c. The Complete Ground

1. Within the real ground, the ground as content and the ground as reference alike are no more than bases. The former is only posited to be essential and to be ground; the reference, for its part, is the something belonging to the grounded, an indeterminate substrate carrying a content of differing kinds, a linkage of that content which is no reflection of its own but comes from outside and hence is merely posited. What the real ground-reference amounts to is therefore rather ground in a sublated state, so that it makes up instead the side of the grounded, or of positedness. Being positedness, though, the ground has by now retreated into a ground of its own; it has become something grounded which possesses another ground. That further ground receives thereby the following determination: first, it is identical with the real ground taken as its grounded, and on this score the very same content belongs to either side, so that both content-determinations, together with the linkage they have in the something, turn up in the new ground as well. But secondly, into this new ground that merely posited outward linkage has been sublated, and the new ground, being the linkage's reflection into itself, is the absolute reference holding between the two content-determinations.

Since the real ground has retreated into a ground of its own, there is reinstated upon it the identity that ground and grounded have, which is to say the formal ground. For that reason the ground-reference now arisen is the complete one: it harbours formal and real ground at once, and it mediates those content-determinations that confronted each other immediately in the real ground.

2. Here, then, is the closer determination the ground-reference has given itself. First: something has a ground, and it carries in it the content-determination that constitutes the ground, plus a second one as posited through the first. Yet these being indifferent content, neither is the one ground upon its own self nor the other upon its own self grounded by the first; that reference is instead, within the immediacy of the content, sublated or posited, and as such it grounds itself in an other. Differing from the first only in point of form, this second reference carries the same content as the first — the two content-determinations, that is — yet it is their immediate linkage. But since what gets linked is throughout content of differing kinds, determination therefore indifferent to its counterpart, this is not the truly absolute reference between them, which would have one determination be the self-identical element within positedness and the other be nothing but that positedness of the identical; instead a something bears the reference and constitutes it as unreflected, as merely immediate, so that it counts only as relative ground over against the linkage found in the other something. So the two somethings are the pair of distinguished references of content which have come out. Standing in the identical ground-reference of form, they are a single whole content — the pair of content-determinations plus the reference between them — and what distinguishes them is nothing but the mode of that reference, immediate in the one, posited in the other, whereby the one diverges from the other in point of form alone, as ground and grounded. – Secondly: this ground-reference is real, and not formal merely. As has shown itself, formal ground passes over into real ground; the moments of form reflect into themselves; they amount to a self-subsistent content, and so a content peculiar as ground and one peculiar as grounded belong to the ground-reference too. To begin with, what constitutes the immediate identity of the formal ground's two sides is the content, and so a single content belongs to both. Form, though, adheres to the content upon its own self, which makes the content twofold, standing to itself as ground and as grounded. Hence, of the two content-determinations belonging to the pair of somethings, one gets determined as being not just shared between them upon outward comparison, but as the substrate identical to both and as the base upon which their reference rests. Set against the second content-determination it counts as the essential one and grounds that second as posited — namely within the something whose reference is the grounded reference. Within the first something, the one that is the ground-reference, this second content-determination too stands linked immediately, and in itself, with the first determination. The second something, by contrast, carries the one determination only in itself, as the point where it is immediately identical with the first something, while it carries the second as posited within it. What makes the first content-determination ground of the second is its original linkage, inside the first something, with that other content-determination.

Thus the ground-reference that the content-determinations have inside the second something stands mediated by the first, in-itself reference belonging to the first something. Here is the syllogism: since inside one something the determination B stands linked in itself with the determination A, B stands linked as well inside the second something, to which A alone belongs immediately. Inside the second something it is not merely this second determination that comes mediated; that the something's immediate determination should be ground comes mediated too, namely by the original reference which that determination bears to B inside the first something. Such a reference is accordingly ground of the ground A, and the whole ground-reference lies [in] the second something as posited, or grounded.

3. Real ground exhibits the ground's reflection turned external to itself; and the ground's complete mediation consists in re-establishing the identity it has with itself. Yet since this identity has along with it taken on the outwardness proper to real ground, the formal ground-reference, in this unity of itself with real ground, is a ground positing itself quite as much as sublating itself; the ground-reference mediates itself with itself through its negation. To begin with, ground is the original reference, a reference between immediate content-determinations. Being essential form, the ground-reference has for its two sides such as are sublated ones, or moments. Accordingly, as the form of immediate determinations, it is the self-identical reference and, at the same time, reference of its negation; whence it is ground not in and for its own self, but as referring to the ground-reference sublated. – Secondly, the sublated reference — the immediate, that is, which within the original and within the posited reference alike is the identical base — is likewise not real ground in and for its own self; on the contrary, its being ground is something posited through that original linkage. –

In its totality, therefore, the ground-reference is essentially a presupposing reflection: formal ground presupposes the immediate content-determination, while the latter, as real ground, presupposes form. So ground is form taken as immediate linkage, yet in such fashion that form thrusts itself away from itself, presupposing immediacy instead, and within it refers to itself as to an other. That immediate is the content-determination, the simple ground; but qua this, qua ground namely, it has likewise been thrust away from itself and refers to itself, again, as to an other. – The total ground-reference has determined itself in this way into conditioning mediation.

C. Condition

a. The Relatively Unconditioned

1. The ground counts as immediate, the grounded as mediated. But since ground is positing reflection, it makes of itself a positedness; and since it is presupposing reflection too, it refers to itself as to a sublated thing, an immediate by which it is itself mediated. Such mediation, the advance running from immediate to ground, is not reflection coming from outside but, as has turned out, what the ground does of itself; put otherwise, the ground-reference, reflecting as it does into identity with self, is with equal essentiality a reflection that divests itself. What the ground refers to as to its essential presupposition, this immediate, is the condition; hence real ground stands essentially conditioned. Its own otherness is the determinateness which it holds.

So condition is, first, an existence that is immediate and manifold. Secondly, that existence stands referred to another, to a thing which is ground — not ground of this existence, but under a different respect, seeing that existence is of itself immediate and without ground. Under such reference it counts as something posited; being condition, immediate existence ought to be, not for itself, but for another. Yet its standing thus for another is likewise, at the same time, no more than a positedness; its being something posited lies sublated in its immediacy, and an existence is indifferent to being condition. Thirdly, condition is immediate in such wise as to constitute the ground's presupposition. So determined, it is the ground's reference of form returned into identity with self, and therewith the content of the ground. Content as such, though, amounts only to the ground's indifferent unity, unity as it stands within form; where form is lacking content is lacking too. Content does nonetheless win free of form, seeing that in the complete ground the ground-reference becomes a reference outward to its own identity, by which content comes by immediacy. To the extent, therefore, that condition is where the ground-reference holds its identity with itself, condition supplies the ground's content; but since content stands indifferent towards that form, it is the ground's content in itself alone, a thing that has yet to become content and so supplies the material for the ground. Set down as condition, existence carries, under the second moment, the determination of forfeiting its indifferent immediacy and becoming a moment of something else. In virtue of its immediacy it stands indifferent towards this reference; to the extent that it steps into the reference, however, it supplies the being-in-itself of the ground and is for the ground the unconditioned. To be condition at all, it has its presupposition in the ground and is conditioned itself; such a determination, though, remains outward to it.

2. A something does not exist through its condition; a thing's condition is not its ground. For the ground, condition is the moment of unconditioned immediacy; it is not, though, itself that movement, that positing, which refers to itself negatively and turns itself into positedness. Over against condition there consequently stands the ground-reference. Alongside its condition a something has a ground as well. – The ground is reflection's empty movement, because reflection keeps immediacy outside itself as what it presupposes. Reflection is nevertheless the entire form and the mediating that is self-subsistent; for its ground is not the condition. Since this mediating refers to itself in the manner of positing, from that side it too is an immediate and an unconditioned; presuppose itself it does, yet as a positing that has been divested or sublated; while whatever it is by its own determination, that it is in and for its own self. – To the extent, then, that the ground-reference is self-subsistent reference to itself and carries reflection's identity upon its own self, it holds a content peculiar to it, over against the content belonging to condition. The one is the ground's content and for that reason essentially formed; the other, contrariwise, is immediate material and nothing more, material to which reference to the ground is as outward as it is at the same time what supplies the ground's being-in-itself; so the other is a mingling of self-subsistent content, bearing no reference to what the ground-determination has for content, with content that passes into it and, serving as its material, is to become a moment of it.

