Addition 1. Construing the absolute (God) as the object and not moving beyond such a construal is in general the standpoint of superstition and slavish fear, as Fichte above all has rightly emphasized in recent times. To be sure, God is the object, and indeed the object without qualification, opposite which our particular (subjective) opinions and wants have no truth and no validity. But precisely as the absolute object, God does not stand like some sinister and inimical power over against subjectivity. Instead God contains subjectivity as an essential factor within himself. This point is formulated in the teachings of the Christian religion, when it is said that God wants for all human beings to be helped and wants all of them to be blessed. That human beings are helped, that they are blessed, this happens by virtue of the fact that they attain consciousness of their unity with God and God ceases to be for them a mere object and thereby just an object [Gegenstand] of fear and terror, as was the case for the religious consciousness of the Romans in particular. If, furthermore, in the Christian religion, God is known [gewußt] as love, and indeed insofar as he revealed himself to humanity in his Son, who is one with him, and did so as this individual human being, by this means redeeming humanity, this says likewise that the opposition of objectivity and subjectivity is in itself overcome and the basic matter for us is to participate in this redemption by letting go of our immediate subjectivity (taking off the old Adam) and becoming conscious of God as our true and essential self. – Now, just as religion and the religious culture consists in overcoming the opposition of subjectivity and objectivity, so too science, and more precisely philosophy, has no other task than to overcome this opposition through thinking. In the case of knowing, what generally needs to be done is to strip away the alienness of the objective world standing over against us, to find our way into it, as one says, which amounts to saying that we need to trace the objective [dimension] back to the concept which is our innermost self. From the previous discussion it can be gathered how wrong it is to consider subjectivity and objectivity a rigid and abstract opposition. Both are utterly dialectical. In keeping with its own activity, without needing any external material or stuff, the concept which at first is only subjective proceeds to objectify itself, and so too the object is not something immovable and devoid of process, but instead is the process of proving itself to be at the same time the subjective [dimension] that forms the progression to the idea. What happens to anyone who is not familiar with the determinations of subjectivity and objectivity, preferring to hold fast to them in their abstraction, is that these abstract determinations slip through his fingers before he lays hold on them and he says precisely the opposite of what he wanted to say.

 Addition 2. Objectivity contains the three forms: mechanism, chemism, and the relation of purpose. The mechanically determined object is the immediate, indifferent object. It contains difference, to be sure, but the diverse [elements] behave indifferently towards one another and the combination of them is only external to them. In chemism, by contrast, the object demonstrates itself to be essentially different, such that the objects are what they are only through their relation to one another and the difference constitutes their quality. The third form of objectivity, the teleological relationship, is the unity of mechanism and chemism. The purpose is again, like the mechanical object, a totality enclosed within itself, yet enriched by the principle of difference [Differenz] that emerged in chemism, and so it [the purpose] refers to the object standing over against it. It is the realization of the purpose, then, that forms the transition to the idea.

