CHAPTER VIII.

SECOND SUB-DIVISION OF LOGIC.

THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE.

112.] The terms in Essence are always mere pairs of correlatives, and

not yet absolutely reflected in themselves: hence in essence the actual

unity of the notion is not realised, but only postulated by reflection.

Essence,--which is Being coming into mediation with itself through the

negativity of itself--is self-relatedness, only in so far as it is

relation to an Other,--this Other however coming to view at first not

as something which _is,_ but as postulated and hypothetised.--Being has

not vanished: but, firstly, Essence, as simple self-relation, is Being,

and secondly as regards its one-sided characteristic of immediacy,

Being is deposed to a mere negative, to a seeming or reflected

light--Essence accordingly is Being thus reflecting light into itself.

The Absolute is the Essence. This is the same definition as the

previous one that the Absolute is Being, in so far as Being likewise

is simple self-relation. But it is at the same time higher, because

Essence is Being that has gone into itself: that is to say, the

simple self-relation (in Being) is expressly put as negation of

the negative, as immanent self-mediation.--Unfortunately when the

Absolute is defined to be the Essence, the negativity which this

implies is often taken only to mean the withdrawal of all determinate

predicates. This negative action of withdrawal or abstraction thus

falls outside of the Essence--which is thus left as a mere result apart

from its premisses,--the _caput mortuum_ of abstraction. But as this

negativity, instead of being external to Being, is its own dialectic,

the truth of the latter, viz. Essence, will be Being as retired within

itself,--immanent Being. That reflection, or light thrown into itself,

constitutes the distinction between Essence and immediate Being, and is

the peculiar characteristic of Essence itself.

* * * * *

Any mention of Essence implies that we distinguish it from Being:

the latter is immediate, and, compared with the Essence, we look upon

it as mere seeming. But this seeming is not an utter nonentity and

nothing at all, but Being superseded and put by. The point of view

given by the Essence is in general the standpoint of 'Reflection.'

This word 'reflection' is originally applied, when a ray of light in

a straight line impinging upon the surface of a mirror is thrown back

from it. In this phenomenon we have two things,--first an immediate

fact which is, and secondly the deputed, derivated, or transmitted

phase of the same.--Something of this sort takes place when we reflect,

or think upon an object; for here we want to know the object, not in

its immediacy, but as derivative or mediated. The problem or aim of

philosophy is often represented as the ascertainment of the essence of

things: a phrase which only means that things instead of being left

in their immediacy, must be shown to be mediated by, or based upon,

something else. The immediate Being of things is thus conceived under

the image of a rind or curtain behind which the Essence lies hidden.

Everything, it is said, has an Essence; that is, things really are not

what they immediately show themselves. There is therefore something

more to be done than merely rove from one quality to another, and

merely to advance from qualitative to quantitative, and _vice versâ:_

there is a permanent in things, and that permanent is in the first

instance their Essence. With respect to other meanings and uses of the

category of Essence, we may note that in the German auxiliary verb

_'sein'_ the past tense is expressed by the term for Essence (_Wesen_):

we designate past being as _gewesen._ This anomaly of language implies

to some extent a correct perception of the relation between Being and

Essence. Essence we may certainly regard as past Being, remembering

however meanwhile that the past is not utterly denied, but only laid

aside and thus at the same time preserved. Thus, to say, Caesar _was_

in Gaul, only denies the immediacy of the event, but not his sojourn

in Gaul altogether. That sojourn is just what forms the import of

the proposition, in which however it is represented as over and

gone.--'_Wesen_' in ordinary life frequently means only a collection

or aggregate: Zeitungswesen (the Press), Postwesen (the Post-Office),

Steuerwesen (the Revenue). All that these terms mean is that the things

in question are not to be taken single, in their immediacy, but as a

complex, and then, perhaps, in addition, in their various bearings.

This usage of the term is not very different in its implication from

our own.

People also speak of _finite_ Essences, such as man. But the very term

Essence implies that we have made a step beyond finitude: and the title

as applied to man is so far inexact. It is often added that there is

a supreme Essence (Being): by which is meant God. On this two remarks

may be made. In the first place the phrase 'there is' suggests a

finite only: as when we say, there are so many planets, or, there are

plants of such a constitution and plants of such an other. In these

cases we are speaking of something which has other things beyond and

beside it. But God, the absolutely infinite, is not something outside

and beside whom there are other essences. All else outside f God, if

separated from Him, possesses no essentiality: in its I isolation it

becomes a mere show or seeming, without stay or essence of its own.

But, secondly, it is a poor way of talking to call God the _highest_

or supreme Essence. The category of quantity which the phrase employs

has its proper place within the compass of the finite. When we call

one mountain the highest on the earth, we have a vision of other

high mountains beside it. So too when we call any one the richest or

most learned in his country. But God, far from being _a_ Being, even

the highest, is _the_ Being. This definition, however, though such

a representation of God is an important and necessary stage in the

growth of the religious consciousness, does not by any means exhaust

the depth of the ordinary Christian idea of God. If we consider God as

the Essence only, and nothing more, we know Him only as the universal

and irresistible Power; in other words, as the Lord. Now the fear of

the Lord is, doubtless, the beginning,--but _only_ the beginning, of

wisdom. To look at God in this light, as the Lord, and the Lord alone,

is especially characteristic of Judaism and also of Mohammedanism.

The defect of these religions lies in their scant recognition of the

finite, which, be it as natural things or as finite phases of mind,

it is characteristic of the heathen and (as they also for that reason

are) polytheistic religions to maintain intact. Another not uncommon

assertion is that God, as the supreme Being, cannot be known. Such is

the view taken by modern 'enlightenment' and abstract understanding,

which is content to say, _Il y a un être suprême_: and there lets

the matter rest. To speak thus, and treat God merely as the supreme

other-world Being, implies that we look upon the world before us in

its immediacy as something permanent and positive, and forget that

true Being is just the superseding of all that is immediate. If God

be the abstract super-sensible Being, outside whom therefore lies all

difference and all specific character, He is only a bare name, a mere

_caput mortuum_ of abstracting understanding. The true knowledge of God

begins when we know that things, as they immediately are, have no truth.

In reference also to other subjects besides God the category of Essence

is often liable to an abstract use, by which, in the study of anything,

its Essence is held to be something unaffected by, and subsisting in

independence of, its definite phenomenal embodiment. Thus we say, for

example, of people, that the great thing is not what they do or how

they behave, but what they are. This is correct, if it means that a

man's conduct should be looked at, not in its immediacy, but only as

it is explained by his inner self, and as a revelation of that inner

self. Still it should be remembered that the only means by which the

Essence and the inner self can be verified, is their appearance in

outward reality; whereas the appeal which men make to the essential

life, as distinct from the material facts of conduct, is generally

prompted by a desire to assert their own subjectivity and to elude an

absolute and objective judgment.

113.] Self-relation in Essence is the form of Identity or of

reflection-into-self, which has here taken the place of the immediacy

of Being. They are both the same abstraction,--self-relation.

The unintelligence of sense, to take everything limited and finite for

Being, passes into the obstinacy of understanding, which views the

finite as self-identical, not inherently self-contradictory.

114.] This identity, as it has descended from Being, appears in the

first place only charged with the characteristics of Being, and

referred to Being as to something external. This external Being, if

taken in separation from the true Being (of Essence), is called the

Unessential. But that turns out a mistake. Because Essence is

Being-in-self, it is essential only to the extent that it has in itself

its negative, _e._ reference to another, or mediation. Consequently,

it has the unessential as its own proper seeming (reflection) in

itself. But in seeming or mediation there is distinction involved:

and since what is distinguished (as distinguished from the identity

out of which it arises, and in which it is not, or lies as seeming,)

receives itself the form of identity, the semblance is still in the

mode of Being, or of self-related immediacy. The sphere of Essence

thus turns out to be a still imperfect combination of immediacy and

mediation. In it every term is expressly invested with the character

of self-relatedness, while yet at the same time one is forced beyond

it. It has Being,--reflected being, a being in which another shows,

and which shows in another. And so it is also the sphere in which the

contradiction, still implicit in the sphere of Being, is made explicit.

