Chapter 1. Concrete Existence

As the principle of ground expresses it — everything that is has a ground, or is something posited, something mediated — so too a principle of concrete existence would have to be set up and expressed thus: everything that is concretely exists. Not to be a first immediate, but to be essence come forth into immediacy — that is the truth of being.

But if it was further said as well that what concretely exists has a ground and is conditioned, then it would have to be said no less: it has no ground and is unconditioned. For the sublating of that mediation which refers by ground and condition has brought forth an immediacy, and this immediacy is concrete existence, which in emerging sublates just this emerging itself.

Insofar as the proofs of the concrete existence of God may be mentioned here, it should be recalled beforehand that alongside immediate being, first, and concrete existence, second — the being emerging out of essence — there is a still further being, one emerging out of the concept: objectivity. – Proving as such is mediated cognition. Each kind of being demands or contains a kind of mediation of its own; the nature of proving therefore comes out differently in respect of each. The ontological proof wants to set out from the concept; it lays the sum total of all realities down as ground, and thereupon subsumes concrete existence too under reality. It is therefore that mediation which is a syllogism, and it does not yet fall to be considered here. Regard has already been paid above (Part I, Division I, p. 47 f.) to Kant's reminder against this, and it was noted that Kant understands by concrete existence the determinate existence whereby something enters the context of the whole of experience, that is, enters the determination of an otherness and the reference to other. As something concretely existing, then, a something stands mediated by an other, and concrete existence at large is the side on which it is mediated. Now in what Kant calls the concept — that is, in a something so far as it is taken as merely and simply referred to itself, or in representation as such — its mediation does not lie; within abstract identity with itself the setting-in-opposition has been dropped. What the ontological proof would have to exhibit is that the absolute concept, the concept of God namely, arrives at determinate existence, at mediation, or how the simple essence mediates itself with mediation. This comes about through the subsumption indicated, that of concrete existence under its universal, namely under reality, which is assumed as the middle — on the one side God in his concept, on the other side concrete existence. – Of this mediation, so far as it has the shape of the syllogism, there is, as has been said, no question here. How that mediation of essence with concrete existence is in truth constituted, however, is what the exposition up to now has contained. Proving's own nature falls to be considered in the doctrine of cognition. Only what bears upon the nature of mediation at large is to be indicated here.

In the proofs of the existence of God a ground is given for that existence. This is not supposed to be an objective ground of God's existence; for that existence is in and for its own self. It is therefore merely a ground for cognition. With that it declares itself at the same time to be something that vanishes in the object which at first appears through it as grounded. The ground now taken from the world's contingency contains the world's going back into the absolute essence; for the contingent is what in its own self is groundless and sublates itself. In this manner, then, the absolute essence does in fact emerge out of the groundless; the ground sublates itself, and with that the shine also vanishes of that relation which was given to God, of being grounded in an other. Hereby this mediation is the genuine one. Only that proving reflection is unacquainted with this nature of its mediation; on the one part it takes itself to be something merely subjective and thereby removes its mediation from God himself, while on the other part it therefore fails to recognize the mediating movement, and to recognize that and how the movement lies within essence itself. Reflection's genuine relation consists in its being both in one: mediation as such, yet at the same time, to be sure, a subjective and outward mediation, that is, the mediation outward to itself, which sublates itself again in its own self. In that exposition, though, concrete existence acquires the skewed relation of appearing merely as something mediated or posited.

Nor, on the other side, can concrete existence be regarded merely as something immediate. Taken in the determination of an immediacy, the apprehending of God's concrete existence has been given out as something unprovable, and the knowledge of it as a merely immediate consciousness, as a faith. Knowledge, it is said, must come to this result: that it knows nothing; that is, that it gives up once more its mediating movement together with the determinations that occur within it. This has come out in the foregoing as well; only it is to be added that reflection, in ending with the sublating of its own self, does not on that account have nothing as its result, as if the positive knowledge of essence, taken as immediate reference to essence, were severed from that result and were an emerging of its own, an act starting merely from itself; rather this very ending, this foundering of mediation, is at once the ground from which the immediate emerges. As was remarked above, language brings together the meaning of this going under and of the ground; the essence of God, one says, is the abyss for finite reason. And such it is in fact, insofar as reason therein surrenders its finitude and lets its mediating movement sink away; yet this abyss, the negative ground, is equally the positive ground from which what is emerges, the essence immediate in its own self; mediation is an essential moment. The mediation through the ground sublates itself, yet it does not leave the ground below, so that what emerges from it would be a posited having its essence elsewhere, namely in the ground; as abyss, rather, this ground is mediation vanished; and conversely, only mediation vanished is at once the ground, and only by way of this negation is it the self-same and the immediate.

Concrete existence, then, is not here to be taken as a predicate, nor as a determination of essence, in such a way that a proposition about it would run: essence concretely exists, or has concrete existence; – essence has rather passed over into concrete existence; concrete existence is essence's absolute externalization, beyond which essence has not remained behind. The proposition would accordingly run: essence is concrete existence; from its concrete existence it is not distinguished. – Essence has passed over into concrete existence insofar as essence, qua ground, draws no further distinction between itself and itself as the grounded, or insofar as that ground has sublated itself. This negation, however, is just as essentially essence's position, or simply and solely positive continuity with its own self; concrete existence is the reflection of the ground into itself, the ground's identity with its own self achieved in the ground's negation, and hence that mediation which has posited itself as self-identical and is thereby immediacy.

Now because concrete existence is essentially the mediation identical with itself, it has the determinations of mediation about it, yet in such a way that they are at once reflected into themselves and possess subsistence that is essential and immediate. Being the immediacy that posits itself through sublating, concrete existence is negative unity and being-within-itself; it therefore determines itself immediately as something concretely existing and as a thing.

A. The Thing and Its Properties

Concrete existence, qua something concretely existing, stands posited in the form of that negative unity which it essentially is. At first, though, this negative unity is only an immediate determination, and so the one belonging to something at large. The concretely existing something, however, differs from the something that is. Essentially the former is an immediacy such as has come about through mediation's reflection into its own self. And so the concretely existing something is a thing.

One distinguishes the thing from its concrete existence much as the something may be distinguished from its being. Immediately, thing and what concretely exists are one and the same. Yet because concrete existence is not being's first immediacy, but carries the moment of mediation about it, the determining of concrete existence into thing, and the distinguishing of the two, is no transition but properly an analysis; and this distinguishing is itself contained in concrete existence as such, within the moment of its mediation — the difference of thing-in-itself from outward concrete existence.

a. Thing-in-itself and Concrete Existence

1. As the essential immediate on hand by way of a mediation already sublated, the thing in itself is that which concretely exists. In this, mediation is quite as essential to the thing in itself; but within such first, immediate concrete existence the said difference comes apart into indifferent determinations. One side of it, the mediation of the thing, namely, is the thing's unreflected immediacy; its being pure and simple, which, on account of being determined at once as mediation, amounts to an existence other to itself, inwardly manifold and external. Not existence merely, though: it stands in reference to the sublated mediation and to essential immediacy, and hence is existence as the unessential, as positedness. – (Once the thing is held apart from its concrete existence, it is the possible, the thing belonging to representation, or the thought-thing, which as such is not meant at the same time to exist. The determination of possibility, together with the opposition of the thing to its concrete existence, belongs later.) – Yet thing-in-itself and mediated being are both alike contained in concrete existence, and each is itself a concrete existence; the former concretely exists and is the thing's essential concrete existence, the latter its unessential one.

The thing in itself, as the simple being-reflected of concrete existence into itself, is no ground of the unessential existence; it is motionless, indeterminate unity, since its determination is precisely to be mediation already sublated, and hence merely the groundwork of that existence. Reflection too, therefore, as the existence mediating itself through another, falls outside the thing-in-itself. The latter is to bear no determinate manifoldness on it, and comes by such only once brought before external reflection, towards which it nevertheless stays indifferent. (– Color the thing-in-itself has only once brought before the eye, taste once brought before the nose, and so forth.) Its diversity amounts to respects that an other takes, determinate references which this other confers on itself in regard to the thing-in-itself, and which are no determinations belonging to the latter.

2. This other is now reflection, which, being determined as external, is first external to itself and constitutes the determinate manifoldness. Next it is external to what essentially concretely exists, and refers itself to that as to its absolute presupposition. Both these moments of external reflection, though, a manifoldness of its own and its reference to the thing-in-itself standing other to it, are one and the same. For such concrete existence is external only insofar as it refers itself to essential identity as to an other. Beyond the thing-in-itself, accordingly, the manifoldness has no self-subsistent subsistence of its own, but is only as shine as against it, in its necessary reference thereto, as the reflex breaking upon it. Diversity is thus on hand as an other's reference to the thing-in-itself; but that other is nothing subsisting for itself and is only as reference to it; simultaneously, though, it is only as the repulsion away from it, and so proves the unsupported counter-thrust of itself into itself.

To the thing-in-itself, then, essential identity of concrete existence that it is, this essenceless reflection does not accrue; external to it, rather, that reflection collapses into itself. It founders, and so becomes itself essential identity, or thing-in-itself. – One may view the matter also thus: essenceless concrete existence has its reflection-into-itself in the thing-in-itself; to begin with, it refers itself to that as to its other; but being the other as against what is in itself, it is only the sublating of itself, and the becoming of being-in-itself. Thereby the thing-in-itself is identical with external concrete existence.

On the thing-in-itself this displays itself thus. The thing-in-itself is essential concrete existence referring itself to itself; it is identity with itself only to the extent that it harbors within it the negativity of reflection; what showed up as concrete existence external to it is on that account a moment within it. Hence it is likewise a thing-in-itself repelling itself away from itself, one which accordingly comports itself towards itself as towards an other. So there are now several things-in-themselves on hand, which stand to one another in the reference of external reflection. Their relation to one another as to others is this unessential concrete existence; but it is moreover itself essential to them – or rather, this unessential concrete existence, collapsing into itself, is thing-in-itself, though an other than the first, since the first is immediate essentiality while this one issues out of the unessential concrete existence. Only, this second thing-in-itself is nothing more than an other in general; for, being a thing identical with itself, it holds no further determinateness as against the first, and is, as the first was, the reflection of unessential concrete existence into itself. Thus the determinateness of the diverse things-in-themselves as against one another falls to external reflection.