 Addition. Mechanism, as the first form of objectivity, is also that very category that first presents itself to reflection in observation of the objective [gegenständlich] world and a category from which this observation quite frequently does not budge. Nevertheless, this is a superficial manner of observation, lacking in thought, insufficient for making do either in relation to nature or even less in relation to the spiritual world. In nature only the completely abstract relationships of matter (insofar as it remains locked up in itself) are subject to mechanism. By contrast, even the phenomena and processes of the so-called 'physical domain' in the narrower sense of the word (for example, the phenomena of light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and so forth) cannot be explained in a merely mechanical manner (i.e. through pressure, impulse, displacement of parts, etc.). Even more unsatisfactory is the application and transference of this category to the domain of organic nature, insofar as it is a matter of conceiving what is specific to it: for example, the nourishment and growth of plants or even animal sensation. In any case it must be regarded as a quite essential deficiency, indeed, the chief deficiency of modern research into nature that, even where it is a matter of completely different and higher categories than those of mere mechanism, it nevertheless stubbornly clings to the latter, contradicting what presents itself to an unprejudiced observation [Anschauung], and by this means blocks the path to an adequate knowledge of nature. – Next, with regard to the formations of the spiritual world, here too in the consideration of them the mechanical perspective has been unduly promoted in various ways. This is the case, for example, if it is said that a human being consists of body and soul. In this assertion these two count as subsisting each for themselves and as being combined with one another only externally. It also happens when the soul is regarded as a mere complex of forces and faculties, subsisting self-sufficiently next to one another. – Thus, on the one hand, the mechanical manner of observation must be rejected out of hand where it comes on the scene with the pretension of occupying the position of conceptual knowing in general and making mechanism the absolute category. Yet, on the other hand, mechanism's legitimacy and meaning as a universal, logical category must also be expressly vindicated, and accordingly by no means should it be limited merely to the domain of nature from which this category's name is taken. Thus, there is nothing to object to if attention is paid to mechanical actions (e.g. those of weight, lever, and so forth) even outside the realm of genuine mechanics, particularly in physics and in physiology. Only it should not be overlooked thereby that within these domains the laws of mechanism are no longer the decisive ones, but make their appearance only, as it were, in a subservient position. Immediately linked to this point is then the further remark that where the higher functions in nature, namely, the organic functions, suffer a disturbance or hindrance in one way or another in their normal effectiveness, the otherwise subordinate mechanism immediately emerges as dominating. Thus, for example, someone suffering from a weak stomach has a sensation of pressure in the stomach after consuming a modest quantity of certain foods, while others whose digestive organs are healthy remain free of this sensation, despite having consumed the same thing. This is also the case with the general feeling of heaviness in the arms and legs when the body is in a sickly mood. – Even in the domain of the spiritual world, mechanism has its place, albeit a place that is likewise merely subordinate. One speaks rightly of mechanical memory and of all sorts of mechanical activities such as, for example, reading, writing, playing music, and so forth. More precisely in this connection, as far as memory is concerned, a mechanical manner of behaving is even inherent in its essence; a circumstance that has often been overlooked by modern pedagogy, to the great detriment of the education of youth, in a mistaken zeal for freedom of the intelligence. Nevertheless, someone would prove to be a bad psychologist if, in order to fathom the nature of memory, he were to take flight to mechanics and apply its laws without further ado to the soul. The mechanical dimension of memory precisely consists solely in the fact that here certain signs, sounds, and so forth are construed in their merely external combination and then reproduced in this combination, without it being necessary thereby to attend explicitly to their meaning and inner combination. In order to recognize this connection with mechanical memory, no further study of mechanics is needed, and from this study there is nothing to be gained for psychology as such.

 Addition. Chemism is a category of objectivity that as a rule does not tend to be stressed particularly. Instead it is usually taken together with mechanism as one and, in this manner of taking them together, under the common title 'mechanistic relationship', it is opposed to the relationship of purposiveness. The motivation for this is to be sought in the fact that mechanism and chemism have, indeed, this in common: each is initially the concretely existing concept only in itself, whereas the purpose, by contrast, is to be regarded as the concept existing concretely for itself. Nonetheless, mechanism and chemism also differ from one another very specifically, namely, in the way that the object, in the form of mechanism, is initially only an indifferent relation to itself, whereas the chemical object, by contrast, demonstrates itself to be related straightaway to an other. Now, to be sure, even in the case of mechanism, as it develops, relations to an other are already emerging. But the relation of the mechanical objects to one another is only an external relation initially, such that the objects related to one another are left with the semblance [Schein] of self-sufficiency. Thus, for example, in nature the various heavenly bodies that form the solar system are connected by their movements and, by this means, demonstrate that they are related to one another. Yet motion, as the unity of space and time, is nothing but an utterly external and abstract relation and so it seems as though the heavenly bodies, related in such an external manner to one another, would be and even remain what they are without this relation that they have to one another. – In the case of chemism, by contrast, things behave otherwise. Chemically differentiated [chemisch-differenten] objects are explicitly what they are, only through their difference [Differenz], and are thus the absolute drive to integrate themselves through and with one another.

 Addition. The chemical process is still a finite, conditioned process. The concept as such is as yet only the inner dimension of this process and does not yet come into concrete existence in its being-for-itself. In the neutral product, the process is extinguished and what stirs things up falls outside the process.

