FIRST SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.
THE DOCTRINE OF BEING.
84.] Being is the notion implicit only: its special forms have the
predicate 'is'; when they are distinguished they are each of them an
'other': and the shape which dialectic takes in them, _i.e._ their
further specialisation, is a passing over into another. This further
determination, or specialisation, is at once a forth-putting and in
that way a disengaging of the notion implicit in being; and at the
same time the withdrawing of being inwards, its sinking deeper into
itself. Thus the explication of the notion in the sphere of being does
two things: it brings out the totality of being, and it abolishes the
immediacy of being, or the form of being as such.
85.] Being itself and the special sub-categories of it which
follow, as well as those of logic in general, may be looked upon as
definitions of the Absolute, or metaphysical definitions of God: at
least the first and third category in every triad may,--the first,
where the thought-form of the triad is formulated in its simplicity,
and the third, being the return from differentiation to a simple
self-reference. For a metaphysical definition of God is the expression
of His nature in thoughts as such: and logic embraces all thoughts so
long as they continue in the thought-form. The second sub-category in
each triad, where the grade of thought is in its differentiation,
gives, on the other hand, a definition of the finite. The objection to
the form of definition is that it implies a something in the mind's eye
on which these predicates may fasten. Thus even the Absolute (though
it purports to express God in the style and character of thought) in
comparison with its predicate (which really and distinctly expresses
in thought what the subject does not), is as yet only an inchoate
pretended thought--the indeterminate subject of predicates yet to
come. The thought, which is here the matter of sole importance, is
contained only in the predicate: and hence the propositional form, like
the said subject, viz. the Absolute, is a mere superfluity (cf. § 31,
and below, on the Judgment).
Each of the three spheres of the logical idea proves to be a systematic
whole of thought-terms, and a phase of the Absolute. This is the case
with Being, containing the three grades of quality, quantity, and
measure. Quality is, in the first place, the character identical with
being: so identical, that a thing ceases to be what it is, if it loses
its quality. Quantity, on the contrary, is the character external
to being, and does not affect the being at all. Thus _e.g._ a house
remains what it is, whether it be greater or smaller; and red remains
red, whether it be brighter or darker. Measure, the third grade of
being, which is the unity of the first two, is a qualitative quantity.
All things have their measure: _i.e._ the quantitative terms of their
existence, their being so or so great, does not matter within certain
limits; but when these limits are exceeded by an additional more or
less, the things cease to be what they were. From measure follows the
advance to the second sub-division of the idea, Essence.
The three forms of being here mentioned, just because they are the
first, are also the poorest, _i.e._ the most abstract. Immediate
(sensible) consciousness, in so far as it simultaneously includes
an intellectual element, is especially restricted to the abstract
categories of quality and quantity. The sensuous consciousness is in
ordinary estimation the most concrete and thus also the richest; but
that is only true as regards materials, whereas, in reference to the
thought it contains, it is really the poorest and most abstract.
A.--QUALITY.
(a) Being.
86.] Pure Being makes the beginning: because it is on one hand pure
thought, and on the other immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate;
and the first beginning cannot be mediated by anything, or be further
determined.
All doubts and admonitions, which might be brought against beginning
the science with abstract empty being, will disappear, if we only
perceive what a beginning naturally implies. It is possible to define
being as 'I = I,' as 'Absolute Indifference' or Identity, and so on.
Where it is felt necessary to begin either with what is absolutely
certain, _i.e._ the certainty of oneself, or with a definition or
intuition of the absolute truth, these and other forms of the kind
may be looked on as if they must be the first. But each of these
forms contains a mediation, and hence cannot be the real first: for
all mediation implies advance made from a first on to a second, and
proceeding from something different. If I = I, or even the intellectual
intuition, are really taken to mean no more than the first, they are in
this mere immediacy identical with being: while conversely, pure being,
if abstract no longer, but including in it mediation, is pure thought
or intuition.
If we enunciate Being as a predicate of the Absolute, we get the first
definition of the latter. The Absolute is Being. This is (in thought)
the absolutely initial definition, the most abstract and stinted.
It is the definition given by the Eleatics, but at the same time is
also the well-known definition of God as the sum of all realities. It
means, in short, that we are to set aside that limitation which is in
every reality, so that God shall be only the real in all reality, the
superlatively real. Or, if we reject reality, as implying a reflection,
we get a more immediate or unreflected statement of the same thing,
when Jacobi says that the God of Spinoza is the _principium_ of being
in all existence.
(1) When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought in its
merest indeterminateness: for we cannot determine unless there is
both one and another; and in the beginning there is yet no other. The
indeterminate, as we here have it, is the blank we begin with, not a
featurelessness reached by abstraction, not the elimination of all
character, but the original featurelessness which precedes all definite
character and is the very first of all. And this we call Being. It is
not to be felt, or perceived by sense, or pictured in imagination:
it is only and merely thought, and as such it forms the beginning.
Essence also is indeterminate, but in another sense: it has traversed
the process of mediation and contains implicit the determination it has
absorbed.
(2) In the history of philosophy the different stages of the logical
Idea assume the shape of successive systems, each based on a particular
definition of the Absolute. As the logical Idea is seen to unfold
itself in a process from the abstract to the concrete, so in the
history of philosophy the earliest systems are the most abstract, and
thus at the same time the poorest. The relation too of the earlier
to the later; systems of philosophy is much like the relation of the
corresponding stages of the logical Idea: in other words, the earlier
are preserved in the later; but subordinated and submerged. This is
the true meaning of a much misunderstood phenomenon in the history of
philosophy--the refutation of one system by another, of an earlier by
a later. Most commonly the refutation is taken in a purely negative
sense to mean that the system refuted has ceased to count for anything,
has been set aside and done for. Were it so, the history of philosophy
would be of all studies most saddening, displaying, as it does,
the refutation of every system which time has brought forth. Now,
although it may be admitted that every philosophy has been refuted,
it must be in an equal degree maintained, that no philosophy has been
refuted, nay, or can be refuted. And that in two ways. For first,
every philosophy that deserves the name always embodies the Idea: and
secondly, every system represents one particular factor or particular
stage in the evolution of the Idea. The refutation of a philosophy,
therefore, only means that its barriers are crossed, and its special
principle reduced to a factor in the completer principle that follows.
Thus the history of philosophy, in its true meaning, deals not with a
past, but with an eternal and veritable present: and, in its results,
resembles not a museum of the aberrations of the human intellect,
but a Pantheon of Godlike figures. These figures of Gods are the
various stages of the Idea, as they come forward one after another in
dialectical development. To the historian of philosophy it belongs to
point out more precisely, how far the gradual evolution of his theme
coincides with, or swerves from, the dialectical unfolding of the pure
logical Idea. It is sufficient to mention here, that logic begins
where the proper history of philosophy begins. Philosophy began in the
Eleatic school, especially with Parmenides. Parmenides, who conceives
the absolute as Being, says that 'Being alone is and Nothing is not.'
Such was the true starting-point of philosophy, which is always
knowledge by thought: and here for the first time we find pure thought
seized and made an object to itself.
Men indeed thought from the beginning: (for thus only were they
distinguished from the animals). But thousands of years had to elapse
before they came to apprehend thought in its purity, and to see in it
the truly objective. The Eleatics are celebrated as daring thinkers.
But this nominal admiration is often accompanied by the remark that
they went too far, when they made Being alone true, and denied the
truth of every other object of consciousness. We must go further than
mere Being, it is true: and yet it is absurd to speak of the other
contents of our consciousness as somewhat as it were outside and beside
Being, or to say that there are other things, as well as Being. The
true state of the case is rather as follows. Being, as Being, is
nothing fixed or ultimate: it yields to dialectic and sinks into its
opposite, which, also taken immediately, is Nothing. After all, the
point is, that Being is the first pure Thought; whatever else you may
begin with (the I = I, the absolute indifference, or God Himself),
you begin with a figure of materialised conception, not a product of
thought; and that, so far as its thought content is concerned, such
beginning is merely Being.
87.] But this mere Being, as it is mere abstraction, is therefore the
absolutely negative: which, in a similarly immediate aspect, is just
Nothing.
(1) Hence was derived the second definition of the Absolute; the
Absolute is the Nought. In fact this definition is implied in saying
that the thing-in-itself is the indeterminate, utterly without form
and so without content,--or in saying that God is only the supreme
Being and nothing more; for this is really declaring Him to be the same
negativity as above. The Nothing which the Buddhists make the universal
principle, as well as the final aim and goal of everything, is the same
abstraction.
(2) If the opposition in thought is stated in this immediacy as Being
and Nothing, the shock of its nullity is too great not to stimulate
the attempt to fix Being and secure it against the transition into
Nothing. With this intent, reflection has recourse to the plan of
discovering some fixed predicate for Being, to mark it off from
Nothing. Thus we find Being identified with what persists amid all
change, with _matter,_ susceptible of innumerable determinations,--or
even, unreflectingly, with a single existence, any chance object of
the senses or of the mind. But every additional and more concrete
characterisation causes Being to lose that integrity and simplicity it
has in the beginning. Only in, and by virtue of, this mere generality
is it Nothing, something inexpressible, whereof the distinction from
Nothing is a mere intention or _meaning._
All that is wanted is to realise that these beginnings are nothing but
these empty abstractions, one as empty as the other. The instinct that
induces us to attach a settled import to Being, or to both, is the very
necessity which leads to the onward movement of Being and Nothing,
and gives them a true or concrete significance. This advance is the
logical deduction and the movement of thought exhibited in the sequel.
The reflection which finds a profounder connotation for Being and
Nothing is nothing but logical thought, through which such connotation
is evolved, not, however, in an accidental, but a necessary way. Every
signification, therefore, in which they afterwards appear, is only a
more precise specification and truer definition of the Absolute. And
when that is done, the mere abstract Being and Nothing are replaced
by a concrete in which both these elements form an organic part.--The
supreme form of Nought as a separate principle would be Freedom: but
Freedom is negativity in that stage, when it sinks self-absorbed to
supreme intensity, and is itself an affirmation, and even absolute
affirmation.
