Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind), vol. I incl. Preface

40 Phenomenology of Mind In mathematical knowledge the insight required is an external function so far as the subject-matter dealt with is concerned. It follows that the actual fact is thereby altered. The means taken, construction and proof, contain, no doubt, true propositions ; but all the same we are bound to say that the content is false. The triangle in the above example is taken to pieces, and its parts made into other figures to which the construction gives rise in the triangle. It is only at the end that we find again reinstated the triangle we are really concerned with ; it was lost sight of in the course of the construction, and was present merely in fragments, that belonged to other wholes. Thus we find negativity of content coming in here too, a negativity which would have to be called falsity, just as much as in the case of the movement of the notion where thoughts that are taken to be fixed pass away and disappear. The real defect of this kind of knowledge, however, affects its process of knowing as much as its material. As to that process, in the first place we do not see any necessity in the construction. The necessity does not arise from the nature of the theorem : it is imposed ; and the injunction to draw just these lines, an infinite number of others being equally possible, is blindly acquiesced in, without our knowing anything further, except that, as we fondly believe, this will serve our purpose in getting at the proof. Later on this purposive device then comes out, and is therefore merely external in character, just because it is only after the proof is found that it comes to be known. In the same way, again, the proof takes a direction that begins anywhere we like, without our knowing as yet what relation

iliis beginning has to the result to be brought out. In its Jourse, it takes up certain specific elements and relations md lets others alone, without its being directly obvious f?hat necessity there is in the matter. An external purpose controls this process. The evidence peculiar to this defective way of knowing — an evidence on the strength of which mathematics plumes itself and proudly struts before philosophy — rests solely on the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of its material, and is on that account of a kind that philosophy must scorn to have anything to do with. Its purpose or principle is quantity. This is precisely the relationship that is non-essential, alien to the character of the notion. The process of knowledge goes on, therefore, on the surface, does not affect the concrete fact itself, does not touch its inner nature or notion, and is hence not a conceptual way of comprehendmg. The material which is to enable mathematics to proffer these welcome treasures of truth consists of space and nmnerical units {das Eins). Space is that kind of existence on which the concrete notion inscribes the diversity it contains — an empty, lifeless element in which its differences likewise subsist in passive, hfeless form. What is concretely actual is not something spatial, such as is treated of in mathematics. With unieahties like the things mathematics takes account of, neither concrete sensuous perception nor philosophy has anything to do. In an unreal element of that sort we find, then, only unreal truth, fixed lifeless propositions. We can call a halt at any of them ; the next begins of itself de novo, without the first having led up to the one that follows, and without any necessary connexion having in this way

42 Phenomenology of Mind arisen from the nature of the subject-matter itself. So, too — and herein consists the formal character of mathematical evidence — because of that principle and the element where it appHes, knowledge advances along the hues of bare equality, of abstract identity. For what is hfeless, not being self-moved, does not bring about distinction within its essential nature ; does not come at essential opposition or unlikeness ; and hence involves no transition of one opposite element into its other, no qualitative, immanent movement, no seZ/-movement. It is quantity, a form of difference that does not touch the essential nature, which alone mathematics deals with. It abstracts from the fact that it is the notion which separates space into its dimensions, and determines the connections between them and in them. It does not consider, for example, the relation of line to surface, and when it compares the diameter of a circle with its circumference, it runs up against their incommensurability, i.e. a relation in terms of the notion, an infinite element, that escapes mathematical determination. Inamanent or so-called pure mathematics, again, does not oppose, time qua time to space, as a second subjectmatter for consideration. Applied mathematics, no doubt, treats of time, as also of motion, and other concrete things as well ; but it picks up/ from experience synthetic propositions — i.e. propositions expressing relations, relations determined by their essential nature — and merely applies its formulae to those propositions assumed to start with. That the so-called proofs of propositions like that stating the equilibrium of the lever, the relation of space and time in gravitation, etc., which applied mathematics fre-

quently gives, should be taken and given as proofs, is itself merely a proof of how great the need is for knowledge to have a process of proof, seeing that, even where proof is not to be had, knowledge yet puts a value on the mere semblance of it, and gets thereby a certain sense of satisfaction. A criticism of these proofs would be as instructive as it would be significant, if the criticism could strip mathematics of this artificial finery, and bring out its hmitations, and thence show the necessity for another type of knowledge. As to time, which we are asked to think of as the coimterpart to space, and as constituting the objectmatter of the other division of pure mathematics, it is the notion itself in the form of existence. The principle of quantity, of difference which is not determined by the notion, and the principle of equality, of abstract, lifeless unity, are incapable of deahng with that sheer restlessness of hfe and its absolute and inherent process of differentiation. It is therefore only in an arrested, paralysed form, only in the form of the quantitative unit, that this essentially negative activity becomes the second object-matter of this way of knowing, which, itself an external operation, degrades what is selfmoving to the level of mere matter, in order thus to get an indifferent, external, lifeless content.

Philosophy, on the contrary, does not deal with a determination that is non-essential, but with a determination so far as it is an essential factor. The abstract or unreal is not its element and content, but the real, what is self-establishing, has life within itself, existence in its very notion. It is the process that creates its own moments in its course, and goes through them all ; and the whole of this movement constitutes its positive 44 ' Phenomenology of Mind content and its truth. This movement includes, therefore, within it the negative factor as well, the element which would be named falsity if it could be considered one from which we had to abstract. The element that disappears has rather to be looked at as itself essential, not in the sense of being something fixed, that has to be cut off from truth and allowed to lie outside it, heaven knows where ; just as similarly the truth is not to be held to stand on the other side as an immovable lifeless positive element. Appearance is the process of arising into being and passing away again, a process that itself does not arise and does not pass away, but is fer se, and constitutes reality and the life-movement of truth. In this way truth is the bacchanalian revel, where not a soul is sober ; and because every member no sooner gets detached than it 60 ipso collapses straightway, the revel is just as much a state of transparent imbroken calm. Judged by that movement, the particular shapes which mind assumes do not indeed subsist any more than do determinate thoughts or ideas ; but they are, all the same, as much positive and necessary moments, as negative and transitory. In the entirety of the movement, taken as an unbroken quiescent whole, that which gets distinctness in the course of its process and secures specific existence, is preserved in the form of a self-recollection, in which existence is self-knowledge, and self-knowledge, again, is immediate existence.

It might well seem necessary to state at the outset the chief points in connexion with the method of this process, the way in which science operates. Its nature, however, is to be found in what has already been said, while the proper systematic exposition of it is the special business of Logic, or rather is Logic itself. For the method is nothing else than the structure of the whole in its pure and essential form. In regard, however, to what has been hitherto currently held on this point, we must be sensible that the system of ideas bearing on the question of philosophical method, belongs also to a stage of mental culture that has now passed away. This may perhaps seem somewhat roughhanded or revolutionary ; and I am far from adopting an attitude of that sort; but it is significant that the scientific regime bequeathed by mathematics — a regime of explanations, divisions, axioms, an array of theorems, with proofs, principles, and the consequences and conclusions drawn from them — all this has already come to be generally considered as at any rate out of date. Even though there is no clear idea why it is unsuitable, yet little or no use is made of it any longer ; and even though it is not condemned outright, it is all the same not in favour. And we must have the prejudice and conviction that what is excellent can turn itself to practical account, and make itself acceptable. But it is not difficult to see that the method of propounding a proposition, producing reasons for it and then refuting its opposite by reasons too, is not the form in which truth can appear. Truth moves itself by its very nature ; but the method just mentioned is a form of Imowledge external to its material. Hence it is pecuhar to mathematics and must be left to mathematics, which, as already indicated, takes for its principle the relation of quantity, a relation alien to the notion, and gets its material from lifeless space, and the equally lifeless numerical unit. Or, again, such a method, adopting a freer style, one involving more

46 Phenomenology of Mind of arbitrariness and chance, may have a place in ordinary Ufe, in a conversation, or in supplying matter-offact instruction for the satisfaction of curiosity rather than knowledge, very much like what a preface does. In every-day life the mind finds its content in different kinds of knowledge, experiences of various sorts, concrete facts of sense, thoughts, too, and principles, and, in general, in whatever Ues ready to hand, or passes for a sohd stable entity, or real being. The mind follows wherever this leads, sometimes interrupting the connection by an unrestrained caprice in deahng with the content, and takes up the attitude of determining and handhng it in quite an external fashion. It runs the content back to some touchstone of certainty or other, even though it be but the feeling of the moment ; and conviction is satisfied if it reaches some familiar resting-place. But when the necessity of the notion banishes from its realm the loose procedure of the " raisonnements " of conversation, as well as the pedantic style of scientific pomposity, its place, as we have already mentioned, must not be taken by the disconnected utterance of presageful surmise and inspiration, and the arbitrary caprice of prophetic utterance ; for this does not merely despise that particular form of scientific procedure, but contemns scientific procedure altogether.

