1.  Revealed religion's mindful spirit has not yet overcome its consciousness as such; its actual self-consciousness is not object of its consciousness.  Spirited mind here and the moments differentiating themselves within it are confined to image thinking and the form of objectivity.  ²The content of this image thinking is absolute mindful spirit and all that remains to do is overcome just this form; better: the form belongs to consciousness as such, so its truth must have already emerged among the patterns of consciousness.

– ³This is not the one-sided overcoming of the object of consciousness with the object returning back into the self.  It must be more specific with the object not only as such demonstrating itself to be vanishing from consciousness, but even more importantly demonstrating that the externalization of self-consciousness is what establishes thinghood and that this externalization has not only negative, but also positive significance and that not just for us or in itself, but for consciousness too.  ⁴Consciousness externalizes itself thereby establishing itself as object or, given the inseparable unity of being for itself, it asserts the object to be itself.  This is one reason why the negative of the object, its self-overcoming, has positive significance for consciousness, i.e. consciousness knows this nullity of the object.  ⁵The other reason is that there's another moment here: it has also overcome this externalization and objectivity, taking them back into itself; consciousness thus remains by itself even within its otherness.

– ⁶This is the motion of consciousness within which it is the totality of its moments.

– ⁷Consciousness must therefore relate to the object in terms of the totality of its defining moments and must have grasped it according to each of them.  ⁸This totality of defining terms is what makes the object in itself  spiritual/mental essence.  For consciousness the object becomes this in truth when it grasps each and every one of them as moments of the self, i.e. through the spiritual/mental relation to them described in the second paragraph above.

2.  The object is then partly immediate being, i.e. just a thing; this corresponds to immediate consciousness [I. Sense Certainty].  It is also partly a process of becoming other to itself, its relation or being for another, and being for itself, the terms of perception [II. Perception].  Then again it is also partly essence, the universal, which corresponds to understanding [III. Force and Understanding].  ²As a whole, the object is the syllogism  that is both the motion of the universal through definition into singularity and the reverse motion, from singularity through it as overcome, i.e. definition, into the universal.

– ³All three of these defining terms [immediacy, relation and universality] then lead consciousness to know the object as nothing but itself [B. Self-Consciousness, IV. Truth of Self-Certainty].  ⁴That's not about knowledge as pure conceptual comprehension of the object.  Rather, this knowledge should only be presented in its becoming, in its moments from the standpoint of what belongs to consciousness as such, in the moments of the genuine concept; i.e. it's about pure knowledge in the form of patterns of consciousness.  ⁵This is why the object does not yet appear in consciousness as such as spiritual/mental essence, as we just described it.  Neither is the relation of consciousness to the object one of contemplating it in this totality as such, nor in the pure concept form of that totality.  It is regarded partly as just a pattern of consciousness, partly also as a number of such patterns that we put together, in which the totality of the object's moments and those of the relation of consciousness can only be presented resolved into the moments of those patterns.

3.  Grasping the object just in terms of the pattern of consciousness then now only requires us to recall the earlier patterns we have already discussed.

– ²Observing reason [V.A.] dealt with the object as immediate, indifferent being by seeking and finding itself in this indifferent thing, i.e. it is aware both that its action is external and that the object is merely immediate.

– ³We saw also at its peak how observing reason reached its defining moment in the infinite proposition that the being of the ego, I, is a thing [V.A.c. Physiognomy and phrenology etc. §36.7 f. and §38.3-7 M].  ⁴Indeed, a sensuous, immediate thing.  When the ego is called a soul, it is still imagined as a thing, a thing invisible etc. that cannot be felt, so in fact not as immediate being and not really as what we usually mean when we talk of a thing at all.

– ⁵Taking that proposition just as it sounds leaves it devoid of spirited mind, indeed the acme of mindlessness.  ⁶In its concept, however, this proposition is the most abundantly, mindfully spirited and it is precisely this, its inside – not yet available in it – that the other two moments to be considered express.

4.  The thing is I.  The thing is indeed overcome in this infinite proposition.  The thing is nothing in itself.  It only has meaning in the relation, only through the ego and its relation to the thing.

