C. The Measureless

Measure is magnitude that is in itself, which withstands the externality and indifference of immediate quantum and maintains itself against it. But this indifferent self-subsistence of the specific measures rests upon quantitative difference, and is therefore capable of ascending and descending along the scale of quantum upon which the ratios change; a something or a quality is driven out beyond itself into the measureless, and founders through the mere change of its quantum. Magnitude is the indifferent external constitution at which an existence can be seized and through which it can be destroyed.

The qualitative relation passes over into merely quantitative ratios which have no negative unity and are thereby no qualitative ratios; the change that has set in along with them is not a change of quality. But conversely this at first indifferent externality of the ratio becomes once again a qualifying determinateness and so forth into infinity. To that extent the bad infinity of the infinite progress is at hand. — The measureless consists in the merely quantitative into which a measure passes over; quantum as such is the measureless. But since conversely the measureless quantitative ratio itself becomes once more a specific one, the measureless thus sublates itself again at its own self. What is at hand, then, is not only the negation of the specific relation but also the negation of the quantitative going-on itself. The infinite is this negation of both moments; it is the absolute determination which they lack. The specific relation is at first what is determined in itself, because as a relation it has difference at its own self, and because its sides too are not immediate magnitudes, not units as in the immediate direct ratio, but specified, posited determinations of quantity. But this being-determined in itself does not hold; it continues itself with its other and passes over into the merely quantitative difference; a difference which consists in immediate quanta not specified through the negative unity; this difference, however, rather goes back into the specific relation. Neither of the two, then, is absolute being-determined. This infinity accordingly consists at large in the negation of both sides. But at the same time this negation is not the beyond of each, an infinity situated outside them or merely their inner infinity, but their infinity posited at their own selves. — The qualitative infinity, namely, was the breaking-forth of the infinite at the finite, the immediate transition and the vanishing of the this-side in its beyond. Quantitative infinity, by contrast, is the continuity of quantum, a continuity of it out beyond itself. The qualitatively finite becomes the infinite; the quantitatively finite has its beyond at its own self, and points beyond itself. But the infinity of the specification of measure is at its own self this totality, which does not have the other as a beyond of itself but posits, in its negation that goes out beyond itself, only this: that it is totality, that it does not have or posit an other over against itself. The specific relation is the negative unity of quantities which are determined through it; as this negative unity it is the self-subsistent, indifferent subsistence. But that into which it has specified itself are determinations of quantity; it therefore does not pass over into the quantitative ratio but only refers itself therein to itself; and measurelessness, or its negation, namely the quantitative aspect of the relation, is its negative reference to itself. Its infinity is accordingly the sublating not of itself, but of its being an other; this is the negation of it as that through which it is. The qualitative relation, then, as reference of specific quantities, thereby makes itself external, makes itself into a subsistence devoid of quality; but it is precisely this its negation through which it is what makes up its specific constitution. — This is its nature, but it is at the same time at hand within the infinite progress. Namely, the specific relation, as indifferent towards itself, repels itself away from itself and makes itself into another specific relation. This is another quantitative ratio; both are therefore indifferent towards each other, and their qualitative reference is sublated. But precisely thereby they are only externally distinguished; the reference to the other is thus a reference to what is not distinguished from it, to itself, as to its negation. This repelling of the specific away from itself is its self-subsistence; this consists, then, in referring itself to its other, which is only quantitatively distinguished, in such a way that in its negation it is what it is. — So conversely the quantitative determination overturns into specific determination, but because the latter is at its own self the quantitative, the quantitative maintains itself in its becoming-other, and is thus in its constitution what it is according to its determination: to be in its negation what it is.