 Addition. The transition from chemism to the teleological relationship is entailed by the fact that the two forms of the chemical process reciprocally sublate one another. In this way it comes about that the concept, initially only present in itself in chemism and in mechanism, becomes free, and the concept, thus existing concretely for itself, is the purpose.

 Addition. When speaking of purpose, one usually has one's eye only on external purposiveness. In this manner of considering things, they do not count as bearing their determination in themselves. Instead they count merely as means that are used and used up to realize some purpose lying outside them. This is in general the viewpoint of utility, which formerly played a great role in the sciences as well, but then deservedly came to be discredited, and recognized to be insufficient for true insight into the nature of things. To be sure, justice must be done to finite things as such inasmuch as they are to be considered to be other than ultimate and to point beyond themselves. This negativity of finite things, however, is their own dialectic and, in order to know this, one first has to get involved with their positive content. Moreover, what is at stake in the case of the teleological manner of consideration is the well-intended interest of pointing out the wisdom of God announcing itself in nature. To this extent, accordingly, it should be noted that, with this search for purposes that things serve as means, one does not get beyond the finite and easily lapses into meagre reflections, as, for example, when not only is the grapevine considered from the viewpoint of the familiar use that it affords human beings, but even the cork tree is so considered in relation to the stopper that is cut from its bark in order to seal the wine bottle. In former times, entire books have been written in this vein and it is easy to establish that neither the true interest of religion nor that of science can be advanced in this way. The external purposiveness stands immediately before the idea, but sometimes what thus stands on the threshold is precisely more insufficient than anything else.

 Addition. The development of the purpose into the idea comes about by way of three steps: first, that of the subjective purpose; second, that of the purpose bringing itself about [sich vollführenden]; and third, that of the purpose that has brought itself about. – At the outset we have the subjective purpose and this, as the concept being for itself, is itself the totality of the conceptual moments. The first of these moments is that of the universality identical with itself: as it were, the neutral first water in which everything is contained but not yet separated out. The second is then the particularization of this universal, through which it receives a determinate content. But since this determinate content is posited by the activity of the universal, the latter then returns to itself by means of that content and joins itself together with itself [schließt sich mit sich selbst zusammen]. Accordingly, when we set a purpose in front of us, we also say that we decide [beschließen] on something and accordingly consider ourselves at the outset to be, as it were, open and amenable to this or that determination. Similarly then, however, it is also said that 'one has resolved [entschlossen] to do something', which expresses that the subject has emerged from his inwardness, i.e. his being only for himself, and let himself in for the objectivity standing opposite him. This then yields the progression from the merely subjective purpose to the purposive activity directed outwards.

 Addition. The process of carrying out the purpose is the mediated manner of realizing the purpose; just as necessary, however, is the immediate realization of it. The purpose seizes the object immediately because it is the power over the object, because in it the particularity is contained and, in the latter, the objectivity is also contained. – The living entity has a body; the soul takes control of it and has immediately objectified itself in it. The human soul has a great deal to do in making its corporeal condition a means. A human being must first take possession of his body, as it were, so that it may be the instrument of his soul.

 Addition. Reason is as cunning as it is powerful. The cunning consists generally in the activity of mediating, which, by letting the objects, in keeping with their own nature, act on one another and wear themselves out on one another, without meddling immediately in this process, achieves its purpose alone. In this sense, one can say that the divine providence, over against the world and its process, behaves as the absolute cunning. God gives free rein to human beings with their particular passions and interests and, by this means, what comes about is the accomplishment of his aims which are different from what was pursued by those of whom he makes use in the process.

 Addition. The finitude of the purpose consists in the fact that, in the course of its realization, the material applied as means to it is only subsumed under it externally and made to conform to it. But, now, in fact the object in itself is the concept and because the concept, as purpose, is realized therein, this is only the manifestation of its own inner dimension. The objectivity is thus as it were only a hull under which the concept lies hidden. Within the finite, we cannot experience it or see that the purpose is truly attained. To accomplish the infinite purpose is thus merely to sublate the illusion [Täuschung] that it is not yet accomplished. The good, the absolute good, brings itself to completion in the world eternally and the result is that it is already brought to completion in and for itself, without needing first to wait for us. It is this illusion in which we live and at the same time it alone is the activating principle upon which the interest of the world rests. The idea in its process fabricates that illusion for itself, positing an other opposite itself, and its action consists in sublating this illusion. Truth emerges only from this error and herein lies the reconciliation with error and with finitude. Otherness or error, as something sublated, is itself a necessary moment of the truth, the truth which only is by making itself its own result.