– ²This moment emerged for consciousness in the pure insight of the Enlightenment.  ³Things are simply useful and are only to be considered according to their utility [VI.B.II.a. Enlightenment's struggle etc. §20.1 ff. and VI.B.II.b. Truth of the Enlightenment §§7,8 M].

– ⁴The educated and cultivated self-consciousness that has worked its way through the world of self-alienated spirit has, through its externalization, generated the thing as itself, thus holding on to itself within it, and is keenly aware of its dependence, i.e. self-consciousness here knows that the thing is essentially only being for another.  Putting the relation, which is all that constitutes the nature of the object here, in complete terms: self-consciousness regards the thing as being for itself  declaring sense certainty to be absolute truth while also holding this being for itself to be only a moment that vanishes and transits into its opposite, into that being for another just abandoned.

5.  This does not complete the knowledge of the thing.  It has to be known not only in terms of the immediacy of being and according to its defining characteristics, but also as essence, as inside, as the self.  ²This is available in moral self-consciousness.  ³This knows its knowledge to be absolute essence or simply being as pure willing or knowing; here there exists nothing but this willing and knowing.  Anything else has only inessential being, i.e. not being in itself but only its empty shell.  ⁴In its world view moral consciousness releases existence from out of the self and in the same way takes it back again into itself [VI.C.a. Moral world view §1.1–3; VI.C.b. Duplicity §§14, 15. M].  ⁵Finally, as conscience morality is no longer this still alternating assertion and distortion of existence and of the self; now it knows that its existence as such is this pure self-certainty.  The objective element into which it projected itself as action is nothing other than the self's pure knowledge of itself [VI.C.a. Conscience etc. §2.9 – §4. M].

6.  These are the moments combining together to compose the reconciliation of spirited mind with its very own consciousness.  Each for itself is singular and it is only their spiritual/mental unity that constitutes the force of this reconciliation.  ²The last of these moments is necessarily this unity itself, which, clearly, in fact binds them all together within itself.  ³The mindful spirit certain of itself in its existence has for its element of existence nothing other than this knowledge of itself.  Its own language in which it declares that what it does it does from a conviction of duty is what gives its action validity.

– ⁴Action is the first implicit separation of the simplicity of the concept and the return from this separation.  ⁵This first motion switches into the second when the element of recognition asserts itself as the simple knowledge of duty against the difference and division lying in action as such, in this way forming an iron reality against action.  ⁶In forgiveness, however, we saw how this rigidity departs from and renounces itself.  ⁷Actual reality thus has here, even as immediate existence, no other meaning for self-consciousness than as pure knowledge.  Similarly, as determinate existence, as relation, the opposition constitutes a knowledge partly of this pure, single self and partly of knowledge as universal.  ⁸This all implies that the third moment, universality or the essence, only counts for each of the two sides in this confrontation as knowledge.  Now they finally overcome the remaining empty opposition and are the knowledge I = I; this is the single self that is immediate, pure knowledge or universal [VI.C. Conscience etc. §22.4–7, §29 and §§39, 40. M].

7.  This reconciliation of consciousness with self-consciousness thus comes together in two ways.  Once in the religious spirit and again in consciousness itself as such.  ²They are distinguished in that this reconciliation in religion takes the form of being in itself, while in consciousness it takes that of being for itself.  ³Up to now they have remained apart as consciousness developed in the order of the patterns that emerged to us, partly in its own single moments, but partly also having at length arrived at their unification before religion too brought its object to the pattern of real self-consciousness [VII. Religion §6 – §8.4 M].  ⁴It remains to demonstrate the unification of the two sides, for it concludes this series of patterns of mindful spirit.  In this unification spirited mind arrives at knowledge of itself not only as it is in itself, in terms of its absolute content, nor solely as it is according to its content-free form, in terms of self-consciousness; here spirited mind comes to know itself as it is in and for itself.

