the notion is only the notion itself - an objectivity, 
viz. into which it, being the universal, continues itself, and in which it has 
only its own character, the total character. The Idea is the infinite 
judgement, of which the terms are severally the independent totality; and in 
which, as each grows to the fullness of its on n nature, it has thereby at the 
same time passed into the other. None of the other specific notions exhibits 
this totality complete on both its sides as the notion itself and objectivity. 
§ 215
The Idea is essentially a process, because its identity is the absolute and 
free identity of the notion, only in so far as it is absolute negativity and for 
that reason dialectical. It is the round of movement, in which the notion, in 
the capacity of universality which is individuality, gives itself the character 
of objectivity and of the antithesis thereto; and this externality which has 
the notion for its substance, finds its way back to subjectivity through its 
immanent dialectic
As the idea is (a) a process, it follows that such an expression for the 
Absolute as unity of thought and being, of finite and infinite, etc., is false; 
for unity expresses an abstract and merely quiescent identity. As the Idea is 
(b) subjectivity, it follows that the expression is equally false on another 
account. That unity of which it speaks expresses a merely virtual or 
underlying presence of the genuine unity. The infinite would thus seem to 
be merely neutralised by the finite, the subjective by the objective, thought 
by being. But in the negative unity of the Idea, the infinite overlaps and 
includes the finite, thought overlaps being, subjectivity overlaps objectivity. 
The unity of the Idea is thought, infinity, and subjectivity, and is in 
consequence to be essentially distinguished from the Idea as substance, just 
as this overlapping subjectivity, thought, or infinity is to be distinguished 
from the one-sided subjectivity, one-sided thought, one-sided infinity to 
which it descends in judging and defining. 
§ 215n
The idea as a process runs through three stages in its development. The first 
form of the idea is Life: that is, the idea in the form of immediacy. The 
second form is that of mediation or differentiation; and this is the idea in 
the form of Knowledge, which appears under the double aspect of the 
Theoretical and Practical idea. The process of knowledge eventuates in the 
restoration of the unity enriched by difference. This gives the third form of 
the idea, the Absolute Idea: which last stage of the logical idea evinces 
itself to be at the same time the true first, and to have a being due to itself 
alone. 
(a) Life 
§ 216
The immediate idea is Life. As soul, the notion is realised in a body of 
whose externality the soul is the immediate self-relating universality. But 
the soul is also its particularisation, so that the body expresses no other 
distinctions than follow from the characterisations of its notion. And finally 
it is the Individuality of the body as infinite negativity-the dialectic of that 
bodily objectivity, with its parts lying out of one another, conveying them 
away from the semblance of independent subsistence back into 
subjectivity, so that all the members are reciprocally momentary means as 
well as momentary ends. Thus as life is the initial particularisation, so it 
results in the negative self-asserting unity: in the dialectic of its corporeity 
it only coalesces with itself. In this way life is essentially something alive, 
and in point of its immediacy this individual living thing. It is characteristic 
of finitude in this sphere that, by reason of the immediacy of the idea, body 
and soul are separable. This constitutes the mortality of the living being. It 
is only, however, when the living being is dead, that these two sides of the 
idea are different ingredients. 
§ 216n
The single members of the body are what they are only by and in relation to 
their unity. A hand e.g. when hewn off from the body is, as Aristotle has 
observed, a hand in name only, not in fact. From the point of view of 
understanding, life is usually spoken of as a mystery, and in general as 
incomprehensible. By giving it such a name, however, the Understanding 
only confesses its own finitude and nullity. So far is life from being 
incomprehensible, that in it the very notion is presented to us, or rather the 
immediate idea existing as a notion. And having said this, we have 
indicated the defect of life. Its notion and reality do not thoroughly 
correspond to each other. The notion of life is the soul, and this notion has 
the body for its reality. The soul is, as it were, infused into its corporeity; 
and in that way it is at first sentient only, and not yet freely self-conscious. 
The process of life consists in getting the better of the immediacy with 
which it is still beset: and this process, which is itself threefold, results in 
the idea under the form of judgement, i.e. the idea as Cognition. 
§ 217
A living being is a syllogism, of which the very elements are in themselves 
systems and syllogisms (§ § 198, 201, 207). They are however active 
syllogisms or processes; and in the subjective unity of the vital agent make 
only one process. 'Thus the living being is the process of its coalescence 
with itself, which runs on through three processes. 
