have their bond of union only in it as in a third thing, but would be in themselves outside of this unity and mutually opposed. On the contrary, their unity is to be regarded as belonging essentially to them, that is to say, as a unity which is constituted solely by the determinations themselves, and, conversely, the separate determinations as such are to be considered as in themselves inseparable from each other, and able to pass over into each other, and as having no meaning taken by themselves apart from one another, so that as they constitute the unity this latter is their soul and substance.
It is this which constitutes the concrete element of the Notion in general. We cannot engage in philosophical speculation regarding any object whatever without employing universal and abstract categories of thought, least of all when God, the profoundest subject of thought, the absolute Notion, is the object, so that it was not possible to avoid pointing out what the speculative notion or conception of the Notion itself is. Here it will be possible to develop this notion only in the way of an historical sketch; that its content is true in-and-for-itself is shown in the logical part of philosophy. Some examples might make it plainer for ordinary thought, and not to go too far—and Spirit, certainly, is always what is nearest—it is sufficient to think of the life-force which is the unity, the simple unit of the soul, and which is at the same time so concrete in itself that it appears only in the form of the process of its viscera, of its members and organs, which are essentially different from it and from each other, and which, yet, when separated from it, perish, and cease to be what they are, namely, life, that is, they no longer have the meaning and signification which belong to them.
We have still to trace in detail the result of the notion or conception of the speculative Notion in the same fashion in which we have dealt with the conception itself. That is to say, since the characteristics of the