The distinction between Being and Nought is, in the first place,
only implicit, and not yet actually made: they only _ought_ to be
distinguished. A distinction of course implies two things, and that one
of them possesses an attribute which is not found in the other. Being
however is an absolute absence of attributes, and so is Nought. Hence
the distinction between the two is only meant to be; it is a quite
nominal distinction, which is at the same time no distinction. In all
other cases of difference there is some common point which comprehends
both things. Suppose _e.g._ we speak of two different species: the
genus forms a common ground for both. But in the case of mere Being and
Nothing, distinction is without a bottom to stand upon: hence there can
be no distinction, both determinations being the same bottomlessness.
If it be replied that Being and Nothing are both of them thoughts, so
that thought may be reckoned common ground, the objector forgets that
Being is not a particular or definite thought, and hence, being quite
indeterminate, is a thought not to be distinguished from Nothing.--It
is natural too for us to represent Being as absolute riches, and
Nothing as absolute poverty. But if when we view the whole world we
can only say that everything _is,_ and nothing more, we are neglecting
all speciality and, instead of absolute plenitude, we have absolute
emptiness. The same stricture is applicable to those who define God
to be mere Being; a definition not a whit better than that of the
Buddhists, who make God to be Nought, and who from that principle draw
the further conclusion that self-annihilation is the means by which man
becomes God.
88.] Nothing, if it be thus immediate and equal to itself, is also
conversely the same as Being is. The truth of Being and of Nothing is
accordingly the unity of the two: and this unity is Becoming.
(1) The proposition that Being and Nothing is the same seems so
paradoxical to the imagination or understanding, that it is perhaps
taken for a joke. And indeed it is one of the hardest things thought
expects itself to do: for Being and Nothing exhibit the fundamental
contrast in all its immediacy,--that is, without the one term being
invested with any attribute which would involve its connexion with
the other. This attribute however, as the above paragraph points out,
is implicit in them--the attribute which is just the same in both. So
far the deduction of their unity is completely analytical: indeed the
whole progress of philosophising in every case, if it be a methodical,
that is to say a necessary, progress, merely renders explicit what
is implicit in a notion.--It is as correct however to say that Being
and Nothing are altogether different, as to assert their unity. The
one is _not_ what the other is. But since the distinction has not at
this point assumed definite shape (Being and Nothing are still the
immediate), it is, in the way that they have it, something unutterable,
which we merely _mean._
(2) No great expenditure of wit is needed to make fun of the maxim that
Being and Nothing are the same, or rather to adduce absurdities which,
it is erroneously asserted, are the consequences and illustrations of
that maxim.
If Being and Nought are identical, say these objectors, it follows that
it makes no difference whether my home, my property, the air I breathe,
this city, the sun, the law, mind, God, are or are not. Now in some of
these cases, the objectors foist in private aims, the utility a thing
has for me, and then ask, whether it be all the same to me if the
thing exist and if it do not. For that matter indeed, the teaching of
philosophy is precisely what frees man from the endless crowd of finite
aims and intentions, by making him so insensible to them, that their
existence or non-existence is to him a matter of indifference. But it
is never to be forgotten that, once mention something substantial, and
you thereby create a connexion with other existences and other purposes
which are _ex hypothesi_ worth having: and on such hypothesis it comes
to depend whether the Being and not-Being of a determinate subject are
the same or not. A substantial distinction is in these cases secretly
substituted for the empty distinction of Being and Nought. In others
of the cases referred to, it is virtually absolute existences and
vital ideas and aims, which are placed under the mere category of
Being or not-Being. But there is more to be said of these concrete
objects, than that they merely are or are not. Barren abstractions,
like Being and Nothing--the initial categories which, for that reason,
are the scantiest anywhere to be found--are utterly inadequate to
the nature of these objects. Substantial truth is something far
above these abstractions and their oppositions.--And always when a
concrete existence is disguised under the name of Being and not-Being,
empty-headedness makes its usual mistake of speaking about, and having
in the mind an image of, something else than what is in question: and
in this place the question is about abstract Being and Nothing.
(3) It may perhaps be said that nobody can form a notion of the
unity of Being and Nought. As for that, the notion of the unity is
stated in the sections preceding, and that is all: apprehend that,
and you have comprehended this unity. What the objector really means
by comprehension--by a notion--is more than his language properly
implies: he wants a richer and more complex state of mind, a pictorial
conception which will propound the notion as a concrete case and one
more familiar to the ordinary operations of thought. And so long as
incomprehensibility means only the want of habituation for the effort
needed to grasp an abstract thought, free from all sensuous admixture,
and to seize a speculative truth, the reply to the criticism is, that
philosophical knowledge is undoubtedly distinct in kind from the
mode of knowledge best known in common life, as well as from that
which reigns in the other sciences. But if to have no notion merely
means that we cannot represent in imagination the oneness of Being
and Nought, the statement is far from being true; for every one has
countless ways of envisaging this unity. To say that we have no such
conception can only mean, that in none of these images do we recognise
the notion in question, and that we are not aware that they exemplify
it. The readiest example of it is Becoming.; Every one has a mental
idea of Becoming, and will even allow that it is _one_ idea: he will
further allow that, when it is analysed, it involves the attribute
of Being, and also what is the very reverse of Being, viz. Nothing:
and that these two attributes lie undivided in the one idea: so that
Becoming is the unity of Being and Nothing.--Another tolerably plain
example is a Beginning. In its beginning, the thing is not yet, but
it is more than merely nothing, for its Being is already in the
beginning. Beginning is itself a case of Becoming; only the former term
is employed with an eye to the further advance.--If we were to adapt
logic to the more usual method of the sciences, we might start with the
representation of a Beginning as abstractly thought, or with Beginning
as such, and then analyse this representation, and perhaps people
would more readily admit, as a result of this analysis, that Being and
Nothing present themselves as undivided in unity.
(4) It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are
the same,' or 'The unity of Being and Nothing'--like all other
such unities, that of subject and object, and others--give rise to
reasonable objection. They misrepresent the facts, by giving an
exclusive prominence to the unity, and leaving the difference which
undoubtedly exists in it (because it is Being and Nothing, for example,
the unity of which is declared) without any express mention or notice.
It accordingly seems as if the diversity had been unduly put out of
court and neglected. The fact is, no speculative principle can be
correctly expressed by any such propositional form, for the unity has
to be conceived _in_ the diversity, which is all the while present and
explicit. 'To become' is the true expression for the resultant of 'To
be' and 'Not to be'; it is the unity of the two; but not only is it
the unity, it is also inherent unrest,--the unity, which is no mere
reference-to-self and therefore without movement, but which, through
the diversity of Being and Nothing that is in it, is at war within
itself.--Determinate being, on the other hand, is this unity, or
Becoming in this form of unity: hence all that 'is there and so,' is
one-sided and finite. The opposition between the two factors seems to
have vanished; it is only implied in the unity, it is not explicitly
put in it.
(5) The maxim of Becoming, that Being is the passage into Nought,
and Nought the passage into Being, is controverted by the maxim of
Pantheism, the doctrine of the eternity of matter, that from nothing
comes nothing, and that something can only come out of something. The
ancients saw plainly that the maxim, 'From nothing comes nothing,
from something something,' really abolishes Becoming: for what it
comes from and what it becomes are one and the same. Thus explained,
the proposition is the maxim of abstract identity as upheld by the
understanding. It cannot but seem strange, therefore, to hear such
maxims as, 'Out of nothing comes nothing: Out of something comes
something,' calmly taught in these days, without the teacher being in
the least aware that they are the basis of Pantheism, and even without
his knowing that the ancients have exhausted all that is to be said
about them.
Becoming is the first concrete thought, and therefore the first
notion: whereas Being and Nought are empty abstractions. The notion
of Being, therefore, of which we sometimes speak, must mean Becoming;
not the mere point of Being, which is empty Nothing, any more than
Nothing, which is empty Being. In Being then we have Nothing, and in
Nothing Being: but this Being which does not lose itself in Nothing
is Becoming. Nor must we omit the distinction, while we emphasise the
unity of Becoming: without that distinction we should once more return
to abstract Being. Becoming is only the explicit statement of what
Being is in its truth.
We often hear it maintained that thought is opposed to being. Now in
the face of such a statement, our first question ought to be, what is
meant by being. If we understand being as it is defined by reflection,
all that we can say of it is that it is what is wholly identical and
affirmative. And if we then look at thought, it cannot escape us that
thought also is at least what is absolutely identical with itself. Both
I therefore, being as well as thought, have the same attribute.
This identity of being and thought is not however to be I taken in
a concrete sense, as if we could say that a stone, so far as it has
being, is the same as a thinking man. A concrete thing is always very
different from the abstract category as such. And in the case of being,
we are speaking of nothing concrete: for being is the utterly abstract.
So far then the question regarding the _being_ of God--a being which is
in itself concrete above all measure--is of slight importance.
As the first concrete thought-term, Becoming is the first adequate
vehicle of truth. In the history of philosophy, this stage of the
logical Idea finds its analogue in the system of Heraclitus. When
Heraclitus says 'All is flowing' (πάντα ῥεῖ), he enunciates Becoming
as the fundamental feature of all existence, whereas the Eleatics,
as already remarked, saw the only truth in Being, rigid processless
Being. Glancing at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then goes
on to say: Being no more is than not-Being (οὐδὲν μᾶλλon τὸ όν τοῦ μὴ
ὅντos ἐστί): a statement expressing the negativity of abstract Being,
and its identity with not-Being, as made explicit in Becoming: both
abstractions being alike untenable. This maybe looked at as an instance
of the real refutation of one system by another. To refute a Philosophy
is to exhibit the dialectical movement in its principle, and thus
reduce it to a constituent member of a higher concrete form of the?
Idea. Even Becoming however, taken at its best on its own ground, is an
extremely poor term: it needs to grow in depth and weight of meaning.
Such deepened force we find _e.g._ in Life. Life is a Becoming; but
that is not enough to exhaust the notion of life. A still higher form
is found in Mind. Here too is Becoming, but richer and more intensive
than mere logical Becoming. The elements, whose unity constitutes
mind, are not the bare abstracts of Being and of Nought, but the system
of the logical Idea and of Nature.