3. This external reflection is henceforth a comportment of the things-in-themselves towards one another, their mutual mediation as others. In this way the things-in-themselves are the extremes of a syllogism, its middle term being made up by their external concrete existence, that concrete existence whereby they are others for one another and are differentiated. This difference of theirs falls solely within their reference; from their surface, as it were, they merely dispatch determinations into that reference, and towards it, as absolutely reflected into themselves, they stay indifferent. – This relation now makes up the totality of concrete existence. The thing-in-itself stands in reference to a reflection external to it, and within that reflection it has manifold determinations; this is its repelling of itself away from itself into another thing-in-itself; such repelling is the counter-thrust of it into itself, since each is an other only as shining back out of the other; its positedness lies not on itself but on the other, and it is determined solely by the other's determinateness; and this other is just as much determined solely by the determinateness of the first. Since the two things-in-themselves have the diversity thereby not on themselves but each only on the other, they are not differentiated at all; the thing-in-itself, supposed as it is to comport itself towards the other extreme as towards another thing-in-itself, comports itself towards what is undifferentiated from it, and external reflection, which was meant to make up the mediating reference between extremes, turns out to be a comportment of the thing-in-itself merely towards itself, or essentially its reflection into itself; it is accordingly determinateness that is in itself, the determinateness of the thing-in-itself. This determinateness it does not possess, then, in a reference external to it towards another thing-in-itself, and of the other towards it; the determinateness is no mere surface of it, but is its essential mediation with itself as with an other. – Both things-in-themselves, which were to make up the extremes of the reference, being supposed to have in themselves no determinateness as against one another, in fact collapse into one; there is but One thing-in-itself which in external reflection comports itself towards itself, and what makes up its determinateness is its own reference to itself as to an other.

Such determinateness on the part of the thing-in-itself is the property of the thing.

b. Property

Quality is the immediate determinateness belonging to something; the negative itself by virtue of which being is a something. Just so, the thing's property is the negativity of reflection whereby concrete existence is at all something concretely existing and, as simple identity with itself, is thing-in-itself. The negativity of reflection, the sublated mediation, is however essentially itself mediation, and reference – not to an other in general, in the way that quality is the unreflected determinateness, but reference to itself as to an other; or mediation that immediately is just as much identity with itself. The abstract thing in itself is itself this comportment returning into itself out of another; thereby it is determined in its own self; but its determinateness is constitution, which as such is itself determination and which, being comportment towards another, does not pass over into otherness and is withdrawn from alteration.

A thing has properties; these are, in the first place, its determinate references to what is other; property is on hand only as a manner of comporting towards one another; it is accordingly external reflection, the side of the thing's positedness. But, in the second place, in this positedness the thing is in itself; it preserves itself in the reference to another; admittedly it is thus only a surface with which concrete existence gives itself over to the becoming of being and to alteration, yet in that surface the property does not get lost. A thing possesses the property of bringing about this or that in the other and of expressing itself in its reference after a fashion of its own. It furnishes proof of this property only on condition of an answering constitution in the other thing, yet the property is at once peculiar to it and its own groundwork identical with itself; – this reflected quality is called property for that reason. Therein the thing passes over into an externality, but there the property maintains itself. Through its properties the thing turns into cause, and cause is just this, to preserve itself as effect. Here, however, the thing is as yet no more than the quiescent thing of many properties; not yet determined as actual cause; it is as yet only the in-itself reflection of its determinations, not yet itself the positing one.

As has come out, then, the thing-in-itself is essentially not thing-in-itself in such fashion that its properties would be positedness of an external reflection; rather, they are determinations of its own, through which it comports itself in a determinate manner; it is no determinationless groundwork lying beyond its external concrete existence, but is on hand in its properties, as ground, which is to say, as the identity with itself in its positedness; yet at the same time as conditioned ground, which is to say, its positedness is quite as much self-external reflection; only to the extent that it is external is it reflected into itself and in itself. – By way of concrete existence the thing-in-itself steps into external references; and concrete existence consists in this externality; being the immediacy of being, it subjects the thing to alteration; but it is likewise the reflected immediacy of ground, and so the thing is in itself throughout its alteration. – This mention of the ground-reference must not be taken here, however, as if the thing were determined generally as the ground of its properties; thinghood itself as such is the ground-determination, property is not something distinguished from its ground, nor does it merely make up the positedness, but is that ground which has passed over into its own externality and is thereby truly reflected into itself; property itself as such is the ground, positedness that is in itself, or else the ground makes up the form of property's identity with itself; property's determinateness is the ground's self-external reflection; and the whole of it is the ground which refers itself to itself in its repelling and determining, in its external immediacy. – Essentially, therefore, the thing-in-itself concretely exists, and that it concretely exists means conversely: concrete existence, as external immediacy, is at once being-in-itself.

Remark

Above already (Division I, p. 64), in connection with the moment of existence, namely being-in-itself, the thing-in-itself was mentioned, and the remark was made there that the thing-in-itself as such is nothing but the empty abstraction from all determinateness, of which indeed nothing can be known, precisely on the ground that it is meant to be abstraction from all determination. – Once the thing-in-itself is presupposed in this way as the indeterminate, every determination falls outside it, into a reflection foreign to it, and towards that reflection it stays indifferent. This external reflection is, for transcendental idealism, consciousness. Because this philosophical system transfers all determinateness of things, as regards form no less than content, into consciousness, it falls on that standpoint within me, within the subject, that it is I who see the leaves of a tree not black but green, the sun round and not four-cornered, I who taste sugar sweet and not bitter; that it is I who determine the first and the second stroke of a clock as succeeding one another and not as side by side, and the first neither as cause nor yet as effect of the second, and so forth. – The consciousness of freedom immediately contradicts this garish presentation of subjective idealism, a consciousness according to which I rather know myself to be the universal and the indeterminate, sever those manifold and necessary determinations from myself, and cognize them as an externality for me that accrues to things alone. – Within this consciousness of its freedom the I is for itself the very identity, genuine and reflected into itself, that the thing-in-itself was to have been. – Elsewhere I have shown that transcendental idealism of that sort does not get past the limitedness of the I through the object, past the finite world at all, but alters merely the form of the restriction, which for it stays something absolute, in that it does no more than translate the restriction out of objective shape into subjective shape, turning into determinatenesses of the I, and into a wild alternation of them proceeding within the I as within a thing, what ordinary consciousness knows as a manifoldness and alteration belonging to things merely external to that consciousness. – What stands opposed in the consideration now before us is merely the thing-in-itself together with the reflection at first external to it; the latter has not yet determined itself as consciousness, just as the thing-in-itself has not determined itself as the I either. Out of the nature of the thing-in-itself, and out of that of external reflection, it has emerged that this external element determines itself into thing-in-itself, or conversely becomes the very determination of that first thing-in-itself. What is essential in the inadequacy of the standpoint at which that philosophy comes to a halt lies now in this, that it clings to the abstract thing-in-itself as to a final determination and sets reflection, or the determinateness and manifoldness of the properties, over against the thing-in-itself, whereas in fact the thing-in-itself essentially has that external reflection on it and determines itself into something endowed with determinations of its own, with properties, whereby the abstraction of the thing, that of being pure thing-in-itself, shows itself to be an untrue determination.

c. The Reciprocal Action of Things

Essentially the thing-in-itself concretely exists; the external immediacy and the determinateness belong to its being-in-itself, or else to its reflection-into-itself. Thereby the thing in itself is a thing having properties, and thereby there are several things which differentiate themselves from one another not through some respect foreign to them, but through their own selves. These several diverse things stand in essential reciprocal action by way of their properties; the property is this reciprocal reference itself, and the thing is nothing apart from it; the mutual determining, the middle term of the things-in-themselves which as extremes were to stay indifferent towards this reference of theirs, is itself that reflection identical with itself, the thing-in-itself which those extremes were meant to be. Thinghood is with this brought down to the form of indeterminate identity with itself, an identity having its essentiality only in its property. Whenever, then, talk is of a thing, or of things at large, without the determinate property, their difference is a merely indifferent, quantitative one. One and the same that gets regarded as one thing can quite as well be made into several things, or be regarded as several things; here is an external severing or joining. – A book is a thing, and every one of its leaves is a thing too, and likewise every little scrap of its leaves, and so on into infinity. The determinateness whereby a thing is only this thing lies solely in its properties. By them it differentiates itself from other things, since property is negative reflection and the differentiating; only in its property, accordingly, does the thing have on itself its difference from others. Property is the difference reflected into itself, whereby the thing, in its positedness, i.e. in its reference to another, is at once indifferent towards the other and towards its own reference. For the thing without its properties there consequently remains nothing beyond abstract being-in-itself, an unessential compass and an external gathering-together. Genuine being-in-itself is being-in-itself in its positedness; and this is the property. With this, thinghood has passed over into property.

As the extreme that is in itself, the thing was to comport itself over against the property, and this latter was to make up the middle term between the things standing in reference. Yet such reference is what the things meet in as the reflection repelling itself from its own self, what they are differentiated and referred in. This difference of theirs and their reference is one reflection and one continuity of it. Herewith the things themselves fall merely into this continuity, which is the property, and vanish as subsisting extremes that would have a concrete existence apart from the property.

