Having thus formulated the problem, and clinging firmly to the principle of educational unity, we may distinguish the forms of education which proceed from the ideal content of the spirit. But we must always keep in mind that, as these forms are only distinguishable ideally, they can in no way be effectively separated, and must be found in every concrete educative act. So that their synthesis and their complete immanence is the concreteness of educational unity in its opposition to what I have called fragmentary education. Our distinction then will turn out to be an exact logical analysis, which analyses only the terms of a synthesis and cannot therefore be dissociated from the synthesis. By analysing and by synthesising, by determining the spiritual unity without disconnecting or in any way dissociating its intrinsic ideal determinations, we strive to represent the ideal of education. In making a rapid survey of this analysis, I must refer back to what was said of the attributes of the spirit,--that the spirit _is_ in that it _becomes_, that it becomes in so far as it acquires self-consciousness, that its being therefore is consciousness in the act of being acquired. This act is surely self-consciousness, and it does mean cognition, but a cognition which differs from all others in that it has for its object that very one who cognises. And this is the meaning of "I," identity of subject and object,--an identity, however, that because of its curious nature needs to be carefully examined. It was shown in a preceding chapter that two things, to be thought as two, must yet be thought as one by virtue of the unique relationship which makes their duality possible. Here we observe the inverse: identity of subject and object means that in addition to the subject there is--nothing; it means therefore unity. And yet this unity would in no manner be intelligible if it were not also a duality, if, in other words, the identity of subject and object were not also the difference between them. To distinguish A from B, an initial, elementary minimum difference is required. It is the difference, called _otherness_, by which B is other than A. Without this otherness there would not be A and B, but either A alone or B alone. The subject as it knows itself is certainly not another from the subject alone. But if it did not become _other_ to itself, if it were not object also, as well as subject, it would never know itself. To be object as well as subject implies the necessity of distinguishing these two terms, and shows that there is otherness between them. If it sounds harsh to speak of something that first is "_one_" and then is "_two_," we might state the situation in a different and perhaps simpler way. We might say that the subject would not know itself, if remaining always that one and self-same subject, it were not both subject and object to itself.