 Addition. By truth, one understands at first that I know [wisse] how something is. Yet this is truth only in relation to consciousness or the formal truth, mere correctness. In contrast to this, truth in the deeper sense consists in this, that objectivity is identical with the concept. It is truth in this deeper sense that is at stake if, for example, one is speaking of a true state or of a true work of art. These objects [Gegenstände] are true if they are what they should be, that is to say, if their reality corresponds to their concept. So construed, the untrue is the same as what is otherwise also called 'the bad'. A bad human being is one who is not truly human, i.e. a human being who does not behave in keeping with the concept or determination of a human being. Nothing, meanwhile, can subsist utterly without the identity of the concept and reality. Even something bad and untrue is only insofar as its reality still behaves somehow in conformity with its concept. Something thoroughly bad or at odds with the concept is, precisely for this reason, something collapsing in itself. It is the concept alone through which things have their standing in the world; that is to say, in the language of religious representation, things are what they are only by virtue of the divine and thereby creative thought dwelling within them. – When speaking of the idea, one must not imagine something remote and other-worldly by this. The idea is instead what is thoroughly present, and so too it is to be found in every consciousness, even if muddled and stunted. – We represent the world to ourselves as an enormous totality created by God and, indeed, such that God has revealed himself to us in it. So too we regard the world as governed by divine providence and herein lies the fact that the asundered character [Auseinander] of the world is eternally led back to the unity out of which it went forth and, in keeping with that unity, is preserved. – From time immemorial in philosophy, it has been about nothing other than thoughtfully knowing the idea, and underlying everything that deserves the name 'philosophy' has been the consciousness of an absolute unity of what holds for the understanding only in its separation. – The proof that the idea is the truth is not something to be demanded only now; the entire foregoing elaboration and development of thinking contains this proof. The idea is the result of the course that this has taken, a course that is, nevertheless, not to be understood as if it were something only mediated, that is to say, mediated by something other than itself. The idea is instead its own result and, as such, just as much immediate as mediated. The stages considered so far, those of being and essence and equally of the concept and objectivity, are not something fixed and resting on themselves with regard to this difference among them. Instead they have been demonstrated to be dialectical and their truth is only that of being moments of the idea.

 Addition. The idea, as a process, runs through three stages in its development. The first form of the idea is life, i.e. the idea in the form of immediacy. The second form is then that of the mediation or the difference [Differenz], and this is the idea as knowing which appears in the twofold shape of the theoretical and the practical idea. The process of knowing has, as its result, the restoration of the unity, enriched by the difference, and this yields the third form of the hereby absolute idea, the final stage of the logical process that proves itself to be at once the truly first and the only entity that is through itself alone.

 Addition. The individual members of the body are what they are only by means of their unity and in relation to it. Thus, for example, a hand that is severed from the body, is a hand only in name, but not in reality [der Sache nach], as Aristotle already noted. – From the standpoint of the understanding, life is usually regarded as a mystery and generally as incomprehensible. In this way, meanwhile, the understanding merely confesses its finitude and vacuousness. Life is, in fact, so little something incomprehensible that in it we are confronted with the concept itself and, more precisely, the immediate idea existing concretely as a concept. With this, then, the deficiency of life is also at once articulated. This deficiency consists in the fact that here concept and reality do not truly correspond to one another. The concept of life is the soul and this concept has the body for its reality. The soul is, as it were, poured into its corporality and thus the former is only sensing and feeling [empfindend] but not yet freely being-for-itself. The process of life consists then in overcoming the immediacy in which it is still caught up, and this process (which is itself in turn threefold) has as its result the idea in the form of the judgment, i.e. the idea as knowing.

