1.  The world of customary ethics demonstrated within it that only the mindful spirit cut off, the single self is its destiny and truth [VI.A.b. Customary ethical action etc. §11.1 - §12.4; VI.A.c. Legal status §1.3-7 M].  ²This legal person, however, has its substance and filling outside itself.  ³The motion of the world of education and of faith overcomes this abstraction of the person.  For the self of spirited mind it is only through the completed alienation, through the highest abstraction, that substance becomes the general will, finally becoming that self's property, possession.  ⁴Here at last knowledge appears to have become fully equal to its truth; for its truth is this knowledge itself and all opposition of the two sides vanishes.  It vanishes not for us or in itself, but for self-consciousness itself.  ⁵Self-consciousness is now clearly master over the antithesis within consciousness.  ⁶That comes down to the opposition between its certainty of itself and the object.  Now, however, the object for self-consciousness is its own self-certainty, knowledge – just as its self-certainty as such no longer has its own goals, that is no longer in definite terms; now it is pure knowledge.

2.  For self-consciousness now its knowledge is substance itself.  ²Substance is for self-consciousness just as immediately as absolutely mediated, in undivided unity.  ³Immediate – customary ethical consciousness knows and does its duty itself and belongs to substance as its nature; but this self-consciousness is not character [VI.A.b. Customary ethical action etc. §3.2] like customary ethical consciousness, whose immediacy makes it a specific, definite mindful spirit, belonging to only one of the customary ethical essences with a good deal of ignorance to it [VI.A.b. Customary ethical action etc. §2 M].

– ⁴Self-consciousness is absolute mediation – like self-developing, self-educating consciousness and believing consciousness; for it is essentially the motion of the self of overcoming the abstraction of immediate existence and becoming universal to itself, which it does neither by pure alienation and laceration of its self and reality [VI.B.I.a. Culture and education etc. §33.6 - 11. M] nor by flight [VI.B.I.b. Faith and pure insight §1.11 M].  ⁵Self-consciousness here is immediately present to itself within its substance, for substance is its knowledge, substance is the intuited pure self-certainty; and precisely this immediacy, which is its own actual reality, is all reality, for the immediate is being itself and as pure immediacy, purified through absolute negativity, it is pure being, being as such, all being.

3.  The absolute being, absolute essence, is thus not exhausted in any definite term as being the simple essence of thinking; it is all actual reality and this reality is only as knowledge.  What consciousness did not know would not have had any sense to it and cannot represent any power for consciousness.  All objectivity and world has retreated back into its knowing will.  ²Consciousness is absolutely free in the fact that it knows its freedom and precisely this knowledge of its freedom is its substance and purpose and sole content.