 The problem which Hegel does not overcome is that the identity of essence and being cannot be known, because, as Schelling claims of his concept of being, “existing is not here the consequence of the concept or of essence, but rather existence is here itself the concept and itself the essence” (SW II/3, p. 167). The problem of reflection cannot be overcome in Hegel’s manner: identifying one’s reflection in a mirror as oneself (understood now as a metaphor for essence) entails, as we saw above, a prior non-reflexive moment if one is to know that the reflection is oneself, rather than a random reflected object. How far Schelling moves from any reflexive version of identity philosophy is evident in the following from the Introduction to the Philosophy of Revelation or Foundation of the Positive Philosophy of 1842–3: