The products of reason are present in history — but not so that reason can recognize itself in them at once. Nor can reason itself be present as reason, i.e., consciously, without products in which it can recognize itself. It would be one thing if reason did not yet have products in which to recognize itself; it is quite another when reason can no longer recognize itself in its own excrescences. The world in which the latter is the case is the positive or technological world.