(b) _Being Determinate._
89.] In Becoming the Being which is one with Nothing, and the Nothing
which is one with Being, are only vanishing factors; they are and
they are not. Thus by its inherent contradiction Becoming collapses
into the unity in which the two elements are absorbed. This result is
accordingly Being Determinate (Being there and so).
In this first example we must call to mind, once for all, what was
stated in § 82 and in the note there: the only way to secure any growth
and progress in knowledge is to hold results fast in their truth. There
is absolutely nothing whatever in which we cannot and must not point
to contradictions or opposite attributes; and the abstraction made by
understanding therefore means a forcible insistence on a single aspect,
and a real effort to obscure and remove all consciousness of the other
attribute which is involved. Whenever such contradiction, then, is
discovered in any object or notion, the usual inference is, _Hence_
this object is _nothing._ Thus Zeno, who first showed the contradiction
native to motion, concluded that there is no motion: and the ancients,
who recognised origin and decease, the two species of Becoming, as
untrue categories, made use of the expression that the One or Absolute
neither arises nor perishes. Such a style of dialectic looks only at
the negative aspect of its result, and fails to notice, what is at the
same time really present, the definite result, in the present case a
pure nothing, but a Nothing which includes Being, and, in like manner,
a Being which includes Nothing. Hence Being Determinate is (1) the
unity of Being and Nothing, in which we get rid of the immediacy in
these determinations, and their contradiction vanishes in their mutual
connexion,--the unity in which they are only constituent elements. And
(2) since the result is the abolition of the contradiction, it comes
in the shape of a simple unity with itself: that is to say, it also
is Being, but Being with negation or determinateness: it is Becoming
expressly put in the form of one of its elements, viz. Being.
Even our ordinary conception of Becoming implies that somewhat
comes out of it, and that Becoming therefore has a result. But this
conception gives rise to the question, how Becoming does not remain
mere Becoming, but has a result The answer to this question follows
from what Becoming has already shown itself to be. Becoming always
contains Being and Nothing in such a way, that these two are always
changing into each other, and reciprocally cancelling each other.
Thus Becoming stands before us in utter restlessness--unable however
to maintain itself in this abstract restlessness: for since Being and
Nothing vanish in Becoming (and that is the very notion of Becoming),
the latter must vanish also. Becoming is as it were a fire, which
dies out in itself, when it consumes its material. The result of this
process however is not an empty Nothing but Being identical with the
negation,--what we call Being Determinate (being then and there): the
primary import of which evidently is that it _has become._
90.] (α) Determinate Being is Being with a character or mode--which
simply _is_; and such un-mediated character is Quality. And as
reflected into itself in this its character or mode, Determinate Being
is a somewhat, an existent.--The categories, which issue by a closer
analysis of Determinate Being, need only be mentioned briefly.
Quality may be described as the determinate mode immediate and
identical with Being--as distinguished from Quantity (to come
afterwards), which, although a mode of Being, is no longer immediately
identical with Being, but a mode indifferent and external to it. A
Something is what it is in virtue of its quality, and losing its
quality it ceases to be what it is. Quality, moreover, is completely a
category only of the finite, and for that reason too it has its proper
place in Nature, not in the world of Mind. Thus, for example, in Nature
what are styled the elementary bodies, oxygen, nitrogen, &c, should
be regarded as existing qualities. But in the sphere of mind, Quality
appears in a subordinate way only, and not as if its qualitativeness
could exhaust any specific aspect of mind. If, for example, we consider
the subjective mind, which forms the object of psychology, we may
describe what is called (moral and mental) character, as in logical
language identical with Quality. This however does not mean that
character is a mode of being which pervades the soul and is immediately
identical with it, as is the case in the natural world with the
elementary bodies before mentioned. Yet a more distinct manifestation
of Quality as such, in mind even, is found in the case of besotted or
morbid conditions, especially in states of passion and when the passion
rises to derangement. The state of mind of a deranged person, being one
mass of jealousy, fear, &c, may suitably be described as Quality.
91.] Quality, as determinateness which _is,_ as contrasted with the
Negation which is involved in it but distinguished from it, is
Reality. Negation is no longer an abstract nothing, but, as
a determinate being and somewhat, is only a form on such being--it
is as Otherness. Since this otherness, though a determination of
Quality itself, is in the first instance distinct from it, Quality is
Being-for-another--an expansion of the mere point of Determinate
Being, or of Somewhat. The Being as such of Quality, contrasted with
this reference to somewhat else, is Being-by-self.
The foundation of all determinateness is negation (as Spinoza says,
_Omnis determinatio est negatio_). The unreflecting observer supposes
that determinate things are merely positive, and pins them down under
the form of being. Mere being however is not the end of the matter:--it
is, as we have already seen, utter emptiness and instability besides.
Still, when abstract being is contused in this way with being modified
and determinate, it implies some perception of the fact that, though
in determinate being there is involved an element of negation, this
element is at first wrapped up, as it were, and only comes to the
front and receives its due in Being-for-self.--If we go on to consider
determinate Being as a determinateness which _is,_ we get in this way
what is called Reality. We speak, for example, of the reality of a
plan or a purpose, meaning thereby that they are no longer inner and
subjective, but have passed into being-there-and-then. In the same
sense the body may be called the reality of the soul, and the law the
reality of freedom, and the world altogether the reality of the divine
idea. The word 'reality' is however used in another acceptation to mean
that something behaves conformably to its essential characteristic or
notion. For example, we use the expression: This is a real occupation:
This is a real man. Here the term does not merely mean outward and
immediate existence: but rather that some existence agrees with its
notion. In which sense, be it added, reality is not distinct from the
ideality which we shall in the first instance become acquainted with in
the shape of Being-for-self.
92.] (ß) Being, if kept distinct and apart from its determinate
mode, as it is in Being-by-self (Being implicit), would be only the
vacant abstraction of Being. In Being (determinate there and then),
the determinateness is one with Being; yet at the same time, when
explicitly made a negation, it is a Limit, a Barrier. Hence the
otherness is not something indifferent and outside it, but a function
proper to it. Somewhat is by its quality,--firstly finite,--secondly
alterable; so that finitude and variability appertain to its being.
In Being-there-and-then, the negation is still directly one with the
Being, and this negation is what we call a Limit (Boundary). A thing
is what it is, only in and by reason of its limit. We cannot therefore
regard the limit as only paternal to being which is then and there. It
rather goes through and through the whole of such existence. The view
of limit, as merely an external characteristic of being-there-and-then,
arises from a confusion of quantitative with qualitative limit. Here
we are speaking primarily of the qualitative limit. If, for example,
we observe a piece of ground, three acres large, that circumstance is
its quantitative limit. But, in addition, the ground is, it may be, a
meadow, not a wood or a pond. This is its qualitative limit.--Man,
if he wishes to be actual, must be-there-and-then, and to this end he
must set a limit to himself. People who are too fastidious towards the
finite never reach actuality, but linger lost in abstraction, and their
light dies away.
If we take a closer look at what a limit implies, we see it involving a
contradiction in itself, and thus evincing its dialectical nature. On
the one side the limit makes the reality of a thing; on the other it
is its negation. But, again, the limit, as the negation of something,
is not an abstract nothing but a nothing which _is,--_what we call an
'other.' Given something, and up starts an other to us: we know that
there is not something only, but an other as well. Nor, again, is the
other of such a nature that we can think something apart from it; a
something is implicitly the other of itself, and the somewhat sees
its limit become objective to it in the other. If we now ask for the
difference between something and another, it turns out that they are
the same: which sameness is expressed in Latin by calling the pair
_aliud--aliud._ The other, as opposed to the something, is itself a
something, and hence we say some other, or something else; and so on
the other hand the first something when opposed to the other, also
defined as something, is itself an other. When we say 'something
else' our first impression is that something taken separately is only
something, and that the quality of being another attaches to it only
from outside considerations. Thus we suppose that the moon, being
something else than the sun, might very well exist without the sun.
But really the moon, as a something, has its other implicit in it:
Plato says: God made the world out of the nature of the 'one' and the
'other' (τοῦ ἑτέρου): having brought these together, he formed from
them a third, which is of the nature of the 'one' and the 'other.'
In these words we have in general terms a statement of the nature
of the finite, which, as something, does not meet the nature of the
other as if it had no affinity to it, but, being implicitly the other
of itself, thus undergoes alteration. Alteration thus exhibits the
inherent contradiction which originally attaches to determinate being,
and which forces it out of its own bounds. To materialised conception
existence stands in the character of something solely positive, and
quietly abiding within its own limits: though we also know, it is
true, that everything finite (such as existence) is subject to change.
Such changeableness in existence is to the superficial eye a mere
possibility, the realisation of which is not a consequence of its own
nature. But the fact is, mutability lies in the notion of existence,
and change is only the manifestation of what it implicitly is. The
living die, simply because as living they bear in themselves the germ
of death.
93.] Something becomes an other: this other is itself somewhat:
therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on _ad infinitum._
94.] This Infinity is the wrong or negative infinity: it is only a
negation of a finite: but the finite rises again the same as ever, and
is never got rid of and absorbed. In other words, this infinite only
expresses the _ought-to-be_ elimination of the finite. The progression
to infinity never gets further than a statement of the contradiction
involved in the finite, viz. that it is somewhat as well as somewhat
else. It sets up with endless iteration the alternation between these
two terms, each of which calls up the other.