The infinite progress as such consists only in this, that the specific self-subsistent passes over into the quantitative and the latter into the former, and that in this passing-over the passing-over sublates itself, inasmuch as the new relation is once again as an immediate, indifferent one. But infinity itself is the unity of the qualitative and the quantitative, a unity that repels itself away from itself and immediately is only this repelling itself. — The quantitative and the qualitative are in immediate measure an immediate unity. But they are just as much qualitatively opposed to each other, each is what the other is not; thus in the infinite progress they are the determinations of the relations over against one another. But in this qualitative determination each of them is at the same time, simply at its own self, the passing-over into its other. This passing-over is, considered according to form, the same through which quality at large becomes quantity and quantity becomes quality; namely, the specific aspect of the relation, as excluding repulsion, coalesces into one with what is excluded, or becomes attraction and thereby quantity. Conversely quantity, as externality in itself, which within the progress becomes the externality of its own self, has thereby returned into itself, and quantum is, as what it is in itself, quality.

But what is at hand is not only this passing-over of quality and quantity into each other, which shows itself at them as the determinations of being; rather it comes back here in the reference of the two; their passing-over into each other happens upon the ground of their unity. It is a passing-over which is at the same time the recoil of itself against itself, and which sublates itself. The qualitative, namely, passes over into the quantitative at first as into its other; but here the latter is itself as such what is in itself the passing-over into the qualitative ; — and so reciprocally. Each, then, passes over into its other, which, however, sublates itself at its own self and is only the becoming towards its other. Inasmuch as each thus becomes an other, it rather sublates only this, being an other; in its change it therefore comes together only with itself.

Inasmuch, then, as the passing-over of specifically self-subsistent things into each other is at the same time the negating of this passing-over as a becoming-other, that which changes is no self-subsistence; the alteration is only the change of a state, and what passes over remains in itself the same. The quantitative reference, the specific aspect of the difference of the qualitative and the quantitative, is sublated in this infinity. Just as at first the immediate measure-relation sublated itself in specific self-subsistence, so has the latter now likewise vanished, inasmuch as it is reduced to a state. It was supposed to be at large the sublated immediate measure-relation; the quantitative within it was supposed to be something qualitatively determined, and, as excluding negative unity with itself, a being-for-itself absolutely determined in itself. But this self-subsistence, as passing over into the quantitative, which within it was supposed to be only sublated, has reduced itself to a moment. But inasmuch as the passing-over has sublated itself at large, self-subsistence in its passing-over has come together only with itself. Through the fact that in passing over it sublates its passing-over, it is for the first time genuine self-subsistence. The self-subsistent posits itself as self-subsistent in one and the same respect in which it sublates its specific quality; for only thereby is it the genuine reference to itself.

What is at hand, then, is the self-subsistence which mediates itself with itself through its negation. Specific self-subsistence, the excluding reference to itself, has its indifference towards itself, the quantitative, as its negation, for its mediating moment, and as this return into itself it is absolute self-subsistence.

Chapter 3. The Becoming of Essence

A. Indifference

The specific self-subsistent is mediated with its own self through its negation, and so it is no longer specific but absolute self-subsistence. — At first, to be sure, the specific is immediate being at large, the qualitative, whereas the negation of it is the quantitative, whereby it returns into itself. Yet the quantitative is just as much quality, and thereby something specific over against quality as such, while quality is its negation; the two therefore have only an indeterminate sense left over against each other. — Further, the specific is no longer to be called a self-subsistent; the qualitative and the quantitative are downright nothing but moments any more. The absolute self-subsistent, which is their infinite, in which they are sublated, is their unity insofar as it comes forth out of them. It is not their becoming, — this was the nodal line and the infinite advance of them, for it is not their unity in which they would still have their qualitative difference. Nor has it gone back into the determination of their immediate unity; for the moments are one as in difference from each other, or their unity is not at hand in which they would be one only as sublated, but rather they are this, to continue themselves the one in the other. Their unity is therefore the unity that is in them and indifferent towards them, their indifference.