As the one notion is the common principle underlying all logic, there

appear in the development of Essence the same attributes or terms as

in the development of Being, but in a reflex form. Instead of Being

and Nought we have now the forms of Positive and Negative; the former

at first as Identity corresponding to pure and uncontrasted Being, the

latter developed (showing in itself) as Difference. So also, we have

Becoming represented by the Ground of determinate Being: which itself,

when reflected upon the Ground, is Existence.

The theory of Essence is the most difficult branch of Logic. It

includes the categories of metaphysic and of the sciences in general.

These are products of reflective understanding, which, while it assumes

the differences to possess a footing of their own, and at the same

time also expressly affirms their relativity, still combines the two

statements, side by side, or one after the other, by an 'Also,' without

bringing these thoughts into one, or unifying them into the notion.

A.--ESSENCE AS GROUND OF EXISTENCE.

(a) _The pure principles or categories of Reflection._

(α) Identity.

115.] The Essence lights up _in itself_ or is mere reflection: and

therefore is only self-relation, not as immediate but as reflected. And

that reflex relation is self-Identity.

This Identity becomes an Identity in form only, or of the

understanding, if it be held hard and fast, quite aloof from

difference. Or, rather, abstraction is the imposition of this Identity

of form, the transformation of something inherently concrete into this

form of elementary simplicity. And this may be done in two ways. Either

we may neglect a part of the multiple features which are found in the

concrete thing (by what is called analysis) and select only one of

them; or, neglecting their variety, we may concentrate the multiple

characters into one.

If we associate Identity with the Absolute, making the Absolute the

subject of a proposition, we get: The Absolute is what is identical

with itself. However true this proposition may be, it is doubtful

whether it be meant in its truth: and therefore it is at least

imperfect in the expression. For it is left undecided, whether it means

the abstract Identity of understanding,--abstract, that is, because

contrasted with the other characteristics of Essence, or the Identity

which is inherently concrete. In the latter case, as will be seen,

true Identity is first discoverable in the Ground, and, with a higher

truth, in the Notion.--Even the word Absolute is often used to mean no

more than 'abstract.' Absolute space and absolute time, for example, is

another way of saying abstract space and abstract time.

When the principles of Essence are taken as essential principles of

thought they become predicates of a pre-supposed subject, which,

because they are essential, is 'Everything,' The propositions thus

arising have been stated as universal Laws of Thought. Thus the first

of them, the maxim of Identity, reads: Everything is identical with

itself, A=A: and, negatively, A cannot at the same time be A and not

A.--This maxim, instead of being a true law of thought, is nothing

but the law of abstract understanding. The propositional form itself

contradicts it: for a proposition always promises a distinction

between subject and predicate; while the present one does not fulfil

what its form requires. But the Law is particularly set aside by

the following so-called Laws of Thought, which make laws out of its

opposite.--It is asserted that the maxim of Identity, though it

cannot be proved, regulates the procedure of every consciousness,

and that experience shows it to be accepted as soon as its terms

are apprehended. To this alleged experience of the logic-books may

be opposed the universal experience that no mind thinks or forms

conceptions or speaks, in accordance with this law, and that no

existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. Utterances after the

fashion of this pretended law (A planet is--a planet; Magnetism

is--magnetism; Mind is--mind) are, as they deserve to be, reputed

silly. That is certainly matter of general experience. The logic which

seriously propounds such laws and the scholastic world in which alone

they are valid have long been discredited with practical common sense

as well as with the philosophy of reason.

* * * * * *

Identity is, in the first place, the repetition of what we had earlier

as Being, but as _become,_ through supersession of its character of

immediateness. It is therefore Being as Ideality.--It is important

to come to a proper understanding on the true meaning of Identity:

and, for that purpose, we must especially guard against taking it

as abstract Identity, to the exclusion of all Difference. That is

the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what alone

deserves the name of philosophy. Identity in its truth, as an Ideality

of what immediately is, is a high category for our religious modes

of mind as well as all other forms of thought and mental activity.

The true knowledge of God, it may be said, begins when we know Him as

identity,--as absolute identity. To know so much is to see that all

the power and glory of the world sinks into nothing in God's presence,

and subsists only as the reflection of His power and His glory. In

the same way, Identity, as self-consciousness, is what distinguishes

man from nature, particularly from the brutes which never reach the

point of comprehending themselves as 'I,' that is, pure self-contained

unity. So again, in connexion with thought, the main thing is not to

confuse the true Identity, which contains Being and its characteristics

ideally transfigured in it, with an abstract Identity, identity of bare

form. All the charges of narrowness, hardness, meaninglessness, which

are so often directed against thought from the quarter of feeling and

immediate perception, rest on the perverse assumption that thought

acts only as a faculty of abstract Identification. The Formal Logic

itself confirms this assumption by laying down the supreme law of

thought (so-called) which has been discussed above. If thinking were no

more than an abstract Identity, we could not but own it to be a most

futile and tedious business. No doubt the notion, and the idea too, are

identical with themselves: but identical only in so far as they at the

same time involve distinction.

(β) _Difference._

116.] Essence is mere Identity and reflection in itself only as it is

self-relating negativity, and in that way self-repulsion. It contains

therefore essentially the characteristic of Difference.

Other-being is here no longer qualitative, taking the shape of the

character or limit. It is now in Essence, in self-relating essence, and

therefore the negation is at the same time a relation,--is, in short,

Distinction, Relativity, Mediation.

To ask, 'How Identity comes to Difference,' assumes that Identity as

mere abstract Identity is something of itself, and Difference also

something else equally independent. This supposition renders an answer

to the question impossible. If Identity is viewed as diverse from

Difference, all that we have in this way is but Difference; and hence

we cannot demonstrate the advance to difference, because the person

who asks for the How of the progress thereby implies that for him

the starting-point is non-existent. The question then when put to

the test has obviously no meaning, and its proposer may be met with

the question what he means by Identity; whereupon we should soon see

that he attaches no idea to it at all, and that Identity is for him

an empty name. As we have seen, besides, Identity is undoubtedly a

negative,--not however an abstract empty Nought, but the negation of

Being and its characteristics. Being so, Identity is at the same time

self-relation, and, what is more, negative self-relation; in other

words, it draws a distinction between it and itself.

117.] Difference is, first of all, (1) immediate difference, _e.g._

Diversity or Variety. In Diversity the different things are each

individually what they are, and unaffected by the relation in which

they stand to each other. This relation is therefore external to them.

In consequence of the various things being thus indifferent to the

difference between them, it falls outside them into a third thing, the

agent of Comparison. This external difference, as an identity of the

objects related, is Likeness; as a non-identity of them, is Unlikeness.

The gap which understanding allows to divide these characteristics, is

so great, that although comparison has one and the same substratum for

likeness and unlikeness, which are explained to be different aspects

and points of view in it, still likeness by itself is the first of the

elements alone, viz. identity, and unlikeness by itself is difference.

Diversity has, like Identity, been transformed into a maxim:

'Everything is various or different': or,'There are no two things

completely like each other.' Here Everything is put under a predicate,

which is the reverse of the identity attributed to it in the first

maxim; and therefore under a law contradicting the first. However there

is an explanation. As the diversity is supposed due only to external

comparison, anything taken _per se_ is expected and understood always

to be identical with itself, so that the second law need not interfere

with the first. But, in that case, variety does not belong to the

something or everything in question: it constitutes no intrinsic

characteristic of the subject: and the second maxim on this showing

does not admit of being stated at all. If, on the other hand, the

something _itself_ is as the maxim says diverse, it must be in virtue

of its own proper character: but in this case the specific difference,

and not variety as such, is what is intended. And this is the meaning

of the maxim of Leibnitz.