8.  In fact, this unification has in itself already happened, indeed, in religion too, namely in imagination's return into self-consciousness, but not in terms of its genuine form, for religion is the side of the in itself standing opposed to the motion of self-consciousness [VII.C. Revealed religion §§34 – 40. M].  ²The unification thus belongs to this other side, which in the opposition is the one containing reflection into itself, i.e. the one that contains both itself and its opposite and not only in itself or in a general way, but for itself, developed and differentiated.  ³The content as well as the other side of self-conscious spirit, at least to the extent that it is indeed the other side, are both present in their completeness and have been exhibited as such [§§3 – 6 above. M].  The unification, still lacking, is the simple unity of the concept.  ⁴The concept is available on the side of self-consciousness already, but up to now, like all other moments, it took the form of a particular pattern of consciousness.

– ⁵The concept is thus that part of the pattern of self-certain spirit that stopped and remained in its concept and was called the beautiful soul [VI.C.c. Conscience etc. §26 ff.].  ⁶The beautiful soul is the concept's knowledge of itself in its pure, transparent unity – the self-consciousness that knows this pure knowledge of pure interiority to be mindful spirit, i.e. not only gazing on the divine, but the divine gazing upon itself.

– ⁷This concept fixes itself against its own realization, so it is the one-sided pattern we saw disappearing into an empty haze; although we did also see the pattern's positive externalization and forward motion.  ⁸Its realization is what overcomes the insistence on itself of this object-free self-consciousness, the definiteness of the concept against its filling.  Its self-consciousness acquires the form of universality and what remains to it is its true concept, the concept that has gained its own realization.  Self-consciousness is now the concept in its truth, namely in unity with its externalization – knowledge of the pure knowledge, not as abstract essence, which is duty, but knowledge of it as essence, as this knowledge, this pure self-consciousness that is thus simultaneously the true object, for it is the self that is for itself [VI.C.c. Conscience etc. §27 and §37 – §40. M].

9.  This concept gave itself its filling partly in the activity of self-assured spirit, partly in religion, in which it acquired absolute content as content, i.e. in the form of imagination, otherness for consciousness.  In contrast, in the activity of self-certain spirit the form is simply the self, for this form contains the active spirited mind that is sure of itself; the self implements the life of absolute spirit/mind.  ²We can now see that this pattern is that simple concept that gives up its eternal essence, the concept that is there, that acts.  ³It has self-division or emergence in the purity of the concept, for that purity is absolute abstraction, negativity.  ⁴Similarly, the concept has the element of its actual reality, of being, within itself in pure knowledge itself, for this knowledge is the simple immediacy that is both being and existence as well as essence, the former, negative thinking, the latter, positive thinking.  ⁵Finally, this existence is also what is reflected into itself out of that – as existence and no less as duty – or it is evil being [VI.C.c. Conscience etc. §29.3 ff. M].

– ⁶Going into itself is what constitutes the opposition of the concept and as such it is the emergence of the non-active, non-actual pure knowledge of essence.  ⁷Its emergence in this opposition is its participation in that [VI.C.c. Conscience etc. §33.1 ff. M].  The pure knowledge of essence has implicitly divested itself of its simplicity, for it is self-division, the negativity that is the concept.  In so far as this self-division is becoming for itself  it is evil; in so far as it is the in itself, it is persisting goodness.

– ⁸What happens now in itself at first is itself doubled and doubled for consciousness, i.e. in both cases as much for consciousness as it is its being for itself, its own action.  ⁹The same thing that is already established in itself repeats itself now as consciousness' knowledge of it and conscious action.  ¹⁰Each relinquishes for the other the independence of the definition in which it emerged against the other.  ¹¹This relinquishing is the same renunciation of the one-sidedness of the concept, which in itself constituted the beginning; only now it is its own renunciation just as the concept it renounces is its own concept.

