HARiMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 353 



it is itself, and not any other ; and it puts itself so, 

 incontestably. But such a getting to exact identity 

 can only be by means of differejtce ; and difference, 

 again, implies contrast, and so reference to others. 

 Thus, in thinking itself as eternally real, each spirit 

 inherently thinks the reality of all other spirits. In 

 fine, its self-definition is at the same stroke in terms of 

 its own peculiarity, its own inerasible and unrepeatable 

 particularity, and of the supplemental individualities 

 of a whole world of others, — like it in this possession 

 of indestructible difference, but also like it in self- 

 supplementation by all the rest ; and thus it intrinsi- 

 cally has universality. 



In this fact we have reached the essential form of 

 every spirit or person — the organic union of the par- 

 ticular with the universal, of its private self-activity 

 in the recognition of itself with its public activity in 

 the recognition of all others. That is, self-conscious- 

 ness is in the last resort a conscience, or the union of 

 each spirit's self-recognition with recognition of all. 

 Its self-definition is therefore definite, in both senses 

 of the word : it is at once integral in its thorough and 

 inconfusible difference from every other, and yet it 

 is integral in terms of the entire whole that includes 

 it with all the rest. Thus in both of its aspects — 

 and both are essential to it — in a commanding 

 sense it excludes alternative, and there is universal 

 determinism, that is, universal and stable definite- 



