We in our way of speaking designate the Absolute, the True, as the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, which is therefore neither the one nor the other, and yet just as much the one as the other; and Aristotle busied himself with these same speculations, the deepest forms of speculation even of the present day, and he has expressed them with the greatest definiteness. With Aristotle it is thus no dry identity of the abstract understanding that is indicated, for he distinguishes subjective and objective precisely and decisively. Not dead identity such as this, but energy, is for him what is most to be reverenced, God. Unity is thus a poor, unphilosophic expression, and true Philosophy is not the system of identity; its principle is a unity which is activity, movement, repulsion, and thus, in being different, is at the same time identical with itself. If Aristotle had made the jejune identity of understanding, or experience, his principle, he would never have risen to a speculative Idea like this, wherein individuality and activity are placed higher than universal potentiality. Thought, as the object of thought, is nothing else than the absolute Idea regarded as in itself, the Father; yet this First and unmoved, as distinguished from activity, is, as absolute, simply activity, and is first through this activity set forth as true. In what he teaches respecting the soul we shall find Aristotle recurring to this speculative thought; but to Aristotle it is again an object, like other objects, a kind of condition which he separates from the other conditions of the soul which he understands empirically, such as sleep, or weariness. He does not say that it alone is truth, that all is summed up in Thought, but he says it is the first, the strongest, the most honourable. We, on the other hand, say that Thought, as that which relates to itself, has existence, or is the truth; that Thought comprehends the whole of Truth, even, though we ordinarily represent to ourselves sensation and so on, besides thought, as having reality. Thus, although Aristotle does not express himself in modern philosophic language, he has yet throughout the same fundamental theory; he speaks not of a special kind of reason, but of the universal Reason. The speculative philosophy of Aristotle simply means the direction of thought on all kinds of objects, thus transforming these into thoughts; hence, in being thoughts, they exist in truth. The meaning of this is not, however, that natural objects have thus themselves the power of thinking, but as they are subjectively thought by me, my thought is thus also the Notion of the thing, which therefore constitutes its absolute substance. But in Nature the Notion does not exist explicitly as thought in this freedom, but has flesh and blood, and is oppressed by externalities; yet this flesh and blood has a soul, and this is its Notion. The ordinary definition of truth, according to which it is “the harmony of the conception with the object,” is certainly not borne out by the conception; for when I represent to myself a house, a beam, and so on, I am by no means this content, but something entirely different, and therefore very far from being in harmony with the object of my conception. It is only in thought that there is present a true harmony between objective and subjective; that constitutes me. Aristotle therefore finds himself at the highest standpoint; nothing deeper can we desire to know, although he has always the appearance of making ordinary conceptions his starting-point.