The property, which was to make up the reference of the self-subsistent extremes, is therefore the self-subsistent itself. The things, by contrast, are the unessential. Something essential they are only as the reflection which, in differentiating itself, refers itself to itself; but that is the property. Property, then, is not what is sublated in the thing, nor a mere moment of it; rather the thing is in truth nothing but that unessential compass, which is indeed negative unity, yet only in the way the one of something is, namely an immediate one. If earlier the thing was determined as unessential compass insofar as it is made into such by an external abstraction that leaves the property out of it, by now this abstraction has come about through the passing over of the thing-in-itself into the property itself, though with reversed worth, so that, whereas in that abstracting the abstract thing without its property still hovered before one as the essential while the property counted as an external determination, here the thing as such determines itself through its own self into an indifferent external form of the property. – Set free by now, then, from the indeterminate and impotent combination which the one of the thing is, the property is what makes up the thing's subsistence; a self-subsistent matter. – Being simple continuity with itself, it has form on it at first only as diversity; hence there are manifold self-subsistent matters of the sort, and the thing consists of them.

B. The Subsistence of the Thing in Matters

The passing over of the property into a matter, or into a stuff that is self-subsistent, is that familiar transition which chemistry performs upon sensuous matter, in that it seeks to exhibit the properties of colour, of smell, of taste and so forth as light-stuff, colouring-stuff, odour-stuff, as sour or bitter stuff, and the like. Or else it simply assumes others outright, such as heat-stuff, electrical and magnetic matter, and is persuaded that it thereby handles the properties in their truth. – Quite as current is the expression that things consist of diverse matters or stuffs. One takes care not to call these matters or stuffs things; though one will readily grant that a pigment, say, is a thing; but consider, say, light-stuff, heat-stuff, or the electrical matter, and so forth. I do not know whether these are called things as well. Things and their constituents get distinguished without any precise statement whether the latter are things too and in [how] far, or are perhaps only half-things; but at any rate they are something concretely existing in general.

The necessity of passing over from the properties to matters, or the necessity that the properties are in truth matters, has emerged from their being the essential and thereby the truly self-subsistent element of things. – Yet at the same time the property's reflection into itself makes up but one side of the reflection as a whole, namely the sublating of the difference, and the continuity, with its own self, of the property which was to be a concrete existence for another. Thinghood, as the negative reflection into itself and as the differentiating that repels itself away from another, is thereby brought down to an unessential moment; yet at the same time it has thereby determined itself further. This negative moment has, in the first place, preserved itself; for only insofar as the difference of things has sublated itself has the property become continuous with itself and a self-subsistent matter; the property's continuity into otherness thus contains within itself the moment of the negative, and its self-subsistence, as this negative unity, is at the same time the reinstated something of thinghood; negative self-subsistence over against the positive self-subsistence of the stuff. In the second place, the thing has hereby come out of its indeterminateness into complete determinateness. As thing in itself it is the abstract identity, the simply negative concrete existence, or that existence determined as the undetermined; then it is determined by its properties, through which it is supposed to differentiate itself from others; but since through the property it is rather continuous with others, this incomplete difference sublates itself; the thing has thereby gone back into itself and is now determined as determined; in itself it is determined, or is this thing. –

But, in the third place, this return into itself is indeed the determination referring itself to itself; yet it is at the same time unessential; the subsistence continuous with itself constitutes the self-subsistent matter, wherein the difference of things, their determinateness that is in and for itself, is sublated and is an external one. The thing as this thing is thus indeed complete determinateness, but this is determinateness within the element of unessentiality.

Viewed from the side of the property's movement, the matter comes out as follows. The property is not merely external determination, but concrete existence that is in itself. Since it contains reflection-into-itself as well as reflection into another, this unity of externality and essentiality repels itself away from its own self, and is on the one side the determination as a simple self-subsistent referring itself identically to itself, wherein the negative unity, that is, the one of the thing, is something sublated; – on the other side this determination as against an other, though likewise as a one reflected into itself and determined in itself; hence the matters, and this thing. Such are the two moments of the self-identical externality, or of the property reflected into itself. – The property was that whereby things were supposed to differentiate themselves; in freeing itself from this negative side of its own, that of inhering in an other, it has thereby freed the thing too from its being-determined through other things, and has taken it back out of the reference to another into itself; yet at the same time the thing is only the thing-in-itself that has become other to itself, since the manifold properties are for their part self-subsistent, and their negative reference in the one of the thing has here accordingly become merely a sublated one; the self-identical negation is for that reason only over against the positive continuity of the stuff.

The this makes up the thing's complete determinateness in such fashion that this determinateness is at the same time an external one. The thing consists of self-subsistent matters that are indifferent towards their reference within the thing. That reference is accordingly only an unessential linking of them, and the difference of one thing from others rests on whether several of the particular matters are to be found in it, and in what multitude. Out beyond this thing they reach, continuing themselves into others, and to belong to this thing is no restriction upon them. Just as little, further, are they a limitation for one another, since their negative reference is only the impotent this. Hence in being combined within it they do not sublate one another; as self-subsistents they are impenetrable for one another; in their determinateness they refer to themselves alone, and are a manifoldness of subsistence indifferent towards one another; of a quantitative limit alone are they capable. – The thing as this thing is this merely quantitative reference of theirs, a mere collection, the also of them. It consists of some quantum or other of one stuff, also of that of another, also of others; this connection of having no connection is what alone makes up the thing.

C. The Dissolution of the Thing

This thing, as it has come to determine itself, namely as the merely quantitative interconnection of the free matters, is what is absolutely alterable. Its alteration consists in this, that one or more matters are separated out of the collection or added to this also, or that their quantitative ratio to one another is altered. The coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be of this thing amounts to the external dissolution of a combination that is itself external, or the combination of such items as are indifferent to being combined or not. The matters circulate out of and into this thing unimpeded; the thing itself is absolute porosity without a measure or form of its own.

Thus, in the absolute determinateness whereby it is this thing, the thing is what is absolutely dissolvable. This dissolution is an external becoming-determined, just as the thing's being is too; but what is essential to this being is precisely its dissolution together with the externality of its being; it is only the also; it subsists only in this externality. But it subsists out of its matters as well, and what dissolves its own self is not merely the abstract this as such, but the whole of this thing. For what the thing is determined to be is an external gathering of self-subsistent matters; such matters are not things, negative self-subsistence not belonging to them; they are rather the properties in the shape of what is self-subsistent, that is, a being-determined which as such stands reflected into itself. The matters are accordingly simple and refer only to themselves; but their content is a determinateness; the reflection-into-itself is only the form of this content, which as such is not reflected into itself but instead, according to its determinateness, refers to an other. The thing is therefore not only the also of these matters – their reference as mutually indifferent – but just as much their negative reference; – by virtue of their determinateness the matters are themselves this negative reflection of theirs, which is the punctiformity of the thing. The one matter, taken according to the determinateness of their content over against each other, is not what the other is; and the one, taken according to their self-subsistence, is not insofar as the other is.

The thing is accordingly the reference to one another of the matters out of which it subsists in such a way that in it the one and the other also subsist, yet that at the same time therein the one does not subsist insofar as the other subsists. So far, then, as the one matter is present in the thing, the other stands sublated thereby; yet the thing is equally the also, that is, the subsistence of that other. In the subsisting of the one matter, therefore, the other does not subsist, while equally it does also subsist in the first; and so reciprocally for all these diverse matters. Since, then, in the very respect in which the one subsists the others subsist too – which one subsistence of them is the punctiformity or negative unity of the thing – they interpenetrate each other absolutely; and because the thing is, at the same time, nothing but their also, while the matters stand reflected into their determinateness, they are indifferent towards one another and do not touch each other in their interpenetration. Essentially, then, the matters are porous, the one having its subsistence in the pores, that is, in the non-subsistence, of the other; but those others are themselves porous, and in their pores, or in their non-subsistence, the first subsists too, along with all the remaining ones; their subsistence is at once their sublatedness and the subsisting of others; and that subsistence of the others is no less the sublatedness of these and the subsistence of the first, and in like manner of all the rest. The thing is therefore that self-contradictory mediation whereby self-subsistent subsistence is mediated with itself by way of its own opposite, that is, by way of its negation, or whereby one self-subsistent matter is mediated by means of the subsistence and the non-subsistence of an other. – Concrete existence has attained its completeness in this thing, namely to be, in one, being that is in itself, or self-subsistent subsistence, and unessential concrete existence; hence the truth of concrete existence consists in having its being-in-itself in unessentiality, or its subsistence in an other and indeed in the absolutely other, or in having its nullity for its foundation. It is therefore appearance.

Remark

It is one of the most familiar determinations of representing that a thing consists of many self-subsistent matters. On the one side the thing is considered as having properties whose subsistence is the thing. On the other side, however, these diverse determinations are taken as matters whose subsistence is not the thing; on the contrary, the thing consists of them; it is itself nothing but their external combination and their quantitative limit. The properties and the matters are both alike the same determinations of content, save that in the former case they are moments reflected into their negative unity as into a foundation distinguished from them, namely thinghood, whereas here they are diverse self-subsistent ones, each reflected into a unity of its own with itself. These matters now determine themselves further as self-subsistent subsistence; but they are also together in one thing. This thing has the two determinations: first, to be this, and second, to be the also. The also is that which in outer intuition occurs as spatial extension; this, however, the negative unity, is the punctiformity of the thing. The matters are together in the punctiformity, and their also, or extension, is everywhere this punctiformity; for the also, as thinghood, is essentially determined as negative unity too. Where one of these matters is, accordingly, there in one and the same point is the other; the thing's colour is not in one place, its odorous matter in another, its caloric matter in a third, and so forth; rather, at the very point at which it is warm it is also coloured, sour, electrical, and so on. Now since these matters are not outside one another but in one this, they are assumed to be porous, so that the one exists in the interstices of the other. But the one that finds itself in the interstices of the other is itself porous as well; in its pores, conversely, the other therefore exists; and not this one alone, but the third, the tenth, and so forth. All are porous, and in the interstices of each there are found all the others, just as it in turn, together with the rest, is found in these pores of each of them. They are therefore a multitude that so reciprocally interpenetrates that the ones doing the penetrating are just as much penetrated by the others, so that each thereby penetrates once more its own being-penetrated. Each of them is posited as being its own negation, and that negation is another's subsistence; but this subsistence is no less the negation of that other and the first one's subsistence.

