236.] The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, is the notion of the Idea,--a notion whose object (_Gegenstand_) is the Idea as such, and for which the objective (_Objekt_) is Idea,--an Object which embraces all characteristics in its unity. This unity is consequently I the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself,--and here at least as a thinking or Logical Idea. * * * * * The Absolute Idea is, in the first place, the unity of the theoretical and practical idea, and thus at the same time the unity of the idea of life with the idea of cognition. In cognition we had the idea in a biassed, one-sided shape. The process of cognition has issued in the overthrow of this bias and the restoration of that unity, which as unity, and in its immediacy, is in the first instance the Idea of Life. The defect of life lies in its being only the idea implicit or natural: whereas cognition is in an equally one-sided way the merely conscious idea, or the idea for itself. The unity and truth of these two is the Absolute Idea, which is both in itself and for itself. Hitherto _we_ have had the idea in development through its various grades as _our_ object, but now the idea comes to be its _own object._ This is the νόησις νοήσεως which Aristotle long ago termed the supreme form of the idea. 237.] Seeing that there is in it no transition, or presupposition, and in general no specific character other than what is fluid and transparent, the Absolute Idea is for itself the pure form of the notion, which contemplates its content as its own self. It is its own content, in so far as it ideally distinguishes itself from itself, and the one of the two things distinguished is a self-identity in which however is contained the totality of the form as the system of terms describing its content. This content is the system of Logic. All that is at this stage left as form for the idea is the Method of this content,--the specific consciousness of the value and currency of the 'moments' in its development. * * * * *