– ¹²As negativity, that in itself of the beginning is in truth no less the mediated in itself.  It asserts itself now exactly as it is in truth and the negative is, as definition of each, for the other and simultaneously in itself self-overcoming.  ¹³One of the two parts of the opposition is the inequality of being in itself in its singularity against universality; the other is the inequality of its own abstract universality against the self.  The former withers away from its being for itself and externalized, confesses; the latter recoils from the hardness of its abstract universality and dies with that for its lifeless self and its motionless universality [VI.C.c. Conscience etc. §35.3 – 6 and §39. M].  The result is then that the former has completed itself with the moment of universality, which is essence, while the latter has done it with the universality that is self.  ¹⁴Spirit/mind is first spirit/mind by virtue of being there, elevating its existence into thought and with that into absolute antithesis, from which it then returns to itself through and within the antithesis.  Spirit/mind emerges through the motion of action just described as the pure universality of the knowledge that is self-consciousness and as self-consciousness that is the simple unity of knowledge.

10.  The upshot of this is that what in religion was content or the form of imaging another is here the self's own action.  The concept requires that the content be the self's own action, for this concept is, as we see, the knowledge of the self's action into itself as all essence and all existence, the knowledge of this subject as substance and of the substance as this knowledge of its action.

– ²Our contribution here is partly a matter of collecting the single moments, each of which in its principle exhibits the life of the whole spirit/mind; partly holding firmly to the concept in the form of the concept, whose content has itself already emerged in those moments and in the form of a pattern of consciousness.

11. This last pattern of mindful spirit gives the form of the self to its complete and true content, with that at once realizing its concept and remaining within its concept in the realization.  This is absolute knowledge.  Absolute knowledge is the spirit/mind that knows itself in the pattern of spirit/mind; it is conceptually comprehending knowledge.  ²Truth is not only in itself completely identical to certainty, it also has the pattern of self-certainty, i.e. truth is in its existence; for knowing spirited mind, truth takes the form of self-knowledge.  ³Truth is the content that in religion remains unequal to its own certainty.  ⁴However, this identity is given when the content takes the pattern of the self.  ⁵As a result of this what is itself essence, namely the concept, has become the element of existence, the form of objectivity for consciousness.  ⁶The mindful spirit appearing to consciousness in this element, or, what amounts to the same thing here, produced by consciousness, is science.

12.  The nature, moments and motion of this knowledge has thus emerged in such a way that it is the pure being for itself of self-consciousness.  It is ego, I, that is this and no other I while at the same time being the universal I immediately mediated or overcome.

– ²I has a content, which it differentiates from itself, since I is pure negativity, self-division; it is consciousness.  ³This content is, even in its difference, itself the ego, I, for the content is the motion of self-overcoming, the same pure negativity that is I.  ⁴Within that content as what is differentiated, I is reflected into itself; content can only be comprehended when that I is by itself in its otherness.  ⁵Put more precisely, this content is nothing other than the motion just described; for the content is the spirited mind that runs through itself and, indeed, does that for itself as mindful spirit simply by virtue of the fact that it has the pattern of the concept in its objectivity.

13.  Let us turn now to the existence of this concept.  Science does not appear in time and actual reality before mindful spirit has arrived at this consciousness of itself.  ²It does not exist before that as the spirited mind that knows what it is and certainly nowhere before completion of the labour of subjugating its incomplete formations, before securing for its consciousness the form of its essence and in this way harmonizing its self-consciousness with its consciousness.

– ³The mindful spirit given in and for itself, differentiated in its moments, is knowledge existing for itself, the process of conceptual comprehension as such, which has not yet arrived at substance, i.e. which is not in itself absolute knowledge.

14.  Knowing substance is there in the actual course of things before its form or conceptual pattern emerges.  ²Substance is, after all, the still undeveloped in itself, ground and concept, in its unmoved simplicity and hence the interiority, the self of mindful spirit, which is not yet there.  ³What is there is the as yet undeveloped simplicity and immediacy, the object of imaging consciousness in general.  ⁴The process of knowledge is the spiritual/mental consciousness for which what exists implicitly, in itself, only really is in so far as it is being for the self and being of the self, i.e. concept, which is why it has initially only a poor object in comparison to which substance and its consciousness is much richer.  ⁵Still, the openness substance has in this consciousness is in fact concealment, for substance is still selfless being, but only self-certainty is open, revealed.  ⁶At first, then, only the abstract moments of substance belong to self-consciousness.  These moments are pure motions that drive themselves forward, which is how self-consciousness enriches itself until it has taken the whole substance away from consciousness and has absorbed the whole structure of their essences.  Now, this negative relation to objectivity is no less positive, assertion, which is what enables self-consciousness to generate them from out of itself, thereby regenerating them for consciousness.  ⁷This explains why the moments emerge sooner in the concept that knows itself to be concept than the fulfilled whole, whose becoming is the motion of those moments.  ⁸In consciousness, in contrast, the whole emerges before the moments, but it remains uncomprehended.