The evasion by which representing wards off the contradiction of the self-subsistent subsistence of several matters in one, or their indifference towards one another in their interpenetration, is notoriously wont to be the smallness of the parts and of the pores. Wherever difference-in-itself, contradiction, and the negation of negation come on the scene, wherever in general something is to be comprehended, representing lets itself drop down into the external, quantitative difference; with regard to coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be it takes refuge in gradualness, and with regard to being in smallness, wherein what vanishes is brought down to the imperceptible, the contradiction to a confusion, and the true relation is played over into an indeterminate representing whose murkiness saves what is sublating itself.

Examined more closely, however, this murkiness shows itself to be the contradiction, in part the subjective one of representing, in part the objective one of the object; representing itself contains the elements of it in full. For what it first of all does itself is the contradiction of wanting to hold to perception and to have before it things of existence, and, on the other side, of ascribing sensible existence to what is not perceptible and is determined through reflection; – the little parts and the pores are supposed at once to be a sensible existence, while their positedness is talked of as having that same mode of reality – which belongs to colour, warmth, and so forth. If, furthermore, representing were to look more closely at this objective fog, the pores and the little particles, it would recognize in them not merely a matter and also its negation, such that here there would be the matter, and alongside it its negation, the pore, and next to this again matter, and so on, but rather that in this thing it has 1) the matter that is self-subsistent, 2) its negation, that is, porosity, together with the other self-subsistent matter in one and the same point, and that this porosity, along with the matters' self-subsistent subsistence in one another as in one, is a reciprocal negation and a penetrating of the penetrating. – The more recent accounts given by physics of the diffusion of water vapor in atmospheric air and of the gases through one another bring out more determinately one side of the concept that has here emerged concerning the nature of the thing. They show, namely, that a given volume, for example, takes up just as much water vapor whether it be empty of atmospheric air or filled with it; also that the gases spread through one another in such a way that for each the other is as good as a vacuum, at least that they stand in no chemical combination with one another, each remaining uninterruptedly continuous with itself through the other and preserving itself, in its interpenetration with the others, indifferent towards them. – But the further moment in the concept of the thing is that in the this the one matter is located where the other is, and that what penetrates is at that same point penetrated as well, or that what is self-subsistent is immediately another's self-subsistence. This is a contradiction; yet the thing is nothing else than just this contradiction; that is why it is appearance.

A situation similar to the one obtaining with these matters obtains in the spiritual domain with the representation of the forces of the soul or faculties of the soul. Spirit is this in a far deeper sense: the negative unity within which its determinations penetrate one another. But when it is represented as soul, it is frequently wont to be taken for a thing. Just as the human being at large is allowed to consist of soul and body, each counting as something self-subsistent for itself, so the soul is allowed to consist of so-called forces of the soul, each of which has a self-subsistence subsisting for itself, or is an immediate activity operating for itself according to its determinateness. One represents it to oneself in this way, that here the understanding, there the imagination is at work for itself, that one cultivates the understanding, the memory, and so forth, each for itself, and for the time being lets the other forces lie idle on the left hand until their turn perhaps comes, or perhaps does not. Inasmuch as they are relocated into the materially simple soul-thing, which is supposed to be simple in being immaterial, the faculties are indeed not represented as particular matters; but as forces they are assumed to be quite as indifferent towards one another as those matters are. Spirit, however, is not that contradiction which the thing is, the thing that dissolves itself and passes over into appearance; rather, it is in its own self already the contradiction that has gone back into its absolute unity, namely the concept, wherein the differences are no longer to be thought of as self-subsistent ones, but only as particular moments within the subject, within simple individuality.

Chapter 2. Appearance

Concrete existence is that immediacy of being into which essence has re-established itself. In itself this immediacy is essence's reflection into itself. Essence has stepped up out of its ground as concrete existence, and the ground has itself passed over into that existence. Insofar as it is in its own self the absolute negativity, concrete existence is this reflected immediacy. And now it is posited as such as well, having determined itself as appearance.

Appearance is therefore, to begin with, essence as it is in its concrete existence; essence is immediately at hand in it. That this existence is reflected rather than immediate is what makes up in it the moment of essence; or, taken as essential concrete existence, concrete existence is appearance.

A something is only appearance – meaning that concrete existence as such is merely a posited being, not one that is in and for itself. To have in its own self the negativity of reflection, the nature of essence, is what constitutes its essentiality. This is not some alien reflection, external to it, one to which essence would belong and which, through a comparison of essence with concrete existence, would pronounce this existence to be appearance. Rather, as has emerged, the essentiality of concrete existence which consists in being appearance is concrete existence's own truth. The reflection through which it is this belongs to it itself.

If, however, it is claimed that something is only appearance, taking this to mean that immediate concrete existence would by contrast be the truth, then appearance is on the contrary the higher truth; for appearance is the concrete existence that is essential, while concrete existence is the appearance that is still void of essence, since it has in it only the one moment of appearance, namely concrete existence as immediate, and not yet appearance's negative reflection. When appearance is called void of essence, the moment of its negativity is thought of as though by contrast the immediate were the positive and the genuine; yet it is this immediate that does not yet have the essential truth in it. Concrete existence ceases, rather, to be void of essence precisely by passing over into appearance.

Essence at first shines within its own self, in its simple identity; so understood it is abstract reflection, the pure movement which, from nothing and through nothing, returns to itself. Essence appears, and it is now therefore real shine, since the moments of shine have concrete existence. Appearance, as has emerged, is the thing taken as the negative mediation of itself with its own self; the differences that it contains are self-subsistent matters, and these are the contradiction of being an immediate subsistence while at the same time having their subsistence only in an alien self-subsistence, that is, in the negation of their own, and, once more precisely for that reason, only in the negation of that alien one, or in the negation of their own negation. Shine is this same mediation, but in appearance its unstable moments have the shape of immediate self-subsistence. The immediate self-subsistence that belongs to concrete existence, by contrast, is for its part brought down to a moment. Appearance is accordingly the unity of shine and concrete existence.

Appearance now determines itself more closely. It is essential concrete existence; the essentiality of this existence distinguishes itself from it as unessential, and these two sides enter into reference to each other. – First, then, appearance is simple identity with itself which at the same time contains diverse determinations of content, such that these determinations, as well as their reference, are what remains equal to itself in the flux of appearance; the law of appearance.

Second, however, the law, simple in its diversity, passes over into opposition; what is essential to appearance is set in opposition to appearance itself, and over against the world of appearance there stands the world that is in itself.

Third, this opposition goes back into its ground; what is in itself is present in appearance, and conversely what appears is determined as taken up into its being-in-itself; appearance turns into relation.

A. The Law of Appearance

1. Appearance is what concretely exists, mediated through its negation, which makes up its subsistence. This negation of it is indeed an other self-subsistent, but this other is just as essentially something sublated. What concretely exists is therefore the return of itself into its own self by way of its negation and by way of the negation of that negation of it; it thus possesses essential self-subsistence, just as it is with equal immediacy simply positedness, having a ground and an other for its subsistence. – At first, then, appearance is concrete existence along with its essentiality, positedness along with its ground; this ground, however, is the negation; and that other self-subsistent, the ground of the first one, is itself likewise nothing but a positedness. Or: what concretely exists is, as what appears, reflected into an other, and this other, which is its ground, is itself nothing but this, namely to be reflected into an other. Since it is a return into its own self, the essential self-subsistence accruing to it is, given the negativity of the moments, a returning of nothing through nothing back by way of itself; the self-subsistence of what concretely exists is therefore only the essential shine. The interconnection of what concretely exists and reciprocally grounds itself consists for that reason in this reciprocal negation, namely that what the one subsists in is not the other's subsistence but the other's positedness, and this reference of positedness is alone what makes up their subsistence. The ground is at hand as it is in its truth, namely as a first that is only something presupposed.

This now makes up the negative side of appearance. But in this negative mediation there is immediately contained the positive identity of what concretely exists with itself. For it is not positedness over against an essential ground, or it is not the shine on something self-subsistent; it is rather positedness referring itself to a positedness, or a shine only in a shine. Within this negation of it, or within its other, itself something sublated, it refers to its own self; hence it is essentiality identical with itself, or positive essentiality. – This identical element is not the immediacy that accrues to concrete existence as such and is only the unessential feature, that of having its subsistence in something else. What it is, rather, is the essential content of appearance, and this content has two sides: first, that of standing in the form of positedness or of external immediacy; second, that of being positedness which is identical with itself. Taken according to the first side, it is as an existence, but as a contingent, unessential one which, in accordance with its immediacy, is subject to transition, to coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. Taken according to the other side, it is the simple determination of content withdrawn from that flux, the abiding element in it.

Besides being in general the simple element of what is transitory, this content is also a content that is more determinate and diverse within itself. It is the reflection of appearance, of negative existence, into itself, and hence contains determinateness essentially. Appearance, however, is the manifold diversity that is, tossing itself about in unessential manifoldness; its reflected content, by contrast, is its manifoldness reduced to simple difference. For the determinate essential content is, more precisely, not merely determinate in general but, as what is essential to appearance, the complete determinateness: one and its other. Within appearance each of the two has the other for its subsistence, in such a way that at the same time it is only in that other's non-subsistence. The contradiction sublates itself; and the reflection of it into itself is the identity of their subsistence on both sides, namely that the one's positedness is also the other's positedness. They make up one subsistence, and are at the same time diverse content indifferent towards each other. In the essential side of appearance the negative of the unessential content, namely its sublating of itself, has thus gone back into identity; that content is an indifferent subsistence, one that is not the sublatedness but is rather the other's subsistence.

This unity is the law of appearance.

