II.3. Actuality

Actuality is the unity of Essence and Existence; shapeless Essence and unstable Appearance, or indeterminate persistence and non-persistent multiplicity, in it have their truth. Although Existence is immediacy which has emerged out of Ground, form is not yet posited in it. It determines and forms itself, and in this process is Appearance \ this persistence is determined only as Reflection-into-other, and, as it develops itself into intro-Reflection it becomes two worlds, two totalities of content, one of which is determined as reflected into itself, and the other as reflected into other. Essential Relation represents their form-relation, the perfection of which is the Relation of Inner and Outer, where the content of both is one identical foundation and equally one identity of form.—The form-determination of their distinctness is transcended because this identity with respect to form has resulted; and it is posited that they are one absolute totality.

This unity of Inner and Outer is Absolute Actuality. At this point this Actuality is the Absolute as such—in so far as it is posited as unity in which form is transcended and has become the empty or external distinction of an Outer and an Inner. Reflection is related to this Absolute as external, for it rather contemplates the Absolute than is its proper movement. But since it is this essentially, it exists as the negative return into itself of the Absolute.

Secondly, we have Actuality proper. Actuality Possibility and Necessity constitute the formal moments of the Absolute, or its Reflection.

Thirdly, the unity of the Absolute and its Reflection is the Absolute Relation or, rather, the Absolute as relation to itself,—Substance.