– ⁹Time is the concept itself that is there, presenting itself as an empty intuition to consciousness, which is why mindful spirit necessarily appears in time.  Indeed, it continues to appear in time as long as it does not grasp its pure concept, i.e. as long as it does not abolish time.  ¹⁰Time is the external, intuited, pure self that is not grasped by the self, the merely intuited concept.  When the concept grasps itself it overcomes its time form, comprehends the intuition and becomes comprehended and comprehending intuition.

– ¹¹It is for these reasons that time appears as the destiny and necessity of the spirited mind that is not complete in itself – enriching necessity, the part self-consciousness has in consciousness, setting the immediacy of the in itself, the form substance takes in consciousness, in motion or conversely, taking the in itself as the interior, realizing and revealing that which is first interior, i.e. vindicating it to its own self-certainty.

15.  For this reason it must be said that nothing is known that is not in experience or however this might be expressed, that is not available as felt truth, internally revealed eternal verity, holy article of faith.  ²Experience, after all, consists in the fact that the content – and the content is mindful spirit – in itself is substance and hence object of consciousness.  ³Now, this substance, which is spirited mind, is its own process of becoming what it is in itself and only as this becoming reflecting itself into itself is it in truth spirit/mind.  ⁴Spirit/mind is in itself  the motion that is the process of knowledge – the transformation of that in itself into a for itself, of substance into subject, of the object of consciousness into the object of self-consciousness, i.e. into the object overcome or into the concept.  ⁵This motion is the circle returning into itself, which presupposes its beginning, which it only reaches at the end.

– ⁶Spirited mind is thus necessarily this internal differentiation, so its intuited totality stands against its simple self-consciousness.  Now, as differentiated, that totality is distinguished into its pure concept, time, and its content, the in itself.  As subject, substance includes the initially only inner necessity to represent itself internally as what it is in itself, i.e. as spirit/mind.  ⁷Only the finished objective representation is also its own reflection or its becoming self.

– ⁸Mindful spirit must thus complete itself in itself, as world spirit, before its can achieve its completion as self-consciousness spirited mind.  ⁹This is why the content of religion declares chronologically before science what spirit/mind is, although only science is the true knowledge of it.

16.  The motion of driving the form of its knowledge from itself is the labour spirited mind accomplishes as actual history.  ²Initially as the substance of absolute mindful spirit, the religious community is the raw consciousness whose existence is the harder and more barbaric the deeper its inner spirited mind is and its dull self's work is the harder with its essence, which is the content of its consciousness that is foreign to it.  ³Only after it has abandoned the hope of an external, alien means to overcome that foreignness does it turn – precisely because the alien means overcome is the return back into self-consciousness – to itself, to its own world and presence, discovering them as its own property and thereby takes the first step in moving down out of the intellectual world, or better: to infuse spirit into its abstract element with the actual self.  ⁴Through observation on the one hand it finds existence to be thought, comprehending it conceptually, and conversely it finds in its thinking existence.  ⁵Spirited mind at first declares the immediate unity of thinking and being, of abstract essence and self, only in abstract terms, expressing the first light god in greater purity, i.e. as the unity of extension and being – for extension is the simplicity that is more congruent with pure thinking than light is [VII.A.a. Light god sect2.2-5. M].  This re-awakens in thought the substance of the dawn, of the rising sun.  Then, however, spirited mind recoils back from this abstract unity, from this selfless substance and asserts individuality against it.  ⁶Spirited mind has to externalize this in education and culture, by turning it into existence and implementing it throughout all existence before it arrives at the notion of utility, grasping existence as its will in absolute freedom.  Only then does spirited mind turn out the thought of its innermost depths and declares the essence to be I = I [VI.B.II.b. Enlightenment's truth §§7, 8; VI.B.II. Absolute freedom etc. §3; VI.C.c. Conscience etc. §26.1. M].  ⁷This I = I is, however, the motion reflecting itself into itself.  Now, since this equation as absolute negativity is the absolute difference, the self-identity of the ego, I stands in confrontation with this pure difference, which has to be declares to be the pure difference which is simultaneously objective to the self-knowing self, i.e. to time.  The consequence of this is that just as previously essence was declared to be the unity of thinking and extension, it would now be appropriate to grasp it as the unity of thinking and time, but as the difference left to itself, restless and unstable time rather collapses into itself.  Time is now the objective state of rest of extension, while extension is the pure equality with itself, the ego, I.

