=The Cosmic Law.= If the cosmic unity is a cosmic synthetic consciousness, it must be subject to the law of reason which is fundamental in consciousness. The process of consciousness is an unfolding. It is an evolution, but an evolution that is an unfolding. Ordinarily biological evolution restricts itself to the particular type under consideration. It does not take account of the fact that the growth of one type means the destruction of another. It does not view nature in a universal way and consider construction and destruction, action and reaction, equal. It looks upon development as a process along a tangent or like the infinite series of numbers. But the destructions, the defeats, the reciprocal retrogressions, must be accounted for in a truly Absolute consciousness. Evolution is not therefore an upward advance, but a closed circle. The Absolute is not therefore a consistency, but includes contradictions; and evolution cannot truly be interpreted in quantitative but in qualitative terms, as the unfolding of consciousness. The only way to include everything in the Absolute is to think of the Absolute as coming to a consciousness of itself. The Absolute Reality is the same at any temporal beginning or ending. Its meaning is becoming clearer to itself alone. Such clearness appears in the clearness with which the categories which are the forms of any consciousness become related. The task of philosophy is not to understand these forms together or _seriatim_, but as moments of a unitary development. They are the links in the development of Spirit, God, the Idea, or the Absolute.