If we let somewhat and another, the elements of determinate Being,
fall asunder, the result is that some becomes other, and this other
is itself a somewhat, which then as such changes likewise, and so
on _ad infinitum._ This result seems to superficial reflection
something very grand, the grandest possible. Besuch a progression to
infinity is not the real infinite. That consists in being at home
with itself in its other, or, if enunciated as a process, in coming
to itself in its other. Much depends on rightly apprehending the
notion of infinity, and not stopping short at the wrong infinity of
endless progression. When time and space, for example, are spoken of
as infinite, it is in the first place the infinite progression on
which our thoughts fasten. We say, Now, This time, and then we keep
continually going forwards and backwards beyond this limit. The case
is the same with space, the infinity of which has formed the theme of
barren declamation to astronomers with a talent for edification. In the
attempt to contemplate such an infinite, our thought, we are commonly
informed, must sink exhausted. It is true indeed that we must abandon
the unending contemplation, not however because the occupation is too
sublime, but because it is too tedious. It is tedious to expatiate in
the contemplation of this infinite progression, because the same thing
is constantly recurring. We lay down a limit: then we pass it: next we
have a limit once more, and so on for ever. All this is but superficial
alternation, which never leaves the region of the finite behind. To
suppose that by stepping out and away into that infinity we release
ourselves from the finite, is in truth but to seek the release which
comes by flight. But the man who flees is not yet free: in fleeing he
is still conditioned by that from which he flees. If it be also said,
that the infinite is unattainable, the statement is true, but only
because to the idea of infinity has been attached the circumstance
of being simply and solely negative. With such empty and other world
stuff philosophy has nothing to do. What philosophy has to do with is
always--something concrete and in the highest sense present.
No doubt philosophy has also sometimes been set the task of finding
an answer to the question, how the infinite comes to the resolution
of issuing out of itself. This question, founded, as it is, upon the
assumption of a rigid opposition between finite and infinite, may be
answered by saying that the opposition is false, and that in point
of fact the infinite eternally proceeds out of itself, and yet does
not proceed out of itself. If we further say that the infinite is the
not-finite, we have in point of fact virtually expressed the truth:
for as the finite itself is the first negative, the not-finite is the
negative of that negation, the negation which is identical with itself
and thus at the same time a true affirmation.
The infinity of reflection here discussed is only an _attempt_ to
reach the true Infinity, a wretched neither-one-thing-nor-another.
Generally speaking, it is the point of view which has in recent times
been emphasised in Germany. The finite, this theory tells us, _ought_
to be absorbed; the infinite _ought_ not to be a negative merely, but
also a positive. That 'ought to be' betrays the incapacity of actually
making good a claim which is at the same time recognised to be right.
This stage was never passed by the systems of Kant and Fichte, so far
as ethics are concerned. The utmost to which this way brings us is only
the postulate of a never-ending approximation to the law of Reason:
which postulate has been made an argument for the immortality of the
soul.
95.] (γ) What we now in point of fact have before us, is that somewhat
comes to be an other, and that the other generally comes to be an
other. Thus essentially relative to another, somewhat is virtually an
other against it: and since what is passed into is quite the same as
what passes over, since both have one and the same attribute, viz.
to be an other, it follows that something in its passage into other
only joins with itself. To be thus self-related in the passage, and
in the other, is the genuine Infinity. Or, under a negative aspect:
what is altered is the other, it becomes the other of the other. Thus
Being, but as negation of the negation, is restored again: it is now
Being-for-self.
Dualism, in putting an insuperable opposition between finite and
infinite, fails to note the simple circumstance that the infinite is
thereby only one of two, and is reduced to a particular, to which the
finite forms the other particular. Such an infinite, which is only a
particular, is co-terminous with the finite which makes for it a limit
and a barrier: it is not what it ought to be, that is, the infinite,
but is only finite. In such circumstances, where the finite is on this
side, and the infinite on that,--this world as the finite and the other
world as the infinite,--an equal dignity of permanence and independence
is ascribed to finite and to infinite. The being of the finite is made
an absolute being, and by this dualism gets independence and stability.
Touched, so to speak, by the infinite, it would be annihilated. But
it must not be touched by the infinite. There must be an abyss, an
impassable gulf between the two, with the infinite abiding on yonder
side and the finite steadfast on this. Those who attribute to the
finite this inflexible persistence in comparison with the infinite
are not, as they imagine, far above metaphysic: they are still on the
level of the most ordinary metaphysic of understanding. For the same
thing occurs here as in the infinite progression. At one time it is
admitted that the finite has no independent actuality, no absolute
being, no root and development of its own, but is only a transient.
But next moment this is straightway forgotten; the finite, made a mere
counterpart to the infinite, wholly separated from it, and rescued from
annihilation, is conceived to be persistent in its independence. While
thought thus imagines itself elevated to the infinite, it meets with
the opposite fate: it comes to an infinite which is only a finite, and
the finite, which it had left behind, has always to be retained and
made into an absolute.
After this examination (with which it were well to compare Plato's
Philebus), tending to show the nullity of the distinction made by
understanding between the finite and the infinite, we are liable
to glide into the statement that the infinite and the finite are
therefore one, and that the genuine infinity, the truth, must be
defined and enunciated as the unity of the finite and infinite. Such
a statement would be to some extent correct; but is just as open to
perversion and falsehood as the unity of Being and Nothing already
noticed. Besides it may very fairly be charged with reducing the
infinite to finitude and making a finite infinite. For, so far as
the expression goes, the finite seems left in its place,--it is not
expressly stated to be absorbed. Or, if we reflect that the finite,
when identified with the infinite, certainly cannot remain what it
was out of such unity, and will at least suffer some change in its
characteristics--as an alkali, when combined with an acid, loses some
of its properties, we must see that, the same fate awaits the infinite,
which, as the negative, will on its part likewise have its edge, as
it were, taken off on the other. And this does really happen with the
abstract one-sided infinite of understanding. The genuine infinite
however is not merely in the position of the one-sided acid, and so
does not lose itself. The negation of negation is not a neutralisation:
the infinite is the affirmative, and it is only the finite which is
absorbed.
In Being-for-self enters the category of Ideality.
Being-there-and-then, as in the first instance apprehended in its being
or affirmation, has reality (§ 91): and thus even finitude in the first
instance is in the category of reality. But the truth of the finite is
rather its ideality. Similarly, the infinite of understanding, which
is co-ordinated with the finite, is itself only one of two finites,
no whole truth, but a non-substantial element. This ideality of the
finite is the chief maxim of philosophy; and for that reason every
genuine philosophy is idealism. But everything depends upon not taking
for the infinite what, in the very terms of its characterisation, is.
at the same time made a particular and finite.--For this reason we
have bestowed a greater amount of attention on this distinction. The
fundamental notion of philosophy, the genuine infinite, depends upon
it. The distinction is cleared up by the simple, and for that reason
seemingly insignificant, but incontrovertible reflections, contained in
the first paragraph of this section.
(c) _Being-for-self._
96.] (α) Being-for self, as reference to itself, is immediacy, and
as reference of the negative to itself, is a self-subsistent, the
One. This unit, being without distinction in itself, thus
excludes the other from itself.
To be for self--to be one--is completed Quality, and as such, contains
abstract Being and Being modified as non-substantial elements. As
simple Being, the One is simple self-reference; as Being modified it
is determinate: but the determinateness is not in this case a finite
determinateness--a somewhat in distinction from an other--but infinite,
because it contains distinction absorbed and annulled in itself.
The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the 'I.' We know
ourselves as existents, distinguished in the first place from other
existents, and with certain relations thereto. But we also come to
know this expansion of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it
were, to a point in the simple form of being-for-self. When we say 'I,'
we express the reference-to-self which is infinite, and at the same
time negative. Man, it may be said, is distinguished from the animal
world, and in that way from nature altogether, by knowing himself as
'I': which amounts to saying that natural things never attain a free
Being-for-self, but as limited to Being-there-and-then, are always and
only Being for an other.--Again, Being-for-self may be described as
ideality, just as Being-there-and-then was described as reality. It is
said, that besides reality there is _also_ an ideality. Thus the two
categories are made equal and parallel. Properly speaking, ideality is
not somewhat outside of and beside reality: the notion of ideality
just lies in its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when
reality is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, it is at once seen
to be ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper estimation,
when you allow that reality is not all in all, but that an ideality
must be recognised outside of it. Such an ideality, external to or it
may be even beyond reality, would be no better than an empty name.
Ideality only has a meaning when it is the ideality of something: but
this something is not a mere indefinite this or that, but existence
characterised as reality, which, if retained in isolation, possesses
no truth. The distinction between Nature and Mind is not improperly
conceived, when the former is traced back to reality, and the latter
to ideality as a fundamental category. Nature however is far from
being so fixed and complete, as to subsist even without Mind: in Mind
it first, as it were, attains its goal and its truth. And similarly,
Mind on its part is not merely a world beyond Nature and nothing more:
it is really, and with full proof, seen to be mind, only when it
involves Nature as absorbed in itself.--_Apropos_ of this, we should
note the double meaning of the German word _aufheben_ (to put by, or
set aside). We mean by it (1) to clear away, or annul: thus, we say, a
law or a regulation is set aside: (2) to keep, or preserve: in which
sense we use it when we say: something is well put by. This double
usage of language, which gives to the same word a positive and negative
meaning, is not an accident, and gives no ground for reproaching
language as a cause of confusion. We should rather recognise in it the
speculative spirit of our language rising above the mere 'Either--or'
of understanding.
97.] (β) The relation of the negative to itself is a negative relation,
and so a distinguishing of the One from itself, the repulsion of
the One; that is, it makes Many Ones. So far as regards the
immediacy of the self-existents, these Many _are:_ and the repulsion of
every One of them becomes to that extent their repulsion against each
other as existing units,--in other words, their reciprocal exclusion.
Whenever we speak of the One, the Many usually come into our mind at
the same time. Whence, then, we are forced to ask, do the Many come?
This question is unanswerable by the consciousness which pictures the
Many as a primary datum, and-treats the One as only one among the Many.
But the philosophic notion teaches, contrariwise, that the One forms
the pre-supposition of the Many: and in the thought of the One is
implied that it explicitly make itself Many. The self-existing unit is
not, like Being, void of all connective reference: it is a reference,
as well as Being-there-and-then was, not however a reference connecting
somewhat with an other, but, as unity of the some and the other, it is
a connexion with itself, and this connexion be it noted is a negative
connexion. Hereby the One manifests an utter incompatibility with
itself, a self-repulsion: and what it makes itself explicitly be, is
the Many. We may denote this side in the process of Being-for-self
by the figurative term Repulsion. Repulsion is a term originally
employed in the study of matter, to mean that matter, as a Many, in
each of these many Ones, behaves as exclusive to all the others. It
would be wrong however to view the process of repulsion, as if the
One were the repellent and the Many the repelled. The One, as already
remarked, just is self-exclusion and explicit putting itself as the
Many. Each of the Many however is itself a One, and in virtue of its so
behaving, this all-round repulsion is by one stroke converted into its
opposite,--Attraction.