 Addition. The process of living that is internal to it has in nature the threefold form of sensibility, irritability, and reproduction. As sensibility, the living is immediately a simple relation to itself, the soul that is everywhere present, in its body, the external juxtapositions of which have no truth for it. As irritability, the living appears divided in itself and, as reproduction, the living is constantly reproducing itself from the inner difference of its members and organs. The living is only as this continually self-renewing process within itself.

 Addition. The living stands over against an inorganic nature towards which it behaves as its power and which it assimilates to itself. The result of this process is not, as in the case of the chemical process, a neutral product in which the self-sufficiency of both sides standing opposite one another is sublated. Instead, the living demonstrates itself to be something that reaches over and beyond its other [übergreifend über sein Anderes] which is incapable of withstanding its power. The inorganic nature that is subjugated by the living endures this because it is in itself the same as life is for itself. Hence, in the other, the living is merely connecting with itself. When the soul has fled the body, the play of the elementary powers of objectivity commences. These powers are, so to speak, continually poised to initiate their process in the organic body, and life is the constant battle against them.

 Addition. What is alive dies because it is the contradiction of being in itself the universal, the genus, and yet existing concretely and immediately only as individual. In death, the genus demonstrates itself to be the power over the immediately individual. – For the animal, the process of the genus is the highest point of its condition of being alive. But the animal does not manage to be for itself in its genus, succumbing instead to the latter's power. What is immediately alive mediates itself with itself in the process of the genus and thus elevates itself above its immediacy, only to sink back down to that same immediacy again and again. In this way, life runs its course at first merely into the bad infinity of the progression ad infinitum. What, meanwhile, in keeping with the concept, comes about through the process of life is the sublation and overcoming of the immediacy in which the idea as life is still ensnared.

 Addition. The finitude of knowing lies in the presupposition of a world already found before it, and in the process the knowing subject appears as a tabula rasa. This representation of things has been ascribed to Aristotle, although no one is more removed from this external way of construing knowing than Aristotle. This knowing does not yet know [weiß] itself as the activity of the concept, something which it is only in itself, but not for itself. Its behaviour appears to it as something passive, yet it is in fact active.

 Addition. It is customary to speak of analytic and synthetic method as though following the one or the other were a mere matter of our whim. Yet this is in no way the case. Instead, which of the two methods to apply – both of which result from the concept of finite knowing – depends upon the form of the objects [Gegenstände] themselves that are to be known. Knowing is at the outset analytical. The object has for it the shape of an isolated individual [Gestalt der Vereinzelung] and the activity of analytic knowing aims at tracing the individual lying before it back to a universal. Here thinking has the meaning of abstraction or formal identity only. This is the standpoint on which Locke and all empiricists stand. Many say that knowing can do nothing further than analyse the given, concrete objects [Gegenstände] into their abstract elements and then consider the latter in isolation. It is immediately evident, meanwhile, that this is to turn things upside down and that the sort of knowing that wants to take things as they are thereby falls into self-contradiction. Thus, for example, the chemist brings a piece of meat to his test-tube, breaks it down in a variety of ways, and then says that he has found that it consists of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and so on. However, these abstract bits of material are then no longer meat. Something similar is the case when the empirical psychologist analyses an action into the diverse sides which it presents for consideration and then clings to them in abstraction from one another. In this case, the analytically treated object [Gegenstand] is regarded, as it were, as an onion from which one peels one skin after the other.

 Addition. The movement of the synthetic method is the inversion of the analytic method. While the latter advances by going from the individual as its starting point to the universal, in the former case the universal (as definition) forms the point of departure instead, and there is a progression from it through the particularization (in the division) to the individual (the theorem). With this, the synthetic method demonstrates itself to be the development of the moments of the concept in the object [Gegenstand].

