C. Being-for-itself in Measure

1. Within the shape of specified measure considered a moment ago, what is quantitative on either side stands qualitatively determined (both being in the ratio of powers); so the two count as moments of One measure-determinateness having qualitative nature. In all this, however, the qualities are as yet posited only as immediate ones, as merely diverse, which do not themselves stand in the relation wherein their determinatenesses of magnitude stand, namely that of having neither sense nor existence outside such a relation, this being what the power-determinateness of magnitude carries with it. The qualitative thus keeps itself veiled, since it specifies not itself but the determinateness of magnitude; only at that determinateness is it posited, while on its own it is immediate quality as such, quality which, apart from the setting of magnitude in difference by it and apart from its connection to its other, would still have an existence subsisting on its own. So space and time both hold good, apart from the specification which their determinateness of magnitude receives in the motion of fall or in absolutely free motion, as space at large and time at large, space subsisting on its own outside and without time, as enduring, and time as flowing on its own independently of space.

This immediacy of the qualitative over against its specific measure-connection is, however, just as much knit together with a quantitative immediacy and with the indifference which a quantitative factor in it shows towards this relation of its own; the immediate quality possesses likewise a merely immediate quantum. Hence the specific measure also has a side of at first external alteration, an alteration whose advance is merely arithmetical, is not disturbed by the specifying factor, and into which the external, and therefore merely empirical, determinateness of magnitude falls. Quality and quantum, cropping up in this fashion outside the specific measure as well, stand at the same time in connection with it; the immediacy is a moment of such determinations as themselves belong to measure. The immediate qualities are thus appurtenant to measure too, are likewise in connection, and stand, as regards determinateness of magnitude, in a relation which, lying outside the specified relation, outside the power-determination, is itself only the direct ratio and immediate measure. This consequence, and how it hangs together, is now to be stated more closely.

2. The immediately determined quantum as such, even where as a moment of measure it is otherwise grounded in itself within a nexus of the concept, is, in its bearing upon the specific measure, something given from without. The immediacy thereby posited is, however, the negation of the qualitative measure-determination; that negation was pointed out just above at the sides of this measure-determination, sides which on that account came to look like self-subsistent qualities. Such negation, and the return to immediate determinateness of quantity, lie in the qualitatively determined relation insofar as the relation of things distinguished contains at large their connection as One determinateness, which accordingly, here in the quantitative and as distinguished from the relation-determination, is a quantum. Being the negation of the distinguished sides that are qualitatively determined, this exponent amounts to a being-for-itself, to being-determined-outright; yet a being-for-itself of that kind is only in itself; qua existence it is a simple and immediate quantum, quotient or exponent of what counts as a ratio between the sides of measure, that ratio being taken as direct; but it is, in general terms, the unit appearing as empirical within the quantitative aspect of measure. – In the fall of bodies the spaces traversed stand in the ratio of the square of the times elapsed; s = at²; – this is what stands specifically determined, a ratio of powers holding between space and time; the other relation, the direct ratio, would fall to space and to time taken as qualities indifferent to each other; it is meant to be that of space to the first temporal moment; one and the same coefficient, a, persists through every later point of time; – the unit, an ordinary quantum, for the amount otherwise determined by the specifying measure. This unit passes at the same time for the exponent belonging to that direct ratio which attaches to represented bad velocity, that is, to formal velocity, not specified through the concept . Velocity of that sort does not exist here, no more than does the one mentioned earlier, which was to belong to the body at the end of a moment of time. The former is attributed to the first moment of time in the fall, but this so-called moment of time is itself only an assumed unit and, as such an atomic point, has no existence; the beginning of the motion – the smallness alleged on its behalf could make no difference – is straightway a magnitude, and indeed a magnitude specified by the law of fall. That empirical quantum is attributed to the force of gravity, in such wise that this force itself is supposed to bear no relation to the specification at hand (the power-determinateness), to what is peculiar to the measure-determination. The immediate moment – that in the motion of fall there answers to one unit of time (– a second, and indeed the so-called first one –) an amount of roughly fifteen units of space reckoned as feet – is an immediate measure, on a par with the measure-magnitude of human limbs, or the distances and diameters of the planets, and the like. Where such a measure gets determined lies elsewhere than within the qualitative measure-determination, here that of the law of fall itself; but upon what such numbers hang, the merely immediate and therefore empirically appearing element of a measure – on that head the concrete sciences have so far told us nothing. Here we have to do only with this determinateness of the concept; it is this, that the empirical coefficient makes up the being-for-itself within the measure-determination, but only the moment of being-for-itself, so far as this is in itself and therefore something immediate. The other side is what this being-for-itself has developed into, the specific measure-determinateness belonging to the two sides. – Gravity, in the relation of falling, a motion admittedly still half conditioned and only half free, is by this second moment to be looked upon as a force of nature, so that its relation is determined through the nature of time and of space, and hence that specification, the ratio of powers, falls within gravity; the former, the simple direct ratio, expresses only a mechanical comportment of time and space, the formal velocity, externally brought forth and settled.

3. Measure has determined itself into a specified relation of magnitudes which, qua quantitative, carries the ordinary external quantum about it; that quantum, though, is no quantum at large but essentially serves as the moment determining the relation as such; hence it is exponent, and, since it is now an immediate being-determined, an exponent that cannot alter, the exponent accordingly of that direct ratio, mentioned already, between the very same qualities, whereby their mutual relation of magnitude also gets specifically determined. This direct ratio is, in the example used of the measure of the motion of fall, anticipated as it were and assumed to be present; but, as was noted, it does not yet exist in that motion. – It makes up, however, the further determination that measure is now realized in such a way that its two sides are measures, distinguished as immediate and external and as specified within itself, and that measure is the unity of them. Measure, being this unity, holds within it the relation wherein the magnitudes stand determined and set in difference by the nature of the qualities, a relation whose determinateness is on that account entirely immanent and self-subsistent, and which has at once run together into the being-for-itself of immediate quantum, into the exponent of a direct ratio; therein measure's determining of itself is negated, seeing that its ultimate determinateness, the one that is for itself, lies in this other of its own; and inversely, the immediate measure, which ought to be qualitative in its own self, wins its qualitative determinateness in truth only at that other. Such negative unity constitutes real being-for-itself, the category of a something taken as unity of qualities that stand within the measure-relation; – a complete self-subsistence. Immediately the two, which have turned out to be two different relations, also yield a twofold existence, or more precisely, such a self-subsistent whole is, as something for itself at large, at the same time a repelling within its own self into distinct self-subsistent things, whose qualitative nature and persistence (materiality) reside in their measure-determinateness.

Chapter 2. Real Measure

Measure has been determined into a connection of measures which make up the quality of distinct self-subsistent somethings, more familiarly: things. The measure-relations just considered belong to abstract qualities such as space and time; for those to be considered in what lies ahead the examples are specific gravity and, further on, the chemical properties, which stand as determinations of material concrete existences. Space and time are moments of such measures too, but moments now subordinated to further determinations, no longer comporting themselves to one another merely according to their own conceptual determination. In sound, e.g., the time in which an amount of vibrations occurs and the spatial factor of the length and thickness of the vibrating body are among the determining moments; but those ideal moments have their magnitudes fixed from outside, they no longer show themselves against each other in a ratio of powers but in an ordinary direct one, and the harmonic reduces itself to the wholly external simplicity of numbers whose ratios are the easiest of all to take in, and which thereby afford a satisfaction falling entirely to sensation, since for spirit no representation, image of fantasy, thought or anything of the sort is present to fill it. Since the sides that now constitute the measure-relation are measures themselves, and yet at once real somethings, the measures belonging to them are immediate ones to begin with and, taken as ratios within them, direct ones. It is the relation of such ratios to one another that must now be considered in its onward determination.

Measure, as it is henceforth real, is

firstly a self-subsistent measure of a corporeality which comports itself towards others and in this comportment specifies them, and along with them self-subsistent materiality as well. Such specifying, being an external act of connecting to many others at large, is the bringing forth of further ratios, hence of further measures, and specific self-subsistence no longer stays within one direct ratio but goes over into a specific determinateness that constitutes a series of measures.

Secondly, the direct ratios arising in this way are measures determined in themselves and exclusive ones (elective affinities); yet because their mutual difference is at the same time only quantitative, there is present an onward course of ratios that runs in part merely externally quantitative, though it is broken into by qualitative relations as well, and yields a nodal line of specific self-subsistent entities.

Thirdly, however, in this onward course there enters for measure measurelessness in general, and more determinately the infinity of measure, in which the self-subsistences that exclude one another are at one with each other, and the self-subsistent steps into negative connection with its own self.

A. The Relation of Self-subsistent Measures

The measures are now called no longer merely immediate but self-subsistent, insofar as within themselves they [become] relations of measures which are specified, and so in this being-for-itself are somethings, physical, in the first instance material things. The whole, however, being itself a relation of measures of that kind, is

a. to begin with immediate itself; the two sides, determined as self-subsistent measures of this sort, accordingly subsist outside one another in particular things, and get set externally into combination;

b. the self-subsistent materialities, however, are what they qualitatively are only through the quantitative determination which they have as measures, and hence are determined through a connection to others which is itself quantitative, as different over against them (so-called affinity), and indeed as members of a series made up of quantitative comportment of that kind;

c. this indifferent manifold comportment at the same time closes itself off into an exclusive being-for-itself; – so-called elective affinity.

a. Combination of Two Measures

Within itself a something has been determined as a measure-relation of quanta to which, furthermore, qualities accrue, and the something is what connects these qualities. The first of them is its being-within-itself, whereby it is a being-for-itself, – something material – (weight, if taken intensively, or, extensively, the multitude of material parts); the second, by contrast, is the externality of that being-within-itself, (the abstract, the ideal, space.) Quantitatively determined as these qualities are, it is their ratio to each other that constitutes the qualitative nature of the material something; – weight in ratio to volume, determinate specific gravity. Volume, the ideal side, has to be assumed as unit, whereas the intensive side, appearing in quantitative determinateness and in comparison with volume as extensive magnitude, as a multitude of ones existing for themselves, has to be assumed as amount. – What has vanished here is the purely qualitative comportment of the two determinatenesses of magnitude according to a ratio of powers, and it has vanished because in the self-subsistence of being-for-itself (– of material being –) immediacy has returned, an immediacy at which the determinateness of magnitude counts as quantum as such, and at which the ratio of such a quantum to the further side is likewise fixed in the ordinary exponent of a direct ratio.