98.] (γ) But the Many are one the same as another: each is One, or
even one of the Many; they are consequently one and the same. Or when
we study all that Repulsion involves, we see that as a negative
attitude of many Ones to one another, it is just as essentially a
connective reference of them to each other; and as those to which the
One is related in its act of repulsion are ones, it is in them thrown
into relation with itself. The repulsion therefore has an equal right
to be called Attraction; and the exclusive One, or Being-for-self,
suppresses itself. The qualitative character, which in the One or unit
has reached the extreme point of its characterisation, has thus passed
over into determinateness (quality) suppressed, _i.e._ into Being as
Quantity.
The philosophy of the Atomists is the doctrine in which the Absolute
is formulated as Being-for-self, as One, and many ones. And it is
the repulsion, which shows itself in the notion of the One, which
is assumed as the fundamental force in these atoms. But instead of
attraction, it is Accident, that is, mere unintelligence, which
is expected to bring them together. So long as the One is fixed
as one, it is certainly impossible to regard its congression with
others as anything but external and mechanical. The Void, which is
assumed as the complementary principle to the atoms, is repulsion
and nothing else, presented under the image of the nothing existing
between the atoms.--Modern Atomism--and physics is still in principle
atomistic--has surrendered the atoms so far as to pin its faith
on molecules or particles. In so doing, science has come closer
to sensuous conception, at the cost of losing the precision of
thought.--To put an attractive by the side of a repulsive force, as
the moderns have done, certainly gives completeness to the contrast:
and the discovery of this natural force, as it is called, has been a
source of much pride. But the mutual implication of the two, which
makes what is true and concrete in them, would have to be wrested from
the obscurity and confusion in which they were left even in Kant's
Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science.--In modern times the
importance of the atomic theory is even more evident in political than
in physical science. According to it, the will of individuals as such
is the creative principle of the State: the attracting force is the
special wants and inclinations of individuals; and the Universal, or
the State itself, is the external nexus of a compact.
(1) The Atomic philosophy forms a vital stage in the historical
evolution of the Idea. The principle of that system may be described
as Being-for-self in the shape of the Many. At present, students of
nature who are anxious to avoid metaphysics turn a favourable ear to
Atomism. But it is not possible to escape metaphysics and cease to
trace nature back to terms of thought, by throwing ourselves into the
arms of Atomism. The atom, in fact, is itself a thought; and hence the
theory which holds matter to consist of atoms is a metaphysical theory.
Newton gave physics an express warning to beware of metaphysics, it is
true; but, to his honour be it said, he did not by any means obey his
own warning. The only mere physicists are the animals: they alone do
not think: while man is a thinking being and a born metaphysician. The
real question is not whether we shall apply metaphysics, but whether
our metaphysics are of the right kind: in other words, whether we are
not, instead of the concrete logical Idea, adopting one-sided forms of
thought, rigidly fixed by understanding, and making these the basis of
our theoretical as well as our practical work. It is on this ground
that one objects to the Atomic philosophy. The old Atomists viewed the
world as a many, as their successors often do to this day. On chance
they laid the task of collecting the atoms which float about in the
void. But, after all, the nexus binding the many with one another is
by no means a mere accident: as we have already remarked, the nexus is
founded on their very nature. To Kant we owe the completed theory of
matter as the unity of repulsion and attraction. The theory is correct,
so far as it recognises attraction to be the other of the two elements
involved in the notion of Being-for-self: and to be an element no less
essential than repulsion to constitute matter. Still this dynamical
construction of matter, as it is termed, has the fault of taking for
granted, instead of deducing, attraction and repulsion. Had they been
deduced, we should then have seen the How and the Why of a unity which
is merely asserted. Kant indeed was careful to inculcate that Matter
must not be taken to be in existence _per se,_ and then as it were
incidentally to be provided with the two forces mentioned, but must
be regarded as consisting solely in their unity. German physicists
for some time accepted this pure dynamic. But in spite of this, the
majority of these physicists i n modern times have found it more
convenient to return to the Atomic point of view, and in spite of the
warnings of Kästner, one of their number, have begun to regard Matter
as consisting of infinitesimally small particles, termed 'atoms'--which
atoms have then to be brought into relation with one another by the
play of forces attaching to them,--attractive, repulsive, or whatever
they may be. This too is metaphysics; and metaphysics which, for its
utter unintelligence, there would be sufficient reason to guard against.
(2) The transition from Quality to Quantity, indicated in the paragraph
before us, is not found in our ordinary way of thinking, which deems
each of these categories to exist independently beside the other. We
are in the habit of saying that things are not merely qualitatively,
but also quantitatively defined; but whence these categories originate,
and how they are related to each other, are questions not further
examined. The fact is, quantity just means quality superseded and
absorbed: and it is by the dialectic of quality here examined that this
supersession is effected. First of all, we had Being: as the truth of
Being, came Becoming: which formed the passage to Being Determinate:
and the truth of that we found to be Alteration. And in its result
Alteration showed itself to be Being-for-self, exempt from implication
of another and from passage into another;--which Being-for-self,
finally, in the two sides of its process, Repulsion and Attraction,
was clearly seen to annul itself, and thereby to annul quality in the
totality of its stages. Still this superseded and absorbed quality is
neither an abstract nothing, nor an equally abstract and featureless
being: it is only being as indifferent to determinateness or character.
This aspect of being is also what appears as quantity in our ordinary
conceptions. We observe things, first of all, with an eye to their
quality--which we take to be the character identical with the being
of the thing. If we proceed to consider their quantity, we get the
conception of an indifferent and external character or mode, of such a
kind that a thing remains what it is, though its quantity is altered,
and the thing becomes greater or less.
B.--QUANTITY.
(α) _Pure Quantity._
99.] Quantity is pure being, where the mode or character is
no longer taken as one with the being itself, but explicitly put as
superseded or indifferent.
(i) The expression Magnitude especially marks _determinate_
Quantity, and is for that reason not a suitable name for Quantity
in general. (2) Mathematics usually define magnitude as what can be
increased or diminished. This definition has the defect of containing
the thing to be defined over again: but it may serve to show that the
category of magnitude is explicitly understood to be changeable and
indifferent, so that, in spite of its being altered by an increased
extension or intension, the thing, a house, for example, does not cease
to be a house, and red to be red. (3) The Absolute is pure Quantity.
This point of view is upon the whole the same as when the Absolute is
defined to be Matter, in which, though form undoubtedly is present, the
form is a characteristic of no importance one way or another. Quantity
too constitutes the main characteristic of the Absolute, when the
Absolute is regarded as absolute indifference, and only admitting of
quantitative distinction.--Otherwise pure space, time, &c. may be taken
as examples of Quantity, if we allow ourselves to regard the real as
whatever fills up space and time, it matters not with what.
The mathematical definition of magnitude as what may be increased
or diminished, appears at first sight to be more plausible and
perspicuous than the exposition of the notion in the present
section. When closely examined, however, it involves, under cover
of pre-suppositions and images, the same elements as appear in the
notion of quantity reached by the method of logical development. In
other words, when we say that the notion of magnitude lies in the
possibility of being increased or diminished, we state that magnitude
(or more correctly, quantity), as distinguished from quality, is a
characteristic of such kind that the characterised thing is not in the
least affected by any change in it. What then, it may be asked, is
the fault which we have to find with this definition? It is that to
increase and to diminish is the same thing as to characterise magnitude
otherwise. If this aspect then were an adequate account of it, quantity
would be described merely as whatever can be altered. But quality is
no less than quantity open to alteration; and the distinction here
given between quantity and quality is expressed by saying increase
_or_ diminution: the meaning being that, towards whatever side the
determination of magnitude be altered, the thing still remains what it
is.
One remark more. Throughout philosophy we do not seek merely for
correct, still less for plausible definitions, whose correctness
appeals directly to the popular imagination; we seek approved or
verified definitions, the content of which is not assumed merely as
given, but is seen and known to warrant itself, because warranted
by the free self-evolution of thought. To apply this to the present
case. However correct and self-evident the definition of quantity
usual in Mathematics may be, it will still fail to satisfy the wish to
see how far this particular thought is founded in universal thought,
and in that way necessary. This difficulty, however, is not the only
one. If quantity is not reached through the action of thought, but
taken uncritically from our generalised image of it, we are liable
to exaggerate the range of its validity, or even to raise it to the
height of an absolute category. And that such a danger is real, we see
when the title of exact science is restricted to those sciences the
objects of which can be submitted to mathematical calculation. Here we
have another trace of the bad metaphysics (mentioned in § 98, note)
which replace the concrete idea by partial and inadequate categories of
understanding. Our knowledge would be in a very awkward predicament if
such objects as freedom, law, morality, or even God Himself, because
they cannot be measured and calculated, or expressed in a mathematical
formula, were to be reckoned beyond the reach of exact knowledge, and
we had to put up with a vague generalised image of them, leaving their
details or particulars to the pleasure of each individual, to make
out of them what he will. The pernicious consequences, to which such
a theory gives rise in practice, are at once evident. And this mere
mathematical view, which identifies with the Idea one of its special
stages, viz. quantity, is no other than the principle of Materialism.
Witness the history of the scientific modes of thought, especially in
France since the middle of last century. Matter, in the abstract, is
just what, though of course there is form in it, has that form only as
an indifferent and external attribute.