§ 218
(1) The first is the process of the living being inside itself. In that process it 
makes a split on its own self, and reduces its corporeity to its object or its 
inorganic nature. This corporeity, as an aggregate of correlations, enters in 
its very nature into difference and opposition of its elements, which 
mutually become each other's prey, and assimilate one another, and are 
retained by producing themselves. Yet this action of the several members 
(organs) is only the living subject's one act to which their productions 
revert; so that in these productions nothing is produced except the subject: 
in other words, the subject only reproduces itself.
The process of the vital subject within its own limits has in Nature the 
threefold form of Sensibility, Irritability, and Reproduction. As Sensibility, 
the living being is immediately simple self-relation-it is the soul 
omnipresent in its body, the outsideness of each member of which to others 
has for it no truth. As Irritability, the living being appears split up in itself; 
and as Reproduction, it is perpetually restoring itself from the inner 
distinction of its members and organs. A vital agent only exists as this 
continually self-renewing process within its own limits.
§ 219
(2) But the judgement of the notion proceeds, as free, to discharge the 
objective or bodily nature as an independent totality from itself; and the 
negative relation of the living thing to itself makes, as immediate 
individuality, the presupposition of an inorganic nature confronting it. As 
this negative of the animate is no less a function in the notion of the 
animate itself, it exists consequently in the latter (which is at the same time 
a concrete universal) in the shape of a defect or want. The dialectic by 
which the object, being implicitly null, is merged is the action of the self-
assured living thing, which in this process against an inorganic nature thus 
retains, develops, and objectifies itself.
§ 219n
The living being stands face to face with an inorganic nature, to which it 
comports itself as a master and which it assimilates to itself. The result of 
the assimilation is not, as in the chemical process, a neutral product in 
which the independence of the two confronting sides is merged; but the 
living being shows itself as large enough to embrace its other which cannot 
withstand its power. The inorganic nature which is subdued by the vital 
agent suffers this fate, because it is virtually the same as what life is 
actually. Thus in the other the living being only coalesces with itself. But 
when the soul has fled from the body, the elementary powers of objectivity 
begin their play. These powers are, as it were, continually on the spring, 
ready to begin their process in the organic body; and life is the constant 
battle against them.
§ 220
(3) The living individual, which in its first process comports itself as 
intrinsically subject and notion, through its second assimilates its external 
objectivity and thus puts the character of reality into itself. It is now 
therefore implicitly a Kind, with essential universality of nature. The 
particularising of this Kind is the relation of the living subject to another 
subject of its Kind: and the judgement is the tie of Kind over these 
individuals thus appointed for each other. This is the Affinity of the Sexes.
§ 221
The process of Kind brings it to a being of its own. Life being no more than 
the idea immediate, the product of this process breaks up into two sides. On 
the one hand, the living individuai,~3which was at first presupposed as 
immediate, is now seen to be mediated and generated. On the other, 
however, the living individuality, which, on account of its first immediacy, 
stands in a negative attitude towards universality, sinks in the superior 
power of the latter.
§ 221n
The living being dies, because it is a contradiction. Implicitly it is the 
universal or Kind, and yet immediately it exists as an individual only. 
Death shows the Kind to be the power that rules the immediate individual. 
For the animal the process of Kind is the highest point of its vitality. But 
the animal never gets so far in its Kind as to have a being of its own; it 
succumbs to the power of Kind. In the process of Kind the immediate 
living being mediates itself with itself, and thus rises above its immediacy, 
only however to sink back into it again. Life thus runs away, in the first 
instance, only into the false infinity of the progress ad infinitum. The real 
result, however, of the process of life, in the point of its notion, is to merge 
and overcome that immediacy with which the idea, in the shape of life, is 
still beset.
§ 222
In this manner however the idea of life has thrown off not some one 
particular and immediate 'This', but this first immediacy as a whole. It thus 
comes to itself, to its truth: it enters upon existence as a free Kind self-
subsistent. The death of merely immediate and individual vitality is the 
'procession' of spirit.

(b) Cognition in general 
§223
The idea exists free for itself, in so far as it has universality for the medium 
of its existence-as objectivity itself has notional being- as the idea is its 
own object. Its subjectivity, thus universalised, is pure self-contained 
distinguishing of the idea-intuition which keeps itself in this identical 
universality. But, as specific distinguishing, it is the further judgement of 
repelling itself as a totality from itself, and thus, in the first place, 
presupposing itself as an external universe. There are two judgements, 
which though implicitly identical are not yet explicitly put as identical.