– ⁸What this comes down to is that the ego, I, is not only the self, it is also the identity of the self with itself.  In fact, this equality is the complete and immediate unity with itself, i.e. this subject is just as much the substance.  ⁹Isolated for itself, substance would be the empty intuition, the intuition into a content, which as determinate content would only be accidental and lacking necessity.  Substance would then only count as the absolute to the extent that it was thought of or intuited as absolute unity with all content according to its differences excluded from this and lying in the reflection that does not belong to it since that reflection would not be subject, not reflection upon and into itself, not comprehended as spirit/mind.  ¹⁰If indeed a content should be spoken of, it would be done so only to throw it away into the empty abyss of the absolute; or else to throw it together externally from sense perception.  In this scenario knowledge would appear to come to things, to what is different from itself and to the differences of many and diverse things, but we would have no idea how and from where.

17.  What we have learned is that spirited mind is neither the retreat of self-consciousness into its pure inwardness nor the mere immersion of self-consciousness in substance and the nothingness of its difference.  Instead, it is this motion of the self both externalizing itself and submerging itself in its substance and as subject moving out of substance back into itself, making that substance into object and content, while also overcoming the difference between objectivity and content.  ²That first reflection out of immediacy is the subject differentiating itself from its substance, the self-dividing concept, the movement into itself and becoming of the pure ego, I.  ³This difference is the pure action of the I = I, so the concept is the necessity and the emergence of that existence substance has for its essence and which persists for itself.  ⁴Now, the persistence of existence for itself is the concept asserted in its definition and hence just as much its own motion within itself of descending into the simple substance which is only then substance when it is this negativity and motion.

– ⁵In fact, the I does not have to fix itself in the form of self-consciousness against the form of substance and objectivity, as if it was afraid of its own externalization.  Mindful spirit's power lies rather in remaining identical to itself within its externalization and while being in and for itself, asserting being for itself  to be just as much a moment as being in itself.  Neither is the I a third factor throwing the differences back into the abyss of the absolute while declaring its identity in that absolute.  No, knowledge consists much more in this apparent inactivity that merely contemplates how what is differentiated moves within it and returns back into its own unity.

18.  Arriving at knowledge, spirited mind thus concludes the motion of its patterning to the extent that it remains loaded with the difference of consciousness not yet overcome.  ²It has gained the pure element of its existence, the concept.  ³In terms of the freedom of its being, the content is the self-externalizing self, the immediate unity of self-knowing.  ⁴The pure motion of this externalization , viewed within the content, constitutes the necessity of that self-knowing.   ⁵The differentiated content is determinate in relations, not in itself; it is its own restlessness to overcome itself, i.e. negativity.  It is thus just as much the necessity or differentiation as it is the free being, and also the self.  In this self-like form, in which existence is immediately thought, content is concept.  ⁶Mindful spirit has gained the concept and now it unfolds existence and motion in this aether of its life and is science.  ⁷The moments of its motion no long present themselves as determinate patterns of consciousness, for the difference of consciousness has returned back into the self, so now they are determinate concepts and their organic motion is grounded within itself.  ⁸In this study each moment is at once the difference between knowledge and truth and the motion of that difference's own self-overcoming; but science does not contain this difference nor its overcoming.  In science each moment takes the form of the concept combining the objective form of truth with the knowing self in immediate unity.  ⁹The moments no long enter into this movement out of consciousness or imagination into self-consciousness and vice versa, back and forth.  Now the pure pattern of the moment, freed from its appearance in consciousness, the pure concept and its forward progress depend solely on its pure determinateness.  ¹⁰Conversely, every abstract moment of science corresponds to a pattern of appearing spirit/mind.  ¹¹Existing spirit/mind is not richer than science and neither is it poorer in its content.  ¹²Knowing the pure concepts of science in this form of patterns of consciousness constitutes the aspect of their reality, according to which their essence, the concept, present within them in its simple mediation as thinking, takes the moments of this mediation apart, presenting them according to the inner opposition.

