accident of individual action as such, the accident of circumstances, means, and actuality. The "real fact "itself stands opposed to these moments only so far as they claim to have a value in isolation, but is essentially their unity, because identifying, fusing, actuaUty with individuality. It is, too, an action, and, qua doing, pure action in general, and thereby just as much action of this particular individual ; and this action, because still appertaining to the individual in opposition to actuality, has the sense of a purpose. Similarly it is the transition from this specific character to the opposite : and finally it is a reality which is present objectively for consciousness. The "actual fact" thus expresses the essential spiritual substance in which all these moments as independently valid are cancelled and transcended, and so hold good only as universal, and in which the certainty consciousness has regarding itself is a " fact," a real object before consciousness, an object born of self-consciousness as its own, without ceasing to be a free independent object in the proper sense. The " thing," found at the stage of sense-certainty and perception, now gets its significance through self-consciousness, and through it alone. On this rests the distinction between a thing . A process is gone through here corresponding to what we find in the case of sense-experience and perception. Self-consciousness, then, has attained its true conception of itself when this stage of " real fact " is reached ; fact is the interpenetration of individuality and objectivity. In it self-consciousness has arrived at a consciousness of its own substance. At the same time, as we find self-consciousness here, it is a consciousness which has just arisen, and hence is immediate ; and this is the specific way in which we find spirit at the present stage : it has not yet reached its truly real substance. The " fact itself " takes in this immediate consciousness the form of bare and simple essence , which, being universal, contains all its various moments in itself and belongs to them, but, again, is also indifferent towards them taken as specific moments, and is independent by itself ; and, as this free and independent simple abstract " fact," passes for the essentially real . The various moments of the oric^inal determinateness, the moments of the " fact " of tJiis particular individual, his purpose, means, action, and actual reality, are, on the one hand, particular moments for this consciousness, which it can abandon and give up for the " fact