Identity is, in the first place, the repetition of what we had earlier as Being, but as _become,_ through supersession of its character of immediateness. It is therefore Being as Ideality.--It is important to come to a proper understanding on the true meaning of Identity: and, for that purpose, we must especially guard against taking it as abstract Identity, to the exclusion of all Difference. That is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what alone deserves the name of philosophy. Identity in its truth, as an Ideality of what immediately is, is a high category for our religious modes of mind as well as all other forms of thought and mental activity. The true knowledge of God, it may be said, begins when we know Him as identity,--as absolute identity. To know so much is to see that all the power and glory of the world sinks into nothing in God's presence, and subsists only as the reflection of His power and His glory. In the same way, Identity, as self-consciousness, is what distinguishes man from nature, particularly from the brutes which never reach the point of comprehending themselves as 'I,' that is, pure self-contained unity. So again, in connexion with thought, the main thing is not to confuse the true Identity, which contains Being and its characteristics ideally transfigured in it, with an abstract Identity, identity of bare form. All the charges of narrowness, hardness, meaninglessness, which are so often directed against thought from the quarter of feeling and immediate perception, rest on the perverse assumption that thought acts only as a faculty of abstract Identification. The Formal Logic itself confirms this assumption by laying down the supreme law of thought (so-called) which has been discussed above. If thinking were no more than an abstract Identity, we could not but own it to be a most futile and tedious business. No doubt the notion, and the idea too, are identical with themselves: but identical only in so far as they at the same time involve distinction. (β) _Difference._ 116.] Essence is mere Identity and reflection in itself only as it is self-relating negativity, and in that way self-repulsion. It contains therefore essentially the characteristic of Difference. Other-being is here no longer qualitative, taking the shape of the character or limit. It is now in Essence, in self-relating essence, and therefore the negation is at the same time a relation,--is, in short, Distinction, Relativity, Mediation.