in that it is abstraction, is merely one of the two opposed elements, the statement thus already imphes that the unity is the process of breaking asunder; for if the unity is a negative element, an opposite, then it is put forward precisely as that which contains opposition withiu it. The different aspects of diremption and of becoming self-identical are therefore likewise merely this process of self- cancelling. For since the self-identical element, which should first divide itself asunder or pass into its opposite, is an abstraction, i.e. is already itself a sundered element, its diremption is eo if so a cancelling of what it is, and thus the cancellig of its being srmdered. The process of becoming selfidentical is likewise a process of diremption ; what becomes identical with itself thereby opposes itself to disruption, that is, itself thereby puts itself on one side ; in other words, it becomes really something sundered. Infinitude, this absolute unrest of pure self-movement, such that whatever is determined in any way, e.g., as being, is really the opposite of this determinateness -- has from the start been no doubt the very soul of all that has gone before ; but it is in the inner world that it has first come out explicitly and definitely. The world of appearance, or the play of forces, aheady shows its operation ; but it is in the first instance as Explanation that it comes openly forward. And since it is at length an object for consciousness, and consciousness is aware of it as what it is, consciousness is in this way Self -consciousness. Understanding's function of explaining furnishes in the first instance merely the description of what self-consciousness is. Understanding cancels the distinctions present in Law, distinctions which have aheady become pure distinctions but are still indifferent, and puts them inside a single unity. Force. To bring about this identification, however, is at the same time and immediately a process of diremption ; for understanding removes the distinctions and sets up the oneness of force only by the fact that it creates a new distinction of force and law, which at the same time, however, is no distinction. And in spite of the fact that this distinction is at the same time no distinction, it goes on to deal with it and to cancel this distinction again, since it lets force have just the same constitutive character as law. This process or necessity is, however, in this form, still a necessity and a process of understanding, or the process as such is not the 'object of understanding ;