Now that the triplicity, adopted in the system of Kant — a method rediscovered, to begin with, by instinctive insight, but left Kfeless and uncomprehended —has been raised to its significance as an absolute method, true form is thereby set up in its true content, and the conception of science has come to light. But the use this form has been put to in the Kantian system has no right to the name of science. For we see it there reduced to a hfeless schema, to nothing better than a mere shadow, and scientific organisation to a synoptic table. This formahsm — about which we spoke before in general terms, and whose procedure we wish here to state more fully — thinks it has comprehended and expressed the nature and life of a given form when it proclaims a determination of the schema to be its predicate. The predicate may be subjectivity or objectivity, or again magnetism, electricity, and so on, contraction or expansion, East or West, and such hke — ■ a form of predication that can be multiplied indefinitely, because according to this way of working each determination, each mode, can be applied as a form or schematic element in the case of every other, and each will thankfully perform the same service for any other. With a circle of reciprocities of this sort it is impossible to make out what the real fact in question is, or what the one or the other is. We find there sometimes constituents of sense picked up from ordinary intuition, determinate elements that certainly should mean something else than they express ; at other times what is inherently significant, viz. pure determinations of thought — like subject, object, substance, cause, universality, etc. — these are apphed just as uncritically and unreflectingly as in every-day life, are used much as people employ the terms strong and weak, expansion and contraction. As a result that type of metaphysics is as unscientific as those ideas of sense.

Instead of the inner activity and self-movement of its own actual hfe, such a simple determination of direct intuition {Anschauung) — which means here 48 Phenomenology of Mind sense-knowledge — is expressed in terms of a superficial analogy, and this external and empty application of the formula is called " construction." The same thing happens here, however, as in the case of every kind of formalism. A man's head must be indeed dull if he could not in a quarter of an hour get up the theory that there are enervating, innervating, and indirectly enervating diseases and as many cures, and who could not — smce not so long ago instruction of that sort sufficed for the purpose — in as short a time be turned from being a man who works by rule of thumb into a theoretical physician. Formahsm in the case of speculative Philosophy of Nature {Naturphilosophie) takes the shape of teaching that understanding is electricity, animals are nitrogen, or equivalent to south or north and so on. When it does this whether as baldly as it is here expressed or concocted with even more terminology, such forceful procedure brings and holds together elements to all appearance far removed from one another ; the violence done to stable inert sense-elements by connecting them in this way, confers on them merely the semblance of a conceptual unity, and spares itself the trouble of doing what is after all the important thing — expressing the notion itself, the meaning that underlies sense-ideas. All this sort of thing may strike any one who has no experience with admiration and wonder. He may be awed by the profound genius he thinks it displays, and be dehghted at the happy ingenuity of such characterisations, since they fill the place of the abstract notion with something tangible and sensuous, and so make it more pleasing ; and he may congratulate himself on feeling an instinctive mental affinity for that glorious way of

proceeding. The trick of wisdom of that sort is as quickly acquired as it is easy to practise. Its repetition, when once it is famihar, becomes as boring as the repetition of any bit of sleight-of-hand once we see through it. The instrument for producing this monotonous formahsm is no more difficult to handle than the palette of a painter, on which he only two colours, say red and green, the former for colouring the surface when we want a historical piece, the latter when we want a bit of landscape. It would be difficult to settlewhich is greater in all this, the agreeable ease with which everything in heaven and earth and under the earth is plastered with that botch of colour, or the conceit that prides itself on the excellence of its means for every conceivable purpose ; the one lends support to the other. What results from the use of this method of sticking on to everything in heaven and earth, to every kind of shape and form, natural and spiritual, the pair of determinations from the general schema, and filing everything in this manner, is no less than an " account as clear as noonday " * of the organised whole of the imiverse. It is, that is to say, a synoptic index, hke a skeleton with tickets stuck all over it, or hke rows of pots standing sealed and labelled in a grocer's stall ; and is as intelhgible as either the one or the other. It has lost hold of the hving nature of concrete fact ; just as in the former case we have merely dry bones with flesh and blood all gone, and in the latter, what is hidden away in those pots has equally nothmg to do with hving things. We have already remarked that the final outcome of this style of thinking is,

* Expression adopted from Fichte's " Sonnenklarer Bericht an das Publikum uber das eigentliclie Wesen der neuesten Philosopliie," VOL. I.— E 50 Phenomenology of Mind at the same time, to paint entirely in one kind of colour ; for it turns with contempt from the distinctions in the schematic table, looks on them as belonging to the activity of mere reflection, and lets them drop out of sight in the blankness of the Absolute, and there reinstates pure identity, pure formless whiteness. Such uniformity of colouring in the schema with its hfeless determinations, this absolute identity, and the transition from one to the other — these are one and all alike the expression of inert Hfeless understanding, and an external process of knowledge into the bargain. Not only can what is excellent not escape the fate of becoming thus devitalised and despirituahsed, and seeing its skin flayed and paraded about in this way by hfeless knowledge, and the conceit such knowledge engenders ; but, further, such a fate lets us see the power the " excellent " exercises over the heart (GemutJi), if not over the mind (Geist). Moreover, we recognise here, too, that process towards universahty and determinateness of form which marks the complete attainment of excellence, and which alone makes it possible that this universahty can be turned to superficial uses.

Science can become an organic system only by the inherent hfe of the notion. In science the determinateness, which was taken from the schema and stuck on to existing facts in external fashion, is the self-directing inner soul of the concrete content. The movement of what is partly consists in becoming another to itself, and thus developing exphcitly into its own immanent content ; partly, again, it takes this evolved content, this existence it assumes, back into itself, i.e. makes itself into a mom^ent, and reduces itself to gjmple determinateness. In the first stage of the pro- cess negativity lies in the function of distinguishing and estabhshing existence ; in this latter return into self, negativity consists in the bringing about of determinate simplicity. It is in this way that the content shows its specific characteristic not to be received from something else, and stuck on externally ; the content gives itself this determinate characteristic, appoints itself of its own initiative to the rank of a moment and to a place in the whole. The pigeon-holing process of understanding retains for itself the necessity and the notion controUing the content, that which constitutes the concrete element, the actuahty and hving process of the subject-matter which it labels : or rather, understanding does not retain this for itself, on the contrary, understanding fails to know it. For if it had as much insight as that, it would surely show that it had. It is not even aware of the need for such insight ; if it were, it would drop its schematising process, or at least would no longer be satisfied to know by way of a mere table of contents. A table of contents is all that understanding gives, the content itself it does not furnish at all.

If the specific determination (say even one like magnetism) is one that in itself is concrete or actual, it all the same gets degraded into something hfeless and inert, since it is merely predicated of another existing entity, and not known as an immanent living principle of this existence ; nor is there any comprehension of how in this entity its intrinsic and pecuHar way of expressing and producing itself takes effect. This, the very kernel of the matter, formal understanding leaves to others to add later on. Instead of making its way into the inherent content of the matter in 52 Phenomenology of Mind hand, understanding always takes a survey of the whole, assumes a position away from the particular existence about which it is speaking, i.e. it does not see it at all. True scientific knowledge, on the contrary, demands abandonment to the very hfe of the object, or, which means the same thing, claims to have before it the inner necessity controlling the object, and to express this only. Steeping itself in its object, it forgets to take that general survey, which is merely a turning of knowledge away from the content back into itself. But being sunk into the material in hand, and following the course that such material takes, true knowledge retm-ns back into itself, yet not before the content in its fullness is taken into itself, is reduced to the simplicity of being a determinate characteristic, drops to the level of being one aspect of an existing entity, and passes over into its higher truth. By this process the whole as such, taking itself in its entire sweep, emerges out of the wealth where bare reflection seemed to get lost.

In general, in virtue of the principle that, as we expressed it before, substance is implicitly and in itself subject, all content makes its reflection into itself in its own special way. The subsistence or substance of anything that exists is its self-identity ; for its want of identity, or oneness with itself, would be its dissolution. But self-identity is pure abstraction ; and this is just thinking. When I say Quality, I state simple determinateness ; by means of its quality one existence is distinguished from another or is an " existence " ; it is for itself, something on its own account, or subsists with itself because of this simple characteristic. But by doing so it is essentially Thought. Here we find contained the principle that Being is Thought : here is exercised that insight which is generally at a discount in the case of the ordinary non-conceptual way of speaking of the identity of thought and being. In virtue, further, of the fact that subsistence on the part of what exists is self-identity or pure abstraction, it is the abstraction of itself from itself, in other words, is itself its own want of identity with itself and dissolution — its own proper inwardness and retraction into self — its process of coming to be.

