SINCE Scepticism is the annulling of the opposites which in Stoicism and Epicureanism were accepted as the universal principles from which all other opposites took their rise, it likewise is the unity in which these opposites are found as ideal determinations, so that the Idea must now come into consciousness as concrete in itself. With this third development, which is the concrete result of all that has gone before, an entirely new epoch begins. Philosophy is now on quite a different footing, since, with the rejection of the criterion for subjective knowledge, finite principles in general also disappear; for it is with these that the criterion has to do. This then is the form which Philosophy takes with the Neo-Platonists, and which is closely connected with the revolution which was caused in the world by Christianity. The last stage which we reached—that subjective contentment and return of self-consciousness into itself which is attained by the renunciation of all that is fixed and objective, by flight into the pure, infinite abstraction in itself, by the absolute dearth of all determinate content—this stage had come to perfection in Scepticism, although the Stoic and Epicurean systems have the same end in view. But with this complete entering into and abiding within itself of infinite subjectivity, Philosophy had reached the standpoint at which self-consciousness knew itself in its thought to be the Absolute (Vol. II. p. 372); and since Philosophy now rejected the subjective and finite attitude of self-consciousness, and its manner of distinguishing itself from an unmeaning external object, it comprehended in itself the difference, and perfected the truth into an intelligible world. The consciousness of this, expressing itself as it did in the spirit of the world, now constitutes the object of Philosophy; it was principally brought about by employing and reasoning from Platonic conceptions and expressions, but also by making use of those of the Aristotelians and Pythagoreans.