This indifference of the qualitative and the quantitative is the indifferentness of both determinations at large, each of which in the other does not pass over but only comes together with its own self. For that reason, however, it is further also only the self-subsistence that is in itself, not yet the one that is for itself. Since it is the indifferentness towards the difference of the two determinations, it does not yet have that difference at its own self. It is a unity that is in itself and indifferent, so it is posited in the determination of quantity, and the qualitative difference stands over against it, as that towards which it is indifferent. — Or insofar as it is the infinite that results from the going-into-itself of the qualitative and the quantitative, it has this movement behind it, and is referred to it. — What indifference thus lacks is this, to have at its own self the qualitative unity with itself, the absolute negativity. It stands in the determination of indifferentness towards the negative; hence not the absolutely self-subsistent.

B. The Self-subsistent as Inverse Ratio of Its Factors

Indifference is only the unity of the qualitative and the quantitative that is in itself; it has the determinate reference to its other, towards which it is indifferent; as being in itself it is indeed immediacy, but an immediacy from which its mediation is distinct; it is therefore in fact itself mediated. Thus it is the specific self-subsistent that mediates itself with itself through its negation and thereby becomes absolute self-subsistence, in such a way that it still has the two determinations, specific self-subsistence and the negation of it, at itself as moments which are distinguished from its indifference; through this these moments regain for an instant their determinate sense over against each other. But not as self-subsistents which are such immediately for themselves, rather as ones that have their self-subsistence solely in their indifference and are its moments.

There is first at hand the moment of specific self-subsistence, which in its determinateness is the qualitative one; it is not at its own self the indifferent unity with itself, but is over against that unity the determinate, hence what is differentiated within itself. There are thus two self-subsistences at large; they are self-subsistent only in themselves, in their unity; for in it they are not determinate over against an other; only in the negation of its own self is the specific self-subsistent. In their specific determinateness, however, the one of them is what the other is not, and hence each is at the same time only insofar as the other is. But their determinate diversity over against each other is made up by the quantitative difference; the qualitative one makes up its constitution, its specific reference to an other, through the quantum. This quantum, which makes up the being of the sides of the ratio, is qualitatively determined the one against the other, so that the being of the one is the non-being of the other. They accordingly stand in an inverse ratio.

The inverse ratio returns here; it is not, however, the first, formal one. In that one the qualitative reference — that the one is not what the other is — was itself indifferent to the sides, for they were only quanta at large. Here, in the reality of this ratio, it is the sides' own qualitativity that refers them in this way; their specific determination contains the moment of excluding, of being at their own selves insofar as the other is not. At the same time this return of the sides into themselves is the indifferent reference to self, the quantum; they have it as the determination of their indifferent subsistence over against each other. The quantum for its part is thus, as something specific, not the immediate external determinateness but a qualitative reference.

The two sides of this inverse ratio have their self-subsistence in the indifference of their moments that is in itself; they are this unity itself; but the differentiated unity; they are specified self-subsistents. As the unity of the qualitative and the quantitative, both are in themselves the same and self-subsistent, but they are this unity as mediated through their negation or through otherness; each has its return into itself in the other; the qualitative is what is determined in itself only within quantity as the indifferent subsistence, and the quantitative is something specific only within the qualitative. This negative unity, in which they are a self-subsistent, is still distinguished from their absolute indifference; hence the negative steps over against itself in its determinateness. Their unity is therefore at hand, as their self-subsistence at large, in the difference of two which, as has already been determined, stand to each other in an inverse ratio. They are specifically self-subsistent, as determinate ones, and each is the mediation of itself with itself through its negation; but its negation is distinguished from its self-subsistence that is as yet only in itself; the negation is therefore an other self-subsistent. The return into self accordingly consists likewise as yet only in the immediacy of each, in which it maintains itself over against its alteration; the immediacy of its subsistence and its equality with itself as within alteration, or its mediation with itself, fall apart. There is at each an immediate part which is for itself and does not accrue to it out of the negation of the other, a part that can be regarded as greater or smaller or as infinitely small, and which is at large the moment of specific self-subsistence.