When understanding sets itself to study Identity, it has already passed

beyond it, and is looking at Difference in the shape of bare Variety.

If we follow the so-called law of Identity, and say,--The sea is the

sea, The air is the air, The moon is the moon, these objects pass for

having no bearing on one another. What we have before us therefore is

not Identity, but Difference. We do not stop at this point however, or

regard things merely as different. We compare them one with another,

and thus discover the features of likeness and unlikeness. The work of

the finite sciences lies to a great extent in the application of these

categories, and the phrase 'scientific treatment' generally means no

more than the method which has for its aim comparison of the objects

under examination. This method has undoubtedly led to some important

results;--we may particularly mention the great advance of modern times

in the provinces of comparative anatomy and comparative linguistic.

But it is going too far to suppose that the comparative method can be

employed with equal success in all branches of knowledge. Nor--and this

must be emphasised--can mere comparison ever ultimately satisfy the

requirements of science. Its results are indeed indispensable, but they

are still labours only preliminary to truly intelligent cognition.

If it be the office of comparison to reduce existing differences to

Identity, the science, which most perfectly fulfils that end, is

mathematics. The reason of that is, that quantitative difference is

only the difference which is quite external. Thus, in geometry, a

triangle and a quadrangle, figures qualitatively different, have this

qualitative difference discounted by abstraction, and are equalised to

one another in magnitude. It follows from what has been formerly said

about the mere Identity of understanding that, as has also been pointed

out (§ 99, note), neither philosophy nor the empirical sciences need

envy this superiority of Mathematics.

The story is told that, when Leibnitz propounded the maxim of Variety,

the cavaliers and ladies of the court, as they walked round the garden,

made efforts to discover two leaves indistinguishable from each other,

in order to confute the law stated by the philosopher. Their device was

unquestionably a convenient method of dealing with metaphysics,--one

which has not ceased to be fashionable. All the same, as regards the

principle of Leibnitz, difference must be understood to mean not an

external and indifferent diversity merely, but difference essential.

Hence the very nature of things implies that they must be different.

118.] Likeness is an Identity only of those things which are not

the same, not identical with each other: and Unlikeness is a

relation of things unlike. The two therefore do not fall on different

aspects or points of view in the thing, without any mutual affinity:

but one throws light into the other. Variety thus comes to be reflexive

difference, or difference (distinction) implicit and essential,

determinate or specific difference.

* * * * * *

While things merely various show themselves unaffected by each other,

likeness and unlikeness on the contrary are a pair of characteristics

which are in completely reciprocal relation. The one of them cannot

be thought without the other. This advance from simple variety to

opposition appears in our common acts of thought, when we allow that

comparison has a meaning only upon the hypothesis of an existing

difference, and that on the other hand we can distinguish only on the

hypothesis of existing similarity.

Hence, if the problem be the discovery of a difference, we attribute

no great cleverness to the man who only distinguishes those objects,

of which the difference is palpable, _e.g._ a pen and a camel:

and similarly, it implies no very advanced faculty of comparison,

when the objects compared, _e.g._ a beech and an oak, a temple and

a church, are near akin. In the case of difference, in short, we

like to sec identity, and in the case of identity we like to see

difference. Within the range of the empirical sciences however, the

one of these two categories is often allowed to put the other out of

sight and mind. Thus the scientific problem at one time is to reduce

existing differences to identity; on another occasion, with equal

one-sidedness, to discover new differences. We see this especially in

physical science. There the problem consists, in the first place, in

the continual search for new 'elements,' new forces, new genera, and

species. Or, in another direction, it seeks to show that all bodies

hitherto believed to be simple are compound: and modern physicists and

chemists smile at the ancients, who were satisfied with four elements,

and these not simple. Secondly, and on the other hand, mere identity

is made the chief question. Thus electricity and chemical affinity

are regarded as the same, and even the organic processes of digestion

and assimilation are looked upon as a mere chemical operation. Modern

philosophy has often been nicknamed the Philosophy of Identity. But, as

was already remarked (§ 103, note), it is precisely philosophy, and in

particular speculative logic, which lays bare the nothingness of the

abstract, undifferentiated identity, known to understanding; though it

also undoubtedly urges its disciples not to rest at mere diversity, but

to ascertain the inner unity of all existence.

119.] Difference implicit is essential difference, the Positive

and the Negative: and that is this way. The Positive is the

identical self-relation in such a way as not to be the Negative, and

the Negative is the different by itself so as not to be the Positive.

Thus either has an existence of its own in proportion as it is not the

other. The one is made visible in the other, and is only in so far as

that other is. Essential difference is therefore Opposition; according

to which the different is not confronted by _any_ other but by _its_

other. That is, either of these two (Positive and Negative) is stamped

with a characteristic of its own only in its relation to the other: the

one is only reflected into itself as it is reflected into the other.

And so with the other. Either in this way is the other's _own_ other.

Difference implicit or essential gives the maxim, Everything is

essentially distinct; or, as it has also been expressed, Of two

opposite predicates the one only can be assigned to anything, and

there is no third possible. This maxim of Contrast or Opposition

most expressly controverts the maxim of Identity: the one says a

thing should be only self-relation, the other says that it must be

an opposite, a relation to its other. The native unintelligence of

abstraction betrays itself by setting in juxtaposition two contrary

maxims, like these, as laws, without even so much as comparing

them.--The Maxim of Excluded Middle is the maxim of the definite

understanding, which would fain avoid contradiction, but in so doing

falls into it. A must be either + A or - A, it says. It virtually

declares in these words a third A which is neither + nor--, and which

at the same time is yet invested with + and - characters. If + W mean

6 miles to the West, and - W mean 6 miles to the East, and if the +

and - cancel each other, the 6 miles of way or space remain what they

were with and without the contrast. Even the mere _plus_ and _minus_ of

number or abstract direction have, if we like, zero, for their third:

but it need not be denied that the empty contrast, which understanding

institutes between _plus_ and _minus,_ is not without its value in such

abstractions as number, direction, &c.

In the doctrine of contradictory concepts, the one notion is, say,

blue (for in this doctrine even the sensuous generalised image of a

colour is called a notion) and the other not-blue. This other then

would not be an affirmative, say, yellow, but would merely be kept at

the abstract negative.--That the Negative in its own nature is quite as

much Positive (see next §), is implied in saying that what is opposite

to another is _its_ other. The inanity of the opposition between what

are called contradictory notions is fully exhibited in what we may call

the grandiose formula of a general law, that Everything has the one and

not the other of _all_ predicates which are in such opposition. In this

way, mind is either white or not-white, yellow or not-yellow, &c, _ad

infinitum._

It was forgotten that Identity and Opposition are themselves opposed,

and the maxim of Opposition was taken even for that of Identity,

in the shape of the principle of Contradiction. A notion, which

possesses neither or both of two mutually contradictory marks, _e.g._

a quadrangular circle, is held to be logically false. Now though a

multangular circle and a rectilineal arc no less contradict this

maxim, geometers never hesitate to treat the circle as a polygon with

rectilineal sides. But anything like a circle (that is to say its mere

character or nominal definition) is still no notion. In the notion

of a circle, centre and circumference are equally essential: both

marks belong to it: and yet centre and circumference are opposite and

contradictory to each other.

The conception of Polarity, which is so dominant in physics, contains

by implication the more correct definition of Opposition. But physics

for its theory of the laws of thought adheres to the ordinary logic; it

might therefore well be horrified in case it should ever work out the

conception of Polarity, and get at the thoughts which are implied in it.

(1) With the positive we return to identity, but in its higher truth

as identical self-relation, and at the same time with the note that it

is not the negative. The negative _per se_ is the same as difference

itself. The identical as such is primarily the yet uncharacterised:

the positive on the other hand is what is self-identical, but with the

mark of antithesis to an other. And the negative is difference as such,

characterised as not identity. This is the difference of difference

within its own self.

Positive and negative are supposed to express an absolute difference.

The two however are at bottom the same: the name of either might be

transferred to the other. Thus, for example, debts and assets are not

two particular, self-subsisting species of property. What is negative

to the debtor, is positive to the creditor. A way to the east is also

a way to the west. Positive and negative are therefore intrinsically

conditioned by one another, and are only in relation to each other. The

north pole of the magnet cannot be without the south pole, and _vice

versâ._ If we cut a magnet in two, we have not a north pole in one

piece, and a south pole in the other. Similarly, in electricity, the

positive and the negative are not two diverse and independent fluids.

In opposition, the different is not confronted by any other, but by

_its_ other. Usually we regard different things as unaffected by each

other. Thus we say: I am a human being, and around me are air, water,

animals, and all sorts of things. Everything is thus put outside of

every other. But the aim of philosophy is to banish indifference, and

to ascertain the necessity of things. By that means the other is seen

to stand over against _its_ other. Thus, for example, inorganic nature

is not to be considered merely something else than organic nature, but

the necessary antithesis of it. Both are in essential relation to one

another; and the one of the two is, only in so far as it excludes the

other from it, and thus relates itself thereto. Nature in like manner

is not without mind, nor mind without nature. An important step has

been taken, when we cease in thinking to use phrases like: Of course

something else is also possible. While we so speak, we are still

tainted with contingency: and all true thinking, we have already said,

is a thinking of necessity.

In modern physical science the opposition, first observed to exist

in magnetism as polarity, has come to be regarded as a universal law

pervading the whole of nature. This would be a real scientific advance,

if care were at the same time taken not to let mere variety revert

without explanation, as a valid category, side by side with opposition.

Thus at one time the colours are regarded as in polar opposition to one

another, and called complementary colours: at another time they are

looked at in their indifferent and merely quantitative difference of

red, yellow, green, &c.

(2) Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the

maxim of abstract understanding) we should rather say: Everything is

opposite. Neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in the world of

mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'Either--or'

as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with

difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will then

lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and

what they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature, the acid is

implicitly at the same time the base: in other words, its only being

consists in its relation to its other. Hence also the acid is not

something that persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort

to realise what it potentially is. Contradiction is the very moving

principle of the world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction

is unthinkable. The only thing correct in that statement is that

contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself. But

contradiction, when cancelled, does not leave abstract identity; for

that is itself only one side of the contrariety. The proximate result

of opposition (when realised as contradiction) is the Ground, which

contains identity as well as difference superseded and deposed to

elements in the completer notion.

120.] Contrariety then has two forms. The Positive is the aforesaid

various (different) which is understood to be independent, and yet

at the same not to be unaffected by its relation to its other. The

Negative is to be, no less independently, negative self-relating,

self-subsistent, and yet at the same time as Negative must on every

point have this its self-relation, _i.e._ its Positive, only in the

other. Both Positive and Negative are therefore explicit contradiction;

both are potentially the same. Both are so actually also; since either

is the abrogation of the other and of itself. Thus they fall to the

Ground.--Or as is plain, the essential difference, as a difference, is

only the difference of it from itself, and thus contains the identical:

so that to essential and actual difference there belongs itself as

well as identity. As self-relating difference it is likewise virtually

enunciated as the self-identical. And the opposite is in general that

which includes the one and its other, itself and its opposite. The

immanence of essence thus defined is the Ground.

(γ) _The Ground._

121.] The Ground is the unity of identity and difference, the

truth of what difference and identity have turned out to be,--the

reflection-into-self, which is equally a reflection-into-an-other, and

_vice versâ._ It is essence put explicitly as a totality.

The maxim of the Ground runs thus: Everything has its Sufficient

Ground: that is, the true essentiality of any thing is not the

predication of it as identical with itself, or as different (various),

or merely positive, or merely negative, but as having its Being in

an other, which, being its self-same, is its essence. And to this

extent the essence is not abstract reflection into self, but into an

other. The Ground is the essence in its own inwardness; the essence is

intrinsically a ground; and it is a ground only when it is a ground of

somewhat, of an other.

We must be careful, when we say that the ground is the unity of

identity and difference, not to understand by this unity an abstract

identity. Otherwise we only change the name, while we still think the

identity (of understanding) already seen to be false. To avoid this

misconception we may say that the ground, besides being the unity,

is also the difference of identity and difference. In that case in

the ground, which promised at first to supersede contradiction, a new

contradiction seems to arise. It is however a contradiction which, so

far from persisting quietly in itself, is rather the expulsion of it

from itself. The ground is a ground only to the extent that it affords

ground: but the result which thus issued from the ground is only

itself. In this lies its formalism. The ground and what is grounded are

one and the same content: the difference between the two is the mere

difference of form which separates simple self-relation, on the one

hand, from mediation or derivativeness on the other. Inquiry into the

grounds of things goes with the point of view which, as already noted

(note to § 112), is adopted by Reflection. We wish, as it were, to see

the matter double, first in its immediacy, and secondly in its ground,

where it is no longer immediate. This is the plain meaning of the law

of sufficient ground, as it is called; it asserts that things should

essentially be viewed as mediated. The manner in which Formal Logic

establishes this law of thought, sets a bad example to other sciences.

Formal Logic asks these sciences not to accept their subject-matter as

it is immediately given; and yet herself lays down a law of thought

without deducing it,--in other words, without exhibiting its mediation.

With the same justice as the logician maintains our faculty of thought

to be so constituted that we must ask for the ground of everything,

might the physicist, when asked why a man who falls into water is

drowned, reply that man happens to be so organised that he cannot live

under water; or the jurist, when asked why a criminal is punished,

reply that civil society happens to be so constituted that crimes

cannot be left unpunished.

Yet even if logic be excused the duty of giving a ground for the law

of the sufficient ground, it might at least explain what is to be

understood by a ground. The common explanation, which describes the

ground as what has a consequence, seems at the first glance more lucid

and intelligible than the preceding definition in logical terms. If you

ask however what the consequence is, you are told that it is what has

a ground; and it becomes obvious that the explanation is intelligible

only because it assumes what in our case has been reached as the

termination of an antecedent movement of thought. And this is the

true business of logic: to show that those thoughts, which as usually

employed merely float before consciousness neither understood nor

demonstrated, are really grades in the self-determination of thought.

It is by this means that they are understood and demonstrated.

In common life, and it is the same in the finite sciences, this

reflective form is often employed as a key to the secret of the real

condition of the objects under investigation. So long as we deal with

what may be termed the household needs of knowledge, nothing can be

urged against this method of study. But it can never afford definitive

satisfaction, either in theory or practice. And the reason why it

fails is that the ground is yet without a definite content of its own;

I so that to regard anything as resting upon a ground merely gives

the formal difference of mediation in place of immediacy. We see an

electrical phenomenon, for example, and we ask for its ground (or

reason): we are told that electricity is the ground of this phenomenon.

What is this but the same content as we had immediately before us, only

translated into the form of inwardness?

