hand, the parts are identical with the whole, since they together constitute the whole. The self-comprehension of reason is just like the comprehension by the whole of all its parts, if it is taken in its real speculative significance; and only in this sense could this relationship be dealt with here. But in the sense implied by Sextus, that there is nothing except the whole, the two sides, the whole and the parts, remain in mutual, isolated opposition; in the region of speculation the two indeed are different, but they are likewise not different, for the difference is ideal. Outside of the whole there thus undoubtedly remains another, namely itself as the manifold of its parts. The whole argument thus rests upon the fact that a foreign determination is first of all brought within the Idea, and then arguments against the Idea are brought forward, after it has been thus corrupted by the isolation of a one-sided determination unaccompanied by the other moment of the determination. The case is similar when it is said; “Objectivity and subjectivity are different, and thus their unity cannot be expressed.” It is indeed maintained that the words are literally adhered to; but even as contained in these words, the determination is one-sided, and the other also pertains to it. Hence this difference is not what remains good, but what has to be abrogated. We may perhaps have said enough about the scientific nature of Scepticism, and we have concluded therewith the second section of Greek philosophy. The general point of view adopted by self-consciousness in this second period, the attainment of the freedom of self-consciousness through thought, is common to all these philosophies. In Scepticism we now find that reason has got so far that all that is objective, whether of Being or of the universal, has disappeared for self-consciousness. The abyss of the self-consciousness of pure thought has swallowed up everything, and made entirely clear the basis of thought. It not only has comprehended thought and outside of it a universe in its entirety, but the result, positively expressed, is that self-consciousness itself is reality. External objectivity is not an objective existence nor a universal thought; for it merely is the fact that the individual consciousness exists, and that it is universal. But though for us there is an object, yet this is for it no object, and thus it still has itself the mode of objectivity. Scepticism deduces no result, nor does it express its negation as anything positive. But the positive is in no way different from the simple; or if Scepticism aims at the disappearance of all that is universal, its condition, as immovability of spirit, is itself in fact this universal, simple, self-identical—but a universality (or a Being) which is the universality of the individual consciousness. Sceptical self-consciousness, however, is this divided consciousness to which on the one hand motion is a confusion of its