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 pre-supposition 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 developes the relation of the differents 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 differenced 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, whilst 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 its 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.
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.