Spirit . . . can never be a means standing between purpose and its execution, but as spirit it always reaches beyond the position where it appears as a means, and encloses together in itself both the other extremes, purpose and execution. As this inner movement, spirit is not only a mechanical means which stands between history, the direct experience of it, and its reproduction in the memory; so if spirit nonetheless takes on for a moment the position of means [Mittel], still it is at the same time the inner of both extremes. It is already active in historical appearance, is its soul,and as such is effective on those in whose lives this history occurs. As it now already lives implicitly as soul in the witnesses and in those who hear from witnesses, so is it also active in them as their own inner soul, so that as self-consciousness and as memory of itself it can reproduce itself.