What is at hand, then, in the real inverse ratio are two specific self-subsistences; ones which in themselves are the same, and are distinguished as quanta. Their indifference that is in itself is thus only their sum; a determinate quantum. This sum has its qualitative determinateness in the differing ratios into which the indifferent quanta enter with each other; for the reference which such qualitatively determined quanta of the whole have within the ratio is the specific diversity of this whole. These sides of the ratio are factors which, being in themselves the same whole, determine the whole through their determinate quantitative alteration, not according to its indifference but according to its determinateness; for it is precisely this that they make up.

This determinateness of the factors now consists in the differing ratio of their quanta. But at the same time they are essentially determined qualitatively over against each other; their quantitative diversity is not a falling apart of them but is within One unity. The one therefore has a magnitude only insofar as the other side does not have it; by as much as is taken from the one, so much accrues to the other. But now for that very reason, because their quantitativity is downright of this qualitative nature, each reaches only so far as the other does. Insofar as they were supposed to be diverse as quanta and to make up a determinate ratio, the one would run out beyond the other and would have in its more a being which the other would not have. But in their qualitative reference each is only insofar as the other is. — They are therefore in equilibrium, such that by however much the one increased or diminished, the other would likewise grow or shrink, and would grow or shrink in the very same ratio.

By reason of their qualitative reference, therefore, it cannot come to any quantitative difference. — But the quantitative determination can be taken as the first, and hence the one can be assumed immediately as greater than the other. In that case, however, it goes out beyond its own self; for in its determination it is equal to the other; as unequal to the other, it goes out beyond itself and contains the other. More than the other it has only from the other; but nothing is left over to the latter, for on account of the qualitative determination which the quantitative difference has, what the one would be over and beyond the other, is only this other itself. There is only the one and the other; insofar as the one were to undergo an increment, this increment is only the other.

Insofar, then, as starting from the quantitative representation the equilibrium is disturbed and one factor is taken as greater, it becomes the preponderant one in such a way that the other diminishes at accelerating speed and is overpowered by the first, so that this first makes itself the sole self-subsistent, but is thereby no longer a specific one but the whole.

Insofar, then, as a determinateness is at hand at the whole whose factors the sides of the inverse ratio are supposed to be, and an alteration goes on, this alteration goes on only at the whole itself, not at the factors, which have no determinateness over against each other. Further, insofar as such factors, — though, as has been shown, superfluously, — are assumed as determinations of the whole, it is a matter of complete indifference which of them one lets alter, or else the other alters just as much; there is only one thing at all, the whole, that alters; the difference of the factors is without significance.

But the whole too does not alter; for this whole, the indifference that is in itself, is at large no longer determined qualitatively or quantitatively; it is not sum or quantum, nor any other qualitative determinateness. Determinateness is no longer first negation, but absolute negativity. Indifference is in itself only this, to be indifferent towards quality and quantum. The determinateness, however, which it still had as something that is in itself, and which consisted in the difference of its factors, has completely sublated itself in this, that it showed itself to be what goes back into itself; through this these factors are the same not only in themselves, but in their determinate other ness; it is their negative reference through which they are one.

