Every higher stage in this evolution includes and transcends the lower and thus becomes the purpose, intention, meaning and truth of the lower. In the higher is the real being of the lower made more explicit and conscious of its being. Every stage in this rational evolution reflects a universal situation, every stage has in it elements which speak of the past and predict the future, for the Absolute is implicit in every stage. This process of the self-development of the Reason, Hegel calls the dialectic of the Reason. Hegel observes that everywhere there is change in the universe.
Nothing persists in the same condition for ever.
Everything tends to and passes into something else. This process of being, negation and reconciliation continues perpetually in all things in the universe, until the Absolute is realised in Self-consciousness. Hegel calls these three stages of affirmation, contradiction and fulfilment the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The different parts of the Absolute Whole which act as the theses, antitheses and synthesis in evolution have no meaning in relation to themselves taken separately or independently. When viewed as discrete elements they appear as mere contradictions or discrepancies, but they all have a great meaning in relation to the Whole or the Absolute in which they seek their fulfilment and being, and the dialectical process is the way in which all things proceed necessarily towards this realisation of Self in the Absolute.