The ground however is not merely simple self-identity, but also

different: hence various grounds may be alleged for the same sum

of fact. This variety of grounds, again, following the logic of

difference, culminates in opposition of grounds _pro_ and _contra._

In any action, such as a theft, there is a sum of fact in which

several aspects may be distinguished. The theft has violated the

rights of property: it has given the means of satisfying his wants to

the needy thief: possibly too the man, from whom the theft was made,

misused his property. The violation of property is unquestionably

the decisive point of view before which the others must give way:

but the bare law of the ground cannot settle that question. Usually

indeed the law is interpreted to speak of a sufficient ground, not

of any ground whatever: and it might be supposed therefore, in the

action referred to, that, although other points of view besides the

violation of property might be held as grounds, yet they would not be

sufficient grounds. But here comes a dilemma. If we use the phrase

'sufficient ground,' the epithet is either otiose, or of such a kind

as to carry us past the mere category of ground. The predicate is

otiose and tautological, if it only states the capability of giving a

ground or reason: for the ground is a ground, only in so far as it has

this capability. If a soldier runs away from battle to save his life,

his conduct is certainly a violation of duty: but it cannot be held

that the ground which led him so to act was insufficient, otherwise

he would have remained at his post. Besides, there is this also to

be said. On one hand any ground suffices: on the other no ground

suffices as mere ground; because, as already said, it is yet void of

a content objectively and intrinsically determined, and is therefore

not self-acting and productive. A content thus objectively and

intrinsically determined, and hence self-acting, will hereafter come

before us as the notion: and it is the notion which Leibnitz had in his

eye when he spoke of sufficient ground, and urged the study of things

under its point of view. His remarks were originally directed against

that merely mechanical method of conceiving things so much in vogue

even now; a method which he justly pronounces insufficient. We may

see an instance of this mechanical theory of investigation, when the

organic process of the circulation of the blood is traced back merely

to the contraction of the heart; or when certain theories of criminal

law explain the purpose of punishment to lie in deterring people from

crime, in rendering the criminal harmless, or in other extraneous

grounds of the same kind. It is unfair to Leibnitz to suppose that he

was content with anything so poor as this formal law of the ground. The

method of investigation which he inaugurated is the very reverse of a

formalism which acquiesces in mere grounds, where a full and concrete

knowledge is sought. Considerations to this effect led Leibnitz to

contrast _causae efficientes_ and _causae finales,_ and to insist in

the place of final causes as the conception to which the efficient were

to lead up. If we adopt this distinction, light, heat, and moisture

would be the _causae efficientes,_ not the _causa finalis_ of the

growth of plants: the _causa finalis_ is the notion of the plant itself.

To get no further than mere grounds, especially on questions of law and

morality, is the position and principle of the Sophists. Sophistry,

as we ordinarily conceive it, is a method of investigation which aims

at distorting what is just and true, and exhibiting things in a false

light. Such however is not the proper or primary tendency of Sophistry:

the standpoint of which is no other than that of 'Raisonnement.' The

Sophists came on the scene at a time when the Greeks had begun to grow

dissatisfied with mere authority and tradition and felt the need of

intellectual justification for what they were to accept as obligatory.

That desideratum the Sophists supplied by teaching their countrymen

to seek for the various points of view under which things may be

considered: which points of view are the same as grounds. But the

ground, as we have seen, has no essential and objective principles of

its own, and it is as easy to discover grounds for what is wrong and

immoral as for what is moral and right. Upon the observer therefore it

depends to decide what points are to have most weight. The decision in

such circumstances is prompted by his individual views and sentiments.

Thus the objective foundation of what ought to have been of absolute

and essential obligation, accepted by all, was undermined: and

Sophistry by this destructive action deservedly brought upon itself

the bad name previously mentioned. Socrates, as we all know, met the

Sophists at every point, not by a bare re-assertion of authority and

tradition against their argumentations, but by showing dialectically

how untenable the mere grounds were, and by vindicating the obligation

of justice and goodness,--by reinstating the universal or notion of the

will. In the present day such a method of argumentation is not quite

out of fashion. Nor is that the case only in the discussion of secular

matters. It occurs even in sermons, such as those where every possible

ground of gratitude to God is propounded. To such pleading Socrates

and Plato would not have scrupled to apply the name of Sophistry.

For Sophistry has nothing to do with what is taught:--that may very

possibly be true. Sophistry lies in the formal circumstance of teaching

it by grounds which are as available for attack as for defence. In a

time so rich in reflection and so devoted to _raisonnement_ as our

own, he must be a poor creature who cannot advance a good ground for

everything, even for what is worst and most depraved. Everything in the

world that has become corrupt has had good ground for its corruption.

An appeal to grounds at first makes the hearer think of beating a

retreat: but when experience has taught him the real state of these

matters, he closes his ears against them, and refuses to be imposed

upon any more.

122.] As it first comes, the chief feature of Essence is show in itself

and intermediation in itself. But when it has completed the circle

of intermediation, its unity with itself is explicitly put as the

self-annulling of difference, and therefore of intermediation. Once

more then we come back to immediacy or Being,--but Being in so far as

it is intermediated by annulling the intermediation. And that Being is

Existence.

The ground is not yet determined by objective principles of its

own, nor is it an end or final cause: hence it is not active, nor

productive. An Existence only _proceeds from_ the ground. The

determinate ground is therefore a formal matter: that is to say, any

point will do, so long as it is expressly put as self-relation, as

affirmation, in correlation with the immediate existence depending on

it. If it be a ground at all, it is a good ground: for the term 'good'

is employed abstractly as equivalent to affirmative; and any point (or

feature) is good which can in any way be enunciated as confessedly

affirmative. So it happens that a ground can be found and adduced for

everything: and a good ground (for example, a good motive for action)

may effect something or may not, it may have a consequence or it may

not. It becomes a motive (strictly so called) and effects something,

_e.g._ through its reception into a will; there and there only it

becomes active and is made a cause.

(b) _Existence._

123.] Existence is the immediate unity of reflection-into-self and

reflection-into-another. It follows from this that existence is the

indefinite multitude of existents as reflected-into-themselves, which

at the same time equally throw light upon one another,--which, in

short, are co-relative, and form a world of reciprocal dependence and

of infinite interconnexion between grounds and consequents. The grounds

are themselves existences: and the existents in like manner are in many

directions grounds as well as consequents.

The phrase 'Existence' (derived from _existere_) suggests the fact of

having proceeded from something. Existence is Being which has proceeded

from the ground, and been reinstated by annulling its intermediation.

The Essence, as Being set aside and absorbed, originally came

before us as shining or showing in self, and the categories of this

reflection are identity, difference and ground. The last is the unity

of identity and difference; and because it unifies them it has at the

same time to distinguish itself from itself. But that which is in

this way distinguished from the ground is as little mere difference,

as the ground itself is abstract sameness. The ground works its

own suspension: and when suspended, the result of its negation is

existence. Having issued from the ground, existence contains the ground

in it 'the ground does not remain, as it were, behind existence, but by

its very nature supersedes itself and translates itself into existence.

This is exemplified even in our ordinary mode of thinking, when we

look upon the ground of a thing, not as something abstractly inward,

but as itself also an existent. For example, the lightning-flash

which has set a house on fire would be considered the ground of the

conflagration: or the manners of a nation and the condition of its

life would be regarded as the ground of its constitution. Such indeed

is the ordinary aspect in which the existent world originally appears

to reflection,--an indefinite crowd of things existent, which being

simultaneously reflected on themselves and on one another are related

reciprocally as ground and consequence. In this motley play of the

world, if we may so call the sum of existents, there is nowhere a

firm footing to be found: everything bears an aspect of relativity,

conditioned by and conditioning something else. The reflective

understanding makes it its business to elicit and trace these

connexions running out in every direction; but the question touching an

ultimate design is so far left unanswered, and therefore the craving of

the reason after knowledge passes with the further development of the

logical Idea beyond this position of mere relativity.

124.] The reflection-on-another of the existent is however inseparable

from the reflection-on-self: the ground is their unity, from which

existence has issued. The existent therefore includes relativity, and

has on its own part its multiple interconnexions with other existents:

it is reflected on itself as its ground. The existent is, when so

described, a Thing.