§ 224
The relation of these two ideas, which implicitly and as life are identical, is 
thus one of correlation: and it is that correlativity which constitutes the 
characteristic of finitude in this sphere. It is the relationship of reflection, 
seeing that the distinguishing of the idea in its own self is only the first 
judgement-presupposing the other and not yet supposing itself to 
constitute it. And thus for the subjective idea the objective is the immediate 
world found ready to hand, or the idea as life is in the phenomenon of 
individual existence. At the same time, in so far as this judgement is pure 
distinguishing within its own limits (§ 223), the idea realises in one both 
itself and its other. Consequently it is the certitude of the virtual identity 
between itself and the objective world. Reason comes to the world with an 
absolute faith in its ability to make the identity actual, and to raise its 
certitude to truth; and with the instinct of realising explicitly the nullity of 
that contrast which it sees to be implicitly null.
§ 225
This process is in general terms Cognition. In Cognition in a single act the 
contrast is virtually superseded, as regards both the one-sidedness of 
subjectivity and the one-sidedness of objectivity. At first, however, the 
supersession of the contrast is but implicit. The process as such is in 
consequence immediately infected with the finitude of this sphere, and 
splits into the twofold movement of the instinct of reason, presented as two 
different movements. On the one hand it supersedes the one-sidedness of 
the Idea's subjectivity by receiving the existing world into itself, into 
subjective conception and thought; and with this objectivity, which is thus 
taken to be real and true, for its content it fills up the abstract certitude of 
itself. On the other hand, it supersedes the one-sidedness of the objective 
world, which is now, on the contrary, estimated as only a mere semblance, 
a collection of contingencies and shapes at bottom visionary. It modifies 
and informs that world lay Me inward nature of tie subjective, which is 
here taken to be the genuine objective. The former is the instinct of science 
after Truth, Cognition properly so called - the Theoretical action of the 
idea. The latter is the instinct of the Good to fulfil the same - the 
Practical activity of the  idea, or Volition.
[a] Cognition proper
§ 226
The universal finitude of Cognition, which lies in the one judgement, the 
presupposition of the contrast (§ 224) - a presupposition in contradiction 
of which its own act lodges protest - specialises itself more precisely on 
the face of its own idea. The result of that specialisation is that its two 
elements receive the aspect of being diverse from each other, and, as they 
are at least complete, they take up the relation of 'reflection', not of 'notion', 
to one another. The assimilation of the matter, therefore, as a datum, 
presents itself in the light of a reception of it into categories which at the 
same time remain external to it, and which meet each other in the same 
style of diversity. Reason is active here, but it is reason in the shape of 
understanding. The truth which such Cognition can reach will therefore be 
only finite: the infinite truth (of the notion) is isolated and made 
transcendent, an inaccessible goal in a world of its own. Still in its external 
action cognition stands under the guidance of the notion, and notional 
principles form the secret clue to its movement.
§ 226n
The finitude of Cognition lies in the presupposition of a world already in 
existence, and in the consequent view of the knowing subject as a tabula 
rasa. The conception is one attributed to Aristotle; but no man is further 
than Aristotle from such an outside theory of Cognition. Such a style of 
Cognition does not recognise in itself the activity of the notion -  an 
activity which it is implicitly, but not consciously. In its own estimation its 
procedure is passive. Really that procedure is active.
§ 227
Finite Cognition, when it presupposes what is distinguished from it to be 
something already existing and confronting it - to be the various facts of 
external nature or of consciousness - has, in the first place, (I) formal 
identity or the abstraction of universality for the form of its action. Its 
activity therefore consists in analysing the given concrete object, isolating 
its differences, and giving them the form of abstract universality. Or it 
leaves the concrete thing as a ground, and by setting aside the unessential-
looking particulars, brings into relief a concrete universal, the Genus, or 
Force and Law. This is the Analytical Method.
§ 227n
People generally speak of the analytical and synthetic methods, as if it 
depended solely on our choice which we pursued. This is far from the case. 