Now this exponent, though it is the specific quantum belonging to the something, is an immediate quantum, and only in comparison with the exponents of other such ratios does it, and with it the specific nature of such a something, become determined. What it constitutes is the specific being-determined-in-itself, the inner measure peculiar to a something; but because that measure of its own rests on quantum, it too is nothing more than an external, indifferent determinateness, and such a something is on that account alterable, its inner measure-determination notwithstanding. The other towards which it can comport itself as alterable is no multitude of matter, no quantum at large; against that its specific being-determined-in-itself holds firm; rather it is a quantum that is itself equally the exponent of a specific ratio of that kind. What stand in connection and enter into combination are two things of unlike inner measure; – two metals, say, of unlike specific gravity; – and what homogeneity of nature may otherwise be requisite for such a combination to be possible, so that, e.g., no metal is at issue whose combination with water would be spoken of, does not belong here for consideration. – Each of the two measures, on the one side, preserves itself in the alteration that was to befall it through the externality of quantum, and does so because it is measure, while on the other side this preserving-of-itself is itself a negative comportment towards that quantum, a specifying of it, and, the quantum being exponent of the measure-relation, an alteration of measure itself, and indeed a mutual specifying.

Taken by merely quantitative determination, the combination would be a mere summing of the two magnitudes of the one quality with the two of the other, e.g., in combining two matters of unlike specific gravity, the sum of both weights and of both volumes, so that not merely the weight of the mixture but likewise the space it occupies would stay equal to those respective sums. Yet it is the weight alone that turns out to be the sum of the weights present before the combination; what gets summed is that side which, as the side existing for itself, has become fixed existence and thereby a lasting immediate quantum, – matter's weight, or what passes for it in respect of quantitative determinateness, the multitude of material parts. Into the exponents, though, the alteration falls, since they are the expression of qualitative determinateness, of being-for-itself as measure-relations, which, while quantum as such undergoes the contingent, external alteration by an addendum that is summed, proves itself at the same time to negate this externality. This immanent determining of the quantitative, unable as it is, per the showing above, to come out at the weight, gives proof of itself at the other quality, the side of the ratio that is ideal. To sense perception it may be striking that after two specifically unlike matters have been mixed an alteration – as a rule a diminution – shows up in the summed volume; space itself constitutes the subsisting of matter that lies outside itself. But over against the negativity which being-for-itself harbours within, this subsisting is what has no being in itself, what is alterable; in this way space gets posited as what it truly is, as ideal.

Herewith, though, it is not merely one of the qualitative sides that gets posited as alterable but measure itself, and thereby the qualitative determinateness of the something grounded on measure has shown itself to be nothing fixed in its own self, having rather, like quantum at large, its determinateness in other measure-relations.

b. Measure as a Series of Measure-Relations

1. Were a something that gets united with an other, and equally this other, to be what it is solely by way of simple quality, then in such a combination the two would do nothing but sublate themselves; a something that is measure-relation within itself, however, is self-subsistent and for that very reason unitable with a something of like kind; in getting sublated within this unity it holds itself in being through its indifferent, quantitative subsisting, and comports itself at once as the moment that specifies a fresh measure-relation. Wrapped up in the quantitative, its quality is thereby just as indifferent towards the other measure, continuing itself both into that measure and on into the one newly formed; as for the exponent of this new measure, it is nothing but some quantum or other, a determinateness that is external; and the indifference exhibits itself in this, that the specifically determined something engages with further measures of like kind in just such neutralizations of the measure-relations on either side; in a single one alone, formed by it together with an other, its specific peculiarity finds no expression.

2. Combining in this way with several others, which within them are measures likewise, yields ratios that differ, and hence exponents that differ. Only in comparison with others does the self-subsistent possess the exponent of its being-determined-in-itself; its neutrality with others, however, is what constitutes the real comparing of it with them; here it is compared with them by way of its own self. Since the exponents of these ratios differ, though, the self-subsistent thereby sets out its qualitative exponent as the series of these differing amounts to which it stands as unit; – as a series of specific comportment towards others. Taken as One immediate quantum, the qualitative exponent gives voice to a single relation. What genuinely marks off the self-subsistent is the peculiar series of exponents that it, assumed as unit, builds with other self-subsistents of the kind, seeing that another among them, brought into connection with those very ones and assumed as unit, will shape a different series. – What now constitutes the qualitative side of the self-subsistent is the relation obtaining inside such a series.

Now insofar as a self-subsistent of this kind builds a series of exponents together with a series of self-subsistents, it looks at first as though what marks it off from another lying beyond that series, one with which it gets compared, were this, that the latter makes up a different series of exponents with the very same partners over against it. In this way, however, the two self-subsistents would be not comparable, insofar as each gets regarded as unit over against its own exponents while the two series springing from that connection are indeterminately other. The pair meant to be compared as self-subsistents stand at first distinguished from each other merely as quanta; determining their ratio calls for a common unit that exists for itself. Such a determinate unit is to be looked for nowhere but in that wherein the ones to be compared have, as shown, the specific existence of their measure, that is to say, in the relation borne to one another by the ratio-exponents of the series. This relation of exponents is itself a unit existing for itself, a determinate one in fact, only so far as the members of the series bear it towards both alike as a constant relation among themselves; on that condition it can be their common unit. Here alone, accordingly, does the comparability of the two self-subsistents reside, of the two that were assumed not as neutralizing themselves with each other but as indifferent towards each other. Set apart, outside the comparing, each is unit for the ratios with the members facing it, members that are amounts over against that unit and so make up the series of exponents. Conversely that series is, on the other side, the unit for the pair which, once compared, are quanta over against each other; as such the pair are themselves differing amounts of the unit just now brought out.

But those, further, which over against the pair – or rather the many at large – compared among themselves supply the series of the exponents of their comportment, are within themselves self-subsistents no less, each of them a specific something carrying a measure-relation that belongs to it in itself. To that extent each of them too has to be taken as unit, such that in the pair first named, merely compared among themselves, or rather in the indeterminately several, they possess a series of exponents, exponents which are the comparison-numbers of the ones just named among themselves; and conversely the comparison-numbers of those now taken singly as self-subsistent likewise make up, among themselves, the series of exponents for the members of the first series. Both sides in this way are series wherein each number is firstly unit at large over against the series facing it, at which series it possesses its being-determined-for-itself as a series of exponents; secondly, it is one among the exponents for every member of the facing series; and thirdly a comparison-number to the remaining numbers of its own series, and as an amount of that sort, which belongs to it as exponent too, it possesses its for-itself-determined unit at the series facing it.

3. What has come back in this comportment is the manner and way in which quantum, as existing for itself, that is, as degree, is posited to be simple and yet to have its determinateness of magnitude at a quantum lying outside it, one that is a circle of quanta. In measure, though, what is external here amounts not simply to a quantum and a circle of quanta but to a series of ratio-numbers, whose totality is where the being-determined-for-itself of measure resides. Just as happens with quantum's being-for-itself as degree, the nature of self-subsistent measure has turned itself around into this externality of its own self. Its connection to itself stands at first as an immediate ratio, and with that its indifference towards other lies straightway in quantum alone. Its qualitative side falls therefore into this externality, and its comportment towards other turns into that which constitutes the specific determination of this self-subsistent. So that determination lies purely and simply in the quantitative manner and way of such comportment, a manner and way determined by the other as much as by the self-subsistent itself, the other in question being a series of quanta, and it reciprocally a series of the kind. But there is more contained in this connection, wherein two specific measures specify themselves into a something, into a third, the exponent, namely this, that within it the one has not passed over into the other, so that not merely one negation at large is posited but both are posited negatively there, and, each of them holding itself indifferently within it, its negation is once more negated as well. Their qualitative unity is accordingly an exclusive unity existing for itself. Only in the moment of excluding do the exponents, comparison-numbers among themselves to begin with, come to have at them their truly specific determinateness over against each other, and their difference thereby takes on a qualitative nature as well. It rests nonetheless on the quantitative; firstly, the self-subsistent comports itself towards a several of its qualitatively other side for the sole reason that in such comportment it remains at the same time indifferent; secondly, the neutral connection, by virtue of the quantitativity it holds within, is now not alteration merely but is posited as negation of negation, and as exclusive unity. By this the affinity of a self-subsistent to the several on the other side is no longer an indifferent connection but an elective affinity.

c. Elective Affinity

The expression elective affinity has been employed here, and in what went before neutrality and affinity as well, – terms drawn from the chemical relation. For within the chemical sphere it is essentially in its connection to its other that the material has its specific determinateness; only as this difference does it exist. Bound as this specific connection further is to quantity, it is at the same time a connection not to one single other but to a whole series of differents facing it; what the combinations with that series rest upon is a so-called affinity with each of its members, and yet, indifference notwithstanding, every one of them excludes the rest; and that connection of opposed determinations has still to be looked at. – Chemistry, however, is not the only field where the specific presents itself in a circle of combinations; a single tone likewise acquires its sense only in comporting itself towards, and combining with, another tone and with the series of others; harmonious or disharmonious, such a circle of combinations makes for the tone's qualitative nature, resting as that nature does at the same time on quantitative ratios which form a series of exponents, ratios of the two specific ratios that each of the tones combined is within itself. A single tone is the fundamental tone of a system, and just as much, in turn, one member within the system of every other fundamental tone. The harmonies are exclusive elective affinities, and yet their qualitative peculiarity dissolves once more, just as readily, into the externality of a merely quantitative onward course. – As to wherein the principle of a measure lies for the affinities that are elective affinities (chemical, musical or other) among and against the rest, a remark bearing on the chemical case will still be made below; a question of this higher order, though, is bound up most intimately with the specific character of what is properly qualitative, and has its place in the particular parts of concrete natural science.

Given that a member of one series has its qualitative unity in how it comports itself towards the whole of the series facing it, whose members are diverse from each other solely through the quantum by which they neutralize themselves with that member, the more special determinateness within this manifold affinity is likewise a merely quantitative one. Being an exclusive, qualitative connection, elective affinity takes the comportment out of this quantitative difference. Here the nearest determination on offer is this: that a member's elective affinity towards the members of the other series, with all of which it stands in affinity, follows the difference in multitude, hence in extensive magnitude, that holds among the members of the one side for neutralizing a member of the other. Excluding, understood as a firmer cohesion against other possibilities of combination and grounded on that difference, would then look to be converted into a correspondingly greater intensity, in keeping with the identity established earlier between the forms of extensive and intensive magnitude, forms in both of which the determinateness of magnitude is one and the same. Yet this switching of the one-sided form of extensive magnitude over into its other, the intensive, changes nothing in the nature of the underlying determination, which is that one and the same quantum; so that in fact no excluding at all would be posited thereby, and indifferently either a single combination or else a combination of indeterminately many members might take place, provided only that the portions entering from them, conformably to their mutual ratios, matched the quantum demanded.