3. Condition and ground, the whole's two sides, are therefore on the one hand indifferent towards each other and unconditioned by each other; the first as the unreferred, to which the reference wherein it is condition remains outward; the second as reference or form, before which the condition's determinate existence figures merely as material, as a passive thing whose own form, the form it has upon itself for itself, is unessential. Both of them, further, are mediated as well. Condition supplies the ground's being-in-itself; so essential a moment of the ground-reference is it that it constitutes the ground's simple identity with self. Yet this too lies sublated; such being-in-itself is nothing but a posited thing; existence in its immediacy cares nothing about being condition. Condition's being the being-in-itself for the ground supplies, accordingly, that side of it on which it is a mediated thing. The ground-reference likewise, self-subsistent though it be, has a presupposition of its own too, and keeps its being-in-itself outside itself. – Each of the two sides is therefore the contradiction between indifferent immediacy and essential mediation, the two held within one reference; – or the contradiction between subsisting self-subsistently and being determined as a mere moment.

b. The Absolutely Unconditioned

Each of the two relatively unconditioned shines, to begin with, into the other: the condition, being immediate, shines into the ground's form-reference, and this reference into immediate existence as the positedness of that reference; but apart from this shine of its other within it, each is self-subsistent in its own self and carries its own peculiar content.

First off, the condition is immediate existence; two moments belong to its form — positedness, whereby existence, as condition, counts as material and as a moment of the ground; – and being-in-itself, whereby it makes up the ground's essentiality, the ground's simple reflection within itself. To immediate existence both sides of the form are outward; for that existence is the ground-reference sublated. – Yet, first, existence in its own self amounts to nothing but this: sublating itself in its immediacy and foundering. Being at large is merely the becoming towards essence; making itself into something posited, into the identity which through the negation of itself is what is immediate — that is being's essential nature. So the form-determinations of positedness and of self-identical being-in-itself, the form whereby immediate existence is condition, are not outward to existence at all; existence is rather this very reflection. Secondly, as condition, being is now posited also as that which it essentially is — to wit, as a moment, and so as belonging to an other, and equally as being-in-itself, again of an other; in itself, though, being is such solely by the negation of itself, that is, by way of the ground and of the ground's reflection, which sublates itself and so presupposes; the being-in-itself of being is accordingly nothing but something posited. Two sides belong to this being-in-itself of the condition: to be, on the one hand, the condition's essentiality as the ground's, and on the other hand the immediacy of the condition's own existence. Or rather the two come to the same. Existence is an immediate, but immediacy is essentially what has been mediated — mediated, that is, by the ground that sublates itself. Being immediacy thus mediated by a mediating that sublates itself, it counts at once as the ground's being-in-itself and as the ground's unconditioned; only this being-in-itself is, once more, quite as much mere moment or positedness, for it stands mediated. – Hence the condition is the entire form of the ground-reference; it is that reference's presupposed being-in-itself, and just thereby a positedness itself, its immediacy consisting in making itself into positedness — in thrusting itself away from itself so that it founders and equally is ground, a ground making itself into positedness and thus into the grounded too; and both come to one and the same.

In the conditioned ground, similarly, being-in-itself is not present merely as the shining of an other within it. This ground is the self-subsistent reflection of positing, the reflection, that is, which refers to itself; it is thereby the self-identical, or has within its own self its being-in-itself and its content. At the same time, however, it is presupposing reflection; it refers negatively to itself, sets its being-in-itself over against itself as something other to it, and the condition — by its moment of being-in-itself quite as much as by that of immediate existence — is a moment belonging to the ground-reference itself; immediate existence is essentially only through its ground, and is a moment of the ground as presupposing. Hence the ground too is quite as much the whole itself.