The 'thing-by-itself' (or thing in the abstract), so famous in the

philosophy of Kant, shows itself here in its genesis. It is seen to be

the abstract reflection-on-self, which is clung to, to the exclusion of

reflection-on-other-things and of all predication of difference. The

thing-by-itself therefore is the empty substratum for these predicates

of relation.

If to know means to comprehend an object in its concrete character,

then the thing-by-itself, which is nothing but the quite abstract

and indeterminate thing in general, must certainly be as unknowable

as it is alleged to be. With as much reason however as we speak

of the thing-by-itself, we might speak of quality-by-itself or

quantity-by-itself, and of any other category. The expression would

then serve to signify that these categories are taken in their abstract

immediacy, apart from their development and inward character. It is

no better than a whim of the understanding, therefore, if we attach

the qualificatory 'in or by-itself' to the _thing_ only. But this

'in or by-itself' is also applied to the facts of the mental as well

as the natural world: as we speak of electricity or of a plant in

itself, so we speak of man or the state in itself. By this 'in-itself'

in these objects we are meant to understand what they strictly and

properly are. This usage is liable to the same criticism as the

phrase 'thing-in-itself.' For if we stick to the mere 'in-itself' of

an object, we apprehend it not in its truth, but in the inadequate

form of mere abstraction. Thus the man, by or in himself, is the

child. And what the child has to do is to rise out of this abstract

and undeveloped 'in-himself,' and become 'for himself what he is at

first only 'in-himself,' a free and reasonable being. Similarly, the

state-in-itself is the yet immature and patriarchal state, where the

various political functions, latent in the notion of the state, have

not received the full logical constitution which the logic of political

principles demands. In the same sense, the germ may be called the

plant-in-itself. These examples may show the mistake of supposing

that the 'thing-in-itself' or the 'in-itself' of things is something

inaccessible to our cognition. All things are originally in-themselves,

but that is not the end of the matter. As the germ, being the

plant-in-itself, means self-development, so the thing in general passes

beyond its in-itself, (the abstract reflection on self,) to manifest

itself further as a reflection on other things. It is in this sense

that it has properties.

(c) _The Thing._

125.] (α) The Thing is the totality--the development in explicit

unity--of the categories of the ground and of existence. On the side

of one of its factors, viz. reflection-on-other-things, it has in it

the differences, in virtue of which it is a characterised and concrete

thing. These characteristics are different from one another; they have

their reflection-into-self not on their own part, but on the part of

the thing. They are Properties of the thing: and their relation to the

thing is expressed by the word 'have.'

As a term of relation, 'to have' takes the place of 'to be.' True,

somewhat has qualities on its part too: but this transference of

'Having' into the sphere of Being is inexact, because the character as

quality is directly one with the somewhat, and the somewhat ceases to

be when it loses its quality. But the thing is reflection-into-self:

for it is an identity which is also distinct from the difference,

_i.e._ from its attributes.--In many languages 'have' is employed

to denote past time. And with reason: for the past is absorbed or

suspended being, and the mind is its reflection-into-self; in the mind

only it continues to subsist,--the mind however distinguishing from

itself this being in it which has been absorbed or suspended.

* * * * *

In the Thing all the characteristics of reflection recur as existent.

Thus the thing, in its initial aspect, as the thing-by-itself, is the

self-same or identical. But identity, it was proved, is not found

without difference: so the properties, which the thing has, are the

existent difference in the form of diversity. In the case of diversity

or variety each diverse member exhibited an indifference to every

other, and they had no other relation to each other, save what was

given by a comparison external to them. But now in the thing we have a

bond which keeps the various properties in union. Property, besides,

should not be confused with quality. No doubt, we also say, a thing

has qualities. But the phraseology is a misplaced one: 'having' hints

at an independence, foreign to the 'Somewhat,' which is still directly

identical with its quality. Somewhat is what it is only by its

quality: whereas, though the thing indeed exists only as it has its

properties, it is not confined to this or that definite property, and

can therefore lose it, without ceasing to be what it is.

126.] (ß) Even in the ground, however, the reflection-on-something-else

is directly convertible with reflection-on-self. And hence the

properties are not merely different from each other; they are also

self-identical, independent, and relieved from their attachment to the

thing. Still, as they are the characters of the thing distinguished

from one another (as reflected-into-self), they are not themselves

things, if things be concrete; but only existences reflected

into themselves as abstract characters. They are what are called

Matters.

Nor is the name 'things' given to Matters, such as magnetic and

electric matters. They are qualities proper, a reflected Being,--one

with their Being,--they are the character that has reached immediacy,

existence: they are 'entities.'

To elevate the properties, which the Thing has, to the independent

position of matters, or materials of which it consists, is a proceeding

based upon the notion of a Thing: and for that reason is also found

in experience. Thought and experience however alike protest against

concluding from the fact that certain properties of a thing, such

as colour, or smell, may be represented as particular colouring or

odorific matters, that we are then at the end of the inquiry, and

that nothing more is needed to penetrate to the true secret of things

than a disintegration of them into their component materials. This

disintegration into independent matters is properly restricted to

inorganic nature only. The chemist is in the right therefore when,

for example, he analyses common salt or gypsum into its elements, and

finds that the former consists of muriatic acid and soda, the latter of

sulphuric acid and calcium. So too the geologist does well to regard

granite as a compound of quartz, felspar, and mica. These matters,

again, of which the thing consists, are themselves partly things,

which in that way may be once more reduced to more abstract matters.

Sulphuric acid, for example, is a compound of sulphur and oxygen. Such

matters or bodies can as a matter of fact be exhibited as subsisting by

themselves: but frequently we find other properties of things, entirely

wanting this self-subsistence, also regarded as particular matters.

Thus we hear caloric, and electrical or magnetic matters spoken of.

Such matters are at the best figments of understanding. And we see

here the usual procedure of the abstract reflection of understanding.

Capriciously adopting single categories, whose value entirely depends

on their place in the gradual evolution of the logical idea, it employs

them in the pretended interests of explanation, but in the face of

plain, unprejudiced perception and experience, so as to trace back to

them every object investigated. Nor is this all. The theory, which

makes things consist of independent matters, is frequently applied in a

region where it has neither meaning nor force. For within the limits of

nature even, wherever there is organic life, this category is obviously

inadequate. An animal may be said to consist of bones, muscles, nerves,

&c.: but evidently we are here using the term 'consist' in a very

different sense from its use when we spoke of the piece of granite as

consisting of the above-mentioned elements. The elements of granite are

utterly indifferent to their combination: they could subsist as well

without it. The different parts and members of an organic body on the

contrary subsist only in their union: they cease to exist as such, when

they are separated from each other.

127.] Thus Matter is the mere abstract or indeterminate

reflection-into-something-else, or reflection-into-self at the same

time as determinate; it is consequently Thinghood which then and there

is,--the subsistence of the thing. By this means the thing has on the

part of the matters its reflection-into-self (the reverse of § 125);

it subsists not on its own part, but consists of the matters, and is

only a superficial association between them, an external combination of

them.

128.] (γ) Matter, being the immediate unity of existence with itself,

is also indifferent towards specific character. Hence the numerous

diverse matters coalesce into the one Matter, or into existence

under the reflective characteristic of identity. In contrast to this

one Matter these distinct properties and their external relation which

they have to one another in the thing, constitute the _Form_,--the

reflective category of difference, but a difference which exists and is

a totality.

This one featureless Matter is also the same as the Thing-by-itself

was: only the latter is intrinsically quite abstract, while the former

essentially implies relation to something else, and in the first place

to the Form.

