The third stage, then, is that this totality, which is at first abstract, in that it becomes realized through the active, determining, distinguishing thought, sets itself forth even in the separated determinations, which, as ideal, belong to it. Since these determinations are contained unseparated in the unity, and thus each in it is also the other, these opposed moments are raised into totalities. The quite general forms of opposition are the universal and the particular, or, in another form, Thought as such, external reality, feeling or perception. The Notion is the identity of universal and particular; because each of these is thus set forth as concrete in itself, the universal is in itself at once the unity of universality and particularity, and the same holds good of particularity. Unity is thus posited in both forms, and the abstract moments can be made complete through this unity alone; thus it has come to pass that the differences themselves are each raised up to a system of totality, which respectively confront one another as the Philosophy of Stoicism and of Epicureanism. The whole concrete universal is now Mind; and the whole concrete individual, Nature. In Stoicism pure Thought develops into a totality; if we make the other side from Mind—natural being or feeling—into a totality, Epicureanism is the result. Each determination is formed into a totality of thought, and, in accordance with the simple mode which characterizes this sphere, these principles seem to be for themselves and independent, like two antagonistic systems of Philosophy. Implicitly both are identical, but they themselves take up their position as conflicting, and the Idea is also, as it is apprehended, in a one-sided determinateness. The higher stage is the union of these differences. This may occur in annihilation, in scepticism; but the higher point of view is the affirmative, the Idea in relation to the Notion. If the Notion is, then, the universal—that which determines itself further within itself, but yet remains there in its unity and in the ideality and transparency of its determinations which do not become independent—the further step is, on the other hand, the reality of the Notion in which the differences are themselves brought to totalities. Thus the fourth stage is the union of the Idea, in which all these differences, as totalities, are yet at the same time blended into one concrete unity of Notion. This comprehension first takes place without constraint, since the ideal is itself only apprehended in the element of universality.