Only, the combination we have also named neutralization is not the form of intensity alone; the exponent is in essence a determining of measure, and thereby exclusive; on this side of exclusive comportment the numbers have forfeited their continuity and their running-together with one another; a negative character attaches to the more or less, and the precedence one exponent holds over others does not stop short at determinateness of magnitude. Yet no less is that further side at hand, on which a moment is again indifferent as to receiving the neutralizing quantum from any of several moments facing it, from each in keeping with its specific determinateness over against the other; comportment that excludes and negates suffers at the same time this inroad from the quantitative quarter. – Herewith there is posited a switching of indifferent, merely quantitative comportment into a qualitative one, and inversely a passing-over of the specific determinedness into the merely external relation; – a series of relations that are now of merely quantitative nature, now specific ones and measures.

Remark

The chemical substances are the most distinctive examples of such measures, ones that are moments of measure and have what makes up their determination solely in their bearing towards others. Acids and alkalis, or bases in general, appear as things immediately determined in themselves, yet rather as incomplete bodily elements, as constituents which properly do not exist for themselves but have only this concrete existence, namely to sublate their isolated subsistence and to combine with an other. Moreover, the difference by which they count as self-subsistent lies not in that immediate quality but in the quantitative way and manner of their bearing. For it is not confined to the chemical opposition between acid and alkali, or base as such, but is specified into a measure of saturation, lying in how the quantity of the mutually neutralizing substances is specifically determined. This determination of quantity with respect to saturation makes up the qualitative nature of a substance, makes it into what it is for itself, and the number that expresses this is essentially one among several exponents for a unit standing over against it. – Such a substance stands to another in so-called affinity; insofar as this connection were to remain of a purely qualitative nature, then – as with the connection of the magnetic poles or of the electricities – the one determinateness would be merely the negative of the other, and the two sides would not also show themselves at the same time indifferent towards each other. But because the connection is also of a quantitative nature, each of these substances is capable of neutralizing itself with several, and is not restricted to one standing over against it. It is not just the acid and the alkali, or base, that stand towards each other, but acids and alkalis, or bases. They characterize themselves over against each other in the first instance by this, that one acid, for example, requires more of an alkali in order to saturate itself with it than another does. But the self-subsistence that is for itself shows itself in this, that the affinities behave exclusively and one has preference over another, since taken by itself an acid can enter into combination with all the alkalis, and conversely. Thus what makes up the chief difference of one acid over against another is whether it has a closer affinity to a base than another has, that is, a so-called elective affinity.

Concerning the chemical affinities of acids and alkalis the law has been found that when two neutral solutions are mixed, whereby a separation occurs and from it two new combinations arise, these products are likewise neutral. It follows from this that the multitudes of two alkaline bases which are required for the saturation of one acid are needed in the same ratio for the saturation of another; in general, once the series of ratio numbers in which the various acids saturate one and the same alkali has been determined, taking that alkali as unit, then this series is the same for every other alkali, save only that the various alkalis are to be taken over against each other in different amounts; – amounts which on their side again form just such a constant series of exponents for each of the acids standing over against them, since they relate to each single acid in the same ratio as to every other. – Fischer was the first to bring out these series in their simplicity from Richter's works; see his notes to the translation of Berthollet's Abhandlung über die Gesetze der Verwandtschaft in der Chemie, p. 232, and Berthollet, Statique chimique, Part I, p. 134 ff. – To want to take account here of the knowledge of the ratio numbers of the mixtures of the chemical elements, so greatly developed on all sides since this was first written, would also be a digression for the reason that this empirical, though in part merely hypothetical, extension remains enclosed within the same determinations of the concept. But on the categories employed in it, further on the views of chemical elective affinity itself and of its connection to the quantitative, as well as on the attempt to ground it upon determinate physical qualities, a few remarks may yet be added.

As is well known, Berthollet modified the general representation of elective affinity by the concept of the efficacy of a chemical mass. This modification has – and this is well worth distinguishing – no influence on the quantitative ratios of the chemical laws of saturation themselves, but the qualitative moment of exclusive elective affinity as such is not merely weakened but rather sublated. If two acids act upon an alkali, and the one of which it is said that it has the greater affinity to it is also present in the quantum capable of saturating the quantum of the base, then according to the representation of elective affinity only this saturation ensues; the other acid remains wholly without effect and excluded from the neutral combination. According to that concept of the efficacy of a chemical mass, by contrast, each of the two is effective in a ratio compounded of the multitude of it present and its capacity for saturation, or so-called affinity. Berthollet's investigations have specified the closer circumstances under which the efficacy of the chemical mass is sublated and one acid (the more strongly akin) appears to drive out the other (the weaker) and to exclude its action, and so to be at work in the sense of elective affinity. What he has demonstrated is that the excluding occurs under circumstances – cohesive strength, the failure of the salts produced to dissolve in water – and not through the qualitative nature of the agents as such, circumstances whose effect can in turn be sublated by other circumstances, temperature for example. With the removal of these hindrances the chemical mass comes into efficacy undiminished, and what appeared as purely qualitative excluding, as elective affinity, shows itself to reside merely in external modifications.

Berzelius would be chiefly the one to be heard further on this subject matter. But in his Lehrbuch der Chemie he puts forward nothing distinctive or more determinate on the matter. Berthollet's views have been taken up and repeated word for word, only decked out with the peculiar metaphysics of an uncritical reflection, whose categories alone therefore offer themselves for closer consideration. The theory goes beyond experience and partly invents sensuous representations such as are not themselves given in experience, partly applies determinations of thought, and in both ways makes itself an object of logical critique. We shall therefore take up what that textbook itself (Vol. III, Part I, trans. Wöhler, p. 82 ff.) sets out on the theory. There one reads that one must represent to oneself how, in a fluid of uniform mixture, every atom of the body in solution has about it an equal number of solvent atoms surrounding it; and that where several substances have been dissolved together they must apportion among themselves the interstices lying between the solvent's atoms, so that, given a uniform mixture of the fluid, there arises a symmetry in the situation of the atoms such that all the atoms of the several bodies come to occupy a uniform situation in relation to the atoms of the other bodies; one might accordingly say that solution is marked by the symmetry in the disposition of the atoms, and combination by the determinate proportions.« – This is thereupon elucidated by an example of the combinations that arise from a solution of copper chloride to which sulphuric acid is added; but in this example there is of course no demonstration that atoms exist, nor that a number of atoms of the dissolved bodies surround atoms of the fluid, that free atoms of the two acids range themselves about those that remain combined (with the copper oxide), nor that the symmetry in the disposition and situation exists, nor that interstices between the atoms exist, – least of all that the dissolved substances apportion among themselves the interstices of the atoms of the solvent. This would mean that the dissolved substances take their place where the solvent is not, – for its interstices are the spaces empty of it, – hence that the dissolved substances are not in the solvent but, even while surrounding and encompassing it, or surrounded and encompassed by it, are outside of it, and so assuredly not dissolved by it either. One thus does not see why one must make for oneself such representations, which are not demonstrated in experience, which contradict themselves at once in essentials, and are in no other way further corroborated. This could happen only through the consideration of these representations themselves, that is, through metaphysics, which is logic, but by this they are just as little confirmed as by experience, – on the contrary! – Berzelius does, incidentally, grant the point made above as well, that Berthollet's propositions run counter in no way to the theory of determinate proportions, – he adds, of course, that neither do they run counter to the views of corpuscular philosophy, that is, to the representations adduced just now concerning atoms, concerning the filling of the interstices of the dissolving fluid by atoms of solid bodies, and so forth, – yet this latter, groundless metaphysics has in essence nothing to do with the proportions of saturation themselves.

The specific element expressed in the laws of saturation thus concerns only the multitude of themselves quantitative units (not atoms) of one body with which the quantitative unit (just as little an atom) of another body chemically different from the first neutralizes itself; the diversity consists solely in these different proportions. When Berzelius then, notwithstanding that his doctrine of proportions is wholly and solely a determination of multitudes, nevertheless also speaks of degrees of affinity, for example on p. 86, in that he explains Berthollet's chemical mass as the sum of the degree of affinity out of the available quantity of the operative body, where Berthollet, more consistently, employs the term capacité de saturation, then he is himself thereby falling into the form of intensive magnitude. Yet that form is exactly what constitutes the distinguishing mark of the so-called dynamical philosophy, which earlier, on p. 29 of the same work, he labels »the speculative philosophy of certain German schools« and repudiates emphatically for the good of the admirable »corpuscular philosophy«. Of this dynamical philosophy he states there that it assumes the elements to interpenetrate each other in their chemical union and that neutralization consists in this mutual interpenetration; this means nothing other than that the chemically different particles, which stand over against each other as multitude, go together into the simplicity of an intensive magnitude, something that also announces itself as a diminution of volume. In the corpuscular theory, by contrast, even the chemically combined atoms are supposed to maintain themselves in the interstices, that is, outside one another, (juxtaposition); degree of affinity has no sense in such a bearing, which is a merely extensive magnitude, a perduring of multitude. When it is stated in the same place that the appearances of determinate proportions came quite unforeseen for the dynamical view, this would be merely an external historical circumstance, apart from the fact that Richter's stoichiometric series were already known to Berthollet in Fischer's compilation and were cited in the first edition of this Logic, which demonstrates the nullity of the categories on which the old corpuscular theory rests just as much as the one that would be new. But Berzelius judges erroneously, as if under the dominion of »the dynamical view« the appearances of determinate proportions would have remained unknown »for ever«, – in the sense that that view could not be reconciled with the determinateness of the proportions. This is in any case only determinateness of magnitude, indifferent whether in extensive or in intensive form, – so that Berzelius too, however much he clings to the first form, that of multitude, himself makes use of the representation of degrees of affinity.

Since affinity is herewith led back to quantitative difference, it stands sublated as elective affinity; the excluding that occurs in it, however, has been referred to circumstances, that is, to determinations which show up as something outside affinity – to cohesion, to the failure of the combinations produced to dissolve, and so forth. This representation may in part be compared with the procedure in considering the effect of gravity, where what belongs in itself to gravity itself, namely that the swinging pendulum necessarily passes over into rest through it, is taken merely as the concurrently present circumstance of the external resistance of the air, of the thread, and so forth, and is ascribed to friction alone instead of to gravity. – Here, for the nature of the qualitative that resides in elective affinity, it makes no difference whether that qualitative appears and is grasped in the form of those circumstances as its conditions. With the qualitative as such a new order begins, whose specification is no longer merely quantitative difference.

