The Notion is what has life, what is self-mediating; and so Being, too, is one of its characteristics. Being is different from the Notion to this extent, that Being is not the entire Notion, but is only one of its characteristics, merely that simple aspect of the Notion in virtue of which it is at home with itself, is self-identity.
Being is the determination which is found in the Notion as something different from the Notion, because the Notion is the whole of which Being is only one determination. The other point is that the Notion contains this determination in itself, this latter is one of its determinations; but Being is also different from the Notion, because the Notion is the totality. In so far as they are different, mediation forms a necessary element in their union.
They are not immediately identical; all immediacy is true and real only in so far as it is mediation within self, and conversely all mediation, in so far as it is immediacy in itself, has reference to self. The Notion is different from Being, and the peculiar quality of the difference lies in this that the Notion absorbs and abolishes it.
The Notion is the totality, represented by the movement, the process, whereby it makes itself objective. The Notion as such, as distinct from Being, is something purely subjective, and that implies a defect. The Notion, however, is all that is deepest and highest. The very idea of the Notion implies that it has to do away with this defect of subjectivity, with this distinction between itself and Being, and has to objectify itself. It is itself the act of producing itself as something which has Being, as something objective.
Whenever we think of the Notion, we must give up the idea that it is something which we only possess, and construct within ourselves. The Notion is the Soul, the final-end of an object, of what has life; what we call Soul is the Notion, and in Spirit, in consciousness, the Notion
