154.] The effect is different from the cause. The former as such has a being dependent on the latter. But such a dependence is likewise reflection-into-self and immediacy: and the action of the cause, as it constitutes the effect, is at the same time the pre-constitution of the effect, so long as effect is kept separate from cause. There is thus already in existence another substance on which the effect takes place. As immediate, this substance is not a self-related negativity and _active,_ but _passive._ Yet it is a substance, and it is therefore active also: it therefore suspends the immediacy it was originally put forward with, and the effect which was put into it: it reacts, _e.g._ suspends the activity of the first substance. But this first substance also in the same way sets aside its own immediacy, or the effect which is put into it; it thus suspends the activity of the other substance and reacts. In this manner causality passes into the relation of Action and Reaction, or Reciprocity. In Reciprocity, although causality is not yet invested with its true characteristic, the rectilinear movement out from causes to effects, and from effects to causes, is bent round and back into itself, and thus the progress _ad infinitum_ of causes and effects is, as a progress, really and truly suspended. This bend, which transforms, the infinite progression into a self-contained relationship, is here as always the plain reflection that in the above meaningless repetition there is only one and the same thing, viz. one cause and another, and their connexion with one another. Reciprocity--which is the development of this relation-itself however only distinguishes turn and turn about (--not causes, but) factors of causation, in each of which--just because they are inseparable (on the principle of the identity that the cause is cause in the effect, and _vice versâ_)--the other factor is also equally supposed. (c) _Reciprocity or Action and Reaction._ 155.] The characteristics which in Reciprocal Action are retained as distinct are (α) potentially the same. The one side is a cause, is primary, active, passive, &c, just as the other is. Similarly the pre-supposition of another side and the action upon it, the immediate primariness and the dependence produced by the alternation, are one and the same on both sides. The cause assumed to be first is on account of its immediacy passive, a dependent being, and an effect. The distinction of the causes spoken of as two is accordingly void: and properly speaking there is only one cause, which, while it suspends itself (as substance) in its effect, also rises in this operation only to independent existence as a cause.