Only one whole of form, then, is at hand at all; and just as much only one whole of content. For the condition's peculiar content counts as essential content only insofar as it is reflection's identity with itself within the form, or insofar as this immediate existence is in its own self the ground-reference. This existence, further, is condition solely by virtue of the ground's presupposing reflection; it constitutes the ground's identity with itself, or its content, over against which the ground sets itself. Existence is accordingly no mere formless material for the ground-reference; since it carries this form in its own self, it is formed matter, and, standing at once in identity with the form and indifferent towards it, it is content. It is, lastly, the very same content the ground has, for it is content precisely as the self-identical within the form-reference.

Condition and ground, the whole's two sides, are accordingly one essential unity — in respect of content as much as of form. Through themselves they pass over into each other; or, being reflections, each posits itself as sublated and refers itself to that negation of its own, so that the two presuppose each other. Yet this is at once only a single reflection of the two, their presupposing therefore likewise only one; the mutuality of it passes over rather into their presupposing their one identity as their subsistence and their foundation. This, the one content and unity of form belonging to both, is the genuinely unconditioned; the fact in its own self. – The condition, as emerged above, is the relatively unconditioned only. One is therefore wont to take it as itself a conditioned and to enquire after a fresh condition, and with that the customary progress into infinity from condition to condition is under way. Now why, given a condition, is a fresh condition enquired after — why, that is, is the condition assumed to be a conditioned? Because it is some finite existence or other. But that is a further determination of the condition, not one lying within its concept. The condition as such, rather, is a conditioned because it is the posited being-in-itself; within the absolutely unconditioned it is therefore sublated.

This last now holds the two sides, condition and ground, within itself as its moments; it is the unity into which they have withdrawn. Taken together the two make up its form, its positedness. Condition of both is the unconditioned fact — the absolute condition, however, that is, the condition which is itself ground. – Qua ground the fact is now that negative identity which has thrust itself apart into those two moments; – firstly into the shape of the ground-reference sublated, of an immediate manifold lacking unity and outward to itself, a manifold that refers itself to the ground as to something other than it and at once makes up the ground's being-in-itself; secondly into the shape of an inward and simple form, which is ground, though it refers itself to that immediate, self-identical as it is, as to an other, and determines it as condition — determines, that is, this its in-itself as a moment of its own. – The totality is presupposed by these two sides in such a way that the totality is what posits them. Conversely, since they presuppose the totality , the latter seems in its turn conditioned by them, and the fact seems to arise out of its condition and out of its ground. But these two sides having shown themselves to be the identical, the relation of condition and ground has vanished; both are lowered to a mere shine; and the absolutely unconditioned, in its movement of positing and of presupposing, is nothing other than the movement wherein this shine sublates itself. It is the fact's own doing to condition itself and to set itself as ground over against its conditions; the fact's reference as the conditions and as the ground is, however, a shining within itself, and its comportment towards them is its going together with itself.