 Addition. The definition itself contains the three moments of the concept: the universal as the proximate genus (genus proximum), the particular as the determinacy of the genus (qualitas specifica), and the individual as the defined object [Gegenstand] itself. With respect to definition, the question immediately arises 'where does it comes from?' and this question is generally to be answered by noting that definitions arise on the analytic path. With this answer, however, the dispute about the correctness of the definitions put forward immediately presents itself. For it is a matter here of the perceptions that formed one's point of departure and the kinds of viewpoint from which one looked. The richer the object [Gegenstand] is that is to be defined, i.e. the more diverse sides it offers for consideration, the more diverse the definitions given of it tend to be. Thus, for example, there is an entire array of definitions of life, of the state, and so forth. Geometry, by contrast, has an easy time making definitions since its object, space, is such an abstract object [Gegenstand]. – Further, there is generally no necessity on hand with respect to the content of the defined object [Gegenstand]. One is supposed to accept that there is space, that there are plants, animals, and so forth, and it is not a matter for geometry, botany, and so forth to point out the necessity of the defined objects [Gegenstände]. On account of this circumstance, the synthetic method is no more appropriate for philosophy than the analytic method is, since philosophy has, before anything else, to justify to itself the necessity of its objects [Gegenstände]. Nevertheless, the effort has been made over and over to make use of the synthetic method in philosophy. Spinoza in particular begins with definitions and says, for example, 'Substance is the causa sui.' He lays down the most speculative themes in his definitions, but in the form of assurances. The same holds for Schelling.

 Addition. What is demanded of the division is that it be complete, and part of this requirement is a principle or ground of the division that is so constituted that the division based on it encompasses the entire scope of the domain designated by the definition in general. In the course of the division it is then necessary, in addition, that it be done in such a way that its principle has been drawn from the nature of the object [Gegenstand] itself that is divided up. In this way the division is made naturally and not artificially, i.e. arbitrarily. So, for example, in zoology in the division of mammals, the claws and teeth are used above all as the ground of the division, and this is sensible since mammals themselves distinguish themselves from one another through these parts of their bodies and the general type of the diverse classes of them [i.e. mammals] are to be led back to this. – In general, the true division is to be regarded as determined by the concept. To this extent it is initially threefold; but since the particularity presents itself as something doubled, the division then progresses to something fourfold as well. Trichotomies predominate in the sphere of the spirit and it is one of Kant's accomplishments to have drawn attention to this circumstance.

 Addition. The necessity that knowing attains through the proof is the opposite of what forms for it its point of departure. In its point of departure, knowing had a given and contingent content. Now, however, at the conclusion of its movement, it knows [weiß] the content as a necessary one and this necessity is mediated by the subjective activity. So, too, subjectivity was at first completely abstract, a mere tabula rasa, whereas it proves itself now, by contrast, to be determining. Herein, however, lies the transition from the idea of knowing to the idea of willing. This transition consists then, more precisely, in the fact that the universal is to be construed in its truth as subjectivity, as the self-moving, active concept, positing determinations.

 Addition. While what matters for intelligence is merely taking the world as it is, the will, by contrast, is bent on making the world what it ought to be. The immediate, what it finds before it, counts for the will, not as a fixed being, but instead only as a semblance [Schein], as something in itself vacuous. Here those contradictions come to the fore in which one stumbles around on the standpoint of morality. This in general is the standpoint of the Kantian and even also the Fichtean philosophy in a practical context [Beziehung]. The good is supposed to be realized; one has to work to produce it, and the will is only the good activating itself. But then, were the world as it is supposed to be, the activity of willing would fall by the wayside. Thus the will in itself requires that its purpose also not be realized. This account correctly expresses the will's finitude. But then we should not stand pat with this finitude, and it is the process of willing itself through which this finitude and the contradiction contained in it are sublated. The reconciliation consists in the fact that the will, in its result, returns to the presupposition of knowing, that is to say, it consists in the unity of the theoretical and practical idea. The will knows [weiß] the purpose as its own and the intelligence construes the world as the actual concept. This is the true posture of rational knowing. What is vacuous and vanishing makes up only the surface, not the genuine essence of the world. This is the concept, being in and for itself, and the world is thus itself the idea. The unsatisfied striving disappears if we know that the final purpose of the world has been brought about and to the same degree eternally brings itself about. This is generally the posture of the adult man, while the youth believes that the whole world is in a bad way and out of it a completely different world must be made. By contrast, religious consciousness regards the world as governed by Divine Providence, and thus as corresponding to what it ought to be. This correspondence of is and ought, meanwhile, is not a frozen and inert correspondence; for the good, the final purpose of the world, is only in that it produces itself again and again, and the difference between the spiritual world and the natural world then consists in the fact that while the latter constantly only returns into itself, a progression also takes place in the former.