Owing to the nature which being thus has, and so far as what is has this nature from the point of view of knowledge, this thinking is not an activity which treats the content as something alien and external ; it is not reflection into self away from the content. Science is not that kind of Idealism which stepped into the place of the Dogmatism of mere assertion and took the shape of a Dogmatism of mere assurance, the Dogmatism of mere self - certainty. Rather, since knowledge sees the content go back into its own proper inner nature, the activity of knowledge is absorbed in that content — for it (the activity) is the immanent self of the content — and is also at the same time returned into itself, for this activity is pure self-identity in otherness. In this way the knowing activity is the artful device which, pretending to refrain from activity, looks on and watches how specific determinateness, with its concrete fife, just where it pretends to be working out its own self-preservation and its own private interest, is, in point of fact, doing the very opposite, is doing what brings about its own dissolution and makes itself a moment in the whole.

While, in the foregoing, the significance of Under- 54 Phenomenology of Mind standing was stated from the point of view of the selfconsciousness of substance ; by what has been here stated we can see clearly its significance from the point of view of substance qua being. Existence is Quality, self-identical determinateness, or determinate simpHcity, determinate thought : this is existence as regards Understanding. On this account it is fow, as Anaxagoras first took reahty to be. Those who succeeded him grasped the nature of existence in a more determinate way as elSoi or ISea, i.e. as determinate or specific universahty, kind or genus. The term genus or kind seems indeed too ordinary and inadequate to express ideas like beauty, holiness, eternal, which are now the vogue. As a matter of fact, however, idea {l&ia) means neither more nor less than kind, genus. But we often find in these days that a term which exactly designates a conception is despised and rejected, and another preferred to it which hides and obscures the conception, and thus sounds more edifying, even though this is merely due to its being expressed in a foreign language. Precisely for the reason that existence is designated a genus or kind, it is a naked simple thought ; vovi;, simple abstraction, is substance. It is on account of its simphcity, its self-identity, that it appears steady, fixed, and permanent. But this self-identity is Ukewise negativity ; hence that fixed and stable existence carries the process of its own dissolution within itself. The determinateness appears at first to be so solely through its relation to something else ; and its process seems imposed and forced upon it externally. But its having its own otherness within itself, and the fact of its being a self-initiated process — these are implied in the very simplicity of thought itself. For

this is self-moving thought, thought that distinguishes, is inherent inwardness, the pure notion. Thus, then, it is the very nature of understanding to be a process, and being a process it is Rationahty. In the nature of existence as thus described — to be its own notion and being in one — consists logical necessity in general. This alone is what is rational, the rhythm of the organic whole : it is as much knowledge of content as that content is notion and essential nature. In other words, this alone is the sphere and element of speculative thought. The concrete shape of the content is resolved by its own inherent process into a simple determinate quahty. Thereby it is raised to logical form, and its being and essence coincide ; its concrete existence is merely this process that takes place, and is eo ipso logical existence. It is therefore needless to apply a formal scheme to the concrete content in an external fashion ; the content is in its very nature a transition into a formal shape, which, however, ceases to be formahsm of an external kind, because the form is the indwelling process of the concrete content itself. This nature of scientific method, which consists partly in being inseparable from the content, and partly in determining the rhythm of its movement by its own agency, finds, as we mentioned before, its peculiar systematic expression in speculative philosophy. What is here stated describes in effect the essential principle ; but cannot stand for more at this stage than an assertion or assurance by way of anticipation. The truth it contains is not to be found in this exposition, which is in part historical in character. And just for that reason, too, it is not in the least

66 Phenomenology of Mind refuted if anyone assures us on the contrary that this is not so, that the process instead is here so and so, if ideas we are all used to, being truths accepted or settled and famihar to everyone, are brought to mind and recoimted, or, again, if something new is served up and guaranteed as coming from the inner sanctuaries of inspired intuition. Such a view is bomid to meet with opposition. The first instinctive reaction on the part of knowing, when offered somethmg that was unfamihar, is usually to resist it. It seeks by that means to save freedom and native insight, to secure its own inherent authority against ahen avithority — for that is the way anything apprehended for the first time appears. This attitude is adopted, too, in order to do away with the semblance of a kind of disgrace which would he in the fact that something has had to be learnt. In like manner, again, when the unfamihar or unknown is received with applause, the reaction is in the same way an exaltation of freedom and native authority. It consists in something analogous to ultra-revolutionary declamation and action. Hence the important thing for the student of science is to make himself undergo the strenuous toil of conceptual I'eflection, of thinking in the form of the notion. This demands concentrated attention on the notion as such, on simple and ultimate determinations like being-initself, being-for-itself, self-identity, and so on ; for these are elemental, pure, self-determined functions of a kind we might call souls, were it not that their conceptual nature denotes something higher than that term contains. The interruption by conceptual thought of the habit of always thinking in figurative ideas

{Vorstellungen) is as annoying and troublesome to this way of thinking as to that process of formal intelligence which in its reasoning rambles about with no real thoughts to reason with. The former, the habit, may be called materialised thinking, a fortuitous mental state, one that is absorbed in what is material, and hence finds it very distasteful at once to hft its self clear of this matter and be confined to itself alone. The latter, the process of raisonnement, is, on the other hand, detachment from all content, and conceited superiority to it. What is wanted here is the effort and struggle to give up this kind of freedom, and instead of being a merely arbitrary principle directing the content anyhow, this freedom should sink into and pervade the content, should get it directed and controlled by its own proper nature, i.e. by the self as its own self, and should see this process taking place. We must abstain from interrupting the immanent rhythm of the movement of conceptual thought ; we must refrain from arbitrarily interfering with it, and introducing ideas and reflections that have been obtained elsewhere. Restraint of this sort is itself an essential condition of attending to and getting at the real nature of the notion.

There are the two aspects in the case of that ratiocinative procedure which mark its contrast from conceptual thinking and call for further notice. Raisonnement, in the first place, adopts a negative attitude towards the content apprehended ; knows how to refute it and reduce it to nothingness. To see what the content is not is merely a negative process ; it is a dead halt, which does not of itself go beyond itself, and proceed to a new content ; it has to get hold of 58 Phenomenology of Mind something else from somewhere or other in order to have once more a content. It is reflection upon and into the empty ego, the vanity of its own knowledge. Conceit of this kind brings out not only that this content is vain and empty, but also that to see this is itself fatuity too : for it is negation with no perception of the positive element within it. In that this reflection does not even have its own negativity as its content, it is not inside actual fact at all, but for ever away outside it. On that account it imagines that by asserting mere emptiness it is going much farther than insight that embraces and reveals a wealth of content. On the other hand, in the case of conceptual thinking, as was above indicated, the negative aspect falls within the content itself, and is the positive substance of that content, as well by being its inherent character and moving principle as by being the entirety of what these are. Looked at as a result, it is determinate specific negation, the negative which is the outcome of this process, and consequently is a positive content as well.

In view of the fact that ratiocinative thinking has a content, whether of images or thoughts or a mixture of both, there is another side to its process which makes conceptual comprehension difficult for it. The pecuHar nature of this aspect is closely connected with the essential meaning of the idea (ISea) above described, in fact, expresses the idea in the way this appears as the process of thinking apprehension. For just as ratiocinative thinking in its negative reference, which we have been describing, is nothing but the self into which the content returns ; in the same way, on the other hand, in its positive cognitive process the self is an ideally presented subject to wliicli the content is related as an accident and predicate. This subject constitutes the basis to which the content is attached and on which the process moves to and fro. Conceptual thinking goes on in quite a different way. Since the concept or notion is the very self of the object, manifesting itself as the development of the object, it is not a quiescent subject, passively supporting accidents : it is a self-determining active concept which takes up its determinations and makes them its own. In the course of this process that inert passive subject really disappears ; it enters into the different constituents and pervades the content ; instead of remaining in inert antithesis to determinateness of content, it constitutes, in fact, that very specificity, i.e. the content as differentiated along with the process of bringing this about. Thus the sohd basis, which ratiocination found in an inert subject, is shaken to its foundations, and the only object is this very movement of the subject. The subject supplying the concrete filling to its own content ceases to be something transcending this content, and cannot have further predicates or accidents. Conversely, again, the scattered diversity of the content is brought under the control of the self, and so bound together ; the content is not a universal that can be detached from the subject, and adapted to several indifferently. Consequently the content is in truth no longer predicate of the subject ; it is the very substance, is the inmost reality, and the very principle of what is being considered. Ideational thinking {vmstellen), since its nature consists in dealing with accidents or predicates, and in exercising the right to transcend them because they are nothing more

60 Phenomenology of Mind than predicates and accidents — this way of thinking is checked in its course, since that which has in the proposition the form of a predicate is itself the substance of the statement. It is met by a counter-thrust, as we may say. Starting from the subject, as if this were a permanent base on which to proceed, it discovers, by the predicate being in reahty the substance, that the subject has passed into the predicate, and has thereby ceased to be subject : and since in this way what seems to be predicate has become the entire mass of the content, whole and complete, thinking cannot wander and ramble about at will, but is restrained and controlled by this weight of content. Usually the subject is first set down as the fixed and objective self ; from this fixed position the necessary process passes on to the multiphcity of determinations or predicates. Here the knowing ego takes the place of that subject and is the function of knitting or combining the predicates one with another, and is the subject holding them fast. But since the former subject enters into the determinate constituents themselves, and is their very life, the subject in the second case — viz. the knowing subject — finds that the former, — which it is supposed to be done with and which it wants to transcend, in order to return into itself, — is still there in the predicate : and instead of being able to be the determining agency in the process of resolving the predicate — reflectively deciding whether this or that predicate should be attached to the former subject — it has really to deal with the self of the content, is not allowed to be something on its own account {fur sich), but has to exist along with this content.