The present explanation would be utterly misconceived if it were
supposed to disparage mathematics. By calling the quantitative
characteristic merely external and indifferent, we provide no excuse
for indolence and superficiality, nor do we assert that quantitative
characteristics may be left to mind themselves, or at least require no
very careful handling. Quantity, of course, is a stage of the Idea: and
as such it must have its due, first as a logical category, and then
in the world of objects, natural as well as spiritual. Still even so,
there soon emerges the different importance attaching to the category
of quantity according as its objects belong to the natural or to the
spiritual world. For in Nature, where the form of the Idea is to be
other than, and at the same time outside, itself, greater importance is
for that very reason attached to quantity than in the spiritual world,
the world of free inwardness. No doubt we regard even spiritual facts
under a quantitative point of view; but it is at once apparent that in
speaking of God as a Trinity, the number three has by no means the same
prominence, as when we consider the three dimensions of space or the
three sides of a triangle;--the fundamental feature of which last is
just to be a surface bounded by three lines. Even inside the realm of
Nature we find the same distinction of greater or less importance of
quantitative features. In the inorganic world, Quantity plays, so to
say, a more prominent part than in the organic. Even in organic nature
when we distinguish mechanical functions from what are called chemical,
and in the narrower sense, physical, there is the same difference.
Mechanics is of all branches of science, confessedly, that in which the
aid of mathematics can be least dispensed with,--where indeed we cannot
take one step without them. On that account mechanics is regarded next
to mathematics as the science _par excellence_; which leads us to
repeat the remark about the coincidence of the materialist with the
exclusively mathematical point of view. After all that has been said,
we cannot but hold it, in the interest of exact and thorough knowledge,
one of the most hurtful prejudices, to seek all distinction and
determinateness of objects merely in quantitative considerations. Mind
to be sure is more than Nature and the animal is more than the plant:
but we know very little of these objects and the distinction between
them, if a more and less is enough for us, and if we do not proceed to
comprehend them in their peculiar, that is their qualitative character.
100.] Quantity, as we saw, has two sources: the exclusive unit, and
the identification or equalisation of these units. When we look
therefore at its immediate relation to self, or at the characteristic
of self-sameness made explicit by attraction, quantity is Continuous
magnitude; but when we look at the other characteristic, the One
implied in it, it is Discrete magnitude. Still continuous quantity has
also a certain discreteness, being but a continuity of the Many: and
discrete quantity is no less continuous, its continuity being the One
or Unit, that is, the self-same point of the many Ones.
(1) Continuous and Discrete magnitude, therefore, must not be supposed
two species of magnitude, as if the characteristic of the one did not
attach to the other. The only distinction between them is that the
same whole (of quantity) is at one time explicitly put under the one,
at another under the other of its characteristics. (2) The Antinomy of
space, of time, or of matter, which discusses the question of their
being divisible for ever, or of consisting of indivisible units, just
means that we maintain quantity as at one time Discrete, at
another Continuous. If we explicitly invest time, space, or matter with
the attribute of Continuous quantity alone, they are divisible _ad
infinitum._ When, on the contrary, they are invested with the attribute
of Discrete quantity, they are potentially divided already, and consist
of indivisible units. The one view is as inadequate as the other.
Quantity, as the proximate result of Being-for-self, involves the
two sides in the process of the latter, attraction and repulsion, as
constitutive elements of its own idea. It is consequently Continuous
as well as Discrete. Each of these two elements involves the other
also, and hence there is no such thing as a merely Continuous or a
merely Discrete quantity. We may speak of the two as two particular and
opposite species of magnitude; but that is merely the result of our
abstracting reflection, which in viewing definite magnitudes waives now
the one, now the other, of the elements contained in inseparable unity
in the notion of quantity. Thus, it may be said, the space occupied by
this room is a continuous magnitude, and the hundred men, assembled
in it, form a discrete magnitude. And yet the space is continuous and
discrete at the same time; hence we speak of points of space, or we
divide space, a certain length, into so many feet, inches, &c, which
can be done only on the hypothesis that space is also potentially
discrete. Similarly, on the other hand, the discrete magnitude, made
up of a hundred men, is also continuous: and the circumstance on which
this continuity depends, is the common element, the species man, which
pervades all the individuals and unites them with each other.
(b) _Quantum (How Much)._
101.] Quantity, essentially invested with the exclusionist character
which it involves, is Quantum (or How Much): _i.e._ limited
quantity.
Quantum is, as it were, the determinate Being of quantity: whereas mere
quantity corresponds to abstract Being, and the Degree, which is next
to be considered, corresponds to Being-for-self. As for the details
of the advance from mere quantity to quantum, it is founded on this:
that whilst in mere quantity the distinction, as a distinction of
continuity and discreteness, is at first only implicit, in a quantum
the distinction is actually made, so that quantity in general now
appears as distinguished or limited. But in this way the quantum breaks
up at the same time into an indefinite multitude of Quanta or definite
magnitudes. Each of these definite magnitudes, as distinguished from
the others, forms a unity, while on the other hand, viewed _per se,_ it
is a many. And, when that is done, the quantum is described as Number.
102.] In Number the quantum reaches its development and perfect
mode. Like the One, the medium in which it exists, Number involves two
qualitative factors or functions; Annumeration or Sum, which depends on
the factor discreteness, and Unity, which depends on continuity.
In arithmetic the several kinds of operation are usually presented as
accidental modes of dealing with numbers. If necessity and meaning
is to be found in these operations, it must be by a principle: and
that must come from the characteristic elements in the notion of
number itself. (This principle must here be briefly exhibited.) These
characteristic elements are Annumeration on the one hand, and Unity on
the other, which together constitute number. But Unity, when applied
to empirical numbers, is only the equality of these numbers: hence the
principle of arithmetical operations must be to put numbers in the
ratio of Unity and Sum (or amount), and to elicit the equality of these
two modes.
The Ones or the numbers themselves are indifferent towards each other,
and hence the unity into which they are translated by the arithmetical
operation takes the aspect of an external colligation. All reckoning is
therefore making up the tale: and the difference between the species of
it lies only in the qualitative constitution of the numbers of which we
make up the tale. The principle for this constitution is given by the
way we fix Unity and Annumeration.
Numeration comes first: what we may call, making number; a colligation
of as many units as we please. But to get a _species_ of calculation,
it is necessary that what we count up should be numbers already, and no
longer a mere unit.
First, and as they naturally come to hand, Numbers are quite vaguely
numbers in general, and so, on the whole, unequal. The colligation, or
telling the tale of these, is Addition.
The second point of view under which we regard numbers is as equal,
so that they make one unity, and of such there is an annumeration or
sum before us. To tell the tale of these is Multiplication. It makes
no matter in the process, how the functions of Sum and Unity are
distributed between the two numbers, or factors of the product; either
may be Sum and either may be Unity.
The third and final point of view is the equality of Sum (amount) and
Unity. To number together numbers when so characterised is Involution;
and in the first instance raising them to the square power. To
raise the number to ä higher power means in point of form to go on
multiplying a number with itself an indefinite amount of times.--Since
this third type of calculation exhibits the complete equality of the
sole existing distinction in number, viz. the distinction between Sum
or amount and Unity, there can be no more than these three modes of
calculation. Corresponding to the integration we have the dissolution
of numbers according to the same features. Hence besides the three
species mentioned, which may to that extent be called positive, there
are three negative species of arithmetical operation.
Number, in general, is the quantum in its complete specialisation.
Hence we may employ it not only to determine what we call discrete, but
what are called continuous magnitudes as well. For that reason even
geometry must call in the aid of number, when it is required to specify
definite figurations of space and their ratios.
(c) _Degree._
103.] The limit (in a quantum) is identical with the whole of the
quantum itself. As _in itself_ multiple, the limit is Extensive
magnitude; as in itself _simple_ determinateness (qualitative
simplicity), it is Intensive magnitude or Degree.
The distinction between Continuous and Discrete magnitude differs
from that between Extensive and Intensive in the circumstance that
the former apply to quantity in general, while the latter apply to
the limit or determinateness of it as such. Intensive and Extensive
magnitude are not, any more than the other, two species, of which the
one involves a character not possessed by the other: what is Extensive
magnitude is just as much Intensive, and _vice versâ._
Intensive magnitude or Degree is in its notion distinct from Extensive
magnitude or the Quantum. It is therefore inadmissible to refuse,
as many do, to recognise this distinction, and without scruple to
identify the two forms of magnitude. They are so identified in
physics, when difference of specific gravity is explained by saying,
that a body, with a specific gravity twice that of another, contains
within the same space twice as many material parts (or atoms) as the
other. So with heat and light, if the various degrees of temperature
and brilliancy were to be explained by the greater or less number of
particles (or molecules) of heat and light. No doubt the physicists,
who employ such a mode of explanation, usually excuse themselves, when
they are remonstrated with on its untenableness, by saying that the
expression is without prejudice to the confessedly unknowable essence
of such phenomena, and employed merely for greater convenience. This
greater convenience is meant to point to the easier application of the
calculus: but it is hard to see why Intensive magnitudes, having, as
they do, a definite numerical expression of their own, should not be
as convenient for calculation as Extensive magnitudes. If convenience
be all that is desired, surely it would be more convenient to banish
calculation and thought altogether. A further point against the apology
offered by the physicists is, that, to engage in explanations of this
kind, is to overstep the sphere of perception and experience, and
resort to the realm of metaphysics and of what at other times would be
called idle or even pernicious speculation. It is certainly a fact of
experience that, if one of two purses filled with shillings is twice
as heavy as the other, the reason must be, that the one contains, say
two hundred, and the other only one hundred shillings. These pieces
of money we can see and feel with our senses: atoms, molecules, and
the like, are on the contrary beyond the range of sensuous perception;
and thought alone can decide whether they are admissible, and have
a meaning. But (as already noticed in § 98, note) it is abstract
understanding which stereotypes the factor of multeity (involved in the
notion of Being-for-self) in the shape of atoms, and adopts it as an
ultimate principle. It is the same abstract understanding which, in
the present instance, at equal variance with unprejudiced perception
and with real concrete thought, regards Extensive magnitude as the
sole form of quantity, and, where Intensive magnitudes occur, does not
recognise them in their own character, but makes a violent attempt by a
wholly untenable hypothesis to reduce them to Extensive magnitudes.
Among the charges made against modern philosophy, one is heard more
than another. Modern philosophy, it is said, reduces everything to
identity. Hence its nickname, the Philosophy of Identity. But the
present discussion may teach that it is philosophy, and philosophy
alone, which insists on distinguishing what is logically as well as
in experience different; while the professed devotees of experience
are the people who erect abstract identity into the chief principle
of knowledge. It is their philosophy which might more appropriately
be termed one of identity. Besides it is quite correct that there are
no merely Extensive and merely Intensive magnitudes, just as little
as there are merely continuous and merely discrete magnitudes. The
two characteristics of quantity are not opposed as independent kinds.
