§ 467. As dealing with this given content, thought is (α) _understanding_ with its formal identity, working up the representations, that have been memorised, into species, genera, laws, forces, &c., in short into categories,—thus indicating that the raw material does not get the truth of its being save in these thought-forms. As intrinsically infinite negativity, thought is (β) essentially an act of partition,—_judgment_, which however does not break up the concept again into the old antithesis of universality and being, but distinguishes on the lines supplied by the interconnexions peculiar to the concept. Thirdly (γ), thought supersedes the formal distinction and institutes at the same time an identity of the differences,—thus being nominal _reason_ or inferential understanding. Intelligence, as the act of thought, cognises. And (α) understanding out of its generalities (the categories) _explains_ the individual, and is then said to comprehend or understand itself: (β) in the judgment it explains the individual to be an universal (species, genus). In these forms the _content_ appears as given: (γ) but in inference (syllogism) it characterises a content from itself, by superseding that form-difference. With the perception of the necessity, the last immediacy still attaching to formal thought has vanished. In _Logic_ there was thought, but in its implicitness, and as reason develops itself in this distinction-lacking medium. So in _consciousness_ thought occurs as a stage (§ 437 note). Here reason is as the truth of the antithetical distinction, as it had taken shape within the mind’s own limits. Thought thus recurs again and again in these different parts of philosophy, because these parts are different only through the medium they are in and the antithesis they imply; while thought is this one and the same centre, to which as to their truth the antithesis return. § 468. Intelligence which as theoretical appropriates an immediate mode of being, is, now that it has completed _taking possession_, in its own _property_: the last negation of immediacy has implicitly required that the intelligence shall itself determine its content. Thus thought, as free notion, is now also free in point of _content_. But when intelligence is aware that it is determinative of the content, which is _its_ mode no less than it is a mode of being, it is Will. (b) Mind Practical(145).