What has been said can be expressed in a formal manner by saying that the nature of judgment or the proposition in general, which involves the distinction of subject and predicate, is subverted and destroyed by the speculative judgment ; and the identical proposition, which the former becomes [by uniting subject and predicate], imphes the rejection and repudiation of the above relation between subject and predicate. This conflict between the form of a proposition in general and the unity of the notion which destroys that form, is similar to what we find between metre and accent in the case of rhythm. Rhythm is the result of what hovers between and unites both. So in the case of the speculative or philosophical judgment ; the identity of subject and predicate is not intended to destroy their distinction, as expressed in propositional form ; their unity is to appear as a harmony of the elements. The form of the judgment is the way the specific sense appears, or is made manifest, it is the accent which differentiates the content of its meaning : that the predicate expresses the substance, and the subject itself falls within the universal, is the unity wherein that accent dies aAvay.

To explain what has been said by examples let us take the proposition God is Being. The predicate is " being " : it has siibstantive significance, and thus absorbs the meaning of the subject within it. Being is meant to be here not predicate but the essential nature. Thereby, God seems to cease to be what he was when the proposition was put forward, viz. a fixed subject. Thinking [i.e. ordinary reflection], instead of getting any farther with the transition from subject to predicate, in reality finds its activity checked through the loss of the subject, and it is thrown back 62 Phenomenology of Mine on the thought of the subject because it misses this subject. Or again, since the predicate has itself been pronounced to be a subject, to be the being, to be the essential reality, which exhausts the nature of the subject, thinking finds the subject directly present in the predicate too : and now, instead of having, in the predicate, gone into itself, and preserved the freedom characteristic of ratiocination, it is absorbed in the content all the while, or, at any rate, is required to be so. Similarly, when it is said : " the real is the universal," the real, qua subject, passes away in its predicate. The universal is not only meant to have the significance of a predicate, as if the proposition stated that the real is universal : the universal is meant to express the essential nature of the real. Thinking therefore loses that fixed objective basis which it had in the subject, just as much as in the predicate it is thrown back on the subject, and therein returns not into itself but into the subject underlying the content.

This unaccustomed restraint imposed upon thought is for the most part the cause of the complaints made regarding the unintelhgibihty of philosophical writings, when otherwise the individual has in him the requisite mental cultivation for understanding them. In w^hat has been said we see the reason for the definite objection often made against them, that a good deal has to be read repeatedly before it can be understood — an accusation which is meant to imply something objectionable in the extreme, and one which if granted to be sound admits of no further reply. It is obvious from the above what is the state of the case here. The philosophical proposition, being a proposition, calls up the accepted view of the usual relation of subject and predicate, and suggests the idea of the customary procedure which takes place in knowledge. Its philosophical content destroys this way of proceeding and the ordinary view taken of this process. The common view discovers that the statement is intended in another sense than it is thinking of, and this correction of its opinion compels knowledge to recur to the proposition and take it now in some other sense. There is a difficulty which might well be avoided. It consists in mixing up the methods of procedure followed by speculation and ratiocination, when what is said of the subject has at one time the significance of its conceptual principle, and at another time the meaning of its predicate or accidental quality. The one mode of thinking invalidates the other ; and only that philosophical exposition can manage to become plastic in character which resolutely sets aside and has nothing to do with the ordinary way of relating the parts of a proposition.

As a matter of fact, non-speculative thinking has its rights too, which are justifiable, but are disregarded in the speculative way of stating a proposition. Abolishing the form of the proposition must not take place merely in an immediate manner, merely through the bare content of the proposition. On the contrary, we must give explicit expression to this cancelling process ; it must be not only that internal restraining and confining of thought within its own substance ; this turning of the conception back into itself has to be expressly brought out and stated. This process, which constitutes what formerly had to be accomphshed by proof, is the internal dialectical movement of the 64 Phenomenology of Mind proposition itself. This alone is the concrete speculative element, and only the exphcit expression of this is a speculative systematic exposition. Qua proposition, the speculative aspect is merely the internal restriction of, thought within its own substance where the return of the essential principle into itself is not yet brought out. Hence we often find philosophical expositions referring us to the inner intuition, and thus dispensing with the systematic statement of the dialectical movement of the proposition, which is what we wanted all the while. The proposition ought to express ivhat the truth is : in its essential nature the truth is subject : being so, it is merely the dialectical movement, this self-producing course of activity, maintaining its advance by returning back into itself. In the case of knowledge in other spheres this aspect of the articulated internal nature of the content is constituted by proof. When dialectic, however, has been separated from proof, the idea of philosophical demonstration as a matter of fact vanishes altogether.

On this point it may be mentioned that the dialectical process Ukewise consists of parts or elements which are propositions. The difficulty indicated seems therefore to recur continually, and seems to be a difficulty inherent in the nature of the case. This is like what happens in the ordinary process of proving anything ; the grounds it makes iise of themselves need to be based on other grounds again, and so on ad infinitum. This manner of furnishing grounds and conditions, however, concerns that type of proof from which the dialectical movement is distinct and hence belongs to the process of external knowledge. As to what this movement is, its element is the bare concept ; this furnishes a content which is through and through subject impUciter and per se. There is to be found, therefore, no sort of content standing in a relation, as it were, to an underlying subject, and getting its significance by being attached to this as a predicate. The proposition as it appears is a mere empty form. Apart from the sensuously apprehended or ideally presented {vorgestellten) self, it is in the main the mere name qua name which denotes the subject pure and simple, the empty unit without any conceptual character. For this reason it would e.g. be expedient to avoid the name " God." because this word is not in its primary use a conception as well, but the special name of an underlying subject, its fixed resting-place ; while, on the other hand, being or the one, singleness, subject, etc., themselves directly indicate conceptions. Furthermore, if speculative truths are stated about that subject [God], even then their content is devoid of the immanent notion, because that content is merely present in the form of a passive subject, and owing to this the speculative truths easily take on the character of mere edification. From this side, too, the obstacle, arising from the habit of putting the speculative predicate in the form of a proposition, instead of taking it as an inherent essential conception, is capable of being made greater or less by the mere way philosophical truths are put forward. Philosophical exposition, faithfully following its insight into the nature of speculative truth, must retain the dialectical form, and exclude everything which is not grasped conceptually and is a conception.

As in the case of the procedure of ratiocination, the study of philosophy finds obstruction, too, in the un- 66 Phenomenology of Mind reasoning conceit that builds itself on well-established truths, which the possessor considers he has no need to return upon and reconsider, but rather takes to be fundamental, and thinks he can propound as well as decide and pass sentence by means thereof. In this regard, it is especially needful to make once again a serious business of philosophy. In all spheres of science, art, skill, and handicraft it is never doubted that, in order to master them, a considerable amount of trouble must be spent in learning and in being trained. A.S regards philosophy, on the contrary, there seems still an assumption prevalent that, though every one with eyes and fingers is not on that account in a position to make shoes if he only gets leather and a last, yet everybody understands how to philosophise straight away, and pass judgment on philosophy, simply because he possesses the criterion for doing so in his natural reason — as if he did not in the same way possess the standard for shoemaking too in his own foot. It seems as if the possession of philosophy lay just in the want of knowledge and study, as if philosophy left off where the latter began. It is commonly held to be a formal kind of knowledge devoid of all substantial content. There is a general failure to perceive that, in the case of any knowledge and any science, what is taken for truth, even as regards content, can only deserve the name of " truth " when philosophy has had a hand in its production. Let the other sciences try as much as they hke to get along by ratiocination or raisonnement without philosophy, they are unable to keep alive without it, or to have any spiritual significance and truth in them.

