: on the other hand, they appear as distinctions of form, since one incites and the other is incited, the former being active, the latter passive. As regards the distinction of content, they are in a general way distinct, or distinct for us [who are analysing the process] ; as regards form, however, they are independent, in their relation they break away from one another of themselves, and stand opposed. In the perception of the movement of force, consciousness becomes aware that the extremes, in both these aspects, are nothing fer se, that rather these sides, in which their distinction of nature was meant to consist, are merely vanishing moments, an immediate transition of each into its opposite. For us, however [who are analysing the process], it was also true, as stated above, that per se the distinctions, qiia distinctions of content and form, vanished : and on the side of form, the active, inciting, or independent factor was in its very nature the same as what, from the side of content, was presented as repressed force, force driven back into itself ; the passive, incited, or related factor was, from the side of form, the same as what, from the side of content, took shape as universal medium for the many constituent elements. ^ From this we see that the notion of Force becomes actual when resolved into two forces, and we see too how it comes to be so. These two forces exist as independent entities : but their existence lies in a movement each towards each, of such a kind that in order to be, each has in reality to get its position purely through the other ; that is to say, their being has purely the significance of disappearance. They are not like extremes, that keep to themselves something positively fixed, and merely transmit an external property to one another through their common medium and by external contact : they are what they are solely in this medium and in their contact with each other. We have there immediately both force as it is independently, force repressed within itself, and also its expression, force inciting and force being incited. These moments are thus not divided and set up as two extremes, offering each other only an opposite pole : rather their true nature is simply and solely to be each through the other, and to be in the first instance no more than just what each is thus through the other, since it is just that. They have thus, in point of fact, no substances of their own which could support and maintain them. The notion of