* * * * *

The various matters of which the thing consists are potentially the

same as one another. Thus we get one Matter in general to which the

difference is expressly attached externally and as a bare form. This

theory which holds things all round to have one and the same matter at

bottom, and merely to differ externally in respect of form, is much in

vogue with the reflective understanding. Matter in that case counts for

naturally indeterminate, but susceptible of any determination; while at

the same time it is perfectly permanent, and continues the same amid

all change and alteration. And in finite things at least this disregard

of matter for any determinate form is certainly exhibited. For example,

it matters not to a block of marble, whether it receive the form of

this or that statue or even the form of a pillar. Be it noted however

that a block of marble can disregard form only relatively, that is, in

reference to the sculptor: it is by no means purely formless. And so

the mineralogist considers the relatively formless marble as a special

formation of rock, differing from other equally special formations,

such as sandstone or porphyry. Therefore we say it is an abstraction

of the understanding which isolates matter into a certain natural

formlessness. For properly speaking the thought of matter includes the

principle of form throughout, and no formless matter therefore appears

anywhere even in experience as existing. Still the conception of

matter as original and pre-existent, and as naturally formless, is a

very ancient one; it meets us even among the Greeks, at first in the

mythical shape of Chaos, which is supposed to represent the unformed

substratum of the existing world. Such a conception must of necessity

tend to make God not the Creator of the world, but a mere world-moulder

or demiurge. A deeper insight into nature reveals God as creating the

world out of nothing. And that teaches two things. On the one hand it

enunciates that matter, as such, has no independent subsistence, and on

the other that the form does not supervene upon matter from without,

but as a totality involves the principle of matter in itself. This free

and infinite form will hereafter come before us as the notion.

129.] Thus the Thing suffers a disruption into Matter and Form. Each

of these is the totality of thinghood and subsists for itself. But

Matter, which is meant to be the positive and indeterminate existence,

contains, as an existence, reflection-on-another, every whit as

much as it contains self-enclosed being. Accordingly as uniting

these characteristics, it is itself the totality of Form. But Form,

being a complete whole of characteristics, _ipso facto_ involves

reflection-into-self; in other words, as self-relating Form it has the

very function attributed to Matter. Both are at bottom the same. Invest

them with this unity, and you have the relation of Matter and Form,

which are also no less distinct.

130.] The Thing, being this totality, is a contradiction. On the side

of its negative unity it is Form in which Matter is determined and

deposed to the rank of properties (§ 125). At the same time it consists

of Matters, which in the reflection-of-the-thing-into-itself are as

much independent as they are at the same time negatived. Thus the thing

is the essential existence, in such a way as to be an existence that

suspends or absorbs itself in itself. In other words, the thing is an

Appearance or Phenomenon.

The negation of the several matters, which is insisted on in the

thing no less than their independent existence, occurs in Physics as

_porosity._ Each of the several matters (colouring matter, odorific

matter, and if we believe some people, even sound-matter,--not

excluding caloric, electric matter, &c:) is also negated: and in this

negation of theirs, or as interpenetrating their pores, we find the

numerous other independent matters, which, being similarly porous,

make room in turn for the existence of the rest. Pores are not

empirical facts; they are figments of the understanding, which uses

them to represent the element of negation in independent matters.

The further working-out of the contradictions is concealed by the

nebulous imbroglio in which all matters are independent and all no less

negated in each other.--If the faculties or activities are similarly

hypostatised in the mind, their living unity similarly turns to the

imbroglio of an action of the one on the others.

These pores (meaning thereby not the pores in an organic body, such as

the pores of wood or of the skin, but those in the so-called 'matters,'

such as colouring matter, caloric, or metals, crystals, &c.) cannot be

verified by observation. In the same way matter itself,--furthermore

form which is separated from matter,--whether that be the thing as

consisting of matters, or the view that the thing itself subsists and

only has proper ties,--is all a product of the reflective understanding

which, while it observes and professes to record only what it observes,

is rather creating a metaphysic, bristling with contradictions of which

it is unconscious.

B.--APPEARANCE.

131.] The Essence must appear or shine forth. Its shining or reflection

in it is the suspension and translation of it to immediacy, which,

whilst as reflection-on-self it is matter or subsistence, is also form,

reflection-on-something-else, a subsistence which sets itself aside. To

show or shine is the characteristic by which essence is distinguished

from being,--by which it is essence; and it is this show which, when

it is developed, shows itself, and is Appearance. Essence accordingly

is not something beyond or behind appearance, but just because it

is the essence which exists--the existence is Appearance

(Forth-shining).

* * * * *

Existence stated explicitly in its contradiction is Appearance. But

appearance (forth-shining) is not to be confused with a mere show

(shining). Show is the proximate truth of Being or immediacy. The

immediate, instead of being, as we suppose, something independent,

resting on its own self, is a mere show, and as such it is packed or

summed up under the simplicity of the immanent essence. The essence

is, in the first place, the sum total of the showing itself, shining

in itself (inwardly); but, far from abiding in this inwardness, it

comes as a ground forward into existence; and this existence being

grounded not in itself, but on something else, is just appearance.

In our imagination we ordinarily combine with the term appearance

or phenomenon the conception of an indefinite congeries of things

existing, the being of which is purely relative, and which consequently

do not rest on a foundation of their own, but are esteemed only as

passing stages. But in this conception it is no less implied that

essence does not linger behind or beyond appearance. Rather it is, we

may say, the Infinite kindness which lets its own show freely issue

into immediacy, and graciously allows it the joy of existence. The

appearance which is thus created does not stand on its own feet, and

has its being not in itself but in something else. God who is the

essence, when He lends existence to the passing stages of His own show

in Himself, may be described as the goodness that creates a world: but

He is also the power above it, and the righteousness, which manifests

the merely phenomenal character of the content of this existing world,

whenever it tries to exist in independence.

Appearance is in every way a very important grade of the logical idea.

It may be said to be the distinction of philosophy from ordinary

consciousness that it sees the merely phenomenal character of what the

latter supposes to have a self-subsistent being. The significance of

appearance however must be properly grasped, or mistakes will arise.

To say that anything is a _mere_ appearance may be misinterpreted to

mean that, as compared with what is merely phenomenal, there is greater

truth in the immediate, in that which _is._ Now in strict fact, the

case is precisely the reverse. Appearance is higher than mere Being,--a

richer category because it holds in combination the two elements of

reflection-into-self and reflection-into-another: whereas Being (or

immediacy) still mere relationlessness and apparently rests upon itself

alone. Still, to say that anything is _only_ an appearance suggests a

real flaw, which consists in this, that Appearance is still divided

against itself and without intrinsic stability. Beyond and above mere

appearance comes in the first place Actuality, the third grade of

Essence, of which we shall afterwards speak.

In the history of Modern Philosophy, Kant has the merit of first

rehabilitating this distinction between the common and the philosophic

modes of thought. He stopped half-way however, when he attached to

Appearance a subjective meaning only, and put the abstract essence

immovable outside it as the thing-in-itself beyond the reach of our

cognition. For it is the very nature of the world of immediate objects

to be appearance only. Knowing it to be so, we know at the same time

the essence, which, far from staying behind or beyond the appearance,

rather manifests its own essentiality by deposing the world to a mere

appearance. One can hardly quarrel with the plain man who, in his

desire for totality, cannot acquiesce in the doctrine of subjective

idealism, that we are solely concerned with phenomena. The plain man,

however, in his desire to save the objectivity of knowledge, may very

naturally return to abstract immediacy, and maintain that immediacy

to be true and actual. In a little work published under the title,

_A Report, clear as day, to the larger Public touching the proper

nature of the Latest Philosophy: an Attempt to force the reader to

understand,'_ Fichte examined the opposition between subjective

idealism and immediate consciousness in a popular form, under the shape

of a dialogue between the author and the reader, and tried hard to

prove that the subjective idealist's point of view was right. In this

dialogue the reader complains to the author that he has completely

failed to place himself in the idealist's position, and is inconsolable

at the thought that things around him are no real things but mere

appearances. The affliction of the reader can scarcely be blamed when

he is expected to consider himself hemmed in by an impervious circle

of purely subjective conceptions. Apart from this subjective view of

Appearance, however, we have all reason to rejoice that the things

which environ us are appearances and not steadfast and independent

existences; since in that case we should soon perish of hunger, both

bodily and mental.