As regards philosophy in its proper and genuine sense, we find put forward without any hesitation, as an entirely sufficient equivalent for the long course of mental discipHne — for that profound and fruitful process through which the human spirit attains to knowledge — the direct revelation of the divine and the healthy common sense of mankind, imtroubled and undisciplined by any other knowledge or by proper philosophical reflection. These are held to be a good substitute for real philosophy, much in the way as chicory is lauded as a substitute for coffee. It is not a very pleasing spectacle to observe uncultivated ignorance and barbarity of mind, with neither grace nor taste, without the capacity to concentrate its thoughts on an abstract proposition, still less on a connected statement of such propositions, confidently proclaiming itself to be intellectual freedom and toleration, and even the inspiration of genius. This last used once upon a time, as every one knows, to be all the rage in the case of poetry, as it is now in philosophy. Instead of poetry, however, the efforts of this form of inspiration, when it had any sense at all, resulted in the production of jejune prose, or, if it got beyond that, it produced raving nonsense. In the same way here in the case of philosophy ; philosophising by the hght of nature, which thinks itself too good for conceptual thinking, and, because of the want of it, takes itself to have direct intuitive ideas and poetical thoughts, — such philosophising trades in arbitrary combinations of an imagination merely disorganised through thinking — fictitious creations that are neither fish nor flesh, neither poetry nor philosophy.

On the other hand again, when instinctive philosophy follows the more secure course prescribed by healthy 68 Phenomenology of Mind common sense, it supplies, at tlie very best, a rhetorical melange of commonplace truths. When it is charged with the triviahty of what it offers, it assures us, in reply, that the fullness and richness of its meaning lie deep down in its own heart, and that others must feel this too, since with such phrases as the " heart's natural innocence," " purity of conscience," and so on, it supposes it has expressed things that are ultimate and final, to which no one can take exception, and about which nothing further can be required. But the very problem in hand was just that the best must not be left behind hidden away in secret, but be brought out of the depths and set forth in the light of day. It could quite well from the start have spared itself this trouble of bringing forward ultimate and final truths of that sort ; they were long since to be found, say, in the Catechism, in popular proverbs, etc. It is an easy matter to take such truths in their indefinite and crooked inaccurate form, and in many cases to point out that the mind convinced of them is conscious of the very opposite truths. When it struggles to get itself out of the mental embarrassment thereby produced, it will tumble into further confusion, and possibly burst out with the assertion that in short and in fine the matter is settled, the truth is so and so, and anything else is mere " sophistry " — a password used by plain common sense against cultivated critical reason, hke the phrase " visionary dreaming," by which those ignorant of philosophy sum up its character once for all. Since the man of common sense appeals to his feehng, to an oracle within his breast, he is ready to meet any one who does not agree. He has simply to explain that he has no more to say to any one who

does not find and feel the same as himself. In other words, he tramples the roots of humanity under foot. For the nature of hiunanity is to impel men to agree with one another, and its very existence hes simply in the exphcit reahsation of a community of conscious life. What is anti-human, the condition of mere animals, consists in keeping within the sphere of feeling pure and simple, and in being able to communicate only by way of feehng-states. When a man asks for a royal road to science, no more convenient and comfortable way can be mentioned to him than to put his trust in " healthy common sense " ; and in order, besides, to keep abreast of the times and advance with philosophy, let him read reviews of philosophical works, and even go the length of reading the prefaces and first paragraphs of the works themselves ; for the latter give the general principles on which everything turns, while the reviews, besides the historical references, provide over and above the critical judgment and appreciation, which, being a judgment passed on the work, goes farther than the work that is judged. This common way a man can take in his dressing-gown. But spiritual elation in the eternal, the sacred, the infinite, moves along the highway of truth in the robes of the high priest — a road, that, from the first, is itself immediate being in its innermost, the inspiration of profound and original ideas and flashes of elevated thought. All the same, those depths do not yet reveal the well-spring of inner reality ; nor, again, do these sky-rockets illumine the empyrean. True thoughts and scientific insight can only be won by the labour of the notion. Conceptions alone can produce universahty in the knowing process. This vmiversality is critically

70 Phenomenology of Mind developed and completely finished knowledge, and not the common indefiniteness and inadequacy of ordinary intelligence ; nor, again, is it that extraordinary kind of universahty where the powers and potencies of reason are spoiled and ruined by the indolence and vanity of genius ; it is truth successfully arrived at its own inherent native form, and capable of being the property of every self-conscious reason. Since I have taken the self-development of conceptions or notions to be the medium wherein science really exists, and since in those respects to which I have drawn attention as well as in others, current ideas about the nature of truth and the shape it assumes deviate from my view, and indeed are quite opposed to my position, it is not hkely that the consideration of all this will promise well for a favourable reception of an attempt to expound the system of science in this sense. In the meantime, I may call to mind that while e.g. the supreme merit of Plato's philosophy has sometimes been held to consist in his myths which are scientifically valueless, there have also been times, spoken of even as times of mere sentimentahty and emotion, when the AristoteHan philosophy has been respected on account of its speculative depth of insight, and when the Parmenides of Plato — perhaps the greatest hterary product of ancient dialectic — has been taken to be the positive expression of the divine life, the unveiling and disclosing of its inmost truth. I may reflect, too, that notwithstanding much cloudy obscurity which was the product of ecstasy, this misunderstood ecstasy was in point of fact meant to be nothing else than the activity of the pure notion ; furthermore, that what is best in the philosophy of our time takes its value to lie

in its scientific character ; and even though others take a difierent view, it is only in virtue of its scientific character that recent philosophy really gets its worth acknowledged and accepted. Thus, then, I too may hope that this attempt to vindicate and claim science for conceptual thought, and systematically to develop and present science in this its own pecuhar medium, will manage to make a way for itself by the inherent truth of the result accomphshed. We may rest assured that it is the nature of truth to force its way to recognition when its time comes, and that it only appears when its time has come, and hence never appears too soon, and never finds a public that is not ripe to receive it ; and, further, we may be sure that the individual thinker requires this result to take place, in order to give him confidence in regard to what is no more as yet than a matter for himself singly and alone, and in order to find his assurance, which in the first instance merely belongs to a particular individual, accepted as something universal. In this connection, however, it is very often necessary to distinguish the public from those who take upon themselves to be its representatives and spokesmen. The pubhc takes up an attitude in many respects quite difierent from the latter, indeed, even opposed to them. Whereas the pubhc good-naturedly and generously will rather take the blame upon itself when a philosophical work is not quite acceptable or intelhgible to it, these " representatives," on the contrary, convinced of their own competence, put all the blame on the authors. The influence of the work on the pubhc is more silent than the action of those " representatives," who are like the dead burying their dead. While the general

72 Phenomenology of Mind level of insight at the present time is in the main more highly cultivated, its curiosity more quickened and alert, and its judgment more swiftly made up and pronomiced, so that the feet of those who will carry you out are already at the door : at the same time we have often to distinguish from all this the slower and more gradual effect which rectifies the direction of attention caught and compelled by imposing assurances, corrects, too, contemptuous censure, and after a httle provides a contemporary audience for one class, while another after a temporary vogue finds no audience with posterity any longer. For the rest, at a time when the universal nature of spiritual life has become so very much emphasised and strengthened, and the mere individual aspect has become, as it should be, correspondingly a matter of indiilerence, when, too, that universal aspect holds, by the entire range of its substance, the full measure of the wealth it has built up, and lays claim to it all, the share in the total work of mind that falls to the activity of any particular individual can only be very small. Because this is so, the individual must all the more forget himself, as in fact the very nature of science implies and requires that he should ; and he must, moreover, become and do what he can. But all the less must be demanded of him, just as he must expect the less from himself, and ask the less for himself.