2. Accordingly the law is the positive element in the mediation of what appears. To begin with, appearance is concrete existence as the negative mediation with itself, so that what concretely exists is mediated with itself by its own non-subsistence, by an other, and once again by the non-subsistence of this other. Contained in this is, first, the mere shining and the vanishing of both, unessential appearance; second, also the abiding element, or the law; for in that sublating of the other each of the two concretely exists; and their positedness, taken as their negativity, is at once the identical, positive positedness of the two.

The abiding subsistence that appearance possesses in the law is thus, in the shape it has determined itself into, first set over against the immediacy of being that belongs to concrete existence. This immediacy is indeed in itself the reflected one, that is, the ground returned into itself; but within appearance the simple immediacy now stands distinguished from the reflected immediacy, whereas in the thing the two had only begun to part. The concretely existing thing, in its dissolution, has become this opposition; what is positive about its dissolution is that identity of what appears, as positedness, with itself in its other positedness. – Second, this reflected immediacy is itself determined as positedness in contrast with the immediacy of concrete existence that is. This positedness is now what is essential and truly positive. The German expression Gesetz likewise contains this determination. In this positedness there lies the essential reference between the two sides of the difference which the law contains; the two are mutually diverse immediate content, and are so as the reflection of the vanishing content that belongs to appearance. Taken as essential diversity, the diverse ones are simple determinations of content that refer to themselves. But just as much, none of them is immediate for itself; each is rather essentially positedness, or is only insofar as the other is.

Third, one and the same content belongs to appearance and to the law. The law is appearance's reflection into identity with itself; thus appearance, as the null immediate, stands over against what is reflected-into-itself, and according to this form the two are distinguished. But the reflection of appearance through which this difference obtains is at the same time the essential identity of appearance itself with its reflection – which is what reflection's nature amounts to in general; it is what is identical with itself in positedness and indifferent towards that difference which is the form or the positedness; hence a content that continues itself out of appearance into the law, the content of the law and of appearance.

This content thereby makes up the foundation of appearance; the law is this foundation itself, appearance is the same content but contains something more besides, namely the unessential content of its immediate being. For the form-determination too, through which appearance as such is distinguished from the law, is a content, and likewise one distinguished from the law's content. For concrete existence, taken as immediacy in general, is likewise an identity with itself of matter and form, indifferent towards its form-determinations and hence content; it is thinghood together with its properties and matters. But this content is one whose self-subsistent immediacy at the same time only is as a non-subsistence. The identity of that content with itself in this its non-subsistence, however, is the other, the essential content. This identity, the foundation of appearance that makes up the law, is a moment belonging to appearance itself; it is essentiality's positive side, through which concrete existence is appearance.

The law is therefore not beyond appearance but immediately present in it; the realm of laws is the tranquil image of the world that concretely exists or appears. Rather, both are one totality, and the world that concretely exists is itself the realm of laws, which as the simple identical is at the same time identical with itself within positedness, that is, within the self-dissolving self-subsistence of concrete existence. Concrete existence goes back into the law as into its ground; appearance contains the two together, the simple ground and that dissolving movement of the universe which appears, whose essentiality the ground is.

3. The law is therefore essential appearance; it is the reflection of appearance into itself within its positedness, the content that is identical in it and in unessential concrete existence. First, the identity of the law with its own concrete existence is as yet only the immediate, simple identity, and the law is indifferent towards its concrete existence; appearance still has another content over against the content of the law. The former content is indeed the unessential one and is what goes back into the latter; but for the law it is a first that is not posited by the law; as content, therefore, it is externally connected with the law. Appearance is a multitude of more precise determinations which belong to the this or to what is concrete, and which are not contained in the law but are determined through an other. – Second, whatever appearance contains that is different from the law determined itself as a positive, or as another content; but essentially it is a negative; it is the form and the form's movement as such, which is what belongs to appearance. The realm of laws is appearance's tranquil content; appearance is that same content, but exhibiting itself in restless flux and as the reflection into an other. It is the law as the negative concrete existence that alters itself absolutely, the movement of passing over into what is opposed, of sublating itself and going back into unity. The law does not contain this side of the restless form, or of negativity; appearance is therefore the totality as against the law, for it contains the law but something more besides, namely the moment of the self-moving form. – This defect is present in the law, third, in this way, that the law's content is as yet only a diverse content and hence one indifferent towards itself; the identity of its sides with one another is therefore as yet only an immediate and hence inner identity, or one that is not yet necessary. In the law two determinations of content are essentially connected (for example, in the law of the motion of a falling body, the magnitude of space and the magnitude of time; the spaces traversed stand in the ratio of the squares of the elapsed times); they are connected; this reference is as yet only an immediate one. It is therefore likewise as yet only a posited reference, just as in appearance the immediate has in general acquired the meaning of positedness. What would constitute the essential unity of the law's two sides is their negativity, namely that the one should contain its other in its own self; but this essential unity has not yet emerged in the law. (– Thus the concept of the space traversed in falling does not contain within it that time corresponds to it as a square. Because falling is a sensible motion, it is the reference of time and space; but, first, it is not to be found in the determination of time itself – that is, in the way time is taken according to its representation – that time refers to space, and conversely; one says that one can perfectly well represent time without space and space without time; the one, then, is added externally to the other, and this external reference is motion. Second, the more precise determination is a matter of indifference, according to which magnitudes space and time stand related to each other in motion. The law about this is cognized from experience; to that extent it is only immediate; it still requires a proof, that is, a mediation, for cognition, so that the law does not merely take place but is necessary; this proof and its objective necessity the law as such does not contain. –) The law, therefore, is only the positive essentiality of appearance and not its negative essentiality, in accordance with which the determinations of content are moments of the form, pass over as such into their other, and in their own selves are just as much not themselves but their other. In the law, then, the positedness of the one side of it is indeed the positedness of the other; but their content is indifferent towards this reference, it does not contain this positedness in its own self. The law is therefore certainly the essential form, but not yet the real form reflected into its sides as content.

B. The World of Appearance and the World-in-itself

1. The concretely existing world lifts itself calmly into a realm of laws; the null content belonging to its manifold existence subsists within something other; that subsistence of its is accordingly its dissolution. But within this other what appears also goes together with itself; hence appearance, amid its changing, is likewise an abiding, and its positedness is law. This simple identity of appearance with itself is what law is; law is on that account appearance's foundation, not appearance's ground; for law is not appearance's negative unity, but rather, being appearance's simple identity, the immediate as an abstract unity, alongside which the remaining content of appearance therefore also finds a place. The content is this one, coheres internally, or possesses its negative reflection inside its own self. It stands reflected into something other; and that other is itself one of appearance's concrete existences; appearing things find their grounds and their conditions in other appearing things.

As a matter of fact, though, law is likewise the other of appearance as such, and it is appearance's negative reflection, reflection namely into appearance's other. That content of appearance which is diverse from law's content is the concretely existing, which holds its negativity as its ground or stands reflected into its own non-being. Yet this other, itself something concretely existing, has likewise been reflected in just that way into its non-being; it is thus the same, and therein what appears is in fact reflected not into an other at all but into itself; law is precisely this reflection of positedness into itself. But qua something appearing it stands essentially reflected into its non-being, or else its identity is itself, essentially and in equal measure, its negativity and its other. Appearance's reflection-into-itself, law, is thus not merely appearance's identical foundation either; in law appearance rather possesses its own opposite, and law constitutes appearance's negative unity.

The determination of law has thereby altered in law's own self. To begin with it is only a diverse content, plus the formal reflection of positedness into itself, such that positedness on one of its sides amounts to positedness on the other. But since law is likewise the negative reflection into itself, its two sides stand related not merely as diverse ones but as ones referring negatively to each other. – Or again, law taken barely for itself: then the sides of its content are mutually indifferent; but they are equally sublated through their identity; what is posited in the one is the other's positedness; and so each side's subsisting is also its own non-subsistence. That the one is posited within the other constitutes their negative unity, and each of them is not merely its own positedness but the other's as well, or rather each is itself this negative unity. Within law as such the positive identity belonging to them is as yet only their inner unity, one requiring proof and mediation, since this negative unity has not yet been posited in them. But now that law's diverse sides are determined as being diverse within their negative unity, or as such that each harbours its other in its own self while at once, being self-subsistent, repelling this otherness of its away from itself, law's identity is henceforth a posited and real one too.

Law has therewith likewise acquired the moment it lacked, that of the negative form on its sides; the moment which up to now still belonged to appearance; concrete existence has consequently gone back wholly into itself, and has reflected itself into that absolute otherness of its own which is in and for itself. What was law before is on this account no longer just One side of a whole whose other side had been appearance as such; it is rather the whole itself. It is appearance's essential totality, so that it now embraces the moment of unessentiality as well, which up to now still fell to appearance; embracing it, however, as reflected unessentiality that is in itself, that is, as essential negativity. – Being immediate content, law is determinate in general, marked off from other laws, and of these there is an indeterminable multitude. But since essential negativity now belongs to it in its own self, it no longer harbours a determination of content merely indifferent and contingent in that way; all determinateness whatever is rather its content, standing in an essential reference which makes itself into totality. So appearance reflected into itself is henceforth a world that, being in and for itself, opens up above the world of appearance.

What the realm of laws holds is only the simple, changeless, yet diverse content of the concretely existing world. Yet now that it is that world's total reflection, it holds the moment of that world's essenceless manifoldness as well. This moment of changeableness and of change, reflected into itself and thereby essential, is absolute negativity or form in general as such, though the moments of that form possess, in the world in and for itself, the reality of concrete existence that is self-subsistent and yet reflected; conversely, this reflected self-subsistence now carries form in its own self, whereby its content is not something merely manifold but something essentially cohering with itself.