If accordingly the difference of chemical affinity fixes itself precisely in a series of quantitative ratios over against elective affinity as a qualitative determinateness that supervenes, whose bearing by no means coincides with that order, then this difference is thrown back into complete confusion by the manner in which in more recent times the electrical has been brought into connection with the chemical, and the hope of obtaining from this principle, which is supposed to be deeper, an elucidation about the most important thing, the measure-ratio, is utterly disappointed. The theory that identifies outright the appearances of electricity with those of chemism is not to be examined more closely here, so far as it touches the physical and not merely the measure-ratios, and comes up for mention only to the extent that it muddles the distinctness of the determinations of measure. Taken by itself it is to be called shallow, for shallowness consists precisely in taking what is diverse as identical by leaving out the diversity. As regards affinity in this connection, since chemical processes are thus identified with electrical ones, and likewise with appearances of fire and light, it has been reduced to »the neutralization of opposed electricities«. As for the identification of electricity and chemism itself, it is almost comic to find it presented (p. 63 of the same work) in the following manner, that »the electrical phenomena do indeed account for how bodies act across a shorter or longer interval, for their attraction prior to union (which is to say, the bearing that is not yet chemical) – and for the fire (?) that arises out of this union, but yield us no elucidation as to the cause of that union of bodies which persists with such great force once the opposed electrical state has been annihilated;« that is, the theory yields the elucidation that electricity is the cause of chemical bearing, but that electricity yields no elucidation about what in the chemical process is chemical. – With chemical difference in general being traced back to the opposition of positive and negative electricity, the diversity of affinity among the agents falling on the one side and on the other is determined as the ordering of two series, of electropositive and of electronegative bodies. In identifying electricity and chemism according to their general determination, this much is already overlooked, that the former in general and its neutralization is fleeting and remains external to the quality of the bodies, whereas chemism in its action and especially in neutralization lays claim to the whole qualitative nature of the bodies and alters it. Equally fleeting within electricity is its opposition of positive and negative; it is something so unsteady that it depends on the slightest external circumstances and can be placed in no comparison with the determinateness and firmness of the opposition of acids, for instance, over against the metals, and so on. The alterability that can take place in this chemical bearing through the most violent influences, for instance an elevated temperature and so forth, bears no comparison with the superficiality of the electrical opposition. As for the further difference within the series on either side, that between a constitution more or less positively electrical and one more or less negatively electrical, this is thoroughly uncertain and unverified alike. But out of these series of bodies (Berzelius, loc. cit., p. 64 f.) »arranged according to their electrical dispositions the electrochemical system is supposed to arise, which of all is best suited to give an idea of chemistry;« these series are then given; but as to how they are in fact constituted, it is added on p. 67 »that this is approximately the order of these bodies, but that this matter has been so little investigated that as yet nothing quite certain can be settled with respect to this relative order.« – The ratio numbers of those affinity series (which Richter first drew up), no less than the exceedingly interesting reduction Berzelius has proposed, whereby combinations of two bodies come down to the simplicity of a handful of quantitative ratios, owe nothing whatever to that concoction alleged to be electrochemical. If in those proportions and in the extension of them gained on all sides since Richter the experimental path has been the right lodestar, then all the more does the mingling of these great discoveries with the barrenness of the so-called corpuscular theory, lying as it does outside the path of experience, stand in contrast with it; only this beginning of abandoning the principle of experience could motivate the further resumption of that notion, chiefly begun earlier by Ritter, of setting up fixed orderings of electropositive and electronegative bodies that were at the same time supposed to have chemical significance.

The nullity of the foundation assumed for chemical affinity in the opposition of electropositive and electronegative bodies – even if this opposition were in itself factually more correct than it is – soon shows itself on the experimental path itself, which however leads in turn to further inconsistency. It is conceded at p. 73 (loc. cit.) that two so-called electronegative bodies, such as sulphur and oxygen, combine with each other in a far more intimate manner than, for instance, oxygen and copper, although the latter is said to be electropositive. The basis for affinity resting upon the general opposition of positive and negative electricity must here accordingly give way to a bare more-or-less falling inside one single series of electrical determinateness. The degree of affinity of bodies, so it is now concluded from this, accordingly does not depend on their specific unipolarity alone (what hypothesis this determination belongs with is nothing to the purpose here; it holds only for the either of positive and the or of negative); the degree of affinity must be derived principally from the intensity of their polarity in general. Here, then, the consideration of affinity passes over more closely into the relation of elective affinity, which is what chiefly concerns us; let us see what now results for it. When it is conceded straight away (ibid., p. 73) that this polarity's degree, supposing it has any being outside our mere representation, seems to be no constant quantity but to hinge largely on temperature, the upshot given after all of this is not only that every chemical action is thus in its ground an electrical phenomenon, but further that whatever seems to be an operation of so-called elective affinity comes about solely through an electrical polarity that is stronger in some bodies than in others. As the conclusion of all this squirming about in hypothetical representations, it thus stays with the category of greater intensity, which is the same formal thing as elective affinity in general, and which, by being placed upon a greater intensity of electrical polarity, does not in the least bring that affinity onto a physical ground any further than before. But even what is here supposed to be determined as greater specific intensity is subsequently traced back only to the modifications already cited, those demonstrated by Berthollet.

The credit and renown that Berzelius enjoys for a doctrine of proportions carried through all chemical ratios could hardly of itself count as a ground for withholding an exposure of how bare the theory cited is; the nearer ground for undertaking it must rather be this, that credit of that kind on one side of a science tends, as it did with Newton, to turn into authority on behalf of a baseless structure of poor categories tacked on to it, and that metaphysics of just this sort is what gets issued with the loudest pretension and echoed as loudly again.

Besides the forms of the measure-ratio that bear on chemical affinity and elective affinity, still others may be considered with respect to quantities that qualify themselves into a system. In relation to saturation the chemical bodies form a system of ratios; saturation itself rests on the determinate proportion in which the multitudes on both sides, which have a particular material concrete existence over against each other, combine. But there are also measure-ratios whose moments are inseparable and cannot be exhibited in a concrete existence of their own, distinct from one another. These are what were earlier called the immediate self-subsistent measures, and they are represented in the specific gravities of bodies. – Inside bodies they constitute a ratio of weight against volume; the ratio's exponent, which states what determines one specific gravity as against others, is a determinate quantum belonging only to comparison, a ratio external to them within an external reflection, not founded on their own qualitative bearing towards a concrete existence set over against them. The task stands before us of cognizing the ratio exponents of the series of specific gravities as a system deriving from a rule which would make a bare arithmetical plurality specific as a series of harmonic nodes. – That very requirement would apply to the cognition of the chemical affinity series adduced above. But science has still far to go before arriving there, as far as before grasping the numbers of the distances of the planets of the solar system in a system of measure.

The specific gravities, although at first they seem to have no qualitative ratio to one another, nevertheless likewise enter into qualitative connection. When bodies are chemically combined, or merely amalgamated or synsomatized, there likewise shows itself a neutralization of the specific gravities. The appearance was adduced earlier that the volume – even where the mixture is of materials that strictly remain chemically indifferent to one another – does not equal in magnitude what their volumes added together came to before they were mixed. In it they mutually modify the quantum of determinateness with which they enter into the connection, and in this way make themselves known as bearing themselves qualitatively towards each other. Here the quantum of specific gravity expresses itself not merely as a fixed number of comparison but as a ratio number that is displaceable; and the exponents of the mixtures yield series of measures whose progression is determined by a principle other than the ratio numbers of the specific gravities that are combined with one another. Exponents of these ratios do not amount to exclusive determinations of measure; their advance is continuous, yet harbours within it a specifying law which differs from the formally advancing ratios in which the multitudes get combined, and which renders the one advance incommensurable with the other.

B. Nodal Line of Measure-Relations

The measure-relation's final determination was that, being specific, it is exclusive; the excluding accrues to neutrality as the negative unity of the distinguished moments. For this unity that is for itself, elective affinity, no further principle of specification has come out with regard to its connection to the other neutralities; that specification remains only in the quantitative determination of affinity as such, according to which it is determinate multitudes that neutralize one another and thereby stand over against other relative elective affinities of their moments. But further, for the sake of the fundamental quantitative determination, the exclusive elective affinity also continues itself into the neutralities that are other to it, and this continuity is not merely an external connection of the various neutrality-relations, in the way a comparison would be; rather, neutrality as such has a separability within it, inasmuch as those out of whose unity it has come to be step, as self-subsistent somethings, each of them indifferently, into connection with this or with others of the series facing them, so as to combine with them, albeit in differing, specifically determined multitudes. Herewith this measure, resting as it does on such a relation within its own self, is saddled with an indifference of its own; it is something external at its own self and, in its connection to itself, something alterable.

This connection of the ratio-measure to itself is different from its externality and alterability, which are its quantitative side; over against these it is, as connection to itself, a qualitative foundation that is; – an abiding, material substrate which, as at once the measure's continuity with itself within its externality, would in its quality have to hold that principle for the specification of this externality.

Now on this closer determination the exclusive measure, external to itself in its being-for-itself, repels itself away from its own self, positing itself as another relation that is merely quantitative and likewise as such another relation which is simultaneously another measure; it is determined as a unity that specifies at its own self, one which produces measure-relations at itself. These relations differ from the kind of affinity considered above, in which one self-subsistent comports itself towards self-subsistents of another quality and towards a series of such; they occur at one and the same substrate, inside the very moments of neutrality; repelling itself from itself, the measure determines itself into other relations that differ only quantitatively, which likewise form affinities and measures, alternating with such as remain merely quantitative diversities. In such a way they form a nodal line of measures along a scale of the more and the less.

A measure-relation is at hand; a self-subsistent reality distinguished qualitatively from others. Because it is at the same time essentially a ratio of quanta, a being-for-itself of this sort stands open to externality and to quantum-alteration; it has a latitude within which it stays indifferent towards that alteration and leaves its quality unchanged. But a point of this change of the quantitative sets in at which the quality gets changed, at which the quantum proves to be specifying, so that the ratio, quantitatively altered, has overturned into a measure and with that into a new quality, a new something. This relation, having stepped into the place of the first, is determined by the latter partly according to the qualitative selfsameness of the moments standing in affinity, partly according to quantitative continuity. But since the difference falls within this quantitative side, the new something comports itself indifferently towards the preceding one; their difference is the external one of quantum. It has therefore come forth not out of the preceding one but immediately out of itself; that is, out of the inward specifying unity which has not yet stepped into existence. – The new quality, or new something, is subjected to the very same onward course of its alteration, and so forth into infinity.

Insofar as the advance from one quality runs in the steady continuity of quantity, the ratios drawing near to a qualifying point are, quantitatively regarded, distinguished only by more and less. On this side the alteration is a gradual one. But gradualness concerns merely what is external about the alteration, not what is qualitative about it; the preceding quantitative ratio, infinitely close as it is to the one that follows, is still another qualitative existence. On the qualitative side, accordingly, the merely quantitative going-on of gradualness, which is no limit at its own self, is absolutely broken off; since the newly entering quality, in respect of its merely quantitative connection, is one indeterminately other than the vanishing quality, an indifferent one, the transition is a leap; both are posited as wholly external to one another. – People are fond of making an alteration comprehensible to themselves by way of the gradualness of the transition; but gradualness is rather just the merely indifferent change, the opposite of the qualitative one. In gradualness the coherence of the two realities – they are taken as states, or as self-subsistent things – is on the contrary sublated; it is posited that neither is the limit of the other, but that the one is simply external to the other; and thereby precisely what is needed for comprehending, however little may be called for, is done away with.

