If all knowledge has, as it were, two poles, which mutually suppose and demand each other, they must reciprocally be objects of search in all sciences. There must, therefore, of necessity, be two fundamental sciences; and it must be impossible to set out from the one pole without being driven to the other. The necessary tendency of all natural science, therefore, is to pass from Nature to the intelligent. This, and this alone, lies at the bottom of the effort to bring theory into natural phenomena. The final perfection of natural science would be the complete mentalization of all the laws of Nature into laws of thought. The phenomena, that is, the material, must vanish entirely, and leave only the laws—that is, the formal. Hence it is that the more the accordance with law is manifested in Nature itself, the more the wrappage disappears—the phenomena themselves become more mental, and at last entirely cease. Optical phenomena are nothing more than a geometry whose lines are drawn through the light; and even this light itself is of doubtful materiality. In the phenomena of magnetism all trace of matter has already disappeared, and of those of gravitation; which even physical philosophers believed could be attributed only to direct spiritual influence, there remains nothing but the law, whose action on a large scale is the mechanism of the heavenly motions. The complete theory of Nature would be that whereby the whole of Nature should be resolved into an intelligence. The dead and unconscious products of Nature are only unsuccessful attempts of Nature to reflect itself, and dead Nature, so-called, is merely an unripe Intelligence; hence in its phenomena the intelligent character peers through, though yet unconsciously. Its highest aim, namely, that of becoming completely self-objective, Nature reaches only in its highest and last reflection, which is nothing else than man, or, more generally, what we call reason, by means of which Nature turns completely back upon itself, and by which is manifested that Nature is originally identical with what in us is known as intelligent and conscious. This may perhaps suffice to prove that natural science has a necessary tendency to render Nature intelligent. By this very tendency it is that it becomes natural philosophy, which is one of the two necessary fundamental sciences of philosophy. B. _Or the subjective is made the first, and the problem is, how an objective is superinduced agreeing with it._ If all knowledge is based upon the agreement of these two, then the task of explaining this agreement is plainly the highest for all knowledge; and if, as is generally admitted, philosophy is the highest and loftiest of all sciences, it is certainly the main task of philosophy.