– This world in and for itself is also called the supersensible world; insofar, that is, as the concretely existing world gets determined as the sensible one, namely as the one that is there for intuition, for consciousness in its immediate comportment. – Immediacy, concrete existence, belongs to the supersensible world too, but reflected, essential concrete existence. Essence has as yet no existence; but it is, and in a deeper sense than being; the thing marks the start of reflected concrete existence; it is an immediacy not yet posited as essential or reflected; in truth, however, it is no immediate that is. Only as things of another world, a supersensible one, do things get posited: firstly as genuine concrete existences, secondly as the true over against what has being; – in them one acknowledges that a being distinct from immediate being exists, a being which is genuine concrete existence. This determination overcomes, on the one hand, the sensible representation that grants concrete existence solely to the immediate being of feeling and intuition; on the other hand it overcomes unconscious reflection too, which does indeed carry the representation of things, of forces, of what is inner and so forth, without knowing that determinations of that sort are not sensible immediacies, nor immediacies that have being, but reflected concrete existences.

2. The world in and for itself is concrete existence in its totality; outside it there is nothing else. But since in its own self it is absolute negativity, or form, its reflection-into-itself is a negative reference to itself. Opposition is contained in it, and it repels itself into itself as the essential world and into itself as the world of otherness, the world of appearance. Thus, on the very grounds that it is the totality, it also is merely as one side of that totality, and under this determination it makes up a self-subsistence diverse from appearance's world. In the essential world the world of appearance possesses its negative unity, foundering in that unity and going back into it as into its ground. The essential world is furthermore the ground that posits the world of appearance; for, holding absolute form within its essentiality, its self-identity sublates itself, turns itself into positedness, and, as this posited immediacy, it is the appearing world.

Furthermore, it is not merely the ground of the appearing world in general, but that world's determinate ground. Already qua realm of laws it is manifold content, the essential content namely of the world of appearance, and, being a ground filled with content, it is the determinate ground of the other world, though only as regards this content; for the appearing world still possessed manifold content besides what that realm did, since the negative moment still fell to it as its own. But now that the realm of laws likewise carries this moment in itself, it is the content of the world of appearance in its totality and the ground of that world's entire manifoldness. Yet it is at the same time the negative of that world, and so [it] is the world opposed to it. – In the identity of the two worlds, namely, and given that the one is determined as regards form as the essential one and the other as that same world though posited and unessential, the ground-reference has indeed been re-established; but re-established at once as the ground-reference of appearance, that is, as a reference neither of an identical content nor of a merely diverse one such as law is, but as total reference, or as negative identity and essential reference of content as opposed. – The realm of laws does not amount merely to this, that one content's positedness is another's; this identity is rather essentially, as has come out, negative unity as well; within the negative unity each of law's two sides is in its own self its other content; hence the other is not indeterminately an other in general, but is its other, or carries the first one's determination of content just as much; the two sides are opposed ones accordingly. Since the realm of laws now carries this negative moment and this opposition in itself, and thus, being the totality, repels away from itself both a world in and for itself and an appearing world, the identity of the two is the essential reference of opposition. – Ground-reference as such is opposition foundered in its contradiction; and concrete existence is the ground going together with itself. But concrete existence turns into appearance; ground stands sublated in concrete existence; ground re-establishes itself as appearance's return into itself, but re-establishes itself at once as something sublated, namely as ground-reference of opposed determinations; the identity of such determinations, though, is essentially becoming and passing over, no longer ground-reference as such.

The world in and for itself is thus itself a world internally differentiated into the totality of manifold content; it is identical with the appearing or posited world, and to that extent its ground, yet its identical connection stands at the same time determined as opposition, since the form of the world of appearance consists in reflection into that world's otherness, so that within the world in and for itself the appearing world has genuinely gone back into its own self in the very measure in which this latter is its opposite. So the reference is determined precisely thus, that the world in and for itself is the inverted world of the appearing one.

C. Dissolution of Appearance

The world in and for itself constitutes the determinate ground of the appearing world, and constitutes it only insofar as it possesses in its own self the negative moment, and with it the totality of content-determinations and of the alterations they undergo, a totality answering to the appearing world while at the same time making up the side thoroughly opposed to it. The mutual bearing of the two worlds is accordingly such that what counts as positive in the appearing world counts as negative in the world in and for itself, while what is negative in the one is, conversely, positive in the other. In the appearing world the north pole is in and for itself the south pole, and vice versa; electricity that is positive is in itself negative, and so forth. Whatever counts in appearing existence as evil, as misfortune and so forth, is in and for itself something good and a happiness¹⁵.

As a matter of fact their difference has vanished precisely within this opposition of the two worlds, and whatever was meant to be the world in and for itself is itself an appearing world, while conversely the appearing world is in its own self the essential one. – At first the appearing world stands determined as the reflection into otherness, so that whatever determinations and concrete existences belong to it have ground and subsistence in something other; but as this other is itself likewise something reflected into an other, therein they refer merely to an other engaged in sublating itself, and thus to themselves; herewith the appearing world is in its own self a self-equal law. – The world in and for itself, conversely, is at first the content identical with itself, taken out of otherness and change; but this content, being the appearing world's complete reflection into its own self, or because the diversity belonging to it is difference reflected into itself and absolute, harbours within it the negative moment and the reference to itself as to otherness; thereby it turns into content opposed to itself, content inverting itself, content void of essence. This content of the world in and for itself has furthermore therewith also received the form of immediate concrete existence. For at first that world is ground of the appearing one; but as it possesses the opposition in its own self, it is in equal measure sublated ground and immediate concrete existence.

Each of the two, the appearing world and the essential world, is herewith in its own self the totality of the reflection that is identical with itself and of reflection-into-other, or of being-in-and-for-itself as well as of appearing. Each of them is a self-subsistent whole of concrete existence; the one was meant to be reflected concrete existence only, the other immediate concrete existence only; yet each continues itself within its other, and is on that score in its own self the identity of the two moments. What lies at hand, accordingly, is this totality, one repelling from itself two totalities, the one being the reflected totality and the other the immediate one. Both are in the first instance self-subsistent ones, but they are such only qua totalities, and they are such to this extent, that each essentially carries within it the moment belonging to the other. The differentiated self-subsistence of each, of the one determined as immediate and of the one determined as reflected, is on that score now posited so as to be nothing but essential reference to the other, and so as to have its self-subsistence within this unity of the two.

The beginning was made from the law of appearance; law is the identity of one diverse content with an other content, so fashioned that the one's positedness is the other's. Within law this difference is still at hand, namely that the identity of its sides is as yet an inner one only, and that these sides do not yet possess it in their own selves; herewith, for one part, that identity is not realized; law's content stands not as identical but as an indifferent, diverse content; – for another part, it is herewith determined only in itself so that the one's positedness is the other's; this is not yet at hand within law. By now, however, law stands realized; its inner identity is at the same time an existent one, and conversely law's content is raised into ideality; for in its own self that content is a sublated one, reflected into itself, since each side carries its other within it and is thereby genuinely identical with that other and with its own self.

So law is essential relation. At first the truth of the unessential world is a world in and for itself other to it; but that world is the totality, in that it is both itself and the first world; so the two are immediate concrete existences and hence reflections into their otherness, and by that same token genuinely reflected into themselves. World expresses, generally, the formless totality of manifoldness; this world, essential as much as appearing, has foundered, inasmuch as manifoldness has ceased to be a merely diverse one; so it is still totality, or universe, yet as essential relation. Within appearance two totalities of content have come to be; at first they stand determined over against each other as indifferent self-subsistent ones, and each does have form in its own self, though not over against the other; form, however, has shown itself to be their reference as well, and the essential relation is the consummation of their unity of form.

Chapter 3. The Essential Relation

The truth of appearance is the essential relation. Its content possesses immediate self-subsistence, namely the immediacy that is together with the reflected immediacy, or the reflection identical with itself. At the same time, within this self-subsistence the content is a relative one, existing simply and solely as reflection into what is other to it, or as unity of its reference with that other. Within this unity the self-subsistent content is a posited one, a sublated one; but this very unity is what makes up its essentiality and its self-subsistence; the reflection into other here is reflection into its own self. Sides belong to the relation because it is reflection into other; thus it carries within it the difference of its own self; and the sides of it are self-subsistent subsistence, seeing that in their mutually indifferent diversity they stand broken within themselves, so that whatever subsistence each has holds its meaning, in equal measure, only in the reference to the other, or in their negative unity.

The essential relation is on that score admittedly not yet the genuine third term to essence and to concrete existence; but the determinate uniting of the two is already harboured in it. Essence stands realized within it in such fashion that self-subsistent concretely existing ones serve it for its subsistence; and these have gone back out of their indifference into their essential unity, so that nothing but this unity serves them for their subsistence. The determinations of reflection, the positive one and the negative one, are likewise reflected into themselves only insofar as they stand reflected into what is opposed to them; yet no determination belongs to them beyond this negative unity of theirs; the essential relation, by contrast, has for its sides such terms as stand posited as self-subsistent totalities. The opposition here is the same one as that of positive and negative; but at the same time it is opposition as an inverted world. A side of the essential relation is a totality, one that, however, essentially has something opposed to it, a beyond of itself; it is appearance merely; its concrete existence is not, rather, its own, but that of its other. It is on that score something broken within its own self; but this sublatedness of its consists in its being the unity of its own self and of its other, hence a whole, and precisely for that reason it possesses self-subsistent concrete existence and is essential reflection into its own self.

Such is the concept of relation. To begin with, however, the identity it harbours is not yet complete; the totality which each relative term is in its own self is as yet merely something inner; a side of the relation is at first posited within one of the determinations of the negative unity; what makes up the form of the relation is the self-subsistence proper to each of the two sides. Its identity is on that score merely a reference, and their self-subsistence falls outside that reference, namely into the sides; there is not yet at hand the reflected unity of that identity together with the self-subsistent concrete existences, not yet the substance. – The concept of relation has thus indeed emerged as unity of reflected and of immediate self-subsistence. But this concept is at first still immediate itself, and hence its moments are immediate towards each other, their unity being their essential reference, which becomes the genuine unity answering to the concept only insofar as it realizes itself, that is, insofar as through its own movement it has posited itself as that unity.