Remark

The natural number system already displays such a nodal line of qualitative moments that come to the fore in the merely external going-on. On the one part it is a merely quantitative going forwards and backwards, a perpetual adding-on or taking-away, so that every number stands in the same arithmetical ratio to the number before it and the one after it as these do to the numbers before and after them, and so on. But the numbers arising in this way also have a specific ratio to yet other numbers preceding or following, either that of being such a multiple of one of them as a whole number expresses, or that of being power and root. – In the musical ratios a harmonic ratio comes in, upon the scale of the quantitative going-on, by way of a quantum, without this quantum for itself standing on the scale in any other ratio to its predecessor and successor than these in turn stand in to theirs. While the tones that follow seem to be withdrawing ever further from the keynote, or numbers by the arithmetical going-on seem merely to be growing yet more other, all at once there comes forth instead a return, a surprising accord, which was not qualitatively prepared by what immediately preceded but appears as an actio in distans, as a connection to something remote; the going-on among merely indifferent ratios, which do not change the preceding specific reality or which form no such reality at all, interrupts itself all at once, and since in quantitative respect it is carried on in the same manner, a specific ratio thus breaks in by way of a leap.

In chemical combinations, with the progressive change of the mixture-ratios, such qualitative nodes and leaps occur that two materials at particular points of the mixture-scale form products displaying particular qualities. These products are not distinguished from one another merely by a more and less, nor are they already at hand along with the ratios lying close to those nodal ratios, in a weaker degree perhaps, but are bound to such points themselves. For example, the combinations of oxygen and nitrogen give the various nitrogen oxides and nitric acids, which come forth only at determinate quantitative ratios of the mixture and have essentially different qualities, so that at mixture-ratios lying in between no combinations of specific concrete existences result. – The metal oxides, the lead oxides say, take shape at particular quantitative points along the course of oxidation, and they differ in colour and in other qualities. One does not shade over gradually into another; the ratios that lie between those nodes yield no neutral product, no specific existence. Without having gone through intermediate stages, a specific combination steps forth which rests on a measure-relation and has qualities of its own. – Or water, in changing its temperature, does not thereby become merely more or less warm but runs through the states of hardness, of drippable liquidity and of elastic liquidity; these different states do not set in gradually, rather the merely gradual going-on of the temperature-change is at these points interrupted and checked all at once, and the onset of another state is a leap. – All birth and death, instead of being a continued gradualness, are rather a breaking-off of it, and the leap out of quantitative alteration into qualitative.

There is no leap in nature, so it is said; and ordinary representation, when it is to comprehend a coming-to-be or ceasing-to-be, supposes, as was recalled, that it has comprehended it by representing it as a gradual emerging or vanishing. It has shown itself, however, that the alterations of being as such are not only the passing-over of one magnitude into another magnitude but a transition from the qualitative into the quantitative and conversely, a becoming-other which is a breaking-off of the gradual and a qualitatively-other over against the preceding existence. Under chilling, water does not grow hard bit by bit, in such a way that it would turn pulpy and stiffen by degrees up to the firmness of ice, but is hard at a stroke; when it stands at rest it can still possess its full liquidity even at the entire temperature of the freezing point, and a slight shaking brings it into the state of hardness.

Underlying the gradualness of coming-to-be is the representation that what is coming to be is already there sensibly, or in general actually at hand, only not yet perceptible on account of its smallness, just as, with the gradualness of vanishing, that the non-being, or the other that steps into its place, is likewise at hand, only not yet noticeable; – at hand, that is, not in the sense that the other is contained in itself within the other that is at hand, but that it is at hand as existence, only unnoticeable. Coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be as such are thereby sublated, or the in-itself, the inner, in which something is prior to its existence, is converted into a smallness of external existence, and the essential difference, or the difference of concept, into an external, mere difference of magnitude. – Making a coming-to-be or ceasing-to-be comprehensible out of the gradualness of the alteration has the tediousness proper to tautology; it has what comes to be or ceases to be all finished up beforehand and turns the alteration into a mere change of an external difference, whereby it is in fact nothing but a tautology. The difficulty for an understanding that would comprehend in this fashion lies in the qualitative transition of something into its other as such and into its opposite; against this it deludes itself with identity and with alteration as the indifferent, external alteration of the quantitative.

In the moral sphere, insofar as it is considered within the sphere of being, the same transition from the quantitative into the qualitative takes place; and different qualities appear to be grounded upon a diversity of magnitude. It is a more and less by which the measure of frivolity is overstepped and something wholly other, crime, comes forth, by which right passes over into wrong, virtue into vice. – So too do states, through their difference of magnitude, other things being assumed equal, acquire a different qualitative character. Laws and constitution become something other when the compass of the state and the amount of its citizens expand. The state has a measure of its magnitude, and driven out beyond that measure it collapses within itself without holding, under the very constitution which at a merely different compass made for its good fortune and its strength.

C. The Measureless

Even in its realized being-for-itself the exclusive measure stays saddled with the moment of quantitative existence, and is on that account capable of climbing and sinking along the scale of quantum, upon which the ratios change. Something, or a quality, resting as it does on such a ratio, is driven out beyond itself into the measureless, and perishes through the mere change of its magnitude. Magnitude is the constitution by which an existence can be laid hold of with the shine of innocuousness, and through which it can be destroyed.

The abstract measureless is quantum as such, as determinationless within itself and as only an indifferent determinateness by which the measure is not altered. Within the nodal line of measures, however, this same determinateness stands posited as specifying; the abstract measureless just mentioned raises itself, sublated, to qualitative determinateness; and the new measure-relation, the one into which the relation first at hand passes over, is a measureless in view of that first one, while at its own self it is equally a quality that is for itself; thus posited is the alternation of specific concrete existences with one another, and of these same existences with relations that stay merely quantitative, – and so forth into infinity. What is thus at hand in this passing-over is the negation of the specific relations no less than the negation of the quantitative advance itself; the infinite that is for itself. – The qualitative infinity, such as it is at existence, was the breaking-forth of the infinite at the finite, as immediate transition and vanishing of the here into its beyond. The quantitative infinity, on the other hand, is by its determinateness already the continuity of quantum, a continuity of the quantum out past itself. The qualitatively finite becomes the infinite; the quantitatively finite has its beyond at its own self, and points out beyond itself. This infinity of the specification of measure, however, posits the qualitative and equally the quantitative as sublating each other within one another, and with that it posits the immediate unity they first had, the unity that measure is as such, as one returned into itself and therefore as itself posited. The qualitative, a specific concrete existence, passes over into another in such fashion that nothing occurs but a change in the magnitude-determinateness of a ratio; the alteration of the qualitative itself into something qualitative is thereby posited as an external and indifferent one, and as a going-together with its own self; the quantitative in any case sublates itself as overturning into the qualitative, into determinedness in and for itself. This unity, continuing itself in this way within its own self throughout the alternation of measures, is the genuinely abiding, self-subsistent material, the matter.

What is at hand herewith is α) one and the same matter, posited as foundation in its differentiations and as perennial. Already in quantum as such this severing of being from its determinateness begins; something is large as indifferent towards its determinateness that is. In measure the matter itself is in itself already the unity of what is qualitative and what is quantitative, – of those two moments which inside the universal sphere of being make up the difference, the one being the beyond of the other; the perennial substrate thereby has, at its own self and to begin with, the determination of an infinity that is. β) This selfsameness of the substrate is posited in this, that the qualitative self-subsistences into which the measure-determining unity has been repelled subsist only in differences of quantity, so that into this its own differentiating the substrate carries itself over continuously; γ) within the nodal series' infinite progress what stands posited is the continuing of the qualitative into the going-on of quantity, as into an indifferent alteration, but just as much the negation of the qualitative that this contains, and therewith at the same time the negation of merely quantitative externality. The quantitative pointing out past itself towards an other, as another quantitative, founders in the coming-forth of a ratio-measure, of a quality, and the qualitative passing-over sublates itself in just this, that the new quality is for its part nothing but a quantitative ratio. This mutual passing-over of the qualitative and the quantitative proceeds upon the ground of their unity, and the sense of the process is nothing else than the existence, the showing or positing, that underlying it there is such a substrate, one that would be their unity.

Within the series of self-subsistent measure-relations, the members that stand one-sidedly in them are immediate qualitative somethings (the specific gravities, or the chemical materials, the basic or alkaline ones, the acids for example), and then the neutralizations of these (– among which the combinations of materials of differing specific gravity are here to be comprehended as well –) are self-subsistent and themselves exclusive measure-relations, totalities of a being-for-itself existence, indifferent towards one another. Now such relations have their determination only as nodes upon one and the same substrate. With this the measures, and the self-subsistences posited along with them, are brought down to states. The alteration is only the change of a state, and what passes over is posited as remaining the same within it.

To survey the further determining which measure has run through, its moments gather together thus: that measure is at first the itself immediate unity of quality and of quantity, in the shape of an ordinary quantum, one that is however specific. Herewith, as a determinateness of quantity referring not to an other but to itself, it is essentially ratio. Hence, further, it contains its moments within itself as sublated and undivided; as always within a concept, the difference in it runs thus, that every one of its moments is on its own account unity of the qualitative and the quantitative. This difference, herewith a real one, yields a multitude of measure-relations, self-subsistent within themselves as formal totalities. The series which form the sides of these relations are, for each single member which as belonging to one side comports itself towards the whole series facing it, the same constant order. This unity, still wholly external as mere order, does indeed show itself as the immanent specifying unity of a measure that is for itself, distinguished from its specifications; but the principle that specifies is not yet the free concept, the only thing that gives immanent determination to its differences; the principle is rather at first only substrate, a material, for whose differences, if they are to be as totalities, that is, to have within them the nature of the substrate that stays equal to itself, only the external quantitative determination is at hand, which at the same time shows itself as diversity of quality. In this unity of the substrate with its own self the determination of measure is a sublated one, and its quality an external state that quantum determines. – This whole course is just as much the realizing further determination of measure as it is the bringing of measure down to a moment.

Chapter 3. The Becoming of Essence

A. Absolute Indifference

Being is the abstract indifferentness for which, since it is to be thought for itself as being, the expression indifference has been used, – an indifferentness at which no sort of determinateness is yet supposed to be; pure quantity is indifference as capable of all determinations, yet in such a way that these are external to it and that out of itself it has no connectedness with them; the indifference, however, which may be called the absolute one is the one that, through the negation of every determinateness belonging to being, of quality and of quantity and of the unity these two first have immediately, that of measure, mediates itself with itself into simple unity. Determinateness is at it now only as a state, that is, as a qualitative external which has indifference for its substrate.