 Addition. The absolute idea is first the unity of the theoretical and the practical idea and, by this means, at the same time the unity of the idea of life and the idea of knowing. In knowing [Erkennen], we had the idea in the form of difference [Differenz] and the process of knowing has presented itself to us as the overturning of this difference and as the restoration of that unity which, as such and in its immediacy, is first the idea of life. The deficiency of [the concept of] life consists in being at first only the idea insofar as it is in itself [die an sich seiende Idee]; in contrast to this, but in just as one-sided a fashion, knowing is only the idea insofar as it is for itself. The unity and truth of these two is the idea insofar as it is in and for itself and, thereby, absolute. – Up to now we have had for our object [Gegenstand] the idea in the development through its diverse stages; now, however, the idea is objective with respect to itself [sich selbst gegenständlich]. This is the what Aristotle already designated as the highest form of the idea.

 Addition. When one speaks of the absolute idea, one can think that here finally the substantive must come to the fore, that here everything must become clear. One can, to be sure, vacuously spout on end about the absolute idea; the true content, meanwhile, is nothing but the entire system, the development of which we have considered up to this point. It can accordingly also be said that the absolute idea is the universal, but the universal not merely as an abstract form opposite which the particular content stands as something other than it. Instead it is the absolute form, into which all determinations, the entire fullness of the content posited by it, have gone back. In this respect, the absolute idea is comparable to the old man who says the same religious sentences as the child does, but for the old man they have the meaning of his entire life. Even if the child understands the religious content, what validity that content has for him is still of the sort that lies outside his entire life and world. – The same holds then also for human life in general and the occurrences that make up the content of it. All work is only aimed at the goal, and if this is attained, then one is astonished at finding nothing else than precisely this, what one wanted. The interest lies in the entire movement. If a human being pursues his life, then the end can appear to him as quite limited, but it is the entire decursus vitae [course of a life] that is encompassed in it. – Thus, too, then the content of the absolute idea is the entire expanse of what we had before us up until now. The final [point] is the insight that the entire unfolding makes up the content and interest. – This is, furthermore, the philosophical view that everything that appears limited, taken for itself, acquires its worth through inhering in the whole and being a moment of the idea. Thus it is that we have had the content and what we still have is the knowledge [Wissen] that the content is the living development of the idea and this simple retrospective is contained in the form. Each of the stages considered up to this point is an image of the absolute, albeit in a limited manner at first, and so it drives itself on to the whole, the unfolding of which is precisely what we have designated the method.

 Addition. The philosophical method is as much analytic as it is synthetic, yet not in the sense of a mere juxtaposition or a mere oscillation of these two methods of finite knowing. It is instead such that it contains them as sublated in itself and accordingly behaves in each of its movements both analytically and synthetically at the same time. Philosophical thinking proceeds analytically insofar as it merely takes up its object [Gegenstand], the idea, giving the latter full play, and as it were merely looking upon its movement and development. To this extent, philosophizing is completely passive. But philosophical thinking is then equally synthetic and demonstrates itself to be the activity of the concept itself. This requires, however, the strenuous effort of holding off on one's own notions [Einfälle] and particular opinions which are always trying to assert themselves.

 Addition. In the progression of the idea, the beginning demonstrates itself to be what it is in itself, namely, something posited and mediated and not what simply and immediately is [nicht als das Seiende und Unmittelbare]. Only for immediate consciousness is nature the beginning point [Anfängliche] and the immediate, and the spirit something mediated by nature. In fact, however, nature is posited by the spirit and the spirit itself makes nature its presupposition.

 Addition. We have now returned to the concept of the idea with which we began. This return to the beginning is at the same time a move forward [Fortgang]. What we began with was being, the abstract being, and now we have the idea as being; this idea insofar as it is [diese seiende Idee], however, is nature.