The essential relation is on that score immediately the relation of whole and parts; – the reference of reflected and of immediate self-subsistence, such that both at once are only as mutually conditioning and presupposing each other.

Within this relation not one of the sides is as yet posited as a moment of the other, and hence their identity is itself a side; or else it is not their negative unity. It therefore passes over, secondly, into this, that the one is a moment of the other and is within the other as within its ground, as within what is genuinely self-subsistent of the two; – relation of force and its expression.

Thirdly, the inequality of this reference which is still at hand sublates itself, and the last relation is that of inner and outer. – Within this difference, which has become wholly formal, the relation itself founders, and substance, or the actual, comes forth as the absolute unity of immediate and of reflected concrete existence.

A. The Relation of Whole and Parts

[1.] What the essential relation contains is, first, the self-subsistence of concrete existence reflected into itself; so taken it is the simple form, and its determinations, while they too are concrete existences, are at the same time posited ones, moments kept within the unity. Reflected thus into itself, that self-subsistence is at once reflection into what stands opposed to it, namely into immediate self-subsistence; and the subsistence it has is essentially, no less than it is a self-subsistence of its own, just this identity with its opposite. – Precisely thereby there is also immediately posited, second, the further side: immediate self-subsistence, which, under the determination of the other, is a manifoldness of many kinds within itself, yet so that this manifoldness bears upon it essentially also the reference belonging to the other side, the unity of reflected self-subsistence. The one side, the whole, is that self-subsistence which the world in and for itself constituted; the parts, the other side, are the immediate concrete existence which the appearing world was. Within the relation of whole and parts both sides are self-subsistences of this kind, but so that each lets the other shine inside it, and each equally is only as this identity of the two. Since for now the essential relation is only the first, the immediate one, negative unity and positive self-subsistence are tied together by the also; both sides, posited though they are as moments, are just as much concretely existing self-subsistences. – That the two are posited as moments is accordingly parcelled out thus: first the whole, self-subsistence as reflected, is the concretely existing one, and within it the other, the immediate one, has the standing of a moment; – here it is the whole that constitutes the unity of the two sides, the foundation, and immediate concrete existence stands there as positedness. – Reversed, on the further side, that of the parts, the immediate concrete existence, manifold within, is the self-subsistent foundation, whereas the reflected unity, the whole, is nothing but external reference.

2. Accordingly this relation harbours the self-subsistence of its sides and no less their sublatedness, and the two of them outright in a single reference. Self-subsistent is the whole, and the parts are merely moments of this unity; yet no less are the parts themselves the self-subsistent ones, with their reflected unity for a mere moment; and each of them, in its very self-subsistence, is outright the relative of an other. Hence this relation is contradiction immediate in its own self, and it sublates itself.

Looked at more closely, the whole is the reflected unity possessing self-subsistent subsistence for itself; but this subsistence of its own has no less been repelled from it; being the negative unity, the whole is negative reference to its own self; so it has divested itself; its subsistence it has in what stands opposed to it, in the manifold immediacy, the parts. The whole therefore consists of the parts; so much so that without them it is nothing. It is thus the entire relation and the self-subsistent totality; but upon that very same ground it is only a relative, since what constitutes it a totality is rather its other, the parts; and its subsistence lies not in it but in that other of it.

The parts, likewise, are the entire relation. Immediate self-subsistence is what they are, over against the reflected kind, and they subsist not in the whole but for themselves. They have this whole, further, upon them as their moment; it constitutes their reference; where there is no whole there are no parts. But since they are the self-subsistent ones, that reference is a merely external moment, one to which they remain in and for themselves indifferent. At the same time, however, the parts, being manifold concrete existence, collapse within themselves, for such existence is being devoid of reflection; self-subsistence accrues to them only within the reflected unity, which is at once this unity and the concretely existing manifoldness; that is, self-subsistence is theirs only in the whole, and this is at the same time the self-subsistence that is other to the parts.

Whole and parts condition one another reciprocally, then; but the relation under consideration here stands at the same time higher than the reference of the conditioned and the condition to one another as that was determined above. Here that reference is realized: it is posited, namely, that the condition is the essential self-subsistence of the conditioned precisely in being presupposed by the latter. Taken as such, the condition is nothing but the immediate, and only in itself presupposed. The whole, though certainly the condition of the parts, immediately contains at the same time this as well, that it too only is so far as it has the parts for presupposition. With both sides of the relation posited in this way as reciprocally conditioning, each is an immediate self-subsistence in its own self, but its self-subsistence is no less mediated, or posited, by the other. By virtue of this reciprocity the whole relation is the return of conditioning into its own self, the non-relative, the unconditioned.

Now since neither side of the relation has its self-subsistence in its own self but each in the other, only one identity of the two is at hand, in which both are moments merely; but since each is self-subsistent in its own self, they are two self-subsistent concrete existences that stand indifferent to one another.

Taken in the first respect, that of these sides' essential identity, the whole is equal to the parts and the parts to the whole. In the whole there is nothing absent from the parts, and in the parts nothing absent from the whole. No abstract unity is the whole; it is unity as that of a diverse manifoldness; but this unity, as that wherein the manifold refers to one another, is the determinateness of the manifold whereby the latter is part. An inseparable identity, then, is what the relation has, and one self-subsistence only.

But further, the whole is equal to the parts, though not to them qua parts; for the whole is unity as reflected, whereas the parts constitute the determinate moment, the otherness, of that unity, and they are the diverse manifold. Equal the whole is, not to them as this self-subsistent diversity, but to them together. This together of theirs, however, is nothing else than their unity, the whole as such. Within the parts, therefore, the whole is equal to nothing but itself, and the equality of whole with parts voices only the tautology that the whole as whole is equal to the whole, and not to the parts.

The parts, inversely, are equal to the whole; but since otherness is the moment which they themselves are, their equality is not with it as the unity, but runs thus, that one among its manifold determinations devolves upon the part, or that they are equal to it qua something manifold; they are equal to it, that is, as a divided whole, which means as the parts. So here too the very same tautology is at hand: the parts as parts stand equal not to the whole as such, but within it to themselves, to the parts.

Whole and parts fall in this manner indifferently asunder; each of these sides refers to itself alone. Yet held asunder so, they wreck themselves. That whole which is indifferent towards the parts is the abstract identity, undifferentiated within; and such identity is a whole only as differentiated within its own self, differentiated within, moreover, in such a manner that these manifold determinations stand reflected into themselves and possess immediate self-subsistence. And identity of reflection, through its own movement, has already displayed this reflection into its other as its truth. – Just so the parts, indifferent as they are towards the unity of the whole, are the unrelated manifold merely, the other within itself, which as such is the other of its own self and only what sublates itself. – This reference-to-self of either side is its self-subsistence; but this self-subsistence, which each has for itself, is rather the negation of its own self. Neither, therefore, has its self-subsistence in its own self, but in the other; that other — the one constituting the subsistence — counts as its presupposed immediate, the thing that ought to be a first and its beginning; but this first belonging to each is itself only such a one as is not first, but has its beginning in the other.

The relation's truth lies accordingly in the mediation; its essence is that negative unity wherein reflected immediacy and the immediacy that is are alike sublated. Contradiction is what the relation is, contradiction going back into its ground, into the unity which, as returning, is the reflected unity; but since this unity has no less posited itself as sublated, it refers negatively to its own self, sublates itself, and turns itself into the immediacy that is. This negative reference of it, though, in that it counts as a first, an immediate one, has its mediation solely through its other, and is no less a posited. That other, the immediacy that is, equally is only as sublated; a first is its self-subsistence, but a first only in order to vanish, and the existence it has is posited and mediated.

So determined, the relation is that of whole and parts no longer; the immediacy possessed by its sides has gone over into positedness and mediation; each is posited, so far as it is immediate, as sublating itself and passing over into the other, and, so far as it is itself negative reference, as being at the same time conditioned by the other as by its positive; just as its immediate passing over is no less something mediated, a sublating, namely, posited by the other. – With that, the relation of whole and parts has gone over into the relation of force and its expression.

Remark

Above (Division I, p. 113 ff.) the antinomy of the infinite divisibility of matter came under consideration, in connection with the concept of quantity. Quantity is the unity of continuity and discreteness; within the self-subsistent one it harbours that one's having flowed together with others, and within this identity with itself, prolonged without interruption, it equally harbours the negation of that identity. Once the immediate reference of these moments of quantity gets voiced in the shape of the essential relation of whole and parts — quantity's one counting as part, its continuity as the whole compounded out of parts — the antinomy consists in that contradiction which showed up at the relation of whole and parts and was there dissolved. – For whole and parts are quite as essentially referred to one another, making up one identity only, as they are indifferent towards one another and possess self-subsistent subsistence. The relation, therefore, is antinomy in just this sense: the one moment, by liberating itself from the other, immediately brings that other along.

Let what concretely exists be determined as whole, then, and it has parts, and the parts make up its subsistence; the unity of the whole is a posited reference merely, an external putting together which is no affair of the self-subsistently existing thing. Now so far as the latter is part, it is not whole, not something put together, and so simple. But since reference to a whole is external to it, that reference is no affair of it; and so what is self-subsistent is not in itself part either, for part it is only through such reference. Yet since it is now not part, it is whole, for the only relation at hand is this one of whole and of parts, and the self-subsistent thing is one of the two. But being whole, it is once more something put together; once more it consists of parts, and so on into infinity. – This infinity amounts to nothing but the perennial alternation of the relation's two determinations, in each of which the other immediately springs up, so that the positedness of either is the vanishing of that same one. Let matter be determined as whole, then, and it consists of parts, and upon these the whole sinks to an unessential reference and vanishes. Yet the part, taken for itself in that manner, is likewise not part, but the whole. – Pressed quite closely together, the antinomy of this inference properly runs: because the whole is not the self-subsistent thing, the part is the self-subsistent thing; but because self-subsistence belongs to it only without the whole, self-subsistent it is not qua part, but rather as whole. The infinity of the resulting progress is the incapacity to hold together the two thoughts which this mediation carries, namely that either determination, precisely through its self-subsistence and its severance from the other, passes over into non-self-subsistence and into that other.

