But in this way it is just being, the negative of self-consciousness. In dealing with this, the essential point to note is that pure matter is merely what remains over when we abstract from seeing, feeling, tasting, etc. If they were distinguished as Nature and Spirit or God, the unconscious inner working and weaving would have nothing of the wealth of developed life required in order to be nature, while Spirit or God would have no self-distinguishing consciousness. If they rose above that, their thoughts would coincide, and they would find what to the one is, as it professes, a horror, and to the other a folly, is one and the same thing. The missing moment of presence would then be secured.
Thought is thinghood, or thinghood is thought.
The real essence is here divided asunder in such a way that, to begin with, it appertains to two specifically distinct modes of thinking. The universal common to both is the abstraction of pure self-thinking, of pure quivering within the self. This simple motion of rotating on its own axis is bound to resolve itself into separate moments, because it is itself only motion by distinguishing its own moments. The Sphere of Utility 580 . A being of that kind, however, which is immediately without support and cannot stand of itself, has no being in itself, no inherent existence, it is essentially for something else, which is the power that consumes and absorbs it.