But before it acquired, as a vague and confused formula, so great a publicity as quite to amount to popularity, a philosopher of genius had analyzed and synthetized it, induced and deduced it in an unsurpassable manner, with the speculative formula of reality as _becoming_; that is, as synthesis of being and not-being, being and not-being being thus unthinkable separately, and only thinkable in their living connection, which is becoming and _development_ (evolution). Reality is development, that is, infinite possibility that passes into infinite actuality and from the multiplicity of every instant takes refuge in the one, to break forth anew in the multiple and produce the new unity. The inquiry into the dialectic of the volitional act enters in this way into the very heart of reality. In order to deny multiplicity, contradiction, evil and not-being, it would be necessary to deny at the same time unity, coherence, good and being. [Sidenote: _Nature as becoming. Its resolution in the spirit._] But if by the theory that has been recorded we have explained the necessity of evil for good, or the necessity of the not necessary for the necessary in the volitional act of man, the identification of the volitional act, which is man's, with reality which is of the universal whole, might seem to be too audacious. For (it will be said) the complex of other beings, that we are wont to separate from the complex of human beings and to oppose to it as nature, either is motionless and does not develop, or develops without any consciousness of good and evil, of pleasure and pain, of value and disvalue. Both theses have been maintained and nature has been represented, now as _without history, now as developing itself in an unconscious or mechanical manner._ But the contradictions and absurdities of both theses have been together perceived. "Motionless beings" is a phrase without meaning, to such a degree that even empirical science has everywhere pushed its way into history, and has talked of the evolution of animals and vegetables, of the chemical elements, and even of a history of light and heat. The other expression, "unconscious beings," is not less empty, because being and activity are not otherwise conceivable save in the way that we know our being, which is consciousness; and although empirical science certainly points to more and more rudimentary and tenuous forms of consciousness in beings, always differently individualized, yet it has never been able to demonstrate the absolutely unconscious. If so-called nature be, it develops, and if it develop, cannot do so without some consciousness. This deduction is not a matter of conjecture, but a logical and irrefutable consequence. What is there, then, that persists in men's souls, as an obstacle to the acceptance of this consequence, in accordance with the profound belief of humanity in a community of all beings with one another and with the Whole, as manifested in philosophies and in religions, in