It depends on the form of the objects of our investigation, which of the two 
methods that are derivable from the notion of finite cognition ought to be 
applied. In the first place, cognition is analytical. Analytical cognition deals 
with an object which is presented in detachment, and the aim of its action 
is to trace back to a universal the individual object before it. Thought in 
such circumstances means no more than an act of abstraction or of formal 
identity. That is the sense in which thought is understood by Locke and all 
empiricists. Cognition, it is often said, can never do more than separate the 
given concrete objects into their abstract elements, and then consider these 
elements in their isolation. It is, however, at once apparent that this turns 
things upside down, and that cognition, if its purpose be to take things as 
they are, thereby falls into contradiction with itself. Thus the chemist e.g. 
places a piece of flesh in his retort, tortures it in many ways, and then 
informs us that it consists of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, etc. True: but 
these abstract matters have ceased to be flesh. The same defect occurs in 
the reasoning of an empirical psychologist when he analyses an action into 
the various aspects which it presents, and then sticks to these aspects in 
their separation. The object which is subjected to analysis is treated as a 
sort of onion from which one coat is peeled off after another.
§ 228
This universality is (2) also a specific universality. In this case the line of 
activity follows the three 'moments' of the notion, which (as it has not its 
infinity in finite cognition) is the specific or definite notion of 
understanding. The reception of the object into the forms of this notion is 
the Synthetic Method.
§ 228n
The movement of the Synthetic method is the reverse of the Analytical 
method. The latter starts from the individual, and proceeds to the universal; 
in the former the starting-point is given by the universal (as a definition), 
from which we proceed by particularising (in division) to the individual 
(the theorem). The Synthetic method thus presents itself as the 
development - the 'moments' of the notion on the object.
§ 229
[a] When the object has been in the first instance brought by cognition into 
the form of the specific notion in general, so that in this way its genus and 
its universal character or speciality are explicitly stated, we have the 
Definition. The materials and the proof of Definition are procured by 
means of the Analytical method (§ 227). The specific character however is 
expected to be a 'mark' only: that is to say it is to be in behoof only of the 
purely subjective cognition which is external to the object.
§ 229n
Definition involves the three organic elements of the notion: the universal 
or proximate genus (genus proximum), the particular or specific character 
of the genus (qualitas specifica), and the individual, or object defined. The 
first question that definition suggests, is where it comes from. The general 
answer to this question is to say, that definitions originate by way of 
analysis. This will explain how it happens that people quarrel about the 
correctness of proposed definitions; for here everything depends on what 
perceptions we started from, and what points of view we had before our 
eyes in so doing. The richer the object to be defined is, that is, the more 
numerous are the aspects which it offers to our notice, the more various are 
the definitions we may frame of it. Thus there are quite a host of definitions 
of life, of the state, etc. Geometry, on the contrary, dealing with a theme so 
abstract as space, has an easy task in giving definitions. Again, in respect of 
the matter or contents of the objects defined, there is no constraining 
necessity present. We are expected to admit that space exists, that there are 
plants, animals, etc., nor is it the business of geometry, botany, etc., to 
demonstrate that the objects in question necessarily are. This very 
circumstance makes the synthetic method of cognition as little suitable for 
philosophy as the analytical: for philosophy has above all things to leave no 
doubt of the necessity of its objects. And yet several attempts have been 
made to introduce the synthetic method into philosophy. Thus Spinoza, in 
particular, begins with definitions. He says, for instance, that substance is 
the causa sue. His definitions are unquestionably a storehouse of the most 
speculative truth, but it takes the shape of dogmatic assertions. The same 
thing is also true of Schelling.
§ 230
(b) The statement of the second element of the notion, i.e. of the specific 
character of the universal as particularising, is given by Division in 
accordance with some external consideration.
§ 230n
Division we are told ought to be complete. That requires a principle or 
ground of division so constituted that the division based upon it embraces 
the whole extent of the region designated by the definition in general. But, 
in division, there is the further requirement that the principle of it must be 
borrowed from the nature of the object in question. If this condition be 
satisfied, the division is natural and not merely artificial, that is to say, 
arbitrary. Thus, in zoology, the ground of division adopted in the 
classification of the mammalia is mainly afforded by their teeth and claws. 
That is so far sensible, as the mammals themselves distinguish themselves 
from one another by these parts of their bodies back to which therefore the 
general type of their various classes is to be traced. In every case the 
genuine division must be controlled by the notion. To that extent a division, 
in the first instance, has three members: but as particularity exhibits itself 
as double, the division may go to the extent even of four members. In the 
sphere of mind trichotomy is predominant, a circumstance which Kant has 
the credit for bringing into notice 
§ 231
[c] In the concrete individuality, where the mere unanalysed quality of the 
definition is regarded as a correlation of elements, the object is a synthetic 
nexus of distinct characteristics. It is a Theorem. Being different, these 
characteristics possess but a mediated identity. To supply the materials, 
which form the middle terms, is the office of Construction: and the 
process of mediation itself, from which cognition derives the necessity of 
that nexus, is the Demonstration.