Remark

This ratio of a whole which is meant to possess its determinateness in the difference of magnitude between factors qualitatively determined against each other is put to use, for instance, in the elliptical motion of the heavenly bodies. In this motion their speed accelerates as they approach the perihelion, and it slackens as they approach the aphelion. For what passes as an explanation of this phenomenon, one posits a centripetal and a centrifugal force as qualitative moments of motion along the curved line. Their qualitative difference consists in the diversity of direction. In quantitative respect they are determined as unequal and opposed, so that as the one is to grow the other is to wane, and conversely, and at the same time so that their ratio should also turn about once more, so that once the centripetal force has increased for a while and the centrifugal force has decreased, a point should set in at which the centripetal force decreases while the centrifugal force increases. I have shed light on this subject in an earlier dissertation and laid bare the nullity of this distinction and of the explanations built upon it. Closer consideration readily shows that in the operations and formulas built upon that distinction there in fact occurs no quantitative diversity of these moments at all, but rather that what is always in question is only the whole, the speed of the motion; so that what comes out as the magnitude of the effect of the one factor is just as much the magnitude of the other, as it is likewise the magnitude of the whole. Because they have their qualitative determinateness over against each other, they simply cannot be pulled apart from one another; each has sense only with respect to the other; insofar, therefore, as one of them had a surplus beyond the other, just so far would it stand in no reference to the other and would not be at hand. — Suppose it assumed that at some time the one is greater than the other: were it, as the greater, to stand in reference to what is smaller, then what has been said above sets in, namely that it would gain preponderance absolutely, and the other would vanish. It is a very simple consideration that if, for instance, as is pretended, the centripetal force of the body is to increase as the body approaches the perihelion while the centrifugal force is to decrease by just as much, then the latter can no longer wrench the body loose from the former and remove it once more from its central body; on the contrary, since preponderance has once fallen to the former, the other is overpowered, and with accelerating speed the body is borne towards its central body. Just as, conversely, when the centrifugal force holds the upper hand at the infinite nearness of the aphelion, it is equally contradictory that in the aphelion itself it should now be overpowered by the weaker one. — It is evident that it would take an alien force to bring about this reversal; which means that the now accelerated, now retarded speed of the motion cannot be cognized from those factors which were assumed precisely in order to explain this very difference.

The same ratio was later applied to attractive force and repulsive force in order to grasp how bodies differ in density; and the inverse ratio between sensibility and irritability, too, was supposed to serve for grasping, from the diversity that these two factors of life exhibit, the differing determinations of the whole, of health, as also the diversity among the genera of living beings. But the confusion and the galimatias in which this explaining entangled itself through the uncritical use of these conceptual determinations has had the consequence that this formalism appears to have been soon abandoned again, whereas in science, and especially in physical astronomy, it is carried on in its full extent.

— With regard to absolute indifference, the fundamental concept of Spinoza's substance, it may still be recalled that this concept is the last determination of being before being becomes essence, but that it does not itself reach essence. Absolute indifference contains the absolute unity of the specifically self-subsistent in their highest determination, as that of thinking and of being, and therein at large of all the other modifications of these attributes. Yet with this only the absolute that is in itself, not the absolute that is for itself, has been thought. Or it is the external reflection which halts at the thought that the specifically self-subsistent are in themselves or in the absolute the same and one, that their difference is merely an indifferent one, no difference in itself. What is still lacking here consists in this, that this reflection should not be the external reflection of the thinking subject, but that it should itself be cognized, and indeed as the self-subsistents' own determination and movement to sublate their difference and to be one not merely in themselves but in their qualitative difference, whereby then the concept of essence, not to have the negative outside it but to be at its own self the absolute negativity, indifference towards its own self just as much as of its otherness towards itself.

C. Emergence of Essence

Absolute indifference consisted in this, that it is the specifically self-subsistent which mediates itself with its own self through its negation, and, purified by this negation, is the absolutely self-subsistent. It is thus the indifference which presupposes the specific self-subsistent and the negation of it, and is thereby determined as what is in itself.

In the first place, this determinateness is essential to it; coming back out of those moments, indifference, as the determination or as being-in-itself, is distinguished from them as from its constitution or its being-for-other.

Secondly, however, this determinateness has more closely turned out to be the inverse ratio of factors. For since it is essentially at the absolutely self-subsistent, that specific self-subsistence and the negation of it are to be considered only in their reference to it; or rather they are only moments of this their unity.

