AND ITS SELF-CONSERVATION. 205 



itself to itself. For, beyond the self-contained total, there 

 is absolutely nothing with which that total could possibly 

 sustain any relation whatever. It is itself the sum of all 

 reality, the one positive fact, the all-inclusive deed. 



But this one positive fact, or all-inclusive deed, is thus 

 an infinite, or perfectly self-inclusive process. And this 

 process is that of 



1). THE DIFFERENTIATION OF ENERGY. 



The totality of force or energy, then, is a self-identical 

 Unit, but a unit whose very self-identity necessarily 

 involves its own infinite self-difference or self-negation. 



As self-identical it is in truth self-affirming. But self- 

 affirmation is in reality just the process of self -realization. 

 It is the unfolding into reality of its own essential charac- 

 teristics, qualitative and quantitative. Hence the self- 

 realization of the total energy is a genuine process or prac- 

 tical activity; which activity, it has been shown, and must 

 now be constantly borne in mind, is and can be nothing 

 else than an activity upon itself. It is at once actor, and 

 that which is acted upon. 



Its self-realization, then, as the process of unfolding 

 into reality those characteristics, both qualitative and 

 quantitative, which essentially belong to it, is a process of 

 unfolding within itself distinctions or mutually exclu- 

 sive differences. That is, the self -identical World-Energy 

 in the very process of its self-realization becomes self- 

 different. 



But differentiation is negation, and self -differentiation 

 is self -negation. At the same time, the process of self- 

 realization on the part of the World-Energy just consists 

 in its self-differentiation. Thus alone can it determine 



