The other form is that this concrete is grasped in a more abstract way, as the pure identity of thought, and thus there is lost to thought the point of self-hood pertaining to the concrete. This aspect, expressed as absolute reality in the form of mind in conceiving thought, but yet as in some measure existing immediately in self-consciousness as absolute reality, comes under Philosophy. But spirit, if complete in every aspect, must have also the natural aspect, which in this form of philosophy is still lacking. Now as in Christianity universal history makes this advance of mind in the consciousness of itself, so in the innermost mysteries of the same, in Philosophy, this same change must just as inevitably take place; in fact, Philosophy in her further development does nothing else than grasp this Idea of absolute reality, which in Christianity is merely shadowed forth. Absolute Spirit implies eternal self-identical existence that is transformed into another and knows this to be itself; the unchangeable, which is unchangeable in as far as it always, from being something different, returns into itself. It signifies the sceptical movement of consciousness, but in such a form that the transient objective element at the same time remains permanent, or in its permanence has the signification of self-consciousness. In the Christian religion this spiritual reality was first of all represented as indicating that eternal reality becomes for itself something different, that it creates the world, which is posited purely as something different. To this there is added later this moment, that the other element in itself is not anything different from eternal reality, but that eternal reality manifests itself therein. In the third place there is implied the identity of the other and eternal reality, Spirit, the return of the other into the first: and the other is here to be understood as not only the other at that point where eternal reality manifested itself, but as the other in a universal sense. The world recognizes itself in this absolute reality which becomes manifest; it is the world, therefore, which has returned into reality; and spirit is universal Spirit. But since this Idea of spirit appeared to the Christians first of all in the bare form of ordinary conception, God, the simple reality of the Jews, was for them beyond consciousness; such a God doubtless thinks, but He is not Thought, for He remains beyond reality, and He is only that which is distinguished from the world that our senses perceive. There likewise stands in opposition to the same an individual man—the moment of unity of the world and reality, and spirit, the universality of this unity, as a believing community, which possesses this unity only in the form of ordinary conception, but its reality in the hope of a future.