But whatever has been determined in this fashion as a qualitative external is only something vanishing; being thus external over against being, the qualitative, as the opposite of its own self, is only what sublates itself. Determinateness is in this way posited at the substrate merely as an empty differentiating. Yet precisely this empty differentiating is indifference itself as result. It is indeed in this way the concrete, that which inside its own self, by the negating of all the determinations of being, stands mediated with itself. Being this mediation, it holds within it negation and relation, and what went under the name of state is a differentiating immanent to it and referring itself to itself; precisely the externality, and the vanishing of that externality, makes the unity of being into indifference, and lies therefore within this indifference, which thereby ceases to be merely substrate and, at its own self, merely abstract.

B. Indifference as Inverse Ratio of Its Factors

We must now see how this determination of indifference is posited in indifference itself, and indifference thereby posited as being-for-itself.

1. The reduction of the measure-relations that at first pass for self-subsistent establishes One substrate for them; this substrate is their continuation into one another, hence the inseparable self-subsistent which is present wholly in its differences. For this difference the determinations it harbours, quality and quantity, are at hand, and all depends only on the manner in which they are posited in the substrate. But what settles this is that the substrate figures at first as result, and in itself as the mediation, though the mediation is not yet posited as such in it; by which the substrate is at first substrate, and, with respect to determinateness, is indifference.

In it, accordingly, the difference is at the outset essentially the merely quantitative, external one; and there are two quanta, differing from each other, of one and the same substrate, which on this showing would be the sum of them and hence itself determined as quantum. But indifference is this fixed measure, the absolute limit that is in itself, only in reference to those differences, and in such fashion that it would not itself be a quantum, nor step forward in any way — as sum or even as exponent — over against others, be they sums or indifferences. Only the abstract determinateness falls within indifference; the two quanta, in being posited as its moments, are alterable, indifferent, now larger, now smaller with respect to each other. Restricted, however, by the fixed limit of their sum, their bearing on each other is at the same time not external but negative; and therein lies the qualitative determination under which they now stand to one another. They are on that account to each other in an inverse ratio. This ratio parts company with the earlier, formal inverse ratio in that the whole is here a substrate that is real, while either side is posited under the requirement that in itself it be that whole itself.

In line with the qualitative determinateness just given, the difference is further at hand as one of two qualities, of which the one is sublated through the other, yet, held within One unity and making it up, cannot be severed from it. The substrate, being indifference, is itself likewise in itself the unity of both qualities; each side of the ratio therefore harbours the two of them alike, and differs only in that the one quality carries a more and the other a less, and conversely; by its quantum the one quality is merely the preponderant one in the one side, the second quality in the second.

Each side is thus, in its own self, an inverse ratio; as a formal ratio it returns within the distinct sides. These sides accordingly continue into one another by their qualitative determinations as well: each quality relates itself to itself in the other, and occurs in the two sides only with a differing quantum. Their quantitative difference is that indifference by which they continue into one another, and, as the qualities' self-sameness, this continuation is present within either of the two unities. – Yet the sides, each of them the whole of the determinations and so containing indifference itself, are for that reason posited at the same time as self-subsistent over against each other.

2. Being now is, as this indifference, the being-determined of measure no longer in its immediacy, but that being-determined in the developed manner just displayed; – indifference as being in itself the whole of being's determinations, dissolved as these are into this unity; – equally existence, as the totality of realization once posited, wherein the moments are themselves indifference's totality as it is in itself, sustained by indifference as their unity. Since, however, the unity is held fast only as indifference and hence only as being in itself, and since [the moments] are not yet determined as being-for-itself, that is, as not yet sublating themselves into unity in their own selves and through one another, what is at hand is quite generally the indifference of these moments towards themselves as a developed determinateness.

This self-subsistent, inseparable as it is, must now be examined more closely. It dwells immanently in all its determinations and abides in them in a unity with itself untroubled by them, but α) remaining in itself the totality, it has the determinatenesses sublated within it merely coming forth in it groundlessly. The in-itself of indifference and this its existence stand unconnected; the determinatenesses make their showing in it immediately; indifference is whole in each of them; their difference is thus posited at first as sublated, hence as quantitative; but for just that reason not as indifference's repelling of itself from itself, indifference not as self-determining, only as externally determined and coming to be determined.

β) The two moments stand in an inverse quantitative ratio; – a going back and forth in magnitude which is not determined by indifference, this being precisely indifference towards such going back and forth, but is on that account determined only externally. The pointer is towards an other lying outside indifference, an other in which the determining has its seat. The absolute as indifference carries, on this side, the second defect of the quantitative form: that it is not the absolute that settles the determinateness of the difference — just as its first defect on that score is that in it the differences merely come forth at all, that is, that the absolute's positing is an immediate something and not its own mediation with itself.

γ) What makes up the manner of the moments' subsistence — the moments being now sides of the ratio — is their quantitative determinateness; their existence, through such indifference, is withheld from the transition belonging to the qualitative. But over and above this existence of theirs they have a subsistence that differs from it, a subsistence that is theirs in itself, in that in themselves they are indifference itself, each for its part the unity of those two qualities into which the qualitative moment splits. The difference of the two sides restricts itself to this: that in the one side the one quality is posited carrying a more, in the other a less, the second quality standing conversely. Each side is thus in it the totality of indifference. – Taken singly and by itself, each of the two qualities likewise remains that same sum which indifference is; it continues from the one side over into the other, and the quantitative limit posited within it in the process does not restrict it. At this point the determinations enter into an immediate opposition which develops into contradiction, and this is what must now be seen.

3. Namely, within each side each quality enters into reference to the other, and does so in such wise that this reference too, as has been settled, is meant to be nothing but a quantitative difference. Should both qualities be self-subsistent – taken, say, as sensible matters independent of each other – the whole determinateness of indifference falls apart; its unity and totality would be hollow names. They are, on the contrary, determined at the same time so as to be comprised within One unity, to be inseparable, each having sense and reality solely in this one qualitative reference to the other. But now, precisely because their quantitativity is through and through of this qualitative nature, neither extends further than the other. Were they to be distinct as quanta, the one would run out past the other and would possess, in that more of it, an indifferent existence denied to the other. But in their qualitative reference each is only to the extent that its other is. – What follows is that they stand in equilibrium: by whatever amount the one increased or diminished, the other would grow or shrink to just that extent, and in the very same ratio.

On the ground of their qualitative reference, then, no quantitative difference can arise, nor any more belonging to the one quality. Whatever more should carry the one of the two moments in reference out past the other would be a determination with no footing, or such a more would be but the other itself over again; in this equality of the two, however, neither is at hand, since their existence was to rest on nothing but an inequality of their quantum. – Each of these would-be factors vanishes as surely when it is supposed to lie out beyond the other as when it is supposed to be equal to it. That vanishing shows itself as follows: starting from the quantitative representation, the equilibrium is disturbed and the one factor taken as greater than the other; with that, the other's quality is posited as sublated and as having no footing; the first becomes the preponderant one, so that the second diminishes at an accelerating rate and is overpowered by the first, which thereby makes itself the one and only self-subsistent; but then there are no longer two specifics and factors, only the single whole.

This unity, posited thus as the totality of determining, in the very way it is itself therein determined as indifference, is contradiction on every side; it is therefore to be posited, as this self-sublating contradiction, as determined towards a self-subsistence that is for itself — a self-subsistence whose result and truth is the absolute unity that is no longer merely indifferent but immanently negative within its own self, and this unity is essence.

Remark

The ratio of a whole that is supposed to have its determinateness in the magnitude-difference of factors qualitatively determined against one another is put to use in the case of the elliptical motion of the heavenly bodies. This example, to start with, displays only two qualities in inverse ratio, and not two sides of which each would itself be the unity of the two and their inverse ratio. Given the solidity of the empirical basis, one overlooks the consequence to which the theory brought into that basis leads, namely that of destroying the underlying fact, or, if this fact is held fast as it ought to be, of exposing the emptiness of the theory over against it. Ignoring the consequence lets the fact and the theory that contradicts it subsist peaceably side by side. – The plain fact is that in the elliptical motion of the heavenly bodies their speed accelerates as they draw near the perihelion and slackens as they draw near the aphelion. The quantitative side of this fact has been determined precisely through the tireless diligence of observation, and the fact has further been traced back to its simple law and formula, so that everything has been accomplished which may genuinely be demanded of theory. But to the reflecting understanding this has not seemed enough. In order to supply what is called an explanation of the phenomenon and its law, one assumes a centripetal and a centrifugal force as the qualitative moments of motion in the curved line. Their qualitative difference consists in the opposition of direction, and, quantitatively regarded, in this, that since they are determined as unequal, the one is supposed to increase as the other decreases, and conversely; and then further in this, that their ratio is supposed to turn about again, so that after the centripetal force has for a while grown while the centrifugal force has waned, a point arrives where the centripetal force wanes and the centrifugal force, by contrast, grows. This representation is contradicted, however, by the relation of their essentially qualitative determinateness towards each other. By this determinateness they simply cannot be prised apart; each has meaning only with respect to the other; hence to the extent that one had a surplus over the other, to that same extent it would bear no reference to the other and would not be at hand. – On the assumption that the one is at a given time greater than the other, then, if as the greater it stood in reference to the smaller, what was said above sets in: it would acquire absolute predominance and the other would vanish; the latter is posited as the vanishing one, the one without footing, and nothing in this determination is altered by the vanishing happening only gradually, nor by the fact that by as much as it lost in magnitude the former is supposed to gain; the former founders along with the other, since what it is, it is only insofar as the other is. It is a very simple consideration that if, for instance, as is alleged, the centripetal force of the body is to grow as the body approaches the perihelion while the centrifugal force is to diminish by just as much, then the latter would no longer be able to wrest the body from the former and carry it away again from its central body; on the contrary, since the former is once granted predominance, the other is overpowered, and the body is conveyed to its central body with accelerating speed. Just as, conversely, if the centrifugal force has the upper hand in the infinite proximity of the aphelion, it is equally contradictory that in the aphelion itself it should now be overpowered by the weaker force. – It is further evident that it would take an alien force to bring about this reversal, which means that the now accelerated, now retarded speed of the motion cannot be cognized, or, as it is called, explained, from the assumed determination of those very factors which were assumed precisely in order to explain this difference. That one direction or the other, and with it elliptical motion as such, must consequently vanish is passed over and kept out of sight, on the strength of the settled fact that this motion endures and moves over from accelerated to retarded speed. The assumption that the weakness of the centripetal force at the aphelion turns about into a strength preponderant over the centrifugal force, and conversely at the perihelion, contains in part what was developed above, that each of the sides of the inverse ratio is in its own self this whole inverse ratio; for on the side where motion runs from aphelion to perihelion – the side of the centripetal force that is supposed to preponderate – the centrifugal force is still meant to be contained, though on the wane while the former waxes; in just that inverse ratio the preponderant and ever more preponderant centrifugal force is meant to stand to the centripetal force on the side of the retarded motion, so that on neither side has either of them vanished, but each only grows ever smaller until the time when it turns about into preponderance over the other. What thus recurs on either side is simply what constitutes the defect of this inverse ratio: that either each force is taken self-subsistently on its own, and with their merely external convergence into a single motion, as in the parallelogram of forces, the unity of the concept, the nature of the matter, is sublated; or else that, since the two are qualitatively related to each other through the concept, neither can acquire an indifferent, self-subsistent subsistence over against the other, such as a more would apportion to it; the form of intensity, the so-called dynamic, changes nothing here, since it too holds its determinateness in the quantum and can therefore express just as much force — that is, exists just so far — as it has an opposed force standing over against it. In part, however, that reversal out of preponderance into the opposite involves an alternating qualitative determination as positive and as negative; whatever the one gains is by the same amount the other's loss. The inseparable qualitative connection of this qualitative opposition has, in the theory, been pulled apart into a succession; but with that the theory still owes us the explanation both of this alternation and, above all, of this pulling apart itself. The shine of unity that still lies in the increase of the one accompanied by an equal decrease of the other here vanishes entirely; what is given is a merely external sequence of events, one that does nothing but contradict the consequence of that connection, according to which, once the one has become preponderant, the other must vanish.

