(3.) But it is “negative unity” of these two sides, and hence an individual. The pure universal whose negative relation to itself as determiner makes the particular, completes itself to individuality through this act.
(a.) Since its pure universality is the substrate of its determination, and at the same time a self-related activity (or negativity), it at once becomes its own object.
(b.) Its activity (limiting or determining)—a pure negativity—turned to itself as object, dissolves the particular in the universal, and thus continually realizes its subjectivity.
(c.) Hence these two sides of the negative unity are more properly subject and object, and since they are identical (causa sui) we may name the result “self-consciousness.”
The absolute truth of all truths, then, is that self-consciousness is the form of the Total. God is a Person, or rather the Person. Through His self-consciousness (thought of Himself) he makes Himself an object to Himself (Nature), and in the same act cancels it again into His own image (finite spirit), and thus comprehends Himself in this self-revelation.
Two remarks must be made here: (1.) This is not “Pantheism;” for it results that God is a Person; and secondly Nature is a self-cancelling side in the process; thirdly, the so-called “finite spirit,” or man, is immortal, since otherwise he would not be the last link of the chain; but such he is, because he can develop out of his sensuous life to pure thought, unconditioned by time and space, and hence he can surpass any fixed “higher intelligence,” no matter how high created.
(2.) It is the result that all profound thinkers have arrived at.
Aristotle (Metaphysics XI. 6 & 7) carries this whole question of motion back to its presupposition in a mode of treatment, “sub quadam specie æternitatis.” He concludes thus: “The thinking, however, of that which is purely for itself, is a thinking of that which is most excellent in and for itself.
“The thinking thinks itself, however, through participation in that which is thought by it; it becomes this object in its own activity, in such a manner that the subject and object are identical. For the apprehending of thought and essence is what constitutes reason. The activity of thinking produces that which is perceived; so that the activity is rather that which Reason seems to have of a divine nature; speculation [pure thinking] is the most excellent employment; if, then, God is always engaged in this, as we are at times, He is admirable, and if in a higher degree, more admirable. But He is in this pure thinking, and life too belongs to Him; for the activity of thought is life. He is this activity. The activity, returning into itself, is the most excellent and eternal life. We say, therefore, that God is an eternal and the best living being. So that life and duration are uninterrupted and eternal; for this is God.”
When one gets rid of those “images of sense” called by Spencer “conceivables,” and arrives at the “unpicturable notions of intelligence,” he will find it easy to reduce the vexed antinomies of force, matter, motion, time, space and causality; arriving at the fundamental principle—self-determination—he will be able to make a science of Biology. The organic realm will not yield to dualistic Reflection. Goethe is the great pioneer of the school of physicists that will spring out of the present activity of Reflection when it shall have arrived at a perception of its method.