As the difference between the analytical and synthetic methods is 
commonly stated, it seems entirely optional which of the two we employ. If 
we assume, to start with, the concrete thing which the synthetic method 
presents as a result, we can analyse from it as consequences the abstract 
propositions which formed the pre-suppositions and the material for the 
proof. Thus, algebraical definitions of curved lines are theorems in the 
method of geometry. Similarly even the Pythagorean theorem, if made the 
definition of a right-angled triangle, might yield to analysis those 
propositions which geometry had already demonstrated on is behoof The 
optionalness of either method is due to both alike starting from an external 
presupposition. So far as the nature of the notion is concerned, analysis is 
prior, since it has to raise the given material with its empirical concreteness 
into the form of general abstractions, which may then be set in the front of 
the synthetic method as definitions.
That these methods, however indispensable and brilliantly successful in 
their own province, are unserviceable for philosophical cognition, is self-
evident. They have presuppositions; and their style of cognition is that of 
understanding, proceeding under the canon of formal identity. In Spinoza, 
who was especially addicted to the use of the geometrical method, we are 
at once struck by its characteristic formalism. Yet his ideas were 
speculative in spirit; whereas the system of Wolf, who carried the method 
out to the height of pedantry, was even in subject-matter a metaphysic of 
the understanding. The abuses which these methods with their formalism 
once led to in philosophy and science have in modern times been followed 
by the abuses of what is called 'Construction'. Kant brought into vogue the 
phrase that mathematics 'construes' its notions. All that was meant by the 
phrase was that mathematics has not to do with notions, but with abstract 
qualities of sense-perceptions. The name 'Construction (construing) of 
notions' has since been given to a sketch or statement of sensible attributes 
which were picked up from perception, quite guiltless of any influence of 
the notion, and to the additional formalism of classifying scientific and 
philosophical objects in a tabular form on some presupposed rubric, but in 
other respects at the fancy and discretion of the observer. In the background 
of all this, certainly, there is a dim consciousness of the Idea, of the unity of 
the notion and objectivity - a consciousness too that the idea is concrete. 
But that play of what is styled 'construing' is far from presenting this unity 
adequately, a unity which is none other than the notion properly so called: a 
perception is as little the concreteness of reason and the idea.
Another point calls for notice. Geometry works with the sensuous but 
abstract perception of space; and in space it experiences no difficulty in 
isolating and defining certain simple analytical modes.
To geometry alone therefore belongs in its perfection the synthetic method 
of finite cognition. In its course, however (and this is the remarkable point), 
it finally stumbles upon what are termed irrational and incommensurable 
quantities; and in their case any attempt at further specification drives it 
beyond the principle of the understanding. This is only one of many 
instances in terminology, where the title 'rational' is perversely applied to 
the province of understanding, while we stigmatise as irrational that which 
shows a beginning and a trace of rationality. Other sciences, removed as 
they are from the simplicity of space or number, often and necessarily 
reach a point where understanding permits no further advance: but they get 
over the difficulty without trouble. They make a break in the strict 
sequence of their procedure, and assume whatever they require, though it 
be the reverse of what preceded, from some external quarter - opinion, 
perception, conception, or any other source. Its inobservancy as to the 
nature of its methods and their relativity to the subject-matter prevents this 
finite cognition from seeing that, when it proceeds by definitions and 
divisions, etc., it is really led on by the necessity of the laws of the notion. 
For the same reason it cannot see when it has reached its limit; nor, if it 
have transgressed that limit, does it perceive that it is in a sphere where the 
categories of understanding, which it still continues rudely to apply, have 
lost all authority.
§232
The necessity which finite cognition produces in the Demonstration is, in 
the first place, an external necessity, intended for the subjective 
intelligence alone. But in necessity as such, cognition itself has left behind 
its presupposition and starting-point, which consisted in accepting its 
content as given or found. Necessity qua necessity is implicitly the self-
relating notion. The subjective idea has-thus implicitly reached an original 
and objective determinateness - a something not-given, and for that 
reason immanent in the subject. It has passed over into the idea of Will.