IT is natural to suppose that, before philosopliy enters upon its subject proper — namely, the actual knowledge of what truly is — it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it. The precaution seems legitimate, partly because there are various kinds of knowledge, among which one might be better adapted than another for the attainment of our purpose, — and thus a wrong choice is possible : partly, again, because knowing is a faculty of a definite kind and with a determinate range, without the more precise determination of its nature and limits we might take hold on clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth. This apprehensiveness is sure to pass even into the conviction that the whole enterprise which sets out to secure for consciousness by means of knowledge what exists fer se, is in its very nature absurd ; and that between knowledge and the Absolute there lies a boundary which completely cuts o£E the one from the other. For if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absolute Reahty, the suggestion immediately occurs that the application of an instrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails in the process and has in

74 Phenomenology of Mind view a moulding and alteration of it. Or, again, if knowledge is not an instrument wliich we actively employ, but a kind of passive medium through wliich the light of the truth reaches us, then here, too, we do not receive it as it is in itself, but as it is through and in this medium. In either case we employ a means which immediately brings about the very opposite of its own end ; or, rather, the absurdity lies in making use of any means at all. It seems indeed open to us to find in the knowledge of the way in which the instrument operates, a remedy for this parlous state ; for thereby it becomes possible to remove from the result the part which, in our idea of the Absolute received through that instrument, belongs to the instrument, and thus to get the truth in its purity. But this improvement would, as a matter of fact, only bring us back to the point where we were before. If we take away again from a definitely formed thing that which the instrument has done in the shaping of it, then the thing (in this case the Absolute) stands before us once more just as it was previous to all this trouble, which, as we now see, was superfluous. If the Absolute were only to be brought on the whole nearer to us by this agency, without any change being wrought in it, hke a bird caught by a limestick, it would certainly scorn a trick of that sort, if it were not in its very nature, and did it not wish to be, beside us from the start. For a trick is what knowledge in such a case would be, since by all its busy toil and trouble it gives itself the air of doing something quite different from bringing about a relation that is merely immediate, and so a waste of time to estabhsh. Or, again, if the examination of knowledge, which we represent as a medium,

makes us acquainted with tke law of its refraction, it is likewise useless to eliminate tkis examination from tke result. For knowledge is not tke divergence of tke ray, but tke ray itself by wkick tke trutk comes in contact witk us ; and if tkis be removed, tke bare direction or tke empty place would alone be indicated. Meanwkile, if tke fear of falkng into error introduces an element of distrust into science, wkick witkout any scruples of tkat sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand wky, conversely, a distrust skould not be placed in tkis very distrust, and wky we skould not take care lest tke fear of error is not just tke initial error. As a matter of fact, tkis fear presupposes sometking, indeed a great deal, as trutk, and supports its scruples and consequences on wkat skould itself be examined beforekand to see wketker it is trutk. It starts witk ideas of Imowledge as an instrument, and as a medium ; and presupposes a distinction of ourselves from tkis knowledge. More especially it takes for granted tkat tke Absolute stands on one side, and tkat knowledge on tke otker side, by itself and cut off from tke Absolute, is still sometking real ; in otker words, tkat knowledge, wkick, by being outside tke Absolute, is certainly also outside trutk, is nevertkeless true — a position wkick, wkile calkng itself fear of error, makes itself known ratker as fear of tke trutk.

Tkis conclusion comes from tke fact tkat tke Absolute alone is true or tkat tke True is alone absolute. It may be set aside by making tke distinction tkat a knowledge wkick does not indeed know tke Absolute as science wants to do, is none tke less true too; and tkat knowledge in general, tkougk it may 76 Phenomenology of Mind possibly be incapable of grasping the Absolute, can still be capable of truth of another kind. But we shall see as we proceed that random talk like this leads in the long run to a confused distinction between an absolute truth and a truth of some other sort, and that " absolute," " knowledge," and so on, are words which presuppose a meaning that has first to be got at. With suchlike useless ideas and expressions about knowledge, as an instrument to take hold of the Absolute, or as a medium through which we have a ghmpse of truth, and so on (external relations to which all these ideas of a knowledge which is divided from the Absolute and an Absolute divided from knowledge m the last resort lead), we need not concern ourselves. Nor need we trouble about the evasive pretexts which create the incapacity of science out of the presupposition of such relations, in order at once to be rid of the toil of science, and to assume the air of serious and zealous effort about it. Instead of being troubled with giving answers to all these, they may be straightway rejected as adventitious and arbitrary ideas; and the use which is here made of words like " absolute," "knowledge," as also "objective" and "subjective," and innumerable others, whose meaning is assumed to be famihar to everyone, might well be regarded as so much deception. For to give out that their significance is universally familiar, and that every one indeed possesses their notion, rather looks like an attempt to dispense with the only important matter, which is just to give this notion. With better right, on the contrary, we might spare ourselves the trouble of taking any notice at all of such ideas and ways of talking which would have the effect of warding off science altogether ;

for they make a mere empty show of knowledge which at once vanishes when science comes on the scene. But science, in the very fact that it comes on the scene, is itself a phenomenon ; its " coming on the scene " is not yet itself carried out in all the length and breadth of its truth. In this regard, it is a matter of indifference whether we consider that it (science) is the phenomenon because it makes its appearance alongside another kind of knowledge, or call that other untrue knowledge its process of appearing. Science, however, must Kberate itself from this phenomenality, and it can only do so by turning against it. For, science cannot simply reject a form of knowledge which is not true, and treat this as a common view of things, and then assure us that itself is an entirely different kind of knowledge, and holds the other to be of no accoimt at all ; nor can it appeal to the fact that in this other there are presages of a better. By giviag that assurance it would declare its force and value to he in its bare existence ; but the untrue knowledge appeals hkewise to the fact that it is, and assures us that to it science is nothing. One barren assurance, however, is of just as much value as another. Still less can science appeal to the presages of a better, which are to be found present in untrue knowledge and are there pointing the way towards science ; for it would, on the one hand, be appealing again in the same way to a merely existent fact ; and, on the other, it would be appealing to itself, to the way in which it exists in untrue knowledge, i.e. to a bad form of its own existence, to its appearance, rather than to its real and true nature {an und fur sich). For this

78 Phenomenology of Mind reason we shall here undertake the exposition of knowledge as a phenomenon. Now because this exposition has for its object only phenomenal knowledge, the exposition itself seems not to be science, free, self-moving in the shape proper to itself, but may, from this point of view, be taken as the pathway of the natural consciousness which is pressing forward to true knowledge. Or it can be regarded as the path of the soul, which is traversing the series of its own forms of embodiment, hke stages appointed for it by its own nature, that it may possess the clearness of spiritual hfe when, through the complete experience of its own self, it arrives at the knowledge of what it is in itself. Natural consciousness will prove itself to be only knowledge in principle or not real knowledge. Since, however, it immediately takes itself to be the real and genuine knowledge, this pathway has a negative significance for it; what is a reahsation of the notion of knowledge means for it rather the ruin and overthrow of itself ; for on this road it loses its own truth. Because of that, the road can be looked on as the path of doubt, or more properly a highway of despair. For what happens there is not what is usually imderstood by doubting, a jostling against this or that supposed truth, the outcome of which is again a disappearance in due course of the doubt and a return to the former truth, so that at the end the matter is taken as it was before. On the contrary, that pathway is the conscious insight into the untruth of the phenomenal knowledge, for which that is the most real which is after all only the unreaUsed notion. On that account, too, this thoroughgoing scepticism is not what doubt-

less earnest zeal for truth and science fancies it tas equipped itself with in order to be ready to deal with them, — viz. : the resolve, in science, not to dehver itself over to the thoughts of others on their mere authority, but to examine everything for itself, and only follow its own conviction, or, still better, to produce everything itself and hold only its own act for true. The series of shapes, which consciousness traverses on this road, is rather the detailed history of the process of training and educating consciousness itself up to the level of science. That resolve presents this mental development, (Bildung) in the simple form of an intended purpose, as immediately finished and complete, as having taken place ; this pathway, on the other hand, is, as opposed to this abstract intention, or untruth, the actual carrying out of that process of development. To follow one's own conviction is certainly more than to hand oneself over to authority ; but by the conversion of opinion held on authority into opinion held out of personal conviction, the content of what is held is not necessarily altered, and truth has not thereby taken the place of error. If we stick to a system of opinion and prejudice resting on the authority of others, or upon personal conviction, the one differs from the other merely in the conceit which animates the latter. Scepticism, directed to the whole compass of phenomenal consciousness, on the contrary, makes mind for the first time quahfied to test what truth is ; since it brings about a despair regarding what are called natural views, thoughts, and opinions, which it is matter of indifference to call personal or belonging to others, and with which the consciousness, that proceeds straight

80 Phencnnenology of Mind away to criticise and test, is still filled and hampered, thus being, as a matter of fact, incapable of what it wants to undertake. The completeness of the forms of unreal consciousness will be brought about precisely through the necessity of the advance and the necessity of their connection with one another. To make this comprehensible we may remark, by way of preliminary, that the exposition of untrue consciousness in its untruth is not a merely negative process. Such a one-sided view of it is what the natural consciousness generally adopts ; and a knowledge, which makes this one-sidedness its essence, is one of those shapes assumed by incomplete consciousness which falls into the coujse of the inquiry itself and will come before us there. For this view is scepticism, which always sees in the result only pure nothingness, and abstracts from the fact that this nothing is determinate, is the nothing of that out of wliicJi it comes as a resiilt. Nothing, however, is only, in fact, the true result, when taken as the nothing of what it comes from ; it is thus itself a determinate nothing, and has a content. The scepticism which ends with the abstraction " nothing " or " emptiness " can advance from this not a step farther, but must wait and see whether there is possibly anything new offered, and what that is, — in order to cast it into the same abysmal void. When once, on the other hand, the result is apprehended, as it truly is, as determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen ; and in the negation the transition is made by which the progress through the complete succession of forms comes about of itself.