c. Emergence of the Fact into Concrete Existence

The absolute ground identical with its condition is the absolutely unconditioned — the immediate fact, as that which is genuinely of the nature of essence. Qua ground it refers itself negatively upon itself and turns itself into positedness; into a positedness, however, that is the reflection complete in its sides and the form-reference self-identical within them, as its concept has come out. Firstly, therefore, this positedness is the ground sublated, the fact as the immediate devoid of reflection: the side of the conditions. That side is the totality of the fact's determinations – the fact itself, yet cast out into the outwardness of being; the restored circle of being. Within the condition, essence lets go the unity of its reflection-into-itself as an immediacy, though one that now bears the determination of being a conditioning presupposition and of essentially making up but a single one of essence's sides. – That the conditions are the fact's entire content rests on this, that they are the unconditioned in the shape of formless being. On account of that shape, however, they wear besides a different figure from the determinations of the content such as it is in the fact as such. They appear as a manifoldness devoid of unity, intermingled with the outwardly-essential and with other circumstances which have no place in the circle of existence, insofar as that circle makes up this determinate fact's conditions. – The sphere of being itself is the condition for the absolute, unrestricted fact. That sphere is posited by the ground, in the ground's going back into itself, as the first immediacy, upon which the ground refers itself as upon its unconditioned. Being sublated reflection, this immediacy is reflection in the element of being, an element which accordingly builds itself up as such into a whole; as determinateness of being the form proliferates onward, and appears thereby as a manifold content, one differing from the determination of reflection and indifferent towards it. The unessential which the sphere of being carries about it, and which it strips off insofar as it is condition, is that determinateness of immediacy into which the unity of form lies sunk. In being, this unity of form, as being's reference, is present at first as becoming – as the passing over of one of being's determinatenesses into another. The becoming of being, however, is further a becoming towards essence and a going back into the ground. Existence, therefore, which makes up the conditions, is in truth not determined as condition by an other and put to use as material; through its own self, rather, it makes itself into a moment of an other. – Nor, further, is its becoming a beginning from itself as from what is genuinely first and immediate; its immediacy is rather only the presupposed, and reflection's own doing is the movement of its becoming. Hence to be condition is the truth of existence; existence has its immediacy solely through the ground-reference's reflection, which posits itself as sublated. Becoming is thus, like immediacy, only the shine of the unconditioned, the unconditioned presupposing itself and having its form therein; and the immediacy of being is on that account essentially a moment of form and nothing more.

This shining of the unconditioned has as its other side the ground-reference as such, determined as form as against the immediacy both of the conditions and of the content. But it is the form of the absolute fact, a fact having the unity of its form with itself, or its content, in its own self, and, in determining that content into condition, sublating the content's diversity in this very positing and making it into a moment; just as, conversely, the fact gives itself, qua essenceless form, the immediacy of subsistence within this identity with itself. The ground's reflection sublates the conditions' immediacy and refers them, as moments, into the unity of the fact; but the conditions are what the unconditioned fact itself has presupposed, so that in doing so the fact sublates its own positing; or its positing thereby makes itself, immediately and quite as much, into becoming. – Both are on that account one unity; the movement of the conditions in their own selves is becoming, a going back into the ground and a positing of the ground; the ground as posited, however — as sublated, that is — is what is immediate. Negatively referring itself upon itself, the ground turns itself into positedness and grounds the conditions; but in that immediate existence is thereby determined as a posited, the ground sublates it and only so makes itself into ground. – This reflection, then, is that mediation whereby the unconditioned fact is mediated with itself through its negation. Or rather: the unconditioned's reflection is in the first place presupposing, yet this sublating of its own self is immediately a determining positing; secondly it is therein immediately a sublating of the presupposed and a determining out of itself; and thus this determining is once again a sublating of the positing, and is becoming in its own self. Therein mediation, as a return to itself by way of negation, has vanished; it is simple reflection shining within itself, and absolute becoming without ground. That the fact is posited by its conditions on the one side and on the other by its ground — this movement is nothing else than the vanishing of the shine of mediation. The fact's being posited is hereby a coming forth, the simple putting of itself forth into concrete existence; the fact's pure movement to its own self.

When all the conditions of a fact are on hand, it thereupon steps into concrete existence. The fact is, before it concretely exists; and indeed it is, first, as essence, or as unconditioned; secondly it has existence, or is determinate, and this in the twofold manner considered — on the one side in its conditions, on the other in its ground. In those conditions the fact has given itself the form of outward, groundless being, since as absolute reflection it is the negative reference upon itself and makes itself into its own presupposition. What is thus presupposed as unconditioned is accordingly the groundless immediate, and its being amounts to nothing but being there as groundless. If, then, all the fact's conditions are on hand — which is to say, if the fact's totality stands posited as groundless immediate — this scattered manifoldness recollects itself in its own self. – The whole fact must be there in its conditions, or: to its concrete existence all the conditions belong; for all of them make up the reflection; or, existence being condition, it is determined by the form, its determinations are therefore determinations of reflection, and with any one of them the others are essentially posited. – At first the recollection of the conditions is the foundering of immediate existence and the becoming of the ground. But with that the ground is a posited, which is to say that just as much as it is ground, so much is it sublated as ground and is immediate being. If, then, all the fact's conditions are on hand, they sublate themselves qua immediate existence and qua presupposition, and just as much does the ground sublate itself. The ground shows itself only as a shine that immediately vanishes; this coming forth is thus the fact's tautological movement to itself, and the fact's mediation through the conditions and through the ground is the vanishing of both. So immediate, therefore, is the coming forth into concrete existence that it stands mediated only through the vanishing of mediation.

