The nature then both of art and of religion implies a flagrant contradiction which comes to this,--that the subject to be subject is object, and the object to be object is subject. Hence the torments of the poet and the spasms of the mystic. A perfect art and a perfect religion, that is, art which is not religion, and religion which is not art, are two impossibilities. This does not mean that either art or religion can ever be superseded and left behind as two illusions, ancient and constant, if we will, but none the less devoid of all value. The very contrary of this is true. Just because there is no pure art, religion is eternal; and art is eternal, because religion cannot be attained in its absolute purity. The concrete spirit is neither subject nor object. It is a self-objectifying subject, and an object which becomes the subject in virtue of the subjectivity that alights on it as it realises it. The spirit is therefore a becoming. It is the synthesis, the unity of these two opposites, ever in conflict and yet always intimately joined. And the spirit, as this unity, is the concreteness both of art (reality of the abstract subject) and of religion (reality of the abstract object). It is philosophy. Many definitions have been given of philosophy, and all of them true, because directly or indirectly they may, on the strength of what is expressed or what is understood, be reduced to the following definition: that philosophy is the spirit. If we say that it is the science of the spirit, we indulge in a useless pleonasm. For science, unless we distinguish in an absolute manner (which is impossible) one grade of determinateness from the other, is the same as consciousness; and spirit is, as we have seen, self-consciousness. If we say that philosophy is the science of reality in its universality, we lose sight of the fact that reality, for those who do not stray off into the maze of abstractness, _is_ the spirit. A definition which has never lost its value is that one which makes philosophy consist in the elaboration of concepts, that is, in the unification of all the concepts (those we possess, of course) into a coherent concept. This is an excellent definition, and it warns us that philosophy is not obtained by stopping before abstractions, no matter what these abstractions may be. All particular things are abstractions, each one of which yields a concept, and all of them give a number of concepts, which must be brought together and unified, if we ever intend to think all things that are thought, and thus philosophise. The subject without the object as the artist wants it is an abstraction; and similarly abstract is the object which religion looks up to.