19.  Science contains within itself both this necessity of externalizing the form of the pure concept and the transition of the concept into consciousness.  ²For self-knowing spirited mind – precisely because it grasps its own concept – is immediate equality with itself that is in its difference the certainty of the immediate, i.e. sensuous consciousness – the place we started this journey from; releasing itself from the form of its own self is the highest freedom and security of its knowledge of itself.

20.  And yet this externalization remains incomplete.  It expresses the relation of self-certainty to the object which, simply because it remains in this relation, has not yet gained its complete freedom.  ²Knowledge knows not only itself, but also the negative of itself, its limit.  ³Knowing its limit means knowing how to sacrifice itself.  ⁴This sacrifice is the externalization in which spirit/mind reveals the process of its becoming spirit/mind in the form of free, contingent occurrence, its pure self as the time external to it, intuiting its being similarly as space.  ⁵This, its last becoming, nature, is its living, immediate becoming.  Nature, externalized spirit/mind, is in its existence nothing other than this eternal externalization of its persistence and the motion that produces the subject.

21.  The other side of its becoming, history, is the knowing, self-mediating becoming – spirited mind externalized into time; but this externalization is just as much time's externalization of itself, the negative is the negative of itself.  ²This becoming exhibits a languid, sullen motion and sequence of mindful spirits, a gallery of images, each of which is furnished with the complete wealth of spirit, moving so slowly precisely because the self must penetrate this whole wealth of its substance and digest it all.  ³Its completion consists in knowing completely what it is, its substance, so this knowledge is its movement into itself in which it leaves its existence behind, consigning its pattern to memory.  ⁴In its movement into itself spirited mind is immersed in the night of its self-consciousness, while its vanished existence is preserved in that night.  This existence overcome – the previous one, but reborn by knowledge – is the new existence, a new world with a new pattern of mindful spirit.  ⁵It must now begin again anew with the new immediacy and raise itself again starting from that as if everything that went before were lost to it and it had learned nothing from the previous mindful spirits.  ⁶But the re-membering, re-internalizing, has preserved them and is the inner, and really higher, form of substance.  ⁷So even if this mindful spirit appears to start just with itself in its education right from the beginning again, it in fact is starting from a higher level.  ⁸The domain of mindful spirits forming in existence in this manner constitutes a sequence in which each replaces its predecessor, taking over the world from it.  ⁹The goal of this sequence is the revelation of the depth, which itself amounts to the absolute concept.  This makes the revelation the overcoming of its own depth, i.e. turning its depth into its extension, the negativity of this interiorized ego, I, which is its externalization or substance.  Overcoming the depth also turns it into its time in that this externalization externalizes itself within it, partaking thus in its extension just as in its depth of the self.  ¹⁰The goal, absolute knowledge, the spirited mind knowing itself as spirited mind, has for its path the memory of the mindful spirits as they are in themselves and as they accomplish the organization of their realm.  ¹¹Their preservation from the side of their free existence, appearing in the form of contingency, is history, and from the side of their conceptually comprehended organization, it is the science of appearing knowledge.  Both together, comprehended history, form the memory and the skull pile, the Golgotha of absolute spirit/mind, the actual reality, truth and certainty of that throne without which it would be the lifeless solitary; but then –

from the chalice of this realm of spirits

bubbles over him his own infinity     [adapted from Schiller's poem Friendship V. 59 f. M]