The actual point in the advance which we have now to make consists, therefore, in this that, on the one hand, the negative aspect, fixed by consciousness in an independent relation as the Absolute, is, however, on the other, merely regarded as a phase of the Divine, as a phase, however, which is not only as outside the true Absolute incidental to another Godhead[56], but is to be so ascribed to the Absolute, that the true God appears as a process in which He negates _Himself_, and thereby contains this negative element as an inherent self-determination of His own substance.
Through this enlarged conception the Absolute is for the first time essentially _concrete_, that is self-determination, and thereby essential unity, whose particular antitheses, as parts of a process, appear to consciousness as the different determinations of one and the same God. For the necessity of giving essential definition to the absolute significance is just that which at this stage it is felt to be of first importance to satisfy. All the significances up to this point persisted by virtue of their abstract character as absolutely undefined and consequently void of content, or were merged, when in a converse direction they tended to clear distinction, immediately in the Being of Nature, or fell into a conflict in respect to their configuration which gave them no repose and reconciliation. This twofold defect we have now to remove, both by showing the advance of Thought regarded as itself an ideal process, and by illustrating that advance by means of particular facts of the mind and institutions of nations on the objective plane of history.
And in the _first_ place we may observe a more intimate bond of association is set up between the Inward and Outward aspect of consciousness in the increased recognition that every determination of the Absolute is already essentially an inchoate movement in the direction of expression. For every determination is essentially distinction[57]. The External, however, is as such always defined and distinct, and consequently there is thus an aspect immediately presented, according to which the External is manifested in a form more adequate to the significance than was possible under the modes of conception as yet examined. The first definition, however, and essential negation of the Absolute inevitably falls short of the free self-determination of Spirit as _Spirit._ It is merely the immediate negation of itself. This immediate and consequently natural negation in its most comprehensive form of statement is _Death._ The Absolute is consequently apprehended now in a way that it is compelled to submit itself to this form of negation as a part of the essential determination of its own notion, in other words it is obliged to enter the path of extinction, and we observe consequently the glorification of Death and grief in the first instance made present to the national consciousness as the death of the dying sensuous material. The death of Nature is cognized as a necessary part[58] of the life of the Absolute. The Absolute, however, on the one hand, in order to be subject to this phase of Death, must be posited already as determinate existence; and, equally from another point of view, must not be suffered to remain in the annihilation of Death, but must be held to _re-establish_ itself in an essentially positive unity on a yet higher plane of existence. Death is consequently not accepted here as constituting the entire significance, but merely one aspect of the same. And though no doubt the Absolute is in one sense viewed as a cessation of its immediate existence, a passage over and beyond and a passing away, yet it is quite as much in the reverse sense conceived as a return upon itself, as a resurrection, as an eternal process of Divine realization rendered possible by virtue of this evolutional principle of negation. For Death is capable of a twofold meaning. Under the first it is the immediate passing away of the natural; under the second Death is the extinction of the exclusively natural and thereby the birth of a higher type, that is, spiritual, from which the merely natural falls away in the sense, that Spirit possesses in itself this phase as an essential phase of its own substance.