Every Intensive magnitude is also Extensive, and _vice versâ._ Thus a
certain degree of temperature is an Intensive magnitude, which has a
perfectly simple sensation corresponding to it as such. If we look at a
thermometer, we find this degree of temperature has a certain expansion
of the column of mercury corresponding to it; which Extensive magnitude
changes simultaneously with the temperature or Intensive magnitude. The
case is similar in the world of mind: a more intensive character has a
wider range with its effects than a less intensive.
104.] In Degree the notion of quantum is explicitly put. It is
magnitude as indifferent on its own account and simple: but in such
a way that the character (or modal being) which makes it a quantum
lies quite outside it in other magnitudes. In this contradiction,
where the _independent_ indifferent limit is absolute _externality,_
the Infinite Quantitative Progression is made explicit--an immediacy
which immediately veers round into its counterpart, into mediation (the
passing beyond and over the quantum just laid down), and _vice versâ._
Number is a thought, but thought in its complete self-externalisation.
Because it is a thought, it does not belong to perception: but it is a
thought which is characterised by the externality of perception.--Not
only therefore _may_ the quantum be increased or diminished without
end: the very notion of quantum is thus to push out and out beyond
itself. The infinite quantitative progression is only the meaningless
repetition of one and the same contradiction, which attaches to the
quantum, both generally and, when explicitly invested with its special
character, as degree. Touching the futility of enunciating this
contradiction in the form of infinite progression, Zeno, as quoted by
Aristotle, rightly says, 'It is the same to say a thing once, and to
say it for ever.'
(1) If we follow the usual definition of the mathematicians, given in
§ 99, and say that magnitude is what can be increased or diminished,
there may be nothing to urge against the correctness of the perception
on which it is founded; but the question remains, how we come to
assume such a capacity of increase or diminution. If we simply appeal
for an answer to experience, we try an unsatisfactory course; because
apart from the fact that we should merely have a material image of
magnitude, and not the thought of it, magnitude would come out as a
bare possibility (of increasing or diminishing) and we should have no
key to the necessity for its exhibiting this behaviour. In the way of
our logical evolution, on the contrary, quantity is obviously a grade
the process of self-determining thought; and it has been shown that it
lies in the very notion of quantity to shoot out beyond itself. In that
way, the increase or diminution (of which we have heard) is not merely
possible, but necessary.
(2) The quantitative infinite progression is what the reflective
understanding usually relies upon when it is engaged with the
general question of Infinity. The same thing however holds good of
this progression, as was already remarked on the occasion of the
qualitatively, infinite progression. As was then said, it is not the
expression of a true, but of a wrong infinity; it never gets further
than a bare 'ought,' and thus really remains within the limits
of finitude. The quantitative form of this infinite progression,
which Spinoza rightly calls a mere imaginary infinity (_infinitum
imaginationis,_) is an image often employed by poets, such as Haller
and Klopstock, to depict the infinity, not of Nature merely, but even
of God Himself. Thus we find Haller, in a famous description of God's
infinity, saying:
Ich häufe ungeheure Zahlen,
Gebirge Millionen auf,
Ich sesse Zeit auf Zeit
Und Welt auf Welt zu Hauf,
Und wenn ich von der grausen Höh'
Mit Schwindel wieder nach Dir seh:
Ist alle Macht der Zahl,
Vermehrt zu Tausendmal,
Noch nicht ein Theil von Dir.
[I heap up monstrous numbers, mountains of millions; I pile time upon
time, and world on the top of world; and when from the awful height I
cast a dizzy look towards Thee, all the power of number, multiplied a
thousand times, is not yet one part of Thee.]
Here then we meet, in the first place, that continual extrusion of
quantity, and especially of number, beyond itself, which Kant describes
as 'eery.' The only really 'eery' thing about it is the wearisomeness
of ever fixing, and anon unfixing a limit, without advancing a single
step. The same poet however well adds to that description of false
infinity the closing line:
Ich zieh sie ab, und Du liegst ganz vor mir.
[These I remove, and Thou liest all before me.]
Which means, that the true infinite is more than a mere world beyond
the finite, and that we, in order to become conscious of it, must
renounce that _progressus in infinitum._
(3) Pythagoras, as is well known, philosophised in numbers, and
conceived number as the fundamental principle of things. To the
ordinary mind this view must at first glance seem an utter paradox,
perhaps a mere craze. What, then, are we to think of it? To answer
this question, we must, in the first place, remember that the problem
of philosophy consists in tracing back things to thoughts, and, of
course, to definite thoughts. Now, number is undoubtedly a thought: it
is the thought nearest the sensible, or, more precisely expressed, it
is the thought of the sensible itself, if we take the sensible to mean
what is many, and in reciprocal exclusion. The attempt to apprehend
the universe as number is therefore the first step to metaphysics. In
the history of philosophy, Pythagoras, as we know, stands between the
Ionian philosophers and the Eleatics. While the former, as Aristotle
says, never get beyond viewing the essence of things as material (ὕλη),
and the latter, especially Parmenides, advanced as far as pure thought,
in the shape of Being, the principle of the Pythagorean philosophy
forms, as it were, the bridge from the sensible to the super-sensible.
We may gather from this, what is to be said of those who suppose that
Pythagoras undoubtedly went too far, when he conceived the essence
of things as mere number. It is true, they admit, that we can number
things; but, they contend, things are far more than mere numbers. But
in what respect are they more? The ordinary sensuous consciousness,
from its own point of view, would not hesitate to answer the question
by handing us over to sensuous perception, and remarking, that things
are not merely numerable, but also visible, odorous, palpable, &c. In
the phrase of modern times, the fault of Pythagoras would be described
as an excess of idealism. As may be gathered from what has been said
on the historical position of the Pythagorean school, the real state
of the case is quite the reverse. Let it be conceded that things are
more than numbers; but the meaning of that admission must be that the
bare thought of number is still insufficient to enunciate the definite
notion or essence of things. Instead, then, of saying that Pythagoras
went too far with his philosophy of number, it would be nearer the
truth to say that he did not go far enough; and in fact the Eleatics
were the first to take the further step to pure thought.
Besides, even if there are not things, there are states of things, and
phenomena of nature altogether, the character of which mainly rests on
definite numbers and proportions. This is especially the case with the
difference of tones and their harmonic concord, which, according to a
well-known tradition, first suggested to Pythagoras to conceive the
essence of things as number. Though it is unquestionably important to
science to trace back these phenomena to the definite numbers on which
they are based, it is wholly inadmissible to view the characterisation
by thought as a whole, as merely numerical. We may certainly feel
ourselves prompted to associate the most general characteristics of
thought with the first numbers: saying, 1 is the simple and immediate;
2 is difference and mediation; and 3 the unity of both of these. Such
associations however are purely external: there is nothing in the mere
numbers to make them express these definite thoughts. With every step
in this method, the more arbitrary grows the association of definite
numbers with definite thoughts. Thus, we may view 4 as the unity of
1 and 3, and of the thoughts associated with them, but 4 is just as
much the double of 2; similarly 9 is not merely the square of 3, but
also the sum of 8 and I, of 7 and 2, and so on. To attach, as do some
secret societies of modern times, importance to all sorts of numbers
and figures, is to some extent an innocent amusement, but it is also a
sign of deficiency of intellectual resource. These numbers, it is said,
conceal a profound meaning, and suggest a deal to think about. But the
point in philosophy is, not what you may think, but what you do think:
and the genuine air of thought is to be sought in thought itself, and
not in arbitrarily selected symbols.
105.] That the Quantum in its independent character is external to
itself, is what constitutes its quality. In that externality it
is itself and referred connectively to itself. There is a union in
it of externality, _i.e._ the quantitative, and of independency
(Being-for-self),--the qualitative. The Quantum when explicitly put
thus in its own self, is the Quantitative Ratio, a mode of being
which, while, in its Exponent, it is an immediate quantum, is also
mediation, viz. the reference of some one quantum to another, forming
the two sides of the ratio. But the two quanta are not reckoned at
their immediate value: their value is only in this relation.
The quantitative infinite progression appears at first as a continual
extrusion of number beyond itself. On looking closer, it is, however,
apparent that in this progression quantity returns to itself: for
the meaning of this progression, so far as thought goes, is the fact
that number is determined by number. And this gives the quantitative
ratio. Take, for example, the ratio 2:4. Here we have two magnitudes
(not counted in their several immediate values) in which we are only
concerned with their mutual relations. This relation of the two terms
(the exponent of the ratio) is itself a magnitude, distinguished from
the related magnitudes by this, that a change in it is followed by a
change of the ratio, whereas the ratio is unaffected by the change of
both its sides, and remains the same so long as the exponent is not
changed. Consequently, in place of 2:4, we can put 3:6 without changing
the ratio; as the exponent 2 remains the same in both cases.
106.] The two sides of the ratio are still immediate quanta: and the
qualitative and quantitative characteristics still external to one
another. But in their truth, seeing that the quantitative itself in its
externality is relation to self, or seeing that the independence and
the indifference of the character are combined, it is Measure.
Thus quantity by means of the dialectical movement so far studied
through its several stages, turns out to be a return to quality. The
first notion of quantity presented to us was that of quality abrogated
and absorbed. That is to say, quantity seemed an external character not
identical with Being, to which it is quite immaterial. This notion, as
we have seen, underlies the mathematical definition of magnitude as
what can be increased or diminished. At first sight this definition
may create the impression that quantity is merely whatever can be
altered:--increase and diminution alike implying determination of
magnitude otherwise--and may tend to confuse it with determinate Being,
the second stage of quality, which in its notion is similarly conceived
as alterable. We can, however, complete the definition by adding, that
in quantity we have an alterable, which in spite of alterations still
remains the same. The notion of quantity, it thus turns out, implies an
inherent contradiction. This, contradiction is what forms the dialectic
of quantity. The result of the dialectic however is not a mere return
to quality, as if that were the true and quantity the false notion, but
an advance to the unity and truth of both, to qualitative quantity, or
Measure.