The goal, however, is fixed for Imowledge just as necessarily as the succession in the process. The terminus is at that point where knowledge is no longer compelled to go beyond itself, where it finds its own self, and the notion corresponds to the object and the object to the notion. The progress towards this goal consequently is without a halt and at no earUer stage is satisfaction to be found. That which is confined to a life of nature is unable of itself to go beyond its immediate existence; but by something other than itself it is forced beyond that ; and to be thus wrenched out of its setting is its death. Consciousness, however, is to itself its own notion ; thereby it immediately transcends what is limited, and, since this latter belongs to it, consciousness transcends its own self. Along with the particular there is at the same time set up the " beyond," were this only beside what is limited, as in the case of spatial intuition. Consciousness, therefore, suffers this violence at its own hands ; it destroys its own limited satisfaction. At the feeling of this violence, anxiety for the truth may well withdraw, and struggle to preserve for itself that which is in danger of being lost. But it can find no rest. Should that anxious fearfulness wish to remain always in unthinking indolence, thought will agitate the thoughtlessness, its restlessness will disturb that indolence. Or let it take its stand as a form of sentiimentahty which assures us it finds everything good in its kind, and this assurance likewise will suffer violence at the hands of reason, which finds something not good just because and in so far as it is a kind. Or, again, fear of the truth may conceal itself from itself and others behind the pretext that precisely burning zeal for the very truth makes it so difficult,

8? Phenomenology of Mind nay impossible, to find any other truth, except that of which alone vanity is capable — that of being ever so much cleverer than any ideas, which one gets from oneself or others, could make possible. This sort of conceit which imderstands how to behttle every truth and turn away from it back into itself, and gloats over this its own private understanding, which always knows how to dissipate every possible thought, and to find, instead of all the content, merely the barren Ego — this is a satisfaction which must be left to itself ; for it flees the imiversal and seeks only an isolated existence on its own account {Fiirsicliseyn). As the foregoing has been stated, provisionally and in general, concerning the manner and the necessity of the process of the inquiry, it may also be of further service to make some observations regarding the method of carrying this out. This exposition, viewed as a process of relating science to phenomenal knowledge, and as an inquiry and critical examination into the reality of knowing, does not seem able to be effected without some presupposition which is laid down as •in ultimate criterion. For an examination consists in applying an accepted standard, and, on the final agreement or disagreement therewith of what is tested, deciding whether the latter is right or wrong ; and bhe standard in general, and science as well, were this the criterion, is thereby accepted as the essence or inherently real (Ansich). But, here, where science first appears on the scene, neither science nor any sort of standard has justified itself as the essence or ultimate reality ; and without this no examination seems able to be instituted.

This contradiction and the removal of it will become more definite it, to begin witti, we call to mind tlie abstract determinations of knowledge and of truth, as they are found in consciousness. Consciousness, we find, distinguishes from itself something, to which at the same time it relates itself ; or, to use the current expression, there is something for consciousness ; and the determinate form of this process of relating, or of there being something for a consciousness, is knowledge. But from this being for another we distinguish being in itself or fer se ; what is related to knowledge is likewise distinguished from it, and posited as also existing outside this relation ; the aspect of being per se or in itself is called Truth. What really lies in these determinations does not further concern us here ; for since the object of our inquiry is phenomenal knowledge, its determinations are also taken up, in the first instance, as they are immediately offered to us. And they are offered to us very much in the way we have just stated. If now oitr inquiry deals with the truth of knowledge, it appears feljat we are inquiring what knowledge is in itself. But "In this inquiry knowledge is our object, it is for us ; and the essential nature (Ansich) of knowledge, were this to come to hght, would be rather its being for us : what we should assert to be its essence would rather be, not the truth of knowledge, but only om* knowledge of it. The essence or the criterion would he in us, and what was to be compared with this standard, and decided upon as a result of this comparison, would not necessarily have to recognise that criterion.

But the nature of the object which we are examining surmounts this separation, or semblance of separation, 84 Phenomenology of Mind and presupposition. Consciousness furnislies its own criterion in itself, and the inquiry will thereby be a comparison of itself with its own self ; for the distinction, just made, falls inside itself. In consciousness there is one element for an other, or, in general, consciousness impHcates the specific character of the moment of knowledge. At the same time this " other " is to consciousness not merely for it, but also outside this relation, or has a being in itself, i.e. there is the moment of truth. Thus in what consciousness inside itself declares to be the essence or truth we have the standard which itself sets up, and by which we are to measure its l^TL0wledge. Suppose we call knowledge the notion, and the essence or truth "being" or the object, then the examination consists in seeing whether the notion corresponds with the object. But if we call the inner nature of the object, or what it is in itself, the notion, and, on the other side, understand by object the notion qua object, i.e. the way the notion is for an other, then the examination consists in our seeing whether the object corresponds to its own notion. It is clear, of course, that both of these processes are the same. The essential fact, however, to be borne in mind throughout the whole inquiry is that both these moments, notion and object, " being for another " and " being in itself," themselves fall within that knowledge which we are examining. Consequently we do not require to bring standards with us, nor to apply our fancies and thoughts in the inquiry; and just by our leaving these aside we are enabled to treat and discuss the subject as it actually is in itself and for itself, as it is in its complete reahty.

But not only in this respect, that notion and object, the criterion and what is to be tested, are ready to hand in consciousness itself, is any addition of ours superfluous, but we are also spared the trouble of compariag these two and of making an examination in the strict sense of the term; so that in this respect, too, since consciousness tests and examines itself, all we are left to do is simply and solely to look on. For consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, on the other, consciousness of itself ; consciousness of what to it is true, and consciousness of its knowledge of that truth. Since both are for the same consciousness, it is itself their comparison; it is the same consciousness that decides and knows whether its knowledge of the object corresponds with this object or not. The object, it is true, appears only to be in such wise for consciousness as consciousness knows it. Consciousness does not seem able to get, so to say, behind it as it is, not for consciousness, but in itself, and consequently seems also unable to test knowledge by it. But just because consciousness has, in general, knowledge of an object, there is already present the distinction that the inherent nature, what the object is in itself, is one thing to consciousness, while knowledge, or the being of the object for consciousness, is another moment. Upon this distinction, which is present as a fact, the examination turns. Should both, when thus compared, not correspond, consciousness seems bound to alter its knowledge, in order to make it fit the object. But in the alteration of the knowledge, the object itself also, in point of fact, is altered ; for the knowledge which existed was essentially a knowledge of the object ; with change in the knowledge, the object also becomes

86 Phenomenology of Mind different, since it belonged essentially to this knowledge. Hence consciousness comes to find that what formerly to it was the essence is not what is fer se, or what was fer se was only fer se for consciousness. Since, then, in the case of its object consciousness finds its knowledge not corresponding with this object, the object hkewise fails to hold out ; or the standard for examining is altered when that, whose criterion this standard was to be, does not hold its ground in the course of the examination ; and the examination is not only an examination of knowledge, but also of the criterion used in the process. This dialectic process which consciousness executes on itself — on its knowledge as well as on its object — in the sense that out of it the new and true object arises, is precisely what is termed Experience. In this connection, there is a moment in the process just mentioned which should be brought into more decided prominence, and by which a new hght is cast on the scientific aspect of the following exposition. Consciousness knows something ; this something is the essence or what is fer se. This object, however, is also the fer se, the inherent reality, for consciousness. Hence comes the ambiguity of this truth. Consciousness, as we see, has now two objects ; one is the first fer se, the second is the existence for consciousness of this fer se. The last object appears at first sight to be merely the reflection of consciousness into itself, i.e. an idea not of an object, but solely of its knowledge of that first object. But, as was already indicated, by that very process the first object is altered ; it ceases to be what 'is fer se, and becomes consciously something which is fer se only for consciousness. Consequently, then,

wtat this real fer se is for consciousness is truth : which, however, means that this is the essential reahty, or the object which consciousness has. This new object contains the nothingness of the first ; the new object is the experience concerning that first object. In this treatment of the course of experience, there is an element in virtue of which, it does not seem to be in agreement with what is ordinarily understood by experience. The transition from the first object and the knowledge of it to the other object, in regard to which we say we have had experience, was so stated tbat the knowledge of the first object, the existence for consciousness of the first ens per se, is itself to be the second object. But it usually seems that we learn by experience the untruth of our first notion by appealing to some other object which we may happen to find casually and externally; so that, in general, what we have is merely the bare and simple apprehension of what is in and for itself. On the view above given, however, the new object is seen to have come about by a transformation or conversion of consciousness itself. This way of looking at the matter is our doing, what we contribute ; by its means the series of experiences through which consciousness passes, is lifted into a scientifically constituted sequence, but this does not exist for the consciousness we contemplate and consider. We have here, however, the same sort of circumstance, again, of which we spoke a short time ago when dealing with the relation of this exposition to scepticism, viz. that the result which at any time comes about in the case of an untrue mode of knowledge cannot possibly collapse into an empty nothing, but must necessarily be taken as the negation of that of which it is a result