This same ratio has been applied to attractive and repulsive force so as to comprehend how bodies differ in density; and an inverse ratio between sensibility and irritability was likewise meant to make comprehensible, from the inequality arising between these factors of life, the whole's various determinations, those of health, and also the diversity among the genera of the living. Yet the confusion and the galimatias in which this explaining — which was to become a philosophy-of-nature foundation for physiology, nosology, and then zoology — entangled itself through the uncritical use of these conceptual determinations had here the result that this formalism was soon abandoned again, whereas in the science of physical astronomy in particular it is carried on in its full extent.

Insofar as absolute indifference can seem to be the fundamental determination of Spinoza's substance, it may still be remarked on this head that it is indeed such in the respect that in both of them all determinations of being, and generally every further concrete distinction of thinking and extension and so forth, are posited as having vanished. It is, if one is to stop short at the abstraction, altogether a matter of indifference how that which has gone under in this abyss may have looked in its existence. But substance as indifference is bound up, for one thing, with the need for determining and with regard for it; it is not meant to remain Spinoza's substance, whose one and only determination is the negative one that within it everything is swallowed up. In Spinoza the difference, the attributes, thinking and extension, and then also the modes, the affects and all the remaining determinations, arrive on the scene quite empirically; it is the understanding, itself a mode, into which this distinguishing falls; the attributes stand to substance and to each other in no further determinateness than that they express substance entirely, and that in content — the order of things taken as extended and taken as thoughts — they coincide. With the determination of substance as indifference, however, reflection upon the difference is added; the difference is now posited as what it is in itself in Spinoza, namely as external, and hence more precisely as quantitative. Indifference, like substance, does indeed remain immanent to itself within that difference, – abstractly, though, only in itself; and the difference is not immanent to it, being rather, as quantitative, the very contrary of immanence, while quantitative indifference is rather the unity's being-outside-itself. The difference is therefore not grasped qualitatively either, and substance is not determined as what distinguishes itself, not as subject. The nearest consequence for the category of indifference as such is that within it quantitative and qualitative determination fall apart in their difference, as the development of indifference brought out; indifference is the dissolution of measure, in which both moments had been posited immediately as one.

C. Transition into Essence

Absolute indifference is the last determination of being before being becomes essence; yet indifference does not reach essence. It shows itself as still belonging to the sphere of being, in that, still determined as indifferent, it has the difference in it as an external, quantitative one. This is its existence, and therein indifference stands at once in the opposition of being determined, in contrast to that existence, as no more than what is in itself, and of not being thought as the being-for-itself absolute. Or else it is external reflection that halts at the thought that the specifics are, in themselves or in the absolute, one and the same, that their difference is merely an indifferent one and no difference in itself. What is still lacking here consists in this, that such reflection should not be the external reflection of a thinking, subjective consciousness, but rather the very determination of the differences of that unity to sublate themselves — a unity which then shows itself to be absolute negativity, its indifference towards its own self, towards its own indifference, quite as much as towards otherness.

But this self-sublating of the determination of indifference has already emerged; in the development of its positedness indifference has shown itself on every side to be the contradiction. In itself it is the totality wherein all determinations of being are sublated and contained; so considered it is the foundation, but it is so far confined to the one-sided determination of being-in-itself, and hence the differences — quantitative difference and the inverse ratio of factors — attach to it as external. Being thus the contradiction of itself and of its being-determined, of its determination as it is in itself and of its posited determinateness, indifference is that negative totality in which the determinatenesses have sublated themselves in their own selves, and with them this their fundamental one-sidedness, their being-in-itself. Posited hereby as what indifference in fact is, it is simple and infinite negative reference to itself, the incompatibility of itself with itself, a repelling of itself from itself. The determining and the being determined is no passing over, no external alteration, no coming forth of determinations in it, but indifference's own self-reference, and this self-reference is the negativity of indifference, of its being-in-itself.

But the determinations, as thus repelled, do not now belong to themselves, do not come forward into self-subsistence or externality; they are, on the contrary, as moments; – belonging, first, to the unity that is in itself, not discharged from it but carried by it as their substrate and filled by nothing but it; and, second, as those determinations which, immanent to the unity that is for itself, are only through that unity's repelling of itself. Instead of being ones that are, as throughout the whole sphere of being, they now simply are as posited ones, simply with the determination and sense that they be referred to their unity, each therefore to its own other and negation, – stamped with this relativity of theirs.

With that, being at large, and likewise the being or immediacy of the distinguished determinatenesses, has vanished quite as much as being-in-itself has, and the unity is being, an immediate presupposed totality, in such wise that it is this simple reference to itself only as mediated through the sublating of this presupposition, and that this being-presupposed, this immediate being, is for its part but a moment of the unity's repelling, while self-subsistence and identity with self, as originally given, only is as the resulting, infinite convergence with itself; – being is thus determined into essence, being that, through the sublating of being, is simple being with itself.

Book Two. The Doctrine of Essence

The truth of being is essence.

Being is what is immediate. Because knowing wants to cognize the true, wants to know what being is in and for itself, it refuses to halt at the immediate and at the immediate's determinations; it forces its way through, presupposing that behind this being there lies something further than being itself, and that this background is what constitutes the truth of being. Such cognition is a knowledge that is mediated, since it does not stand straightway at essence and in it, but sets out from something else, from being, and has a preliminary road to travel — the road that leads out beyond being, or rather into it. Not until knowing recollects itself out of immediate being, not until this mediation, does it come upon essence. – Language has kept essence stored in the past tense of the verb Sein: gewesen; for essence is being gone by, though gone by outside of time.

Represented as the pathway of knowing, this movement – the start made from being together with the advance that sublates being and reaches essence as a mediated term – looks like an activity of cognition external to being and of no concern to being's own nature.

But this course is being's own movement. Being showed at itself that by its nature it recollects itself, and that by this going-into-itself it becomes essence.

If the absolute stood at first determined as being, then, it now stands determined as essence. Cognition can find no resting place at manifold existence, nor yet at being, at pure being; there presses forward at once the reflection that this pure being, the negation of all that is finite, has for its presupposition a recollection, a movement that has purified immediate existence into pure being. On this footing being is determined as essence, as a being at which everything determinate and finite stands negated. It is thus the determinationless simple unity from which the determinate has been carried off in an external fashion; to this unity the determinate counted as an external, and even after being carried off it goes on facing the unity; for it was not sublated in itself but relatively, only with reference to this unity. – It has already been recalled above that when pure essence is determined as the sum total of all realities, those realities are subject no less to the nature of determinateness and to abstracting reflection, and the sum total shrinks to an empty simplicity. Essence on this footing is a product merely, a thing made. Abstraction, being the external negation, does no more than lift the determinacies of being off from whatever survives as essence; it shifts them, so to speak, to another spot, and lets them go on being what they were, before as after. On this footing, however, essence is neither in itself nor for itself; it holds through an other, namely through the external reflection that abstracts; and it holds for an other, namely for abstraction and generally for whatever keeps its stand opposite it and has being. Within its determination it amounts, accordingly, to a lack of determination that is inwardly dead and empty.

Essence as it has come to be here, by contrast, is what it is not by virtue of a negativity alien to it but by virtue of its own, the infinite movement of being. Essence is being-in-and-for-itself; it is absolute being-in-itself inasmuch as it stands indifferent to all determinateness of being, otherness and the reference to an other having been sublated outright. Yet it is not this being-in-itself alone; taken as bare being-in-itself it would amount to no more than the abstraction of pure essence; it is quite as essentially being-for-itself; essence is itself this negativity, the self-sublating of otherness and of determinateness.

As the consummated return of being into its own self, essence is thus to begin with the essence that is indeterminate; within it the determinacies of being stand sublated; it harbours them in itself, though not in the shape in which they are posited at it. Absolute essence, in this its simplicity with itself, possesses no existence. Over into existence it must pass, however; for it is being-in-and-for-itself, which is to say that it distinguishes the determinations it harbours in itself; because it repels itself away from itself, or is indifferent towards itself, is negative reference to itself, it thereby sets itself opposite its own self, and is infinite being-for-itself only in that it is unity with itself in this its difference from itself. – This determining, then, is of a different nature from the determining that went on in the sphere of being, and the determinations belonging to essence bear a different character from the determinacies of being. Essence is absolute unity of being-in-and-for-itself; its determining therefore never leaves this unity, and is no becoming and no passing over; nor, correspondingly, are the determinations themselves an other in the sense of other, or references to an other; they are self-subsistent, and yet with that only as such as stand in their unity with one another. – Being at the outset simple negativity, essence has now to posit within its own sphere the determinateness it harbours only in itself, so as to procure existence for itself and thereupon its being-for-itself.

Essence is on the whole what quantity was within the sphere of being; the absolute indifference towards limit. Quantity, though, is this indifference under immediate determination, and limit at quantity is a determinateness immediately external; quantity passes over into quantum; for quantity the external limit is a necessity, and at quantity it is something that is. At essence, on the other hand, determinateness is not; only through essence itself is it posited; not free, but only in reference to the unity of essence. – What the negativity of essence amounts to is reflection, and the determinations amount to reflected ones, posited by essence itself and abiding in it as sublated.