It may be well therefore at this point to observe that whenever in
our study of the objective world we are engaged in quantitative
determinations, it is in all cases Measure which we have in view, as
the goal of our operations. This is hinted at even in language, when
the ascertainment of quantitative features and relations is called
measuring. We measure, _e.g._ the length of different chords that have
been put into a state of vibration, with an eye to the qualitative
difference of the tones caused by their vibration, corresponding to
this difference of length. Similarly, in chemistry, we try to ascertain
the quantity of the matters brought into combination, in order to find
out the measures or proportions conditioning such combinations, that
is to say, those quantities which give rise to definite qualities.
In statistics, too, the numbers with which the study is engaged are
important only from the qualitative results conditioned by them. Mere
collection of numerical facts, prosecuted without regard to the ends
here noted, is justly called an exercise of idle curiosity, of neither
theoretical nor practical interest.
107.] Measure is the qualitative quantum, in the first place as
immediate,--a quantum, to which a determinate being or a quality is
attached.
Measure, where quality and quantity are in one, is thus the completion
of Being. Being, as we first apprehend it, is something utterly
abstract and characterless: but it is the very essence of Being to
characterise itself, and its complete characterisation is reached
in Measure. Measure, like the other stages of Being, may serve as a
definition of the Absolute: God, it has been said, is the Measure of
all things. It is this idea which forms the ground-note of many of the
ancient Hebrew hymns, in which the glorification of God tends in the
main to show that He has appointed to everything its bound: to the
sea and the solid land, to the rivers and mountains; and also to the
various kinds of plants and animals. To the religious sense of the
Greeks the divinity of measure, especially in respect of social ethics,
was represented by Nemesis. That conception implies a general theory
that all human things, riches, honour, and power, as well as joy and
pain, have their definite measure, the transgression of which brings
ruin and destruction. In the world of objects, too, we have measure. We
see, in the first place, existences in Nature, of which measure forms
the essential structure. This is the case, for example, with the solar
system, which may be described as the realm of free measures. As we
next proceed to the study of inorganic nature, measure retires, as it
were, into the background; at least we often find the quantitative and
qualitative characteristics showing indifference to each other. Thus
the quality of a rock or a river is not tied to a definite magnitude.
But even these objects when closely inspected are found not to be quite
measureless: the water of a river, and the single constituents of a
rock, when chemically analysed, are seen to be qualities conditioned
by quantitative ratios between the matters they contain. In organic
nature, however, measure again rises full into immediate perception.
The various kinds of plants and animals, in the whole as well as in
their parts, have a certain measure: though it is worth noticing that
the more imperfect forms, those which are least removed from inorganic
nature, are partly distinguished from the higher forms by the greater
indefiniteness of their measure. Thus among fossils, we find some
ammonites discernible only by the microscope, and others as large as a
cart-wheel. The same vagueness of measure appears in several plants,
which stand on a low level of organic development,--for instance, ferns.
108.] In so far as in Measure quality and quantity are only in
_immediate_ unity, to that extent their difference presents itself in
a manner equally immediate. Two cases are then possible. Either the
specific quantum or measure is a bare quantum, and the definite being
(there-and-then) is capable of an increase or a diminution, without
Measure (which to that extent is a Rule) being thereby set completely
aside. Or the alteration of the quantum is also an alteration of the
quality.
The identity between quantity and quality, which is found in Measure,
is at first only implicit, and not yet explicitly realised. In other
words, these two categories, which unite in Measure, each claim an
independent authority. On the one hand, the quantitative features of
existence may be altered, without affecting its quality. On the other
hand, this increase and diminution, immaterial though it be, has
its limit, by exceeding which the quality suffers change. Thus the
temperature of water is, in the first place, a point of no consequence
in respect of its liquidity: still with the increase or diminution
of the temperature of the liquid water, there comes a point where
this state of cohesion suffers a qualitative change, and the water
is converted into steam or ice. A quantitative change takes place,
apparently without any further significance: but there is something
lurking behind, and a seemingly innocent change of quantity acts as a
kind of snare, to catch hold of the quality. The antinomy of Measure
which this implies was exemplified under more than one garb among the
Greeks. It was asked, for example, whether a single grain makes a heap
of wheat, or whether it makes a bald-tail to tear out a single hair
from the horse's tail. At first, no doubt, looking at the nature of
quantity as an indifferent and external character of Being, we are
disposed to answer these questions in the negative. And yet, as we
must admit, this indifferent increase and diminution has its limit:
a point is finally reached, where a single additional grain makes a
heap of wheat; and the bald-tail is produced, if we continue plucking
out single hairs. These examples find a parallel in the story of the
peasant who, as his ass trudged cheerfully along, went on adding ounce
after ounce to its load, till at length it sunk under the unendurable
burden. It would be a mistake to treat these examples as pedantic
futility; they really turn on thoughts, an acquaintance with which is
of great importance in practical life, especially in ethics. Thus in
the matter of expenditure, there is a certain latitude within which
a more or less does not matter; but when the Measure, imposed by the
individual circumstances of the special case, is exceeded on the one
side or the other, the qualitative nature of Measure (as in the above
examples of the different temperature of water) makes itself felt,
and a course, which a moment before was held good economy, turns into
avarice or prodigality. The same principle may be applied in politics,
when the constitution of a state has to be looked at as independent of,
no less than as dependent on, the extent of its territory, the number
of its inhabitants, and other quantitative points of the same kind. If
we look _e.g._ at a state with a territory of ten thousand square miles
and a population of four millions, we should, without hesitation, admit
that a few square miles of land or a few thousand inhabitants more or
less could exercise no essential influence on the character of its
constitution. But, on the other hand, we must not forget, that by the
continual increase or diminishing of a state, we finally get to a point
where, apart from all other circumstances, this quantitative alteration
alone necessarily draws with it an alteration in the quality of the
constitution. The constitution of a little Swiss canton does not suit
a great kingdom; and, similarly, the constitution of the Roman republic
was unsuitable when transferred to the small imperial towns of Germany.
109.] In this second case, when a measure through its quantitative
nature has gone in excess of its qualitative character, we meet, what
is at first an absence of measure, the Measureless. But seeing
that the second quantitative ratio, which in comparison with the first
is measureless, is none the less qualitative, the measureless is also a
measure. These two transitions, from quality to quantum, and from the
latter back again to quality, may be represented under the image of an
infinite progression--as the self-abrogation and restoration of measure
in the measureless.
Quantity, as we have seen, is not only capable of alteration, _i.e._
of increase or diminution: it is naturally and necessarily a tendency
to exceed itself. This tendency is maintained even in measure. But if
the quantity present in measure exceeds a certain limit, the quality
corresponding to it is also put in abeyance. This however is not a
negation of quality altogether, but only of this definite quality, the
place of which is at once occupied by another. This process of measure,
which appears alternately as a mere change in quantity, and then as a
sudden revulsion of quantity into quality, may be envisaged under the
figure of a nodal (knotted) line. Such lines we find in Nature under
a variety of forms. We have already referred to the qualitatively
different states of aggregation water exhibits under increase or
diminution of temperature. The same phenomenon is presented by the
different degrees in the oxidation of metals. Even the difference of
musical notes may be regarded as an example of what takes place in
the process of measure,--the revulsion from what is at first merely
quantitative into qualitative alteration.
110.] What really takes place here is that the immediacy, which still
attaches to measure as such, is set aside. In measure, at first,
quality and quantity itself are immediate, and measure is only their
'relative' identity. But measure shows itself absorbed and superseded
in the measureless: yet the measureless, although it be the negation
of measure, is itself a unity of quantity and quality. Thus in the
measureless the measure is still seen to meet only with itself.
111.] Instead of the more abstract factors, Being and Nothing, some
and other, &c., the Infinite, which is affirmation as a negation
of negation, now finds its factors in quality and quantity. These
(α) have in the first place passed over, quality into quantity, (§
98), and quantity into quality (§ 105), and thus are both shown up
as negations, (ß) But in their unity, that is, in measure, they are
originally distinct, and the one is only through the instrumentality of
the other. And (γ) after the immediacy of this unity has turned out to
be self-annulling, the unity is explicitly put as what it implicitly
is, simple relation-to-self, which contains in it being and all its
forms absorbed.--Being or immediacy, which by the negation of itself
is a mediation with self and a reference to self,--which consequently
is also a mediation which cancels itself into reference-to-self, or
immediacy,--is Essence.
The process of measure, instead of being only the wrong infinite of
an endless progression, in the shape of an ever-recurrent recoil
from quality to quantity, and from quantity to quality, is also
the true infinity of coincidence with self in another. In measure,
quality and quantity originally confront each other, like some and
other. But quality is implicitly quantity, and conversely quantity
is implicitly quality. In the process of measure, therefore, these
two pass into each other: each of them becomes what it already was
implicitly: and thus we get Being thrown into abeyance and absorbed,
with its several characteristics negatived. Such Being is Essence.
Measure is implicitly Essence; and its process consists in realising
what it is implicitly.--The ordinary consciousness conceives things
as being, and studies them in quality, quantity, and measure. These
immediate characteristics however soon show themselves to be not fixed
but transient; and Essence is the result of their dialectic. In the
sphere of Essence one category does not pass into another, but refers
to another merely. In Being, the form of reference is purely due to
our reflection on what takes place: but it is the special and proper
characteristic of Essence. In the sphere of Being, when somewhat
becomes another, the somewhat has vanished. Not so in Essence: here
there is no real other, but only diversity, reference of the one
to _its_ other. The transition of Essence is therefore at the same
time no transition: for in the passage of different into different,
the different does not vanish: the different terms remain in their
relation. When we speak of Being and Nought, Being is independent, so
is Nought. The case is otherwise with the Positive and the Negative.
No doubt these possess the characteristic of Being and Nought. But
the positive by itself has no sense; it is wholly in reference to the
negative. And it is the same with the negative. In the sphere of Being
the reference of one term to another is only implicit; in Essence on
the contrary it is explicit And this in general is the distinction
between the forms of Being and Essence: in Being everything is
immediate, in Essence everything is relative.