B. The Relation of Force and Its Expression

Force is that negative unity wherein the contradiction of whole and parts has found its dissolution, the truth of that first relation. Whole and parts is the thoughtless relation upon which representation lights first of all; or, objectively taken, it is the dead, mechanical aggregate, which does indeed carry form-determinations by which the manifoldness of its self-subsistent matter gets referred together into a unity, but a unity external to that matter. – The relation of force, by contrast, is the higher return into self, in which the whole's unity, the very thing that constituted the reference of self-subsistent otherness, ceases to be something external and indifferent to this manifoldness.

As the essential relation has by now determined itself, the immediate and the reflected self-subsistence — sides or extremes that in the foregoing relation subsisted for themselves — stand posited within it as sublated, that is, as moments. Contained in this is, first, that the reflected unity together with its immediate existence, so far as either is a first and an immediate, sublate themselves in their own selves and pass over into their other; the former, force, goes over into its expression, and the external is a vanishing thing which retreats into force as into its ground, and is only in being carried and posited by force. Second, this going-over is not a mere becoming and vanishing; it is negative reference to self, or what alters its determination is therein at the same time reflected into itself and maintains itself; the movement of force is not so much a going-over as force's setting itself across, and throughout this alteration posited by force itself force stays what it is. – Third, this reflected unity, referring itself to itself, is itself sublated too and a moment; mediated through its other, it has that other for its condition; and its negative reference to itself, which is a first and starts the movement of its going-over out of itself, has no less a presupposition that solicits it, and an other whence its starting is taken.

a. The Conditionedness of Force

Considered in the closer determinations belonging to it, force has upon it, first, the moment of the immediacy that is; force itself, over against this, stands determined as the negative unity. But this unity, under the determination of immediate being, is a concretely existing something. Such a something, being the negative unity in immediate shape, shows itself as the first; force, on the contrary, being the reflected side, shows itself as the positedness, and so far as belonging to the concretely existing thing or to some matter. Not that force would be the form of this thing and the thing be determined through force; the thing, rather, as something immediate, stays indifferent towards it. – On this determination no ground lies in the thing for its having a force; force, on the other side, being the side of positedness, has the thing essentially for its presupposition. So when the question is raised how thing or matter comes to have a force, force shows up as conjoined with it externally and as stamped upon the thing by some alien power.

In this immediate subsisting, force is a quiescent determinateness of the thing at large: not something expressing itself, but immediately something external. In this way force gets labelled a matter as well, and the magnetic, the electrical force, and so forth, is replaced. What is assumed in its place is a magnetic, an electrical matter, and so forth. Or, in place of the famous attractive force, a fine ether is assumed, said to hold everything together. – These are the matters into which the inert, forceless negative unity of the thing dissolves, and which came under consideration above.

Force, however, harbours immediate concrete existence as a moment, as something which is indeed condition but which goes over and sublates itself; not, therefore, as a concretely existing thing. Nor, further, is it negation in the guise of determinateness; it is negative unity reflecting itself into itself. The thing on which force was to reside thereby loses all further significance here; force is rather itself the positing of the externality that shows up as concrete existence. So neither is it a determinate matter and no more; self-subsistence of that kind long ago went over into positedness and into appearance.

Second, force is the unity of reflected and of immediate subsisting, or of the unity of form and external self-subsistence. It is the two in one; it is the touching of such terms of which the one is so far as the other is not; the positive reflection identical with itself, and the negated reflection. Thus force is the contradiction repelling itself from its own self; it is active; or it is the negative unity referring itself to itself, wherein the reflected immediacy, the essential being-within-itself, is posited as being only a sublated thing, a moment, and hence, so far as force marks itself off from immediate concrete existence, as going over into the latter. Force, then, taken as the determination of the whole's reflected unity, stands posited as coming to be, out of its own self, the concretely existing external manifoldness.

But third, force is as yet only an activity that is in-itself and immediate; it is the reflected unity, and just as essentially the negation of that unity; since it is diverse from this negation and yet is only as the identity of its own self with its negation, it stands essentially referred to the negation as to an immediacy external to it, and holds that immediacy for its presupposition and its condition.

Now this presupposition is no thing found standing over against force; indifferent self-subsistence of that sort is sublated in force; as force's condition it is a self-subsistent other to force. But since it is no thing, and since self-subsistent immediacy has here determined itself at the same time as negative unity referring itself to itself, it is itself force. – Force's activity is conditioned by force's own self as by what is other to it, by a force.

Force is in this way a relation in which either side is the same as the other. Forces are what stand in the relation, and they refer to one another essentially at that. – They are, further, at the outset merely diverse; the unity of their relation is as yet only the inner unity that is in itself. Being conditioned by another force is thus in itself force's own doing; or force is so far only a presupposing doing, one that refers to itself negatively and no more; this other force still lies beyond force's positing activity, beyond, that is, the reflection which in its determining returns into itself immediately.

b. The Solicitation of Force

Force is conditioned for this reason, that the moment of immediate concrete existence contained in it is only a posited one – but, being at once an immediate one, is a presupposed one, wherein force negates its own self. The externality on hand for force is accordingly its own presupposing activity itself, which at the outset stands posited as another force.

This presupposing is, further, mutual. Either of the two forces harbours the unity reflected into itself as sublated, and is on that account presupposing; it posits its own self as something external; that moment of externality is its own one; but because it is no less unity reflected into itself, it at the same time posits this externality of its not within its own self, but as another force.

Yet the external as such is what sublates its own self; and further, the activity that reflects itself into itself stands essentially referred to that external as to what is other to it, but no less as to something in itself null and identical with it. Seeing that the presupposing activity is quite as much reflection into self, it is the sublating of that negation of its, and posits the negation as its own self, or as its own external. Thus force in conditioning is mutually an impulse for the other force, an impulse against which the latter is active. Its bearing is not the passivity of getting determined, as though something else came into it thereby; the impulse only solicits it. In its own self it is the negativity of itself; its repelling of itself from itself is its own positing. What it does, then, consists in sublating this, that the impulse is something external; it turns the impulse into a bare impulse and posits it as its own repelling of its own self from itself, as its own expression.

Force in expressing itself is thus the very same as what at the outset was only presupposing activity, that is, a making of itself external; but force in expressing itself is at once the activity that negates externality and posits it as belonging to itself. Now so far as this consideration takes its start from force as being the negative unity of its own self and thereby presupposing reflection, it comes to the same thing as taking one's start, within the expression of force, from the soliciting impulse. Force is thus determined, in its concept, at first as self-sublating identity, and in its reality, the one of the two forces as soliciting, the other as the one solicited. But at large the concept of force is the identity of positing and of presupposing reflection, or of reflected and of immediate unity, and each of these determinations is outright a moment only, within unity, and hence is as mediated through the other. But equally, on the two forces standing in mutual reference there is no determination present of which would be the soliciting one and which the one being solicited; or rather, both form-determinations accrue to each alike. Yet this identity is not merely an external one of comparison; it is an essential unity of the two.

The one force, namely, is at the outset determined as soliciting, the other as being solicited; in this manner the form-determinations show up as immediate differences of the two forces, differences on hand in themselves. But they are essentially mediated. The one force gets solicited; this impulse is a determination posited into it from without. Force, however, is itself what presupposes; essentially it is a reflecting of itself into itself and a sublating of this, that the impulse should be something external. That it gets solicited is therefore its own doing; or it is determined through its own self that the other force is an other at all and is the soliciting one. The soliciting force refers negatively to its other, in that it sublates the other's externality; so far it is positing; but it is this only through the presupposition of having an other over against it; which is to say, soliciting it is itself only so far as it has an externality upon it, and hence only so far as it gets solicited. Or it is soliciting only so far as it gets solicited into being soliciting. Thus conversely the first gets solicited only so far as it itself solicits the other into soliciting it, the first, that is. Each of the two receives the impulse from the other, then; but the impulse which it gives as active consists precisely in this, that it receives an impulse from the other; and the impulse received by it is solicited by its own self. Both, the impulse given and the impulse received, or the active expression and the passive externality, are accordingly not something immediate but mediated; and indeed each of the two forces is thereby itself the determinateness which the other has towards it, is mediated through the other, and this mediating other is once again its own determining positing.

So this, that an impulse befalls force through another force, that force so far bears itself passively but then again crosses over from this passivity into activity – this is force's going back into its own self. It expresses itself. The expression is reaction in the sense of positing externality as force's own moment, and thereby sublating this, that force should have been solicited by another force. Both are one thing, therefore: the expression of force, whereby through its negative activity upon its own self it gives itself an existence-for-other, and the infinite return, within this externality, upon its own self, such that therein it refers to itself alone. The presupposing reflection, to which conditionedness and the impulse belong, is on that account immediately the reflection returning into itself as well, and the activity is essentially a reacting, against itself. To posit the impulse, or the external, is itself to sublate it, and inversely, to sublate the impulse is to posit externality.

c. The Infinity of Force

Finite force is, so far as its moments still carry the form of immediacy; presupposing reflection and self-referring reflection stand distinguished in it under this determination; the one shows up as an external force subsisting for itself, the other, in referring to that one, as passive. So far as form goes, then, force is conditioned, and so far as content goes it is limited as well; for determinateness on the side of form carries a limitation of content along with it. But what force's activity consists in is expressing itself; that is, as has come out, in sublating externality and determining it as that wherein force stands identical with itself. What force in truth expresses, accordingly, is this: that its reference to another is its reference to its own self, that its passivity subsists within its activity itself. The impulse whereby it gets solicited into activity is a soliciting of its own; the externality arriving upon it is nothing immediate, but something it has itself mediated, just as its own essential identity with itself is not immediate either, but mediated through its negation; or force expresses this, that its externality is identical with its inwardness.