Thirdly, in this determination of being factors of the determinateness of essence, their incomplete unity, their inverse ratio, has sublated itself. Or the determinateness of absolute indifference has shown itself to be the negative reference to its own self. Determinateness is the difference and the mutual negation of the factors; but the negation is no longer the negation of something immediate, such that it would itself be only an immediate one and determined through an other, but rather the negation of the other is negation of one's own specific self-subsistence over against the other; the negative reference to the other, which as such is a being-determined or a passing over, is rather a sublating of one's own determinateness, the passing over into one's own self; negation of the negative.

The determinateness of the indifference that is in itself is with this the infinity of its self-subsistence, the absolute negativity. It is therefore not the specific self-subsistence which mediates itself with its own self through its negation, but it is the absolute self-subsistence, which is only this, to mediate itself with itself through its negativity that is equal to it. — In this, to be sure, a first absolute self-subsistence is enunciated over against the other, which is as mediated with itself. To that extent the former is the immediate one, or the one that only is in itself; to that extent it is the specific, a determinate self-subsistence at large. But the result is precisely this, first, that the self-subsistence which is in itself, indifference as such, is not absolute but is itself determined, and that it is this essentially, but that its determinateness is the negation of the negation, hence a self-subsistence which is for itself, one that contains that self-subsistence which is in itself as something sublated, as a moment. There is therefore at hand the self-subsistence which is this, namely to be, in the complete negation of its own self, that is to say in the self-subsistence of otherness, which means of the first immediate, simple reference to itself, and hence at the same time negative reference to itself.

With this being has absolutely gone back into itself; it has sublated its determinateness of being the simple immediate, and has recollected itself.

Being is first quality, which according to its determination is the being determined in itself, a determinateness which is, in that it is the negation of the other. Quantity, according to its determination, is the indifferent determinateness, which is not the negation of an other but is indifferent towards it and to which the other is external. It first showed itself at them, in their immediacy, that quality passes over into quantity, but quantity into quality. Their unity is measure; whereas before each was posited for itself, in measure they have entered into the reference, at first according to their determinateness over against each other, hence only in a relative unity. Through the movement of measure, however, there is posited what they, each considered for itself, showed themselves to be in themselves, and out of this their absolute unity emerges.

This unity of the qualitative and the quantitative, at first an indifferentness towards the one and towards the other, is essentially not indifference as towards the one and the other, but indifferentness towards its own self, a falling apart within itself. This is the quantitativity of indifference, but just as much its qualitativity; for as indifference it is a self-subsistence that is in itself and immediate; but precisely this being-in-itself, or the immediacy, is determinateness; hence the negation of indifference, an other self-subsistent. The negative reference of the two self-subsistents to each other makes up their qualitative determinateness, in which that first immediacy is thus posited only as determinateness and is thereby sublated; and since this sublating is not merely a sublating of immediacy but of immediacy as negation, it is negation of the negation; the determinateness which is the self-subsistence of the whole; the negative indifference.

This unity with itself of determinateness and of indifference towards it is the truth of being. It is the simple being, indifferent immediacy, as mediated with itself through its negation, through its indifference towards its own self; or it is mediation as pure equality with itself, as simple immediacy, — being which is only this, to have converged with itself in its negation and thereby to be pure being.

Being as this being that is downright recollected is essence. The truth of being is thus to be something immediate as absolutely sublated immediacy. It is only as negative reference to itself; thus it repels itself from itself, this repelling is its non-being, and so it is the first immediacy, qualitative being. But this non-being is indifference towards itself, the sublating of itself, and so it is at first quantitative being; — this is already in itself the return into itself; insofar, namely, as that first is determined as non-being; but it is as yet only quantitative being insofar as that first is immediate being. Quantitative being makes itself into measure and as measure into the indifference that is for itself; this indifference is precisely this, to determine immediate being as a non-being, and being-in-itself as determinateness. Being, in that it is this, not to be what it is and to be what it is not; — as this simple negativity of its own self, is essence.