Between material expression and ideal concept, meaning exists as transit and transition, going both ways from signifier to signified and signified to signifier; between the literal level of the material and its sublation in the idea, the shuttle which carries meaning between these levels is metaphor, and specifically metaphors of the body. What is interesting in this case is that digestion is a literal process (Philosophy of Nature -- assimilation), a metaphorical process (Aesthetics -- e.g. 80) and a conceptual process (as seen in the Concept of Aufhebung). And as far as reading is concerned,[NOTE 47] the notion of digestion is not simply an embodiment (except in the sense that it is a corporeal process) but partakes of all levels -- physical, material, literal, metaphorical, semiotic, hermeneutical.[NOTE 47] It stands at the crossroads as a "figure" -- both as literal figure and figure of the literal. The inscription marks itself and is re-marked by the place of inscription and the instrument or stylus in the act of this re-marking (writing). How does writing come to interrupt this unidirectional flow of meaning? Writing intervenes, interrupts and reverses the flow back toward the direction of the signifier, and as such is a necessary moment of the process. It is a way of re-inserting the "figure" of the body into the body of Hegel's text, which he has not really expunged, but surreptitiously exported and then re-imported it (its meaning = its import) as other under the guise of the same product. But the process itself has transformed that product -- for Hegel it is never simply a question of changing labels or names; the concept of the "body" that has passed through the moment of figuration is indelibly marked. Writing then could be seen as the duty paid on these products as they cross and recross the borders of the different levels of meaning; the tax on the syntax, the shifting semantics of exchange value as values (meanings) and variables (words, signs) are exchanged.