This surmounting of the object of consciousness is notto be taken one sidedly to mean that the object showed itself as returning into the Self, but is to be taken mOfe specifically to mean not only that the object as such presented itself to the Selfas vanishing, butrather that itis the externalization of selfconsciousness that posits the thinghood or the object and that this externalization has not merely a negative but a positive meaning, a meaning which is not only for us or in itself, but for self consciousness itself.