(a) _The World of Appearance._

132.] The Apparent or Phenomenal exists in such a way, that its

subsistence is _ipso facto_ thrown into abeyance or suspended and

is only one stage in the form itself. The form embraces in it the

matter or subsistence as one of its characteristics. In this way

the phenomenal has its ground in this (form) as its essence, its

reflection-into-self in contrast with its immediacy, but, in so doing,

has it only in another aspect of the form. This ground of its is no

less phenomenal than itself, and the phenomenon accordingly goes on to

an endless mediation of subsistence by means of form, and thus equally

by non-subsistence. This endless inter-mediation is at the same time

a unity of self-relation; and existence is developed into a totality,

into a world of phenomena,--of reflected finitude.

(b) _Content and Form._

133.] Outside one another as the phenomena in this phenomenal

world are, they form a totality, and are wholly contained in their

self-relatedness. In this way the self-relation of the phenomenon is

completely specified, it has the Form in itself: and because it

is in this identity, has it as essential subsistence. So it comes about

that the form is Content: and in its mature phase is the Law

of the Phenomenon. When the form, on the contrary, is not reflected

into self, it is equivalent to the negative of the phenomenon, to

the non-independent and changeable: and that sort of form is the

indifferent or External Form.

The essential point to keep in mind about the opposition of Form and

Content is that the content is not formless, but has the form in its

own self, quite as much as the form is external to it. There is thus

a doubling of form. At one time it is reflected into itself; and then

is identical with the content. At another time it is not reflected

into itself, and then is the external existence, which does not at

all affect the content. We are here in presence, implicitly, of the

absolute correlation of content and form: viz. their reciprocal

revulsion, so that content is nothing but the revulsion of form into

content, and form nothing but the revulsion of content into form. This

mutual revulsion is one of the most important laws of thought. But it

is not explicitly brought out before the Relations of Substance and

Causality.

Form and content are a pair of terms frequently employed by the

reflective understanding, especially with a habit of looking on the

content as the essential and independent, the form on the contrary as

the unessential and dependent. Against this it is to be noted that both

are in fact equally essential; and that, while a formless _content_ can

be as little found as a formless _matter,_ the two (content and matter)

are distinguished by this circumstance, that matter, though implicitly

not without form, still in its existence manifests a disregard of form,

whereas the content, as such, is what it is only because the matured

form is included in it. Still the form comes before us sometimes as

an existence indifferent and external to content, and does so for

the reason that the whole range of Appearance still suffers from

externality. In a book, for instance, it certainly has no bearing upon

the content, whether it be written or printed, bound in paper or in

leather. That however does not in the least imply that apart from such

an indifferent and external form, the content of the book is itself

formless. There are undoubtedly books enough which even in reference

to their content may well be styled formless: but want of form in this

case is the same as bad form, and means the defect of the right form,

not the absence of all form whatever. So far is this right form from

being unaffected by the content that it is rather the content itself. A

work of art that wants the right form is for that very reason no right

or true work of art: and it is a bad way of excusing an artist, to say

that the content of his works is good and even excellent, though they

want the right form. Real works of art are those where content and form

exhibit a thorough identity. The content of the Iliad, it may be said,

is the Trojan war, and especially the wrath of Achilles. In that we

have everything, and yet very little after all; for the Iliad is made

an Iliad by the poetic form, in which that content is moulded. The

content of Romeo and Juliet may similarly be said to be the ruin of two

lovers through the discord between their families: but something more

is needed to make Shakespeare's immortal tragedy.

In reference to the relation of form and content in the field of

science, we should recollect the difference between philosophy and

the rest of the sciences. The latter are finite, because their mode

of thought, as a merely formal act, derives its content from without.

Their content therefore is not known as moulded from within through

the thoughts which lie at the ground of it, and form and content do

not thoroughly interpenetrate each other. This partition disappears in

philosophy, and thus justifies its title of infinite knowledge. Yet

even philosophic thought is often held to be a merely formal act; and

that logic, which confessedly deals only with thoughts _quâ_ thoughts,

is merely formal, is especially a foregone conclusion. And if content

means no more than what is palpable and obvious to the senses, all

philosophy and logic in particular must be at once acknowledged to

be void of content, that is to say, of content perceptible to the

senses. Even ordinary forms of thought however, and the common usage of

language, do not in the least restrict the appellation of content to

what is perceived by the senses, or to what has a being in place and

time. A book without content is, as every one knows, not a book with

empty leaves, but one of which the content is as good as none. We shall

find as the last result on closer analysis, that by what is called

content an educated mind means nothing but the presence and power of

thought. But this is to admit that thoughts are not empty forms without

affinity to their content, and that in other spheres as well as in art

the truth and the sterling value of the content essentially depend on

the content showing itself identical with the form.

134.] But immediate existence is a character of the subsistence itself

as well as of the form: it is consequently external to the character of

the content; but in an equal degree this externality, which the content

has through the factor of its subsistence, is essential to it. When

thus explicitly stated, the phenomenon is relativity or correlation:

where one and the same thing, viz. the content or the developed

form, is seen as the externality and antithesis of independent

existences, and as their reduction to a relation of identity, in which

identification alone the two things distinguished are what they are.

(c) _Relation or Correlation._

135.] (α) The immediate relation is that of the Whole and the

Parts. The content is the whole, and consists of the parts (the

form), its counterpart. The parts are diverse one from another. It is

they that possess independent being. But they are parts, only when they

are identified by being related to one another; or, in so far as they

make up the whole, when taken together. But this 'Together' is the

counterpart and negation of the part.

Essential correlation is the specific and completely universal

phase in which things appear. Everything that exists stands in

correlation, and this correlation is the veritable nature of every

existence. The existent thing in this way has no being of its own, but

only in something else: in this other however it is self-relation; and

correlation is the unity of the self-relation and relation-to-others.

The relation of the whole and the parts is untrue to this extent, that

the notion and the reality of the relation are not in harmony. The

notion of the whole is to contain parts: but if the whole is taken

and made what its notion implies, _i.e._ if it is divided, it at once

ceases to be a whole. Things there are, no doubt, which correspond

to this relation: but for that very reason they are low and untrue

existences. We must remember however what 'untrue' signifies. When

it occurs in a philosophical discussion, the term 'untrue' does not

signify that the thing to which it is applied is non-existent. A bad

state or a sickly body may exist all the same; but these things are

untrue, because their notion and their reality are out of harmony.

The relation of whole and parts, being the immediate relation, comes

easy to reflective understanding; and for that reason it often

satisfies when the question really turns on profounder ties. The limbs

and organs, for instance, of an organic body are not merely parts of

it: it is only in their unity that they are what they are, and they

are unquestionably affected by that unity, as they also in turn affect

it. These limbs and organs become mere parts, only when they pass under

the hands of the anatomist, whose occupation, be it remembered, is not

with the living body but with the corpse. Not that such analysis is

illegitimate: we only mean that the external and mechanical relation of

whole and parts is not sufficient for us, if we want to study organic

life in its truth. And if this be so in organic life, it is the case

to a much greater extent when we apply this relation to the mind and

the formations of the spiritual world. Psychologists may not expressly

speak of parts of the soul or mind, but the mode in which this

subject is treated by the analytic understanding is largely founded

on the analogy of this finite relation. At least that is so, when the

different forms of mental activity are enumerated and described merely

in their isolation one after another, as so-called special powers and

faculties.