§ 232n
The necessity which cognition reaches by means of the demonstration is 
the reverse of what formed its starting-point. In its starting-point cognition 
had a given and a contingent content; but now, at the close of its 
movement, it knows its content to be necessary. This necessity is reached 
by means of subjective agency. Similarly, subjectivity at starting was quite 
abstract, a bare tabula rasa. It now shows itself as a modifying and 
determining principle. In this way we pass from the idea of cognition to 
that of will. The passage, as will be apparent on a closer examination, 
means that the universal, to be truly apprehended, must be apprehended as 
subjectivity, as a notion self-moving, active, and form-imposing.

[b] Volition
§233
The subjective idea as original and objective determinateness, and as a 
simple uniform content, is the Good. Its impulse towards self-realisation is 
in its behaviour the reverse of the idea of truth, and rather directed towards 
moulding the world it finds before it into a shape conformable to its 
purposed End. This Volition has, on the one hand, the certitude of the 
nothingness of the presupposed object; but, on the other, as finite, it at the 
same time presupposes the purposed End of the Good to be a mere 
subjective idea, and the object to be independent.
§ 234
This action of the Will is finite: and its finitude lies in the contradiction 
that in the inconsistent terms applied to the objective world the End of the 
Good is just as much not executed as executed, the end in question put as 
unessential as much as essential, as actual and at the same time as merely 
possible. This contradiction presents itself to imagination as an endless 
progress in the actualising of the Good; which is therefore set up and fixed 
as a mere 'ought', or goal of perfection. In point of form however this 
contradiction vanishes when the action supersedes the subjectivity of the 
purpose, and along with it the objectivity, with the contrast which makes 
both finite; abolishing subjectivity as a whole and not merely the one-
sidedness of this form of it. (For another new subjectivity of the kind, that 
is, a new generation of the contrast, is not distinct from that which is 
supposed to be past and gone.) This return into itself is at the same time the 
content's awn 'recollection' that it is the Good and the implicit identity of
the two sides - it is a 'recollection' of the presupposition of the theoretical 
attitude of mind (§ 224) that the objective world is its own truth and 
substantiality.
§ 234n
While Intelligence merely proposes to take the world as it is, Will takes 
steps to make Me world what it ought to be. Will looks upon the immediate 
and given present not as solid being, but as mere semblance without reality. 
It is here that we meet those contradictions which are so bewildering from 
the standpoint of abstract morality. This position in its 'practical' bearings is 
the one taken by the philosophy of Kant, and even by that of Fichte. The 
Good, say these writers, has to be realised: we have to work in order to 
produce it: and Will is only the Good actualising itself. If the world then 
were as it ought to be, the action of Will would be at an end. The Will itself 
therefore requires that its End should not be realised. In these words, a 
correct expression is given to the finitude of Will. But finitude was not 
meant to be the ultimate point: and it is the process of Will itself which 
abolishes finitude and the contradiction it involves. The reconciliation is 
achieved when Will in its result returns to the presupposition made by 
cognition. In other words, it consists in the unity of the theoretical and 
practical idea. Will knows the end to be its own, and Intelligence 
apprehends the world as the notion actual. This is the right attitude of 
rational cognition. Nullity and transitoriness constitute only the superficial 
features and not the real essence of the world. That essence is the notion in 
posse and in esse: and thus the world is itself the idea. All unsatisfied 
endeavour ceases, when we recognise that the final purpose of the world is 
accomplished no less than ever accomplishing itself. Generally speaking, 
this is the man's way of looking; while the young imagine that the world is 
utterly sunk in wickedness, and that the first thing needful is a thorough 
transformation. The religious mind, on the contrary, views the world as 
ruled by Divine Providence, and therefore correspondent with what it ought 
to be. But this harmony between the 'is' and the 'ought to be' is not torpid 
and rigidly stationary. Good, the final end of the world, has being, only 
while it constantly produces itself. And the world of spirit and the world of 
nature continue to have this distinction, that the latter moves only in a 
recurring cycle, while the former certainly also makes progress.
§235
Thus the truth of the Good is laid down as the unity of the theoretical and 
practical idea in the doctrine that the Good is radically and really achieved, 
that the objective world is in itself and for itself the Idea, just as it at the 
same time eternally lays itself down as End, and by action brings about its 
actuality. This life which has returned to itself from the bias and finitude of 
cognition, and which by the activity of the notion has become identical 
with it, is the Speculative or Absolute Idea.

(c) The Absolute Idea
§236
The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, is the notion of the 
Idea - a notion whose object (Gegenstand) is the Idea as such, and for 
which the objective (Objekt) is Idea - an Object which embraces all 
characteristics in its unity. This unity is consequently the absolute and all 
truth, the Idea which thinks itself -  and here at least as a thinking or 
Logical Idea.