Essence has its stand between being and concept, makes up the middle term of the two, and its movement makes up the transition out of being into the concept. Essence is the being-in-and-for-itself, yet under the determination of being-in-itself; for what determines it universally is that it hails from being, or that it is the first negation of being. Its movement lies in this, that it posits negation or determination at itself, thereby procuring existence for itself, and, as infinite being-for-itself, comes to be that which in itself it already is. In this way it procures for itself an existence that matches its being-in-itself, and it becomes the concept. For the concept is the absolute in the way the absolute is, within its existence, absolute or in and for itself. The existence essence gives itself, however, is still not the existence that is in and for itself, but existence as essence gives it to itself, or as it is posited, and so is still distinguished from the existence proper to the concept.

Essence shines first within itself, or is reflection; secondly it appears; thirdly it reveals itself. Within its movement it posits itself in the determinations that follow,

I. as simple essence, essence in itself, in the determinations it has within itself;

II. as stepping out into existence, that is, according to its concrete existence and appearance;

III. as essence in unity with its appearance, as actuality.

First Section. Essence as Reflection within Itself

Essence hails from being; so far, then, it is not straightway in and for itself but a result of that movement. Or again: take essence at the outset as an immediate, and it is a determinate existence with an other set opposite it; it is only essential existence as against unessential existence. But essence is being sublated in and for itself; whatever is set opposite it is shine merely. Only, this shine is a positing that belongs to essence itself.

Essence is first reflection. Reflection gives itself determination; the determinations it has are a positedness that is simultaneously reflection into itself; there are

secondly these determinations of reflection, or the essentialities, to be examined.

Thirdly, essence, as the reflection of determining into its own self, makes itself into ground, and thence passes over into concrete existence and appearance.

Chapter 1. Shine

Essence, coming as it does from being, seems to stand opposite being; this immediate being is at first the unessential.

Only, secondly, it is something more than just unessential; it is essenceless being, it is shine.

Thirdly, this shine is not something external, an other over against essence; it is essence's very own shine. The shining of essence within its own self is reflection.

A. The Essential and the Unessential

Essence is sublated being. Simple equality with its own self is what it is, though only insofar as it is the negation of being's sphere at large. Essence thus has immediacy set opposite it, as an immediacy out of which it has come to be, and one which in this sublating has kept and preserved itself. Essence in this determination is itself an essence that is, an immediate essence, and being is something negative only in reference to essence, not in and for its own self; essence, then, is a determinate negation. Being and essence, on this footing, again bear towards each other the relation of others at large, since each has a being, an immediacy, and the two beings stand indifferent towards one another; measured by that being, each counts for as much as the other.

Simultaneously, though, being in its opposition to essence is the unessential; over against essence it carries the determination of what has been sublated. Insofar, however, as being bears towards essence merely the relation of an other at large, essence is not properly essence but only an existence otherwise determined, the essential.

The difference between essential and unessential has let essence tumble back into the sphere of existence, seeing that essence, as it at first is, stands determined as an immediate that has being, and hence only as an other over against being. With that, the sphere of existence has been laid down as the base, and the point that what being is within this existence is being-in-and-for-itself is one determination more, external to existence itself; just as, the other way about, essence is indeed the being-in-and-for-itself, yet only over against an other, under a determinate respect. – Insofar, then, as at some existence an essential and an unessential are told apart from one another, this difference is an external positing, a setting aside of one portion of that existence from another portion, which leaves the existence itself untouched; a severance falling into a third. Which of the two anything belongs to, the essential or the unessential, is left undetermined thereby. It is some external respect and consideration that draws the difference, and for that reason the very same content may be looked upon now as essential, now as unessential.

Examined more nearly, essence turns into a merely essential over against an unessential through this, that essence is taken only as being or existence sublated. Essence on this footing amounts only to the first negation, the negation which is determinateness, by which being turns into mere existence, or existence into a mere other. Essence, though, is being's absolute negativity; it is being's own self, only not determined merely as an other; rather it is the being that has sublated its own self in both respects, as being that is immediate and as negation that is immediate, as negation encumbered with an otherness. Being, or existence, has thus not held itself over as an other than what essence is, and the immediate still told apart from essence is not merely an unessential existence but the immediate that is null in and for itself; it is a non-essence merely, shine.

B. Shine

1. Being is shine. What the being of shine consists in is solely the sublatedness of being, its nullity; this nullity it has in essence, and apart from its nullity, apart from essence, shine is not. Shine is the negative posited as negative.

Shine is the entire remainder still left over out of the sphere of being. Of itself, though, it still seems to possess an immediate side independent of essence, and to be an other of essence at large. What the other contains at large are two moments, that of existence and that of non-existence. Because the unessential no longer possesses a being, all that remains to it out of otherness is the pure moment of non-existence; shine amounts to this immediate non-existence, so placed within the determinateness of being that it has existence only in the reference to an other, in its non-existence; the non-self-subsistent, which is only in its own negation. All that stays with it, then, is the pure determinateness of immediacy; it stands there as the reflected immediacy, that is, an immediacy which is only by way of its negation, and which, set against its own mediation, amounts to nothing but the empty determination of the immediacy of non-existence.

– Thus shine, the phenomenon of skepticism, or likewise the appearance of idealism, is an immediacy of the kind that is no something and no thing, generally not a being of indifference which would lie outside its determinateness and outside its reference to the subject. That it is — this the skeptic did not allow himself to say; the more recent idealism did not allow itself to view cognitions as a knowledge of the thing-in-itself; that shine was to have no groundwork of being whatever, and into those cognitions the thing-in-itself was not to enter. And yet, simultaneously, skepticism let manifold determinations of its shine pass; or rather its shine had for content the whole manifold wealth of the world. Just so, the appearance of idealism gathers into itself the entire compass of these manifold determinacies. That shine and this appearance are immediately determined in this manifold manner. So there may well be no being, no thing or thing-in-itself lying at the base of this content; for itself the content stays as it is; it has merely been carried over out of being into shine; so that shine holds within its own self those manifold determinacies which are immediate, which are, and which are other towards one another. Shine, accordingly, is itself something immediately determined. This or that content it may have; but the content it has is not posited by shine itself; shine has it immediately. Leibnizian idealism, or Kantian, Fichtean idealism, and other shapes of it besides, have got no further past being as determinateness, past this immediacy, than skepticism did. Skepticism lets the content of its shine be given to it; what content it is to have is for it a matter of the immediate. The Leibnizian monad unfolds its representations out of its own self; but it is not the force that generates and binds them; instead they rise up inside it like bubbles; they are indifferent, immediate towards one another, and so towards the monad itself as well. Just so, the Kantian appearance is a content of perception that is given; it has affections for its presupposition, determinations of the subject that are immediate towards their own selves and towards the subject. The infinite check of Fichtean idealism may well have no thing-in-itself at its base, so that the check becomes purely a determinateness within the I itself. Yet this determinateness, for the I that makes it its own and sublates its externality, is simultaneously an immediate, a restriction upon the I beyond which the I can go, but one which carries at itself a side of indifference on which, though it lie within the I, it holds an immediate non-being of the I itself. –

2. Shine, accordingly, harbours an immediate presupposition, a side that is independent as against essence. Of shine, however, insofar as it is told apart from essence, there is no need to demonstrate that it sublates itself and goes back into essence; for being in its totality has already gone back into essence; shine is the null in itself; all there is to demonstrate is that the determinations which tell it apart from essence belong to essence itself, and beyond that, that this determinateness of essence which shine is, stands sublated within essence itself.

What makes up shine is the immediacy of non-being; but this non-being is nothing else than the negativity of essence at essence's own self. Being is non-being in essence. Its nullity in itself amounts to the negative nature of essence itself. The immediacy or indifference, however, that this non-being harbours, is essence's very own absolute being-in-itself. Essence's negativity is its equality with its own self, or its simple immediacy and indifference. Being has kept itself in essence insofar as essence, at its infinite negativity, has this equality with its own self; through that, essence is itself being. Hence the immediacy which the determinateness at shine possesses over against essence is nothing else than essence's very own immediacy; not, though, the immediacy that has being, but the utterly mediated or reflected immediacy which shine is; – being not as being, but only as being's determinateness, set against mediation; being as moment.

These two moments – nullity, but taken as subsistence, and being, but taken as moment, or negativity that is in itself and immediacy that is reflected – which make up the moments of shine, are on that account the moments of essence itself; there is no shine of being present at essence, nor a shine of essence at being; the shine within essence is not the shine of some other; rather it is the shine in itself, the shine of essence itself.

Shine is essence itself under the determinateness of being. That through which essence has a shine lies in its being determinate within itself, and thereby told apart from its absolute unity. But this determinateness is quite as utterly sublated at its own self. For the self-subsistent is what essence is, a self-subsistent that is in mediating itself with itself by means of its negation, which negation essence itself is; essence is therefore that identical unity in which absolute negativity and immediacy are one. – Negativity is the negativity that is in itself; it is the reference of itself to itself, and so in itself it is immediacy; but it is negative reference to itself, a repelling negating of its own self, and so the immediacy that is in itself is, as against negativity, the negative or the determinate. Yet determinateness of this sort is itself the absolute negativity and this determining, a determining which, immediately as determining, is the sublating of its own self, is return into itself.

Shine is the negative that possesses a being, though in an other, in its negation; it is the non-self-subsistence that at its own self is sublated and null. So it is the negative that goes back into itself, the non-self-subsistent as the non-self-subsistent at its own self. This reference of the negative, or of non-self-subsistence, to itself is the negative's immediacy; the reference is something other than the negative itself; it is the negative's determinateness as against itself, or it is negation as against the negative. Negation as against the negative, however, is the negativity that refers itself only to itself, the absolute sublating of determinateness as such.

The determinateness, then, which shine is within essence, is infinite determinateness; it is only the negative that goes together with itself; and so it is a determinateness which, as such, is self-subsistence, and is not determinate. – Conversely, self-subsistence as immediacy referring itself to itself is just as utterly determinateness and moment, and is only as negativity referring itself to itself. – This negativity, identical with immediacy, and hence this immediacy, identical with negativity, is essence. Shine, accordingly, is essence itself, essence under a determinateness, yet so that the determinateness is only essence's moment, and essence is the shining of itself within its own self.

Within being's sphere, opposite being as something immediate there arises non-being, likewise as something immediate, and the truth of the two is becoming. Within the sphere of essence there stand opposite each other first essence and the unessential, then essence and shine; the unessential and shine as leavings of being. But the pair of them, and equally essence's difference from them, consist in nothing further than this, that essence is at first taken as something immediate, not as it is in itself, that is to say, not as the immediacy which is immediacy qua pure mediation or qua absolute negativity. That first immediacy, accordingly, is no more than the determinateness of immediacy. Sublating this determinateness of essence therefore comes to nothing beyond the pointing out that the unessential is shine merely, and that essence rather harbours shine within its own self, as the infinite movement within itself which determines its immediacy as the negativity, and its negativity as the immediacy, and so is the shining of itself within its own self. Essence in this its self-movement is reflection.