8S Phenomenology of Mind — a result which contains what truth the preceding mode of knowledge has in it. What we have here is presented to us in this form : — since what at first appeared as object is reduced, when it passes into consciousness, to what knowledge takes it to be, and the ultimate entity, the real in itself, becomes what this entity per se is for consciousness; this latter is the new object, whereupon there appears also a new mode or embodiment of consciousness, of which the essence is something other than that of the preceding mode. It is this circumstance which carries forward the whole succession of the modes or attitudes of consciousness in their own necessity. It is only this necessity, this origination of the new object — which offers itself to consciousness without consciousness knowing how it comes by it— that to us, who watch the process, is to be seen going on, so to say, behind its back. Thereby there enters into its process a moment of being per se or of beiag for us, which is not expressly presented to that consciousness which is in the grip of experience itself. The content, however, of what we see arising, exists for it, and we lay hold of and comprehend merely its formal character, i.e. its hare origination ; for it, what has thus arisen has merely the character of object, while, for us, it appears at the same time as a process and coming into being.

In virtue of that necessity this pathway to science is itself eo if so science, and is, moreover, as regards its content. Science of the Experience of Consciousness. The experience which consciousness has concerning itself can, by its essential principle, embrace nothing less than the entire system of consciousness, the whole realm of the truth of mind, and in such wise that the aaoments of truth are set forth in the specific and pecuhar character they here possess — i.e. not as abstract pure moments, but as they are for consciousness, or as consciousness itself appears in its relation to them, and in virtue of which they are moments of the whole, are Bmbodiments or modes of consciousness. In pressing forward to its true form of existence, consciousness will come to a point at which it lays aside its semblance of being hampered with what is foreign to it, with what is only for it and exists as an other ; it will reach a position where its appearance becomes identified with its essence, where, in consequence, its exposition coincides with just this very point, this very stage of the science proper of mind. And, finally, when it grasps this its own essence, it will indicate the nature of absolute knowledge itself.

CEETAINTY OE KNOWLEDGE AT THE LEVEL OF SENSE —THE "THIS," AND "MEANING." THE knowledge, which is at the start or iromediately our object, can be nothing else than just that which is immediate knowledge, knowledge of the immediate, of what is. We have, in dealing with it, to proceed, too, in an immediate way, to accept what is given, not altering anything in it as it is presented before us, and keeping mere apprehension (Auffassen) free from conceptual comprehension (Begreifen) The concrete content, which sensuous certainty furnishes, makes this prima facie appear to be the richest kind of knowledge, to be even a knowledge of endless wealth — a wealth to which we can as little find any limit when we traverse its extent in space and time, where that content is presented before us, as when we take a fragment out of the abundance it offers us and by dividing and dividing seek to penetrate its intent. Besides that, it seems to be the truest, the most authentic knowledge : for it has not as yet dropped anything from the object ; it has the object before itself in its entirety and completeness. This bare fact of certainty, however, is really and admittedly the abstractest and the poorest kind of truth. It merely says regarding what

it knows : it is ; and its truth contains solely tke heing of tlie fact it knows. Consciousness, on its part, in the case of this form of certainty, takes the shape merely of pure Ego. In other words, I, in such a case, am merely qua pure This, and the object likewise is merely qua pure This. I, this particular conscious I, am certain of this fact before me, not because I qua consciousness have developed myself in connection with it and in manifold ways set thought to work about it : and not, again, because the fact, the thing, of which I am certain, in virtue of its having a multitude of distinct quahties, was replete with possible modes of relation and a variety of connections with other things. Neither has anything to do with the truth sensuous certainty contains : neither the I nor the thing has here the meaning of a manifold relation with a variety of other things, of mediation in a variety of ways. The I does not contain or imply a manifold of ideas, the I here does not think: nor does the thing mean what has a multiphcity of qualities. Rather, the thing, the fact, is ; and it is merely because it is. It is — that is the essential point for senseknowledge, and that bare fact of heing, that simple immediacy, constitutes its truth. In the same way the certainty qua relation, the certainty " of " something, is an immediate pure relation ; consciousness is I — nothing more, a pure this ; the individual consciousnes knows a pure this, or knows what is individual.

But, when we look closely, there is a good deal more implied in that bare pure being, which constitutes the kernel of this form of certainty, and is given out by it as its truth. A concrete actual certainty of sense is not merely this pure immediacy, but an example, an instance, of that immediacy. Amongst the innumerable 92 Phenomenology of Mind distinctions that here come to hght, we find in all cases the fundamental difference — viz. that in sense-experience pure being at once breaks up into the two " thises," as we have called them, one this as I, and one as object. When we reflect on this distinction, it is seen that neither the one nor the other is merely immediate, merely is in sense-certainty, but is at the same time mediated : I have the certainty through the other, viz. through the actual fact ; and this, again, exists in that certainty through an other, viz. through the I. It is not only we who make this distinction of essential truth and particular example, of essence and instance, immediacy and mediation ; we find it in sense-certainty itself, and it has to be taken up in the form in which it exists there, not as we have just determined it. One of them is put forward in it as existing in simple immediacy, as the essential reality, the object. The other, however, is put forward as the non-essential, as mediated, something which is not per se in the certainty, but there through something else, ego, a state of knowledge which only knows the object because the object is, and which can as well be as not be. The object, however, is the real truth, is the essential reahty ; it is, quite indifferent to whether it is known or not ; it remains and stands even though it is not known, while the knowledge does not exist if the object is not there.

We have thiis to consider as to the object, whether in point of fact it does exist in sense-certainty itself as such an essential reality as that certainty gives it out to be ; whether its meaning and notion, which is to be essential reahty, corresponds to the way it is present in that certainty. We have for that purpose not to reflect about it and ponder what it might be in truth, but to deal with it merely as sense-certainty contains it. Sense-certainty itself has thus to be asked: What is the This ? If we take it in the two-fold form of its existence, as the Now and as the Here, the dialectic it has in it will take a form as intelhgible as the This itself. To the question. What is the Now ? we reply, for example, the Now is night-time. To test the truth of this certainty of sense, a simple experiment is all we need : write that truth down. A truth cannot lose anything by being written down, and just as httle by our preserving and keeping it. If we look again at the truth we have written down, look at it noiv, at this noon-time, we shall have to say it has turned stale and become out of date.

The Now that is night is kept fixed, i.e. it is treated as what it is given out to be, as something which is ; but it proves to be rather a something which is not. The Now itself no doubt maintains itself, but as what is not night ; similarly in its relation to the day which the Now is at present, it maintains itself as something that is also not day, or as altogether something negative. This self-maintaining Now is therefore not something immediate but something mediated ; for, qua something that remains and preserves itself, it is determined through and hy means of the fact that something else, namely day and night, is not. Thereby it is just as much as ever it was before, Now, and in being this simple fact, it is indifferent to what is still associated with it ; just as little as night or day is its being, it is just as truly also day and night ; it is not in the least affected by this otherness through which it is what it 94 Phenomenology of Mind is. A simple entity of this sort, whicii is by and through negation, which is neither this nor that, which / is a not-this, and with equal indiiTerence this as well as that — a thing of this kind we call a Universal. The Universal is therefore ia point of fact the truth of sensecertainty, the true content of sense-experience.

It is as a universal, too, that we give utterance to sensuous fact. What we say is : " This," i.e. the universal this ; or we say : " it is," i.e. being in general. Of course we do not present before our mind in saying so the universal this, or being in general, but we utter what is universal ; in other words, we do not actually and absolutely say what in this sense-certainty we really mean. Language, however, as we see, is the more truthful ; in it we ourselves refute directly and at once our own " meaning " ; and since universahty is the real truth of sense-certainty, and language merely expresses this truth, it is not possible at all for us even to express in words any sensuous existence which we " mean." The same will be the case when we take the Here, the other form of the This. The Here is e.g. the tree. I turn about and this truth has disappeared and has changed round into its opposite : the Here is not a tree, but a house. The Here itself does not disappear ; it is and remains in the disappearance of the house, tree, and so on, and is indifferently house, tree. The This is shown thus again to be mediated simflicity, in other words, to be universality.

Pure being, then, remains as the essential element for this sense-certainty, since sense-certainty in its very nature proves the universal to be