These questions keep coming back to the corporeity or incorporeity of the body/spirit/nature. The "body" of the sign, its material aspect, its literal level of meaning, must certainly be sublated in order to engage in the process of signification and not remain a mere assemblage of meaningless letters. But this "body" must, at the same time, be incorporated ("ensouled"); that is, processed through the mind at the level of the concept in which that material becomes superfluous (supplementary) and only the essence or purified content of the material enters into spirit or idea. In other words, first the "meaning" is purified of its corporeal element through digestion (assimilation) and then this sifted, ethereal element (incorporeal) can pass through and move to the next stage of the process where "meaning" is transferred onto the register of the idea, as the signifier is first erased and then definitively incorporated by the signified. The persistent paradox is that in Hegel's use of metaphorical language and in the actual expression of his concepts, both literal and figurative levels are described as containing at least trace elements of physical, bodily, material attributes (either as components of the process as the power of digestion, or the assimilation of signifying material by the signified). But if the signifier, the materiality of its inscription, must pass away does it not still haunt the signified? The signified which sublates (cancels and preserves), incorporates, and assimilates the signifier, nonetheless still takes part in this bodily, literal, physical, corporeal practice, process and progress through the transitions of Hegel's language via his bodily metaphors. And since this transit is not unidirectional but goes both ways, then the signifier can't really vanish (be erased) because it must remain as one pole in the circulation of meaning. How does one become embodied in the soul ('ensouled'), incorporated by the incorporeal?