The fact emerges out of the ground. The ground does not ground or posit it in such a way that the ground would still stay below; the positing is rather the ground's movement out to its own self, and the ground's simple vanishing. By union with the conditions the ground obtains outward immediacy and the moment of being. It obtains them, though, neither as something outward nor by an outward reference; as ground, rather, it turns itself into positedness, in the positedness its simple essentiality goes together with itself, and in this sublating of its own self it is the vanishing of its difference from its positedness, hence simple essential immediacy. It does not, then, stay behind as something diverse from the grounded; rather the truth of grounding lies in this, that therein the ground unites with its own self, so that its reflection into an other is its reflection into itself. Just as the fact is the unconditioned, so it is hereby also the groundless, and it steps out of the ground only insofar as the ground has foundered and is no ground — out of the groundless, which is to say out of its own pure form or essential negativity.

Mediated through ground and condition, and through the sublating of that mediation identical with itself, this immediacy is concrete existence.

Second Section. Appearance

Essence must appear.

Absolute abstraction — that is being; this negativity is not something outward to being, but being is being and nothing other than being, only as this absolute negativity. On account of that negativity, being only is as being that sublates itself, and is essence. Essence, however, as the simple equality with itself, is conversely being just as much. In the doctrine of being there is contained the first proposition: being is essence. What makes up the content of the doctrine of essence's first section is the second proposition, essence is being. This being, however, into which essence turns itself, is essential being, concrete existence — a having gone forth out of negativity and inwardness.

Thus does essence appear. Reflection is the shining of essence within itself. Enclosed within the unity, reflection's determinations are simply and solely posited ones, sublated ones; or reflection is the essence that in its positedness is immediately self-identical. In that essence is ground, however, it determines itself really, by way of its reflection, which sublates its own self, or returns into itself; and in that this determination, or the ground-reference's otherness, sublates itself further in the ground's reflection and turns into concrete existence, the form-determinations have in this an element of self-subsistent subsistence. Into appearance their shine completes itself.

Essentiality gone forward into immediacy is at first concrete existence, and something concretely existing, or thing; as the unity, undifferentiated, of essence with its immediacy. The thing does contain reflection, yet in the thing's immediacy reflection's negativity is at first extinguished; since the thing's ground is essentially reflection, however, its immediacy sublates itself; it makes itself into a positedness.

Thus it is, secondly, appearance. What the thing is in itself, its truth, is appearance. But this concrete existence, merely posited and reflected into otherness, is just as much a going out beyond itself into its infinity; against the world of appearance there sets itself the world reflected into itself, the world that is in itself.

Appearing being and essential being, however, stand simply and solely in reference to one another. Concrete existence is thus, thirdly, essential relation; what appears exhibits the essential, and the essential is within its appearance. – Relation is the union, still imperfect, of reflection into itself with reflection into otherness; the perfect interpenetration of the two is actuality.

Chapter 1. Concrete Existence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A. The Thing and Its Properties

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

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

a. Thing-in-itself and Concrete Existence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

b. Property

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

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

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

Remark

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

c. The Reciprocal Action of Things

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

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

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

B. The Subsistence of the Thing in Matters

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

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

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

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

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

C. The Dissolution of the Thing

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

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

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

Remark

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

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

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

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

Chapter 2. Appearance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A. The Law of Appearance

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

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

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

This unity is the law of appearance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C. Dissolution of Appearance

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 3. The Essential Relation

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

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

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

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

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

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