§ 236n
The Absolute Idea is, in the first place, the unity of the theoretical and 
practical idea, and thus at the same time the unity of the idea of life with 
the idea of cognition. In cognition we had the idea in a biased, one-sided 
shape. The process of cognition has issued in the overthrow of this bias and 
the restoration of that unity, which as unity, and in its immediacy, is in the 
first instance the Idea of Life. The defect of life lies in its being only the 
idea implicit or natural: whereas cognition is in an equally one-sided way 
the merely conscious idea, or the idea for itself. The unity and truth of these 
two is the Absolute Idea, which is both in itself and for itself. Hitherto we 
have had the idea in development through its various grades as our object, 
but now the idea comes to be its own object. This is the noisis noiseos 
which Aristotle long ago termed the supreme form of the idea.
§ 237
Seeing that there is in it no transition, or presupposition, and in general no 
specific character other than what is fluid and transparent, the Absolute 
Idea is for itself the pure form of the notion, which contemplates its 
contents as its own self. It is its own content, in so far as it ideally 
distinguishes itself from itself, and the one of the two things distinguished 
is a self-identity in which however is contained the totality of the form as 
the system of terms describing its content. This content is the system of 
Logic. All that is at this stage left as form for the idea is the Method of this 
content - the specific consciousness of the value and currency of the 
'moments' in its development.
§ 237n
To speak of the absolute idea may suggest the conception that we are at 
length reaching the right thing and the sum of the whole matter. It is 
certainly possible to indulge in a vast amount of senseless declamation 
about the idea absolute. But its true content is only the whole system of 
which we have been hitherto studying the development. It may also be said 
in this strain that the absolute idea is the universal, but the universal not 
merely as an abstract form to which the particular content is a stranger, but 
as the absolute form, into which all the categories, the whole fullness of the 
content it has given being to, have retired. The absolute idea may in this 
respect be compared to the old mart who utters the same creed as the child, 
but for whom it is pregnant with the significance of a lifetime. Even if the 
child understands the truths of religion, he cannot but imagine them to be 
something outside of which lies the whole of life and the whole of the 
world. The same may be said to be the case with human life as a whole and 
the occurrences with which it is fraught. All work is directed only to the 
aim or end; and when it is attained, people are surprised to find nothing 
else but just the very thing which they had wished for. The interest lies in 
the whole movement. When a man traces up the steps of his life, the end 
may appear to him very restricted: but in it the whole decursus vitae is 
comprehended. So, too, the content of the absolute idea is the whole 
breadth of ground which has passed under our view up to this point. Last of 
all comes the discovery that the whole evolution is what constitutes the 
content and the interest. It is indeed the prerogative of the philosopher to 
see that everything, which, taken apart, is narrow and restricted, receives its 
value by its connection with the whole, and by forming an organic element 
of the idea. Thus it is that we have had the content already, and what we 
have now is the knowledge that the content is the living development of the 
idea. This simple retrospect is contained in the form of the idea. Each of 
the stages hitherto reviewed is an image of the absolute, but at first in a 
limited mode, and thus it is forced onwards to the whole, the evolution of 
which is what we termed Method.
§238
The several steps or stages of the Speculative Method are, first of all, (a) 
the Beginning, which is Being or Immediacy: self-subsistent, for the simple 
reason that it is the beginning. But looked at from the speculative idea, 
Being is its self-specialising act, which as the absolute negativity or 
movement of the notion makes a judgement and puts itself as its own 
negative. Being, which to the beginning as beginning seems mere abstract 
affirmation, is thus rather negation, dependency, derivation, and 
presupposition. But it is the notion of which Being is the negation: and the 
notion is completely self-identical in its otherness, and is the certainty of 
itself. Being therefore is the notion implicit, before it has been explicitly 
put as a notion. This Being therefore, as the still unspecified notion - a 
notion that is only implicitly or 'immediately' specified - is equally 
describable as the Universal.
When it means immediate being, the beginning is taken from sensation and 
perception - the initial stage in the analytical method of finite cognition. 
When it means universality, it is the beginning of the systematic method. 
But since the Logical Idea is as much a universal as it is in being - since it 
is presupposed by the notion as much as it itself immediately is, its 
beginning is a synthetic as well as an analytical beginning.
§238n
Philosophical method is analytical as well as synthetic, not indeed in the 
sense of a bare juxtaposition or mere alternating employment of these two 
methods of finite cognition, but rather in such a way that it holds them 
merged in itself. In every one of its movements therefore it displays an 
attitude at once analytical and synthetic. Philosophical thought proceeds 
analytically, in so far as it only accepts its object, the Idea, and while 
allowing it its own way, is only, as it were, an onlooker at its movement 
and development. To this extent philosophising is wholly passive. 
Philosophic thought however is equally synthetic, and evinces itself to be 
the action of the notion itself. To that end, however, there is required an 
effort to keep back the incessant impertinence of our own fancies and 
private opinions.
§239
(b) The Advance renders explicit the judgement implicit in the Idea. The 
immediate universal, as the notion implicit, is the dialectical force which 
on its own part deposes its immediacy and universality to the level of a 
mere stage or 'moment'. Thus is put the negative of the beginning, its 
specific character: it supposes a correlative, a relation of different terms - 
the stage of Reflection.
Seeing that the immanent dialectic only states explicitly what was involved 
in the immediate notion, this advance is Analytical; but seeing that in this 
notion this distinction was not yet stated, it is equally Synthetic.
§239n
In the advance of the idea, the beginning exhibits itself as what it is 
implicitly. It is seen to be mediated and derivative, and neither to have 
proper being nor proper immediacy. It is only for the consciousness which 
is itself immediate, that Nature forms the commencement or immediacy 
and that Spirit appears as what is mediated by Nature. The truth is that 
Nature is the creation of Spirit, and it is Spirit itself which gives itself a 
presupposition in Nature.
§ 240
The abstract form of the advance is, in Being, an other and transition into 
an other; in Essence showing or reflection in the opposite; in Notion, the 
distinction of individual from universality, which continues itself as such 
into, and is as an identity with, what is distinguished from it.
§ 241
In the second sphere the primarily implicit notion has come as far as 
shining, and thus is already the idea in germ. The development of this 
sphere becomes a regress into the first, just as the development of the first 
is a transition into the second. It is only by means of this double movement, 
that the difference first gets its due, when each of the two members 
distinguished, observed on its own part, completes itself to the totality, and 
in this way works out its unity with the other. It is only by both merging 
their one-sidedness on their own part, that their unity is kept from 
becoming one-sided.
§ 242 
The second sphere develops the relation of the different to what it primarily 
is - to the contradiction in its own nature. That contradiction which is 
seen in the infinite progress is resolved (c) into the end or terminus, where 
the difference is explicitly stated as what it is in notion. The end is the 
negative of the first, and as the identity with that, is the negativity of itself. 
It is consequently the unity in which both of these Firsts, the immediate and 
the real First, are made constituent stages in thought, merged, and at the 
same time preserved in the unity. The notion, which from its implicitness 
thus comes by means of its differentiation and the merging of that 
differentiation to close with itself, is the realised notion - the notion 
which contains the relativity or dependence of its special features in its 
own independence. It is the idea which, as absolutely first (in the method), 
regards this terminus as merely the disappearance of the show or 
semblance, which made the beginning appear immediate, and made itself 
seem a result. It is the knowledge that the idea is the one systematic whole.
§ 243
It thus appears that the method is not an extraneous form, but the soul and 
notion of the content, from which it is only distinguished, so far as the 
dynamic elements of the notion even on their own part come in their own 
specific character to appear as the totality of the notion. This specific 
character, or the content, leads itself with the form back to the idea; and 
thus the idea is presented as a systematic totality which is only one idea, of 
which the several elements are each implicitly the idea, while they equally 
by the dialectic of the notion produce the simple independence of the idea. 
The science in this manner concludes by apprehending the notion of itself, 
as of the pure idea for which the idea is.
§ 244
The Idea which is independent or for itself, when viewed on the point of 
this unity with itself, is Perception or Intuition, and the percipient Idea is 
Nature. But as intuition the idea is, through an external 'reflection', invested 
with the one-sided characteristic of immediacy, or of negation. Enjoying 
however an absolute liberty, the Idea does not merely pass over into life, or 
as finite cognition allow life to show in it: in its own absolute truth it 
resolves to let the 'moment' of its particularity, or of the first 
characterisation and other-being, the immediate idea, as its reflected image, 
go forth freely as Nature.
§244n
We have now returned to the notion of the Idea with which we began. This 
return to the beginning is also an advance. We began with Being, abstract 
Being: where we now are we also have the Idea as Being: but this Idea 
which has Being is Nature. 










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