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 that I exist by myself, without being a predicate of another being.” Although we always need the air, yet as natural philosophers we convert the air from an object of our physical need into an object of the self-sufficing activity of thought, i.e., into a mere thing for us. In breathing I am the object of the air, the air the subject; but when I make the air an object of thought, of investigation, when I analyze it, I reverse this relation,—I make myself the subject, the air an object. But that which is the object of another being is dependent. Thus the plant is dependent on air and light, that is, it is an object for air and light, not for itself. It is true that air and light are reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical life, in general, is nothing else than this perpetual interchange of the objective and subjective relation. We consume the air, and are consumed by it; we enjoy, and are enjoyed. The understanding alone enjoys all things without being itself enjoyed; it is the self-enjoying, self-sufficing existence—the absolute subject—the subject which cannot be reduced to the object of another being, because it makes all things objects, predicates of itself,—which comprehends all things in itself because it is itself not a thing, because it is free from all things.

That is dependent, the possibility of whose existence lies out of itself; that is independent which has the possibility of its existence in itself. Life therefore involves the contradiction of an existence at once dependent and independent,—the contradiction that its possibility lies both in itself and out of itself. The understanding alone is free from this and other contradictions of life; it is the essence perfectly self-subsistent, perfectly at one with itself, perfectly self-existent. Thinking is existence in self; life, as differenced from thought, existence out of self; life is to give from oneself, thought is to take into oneself. Existence out of self is the world, existence in self is God. To think is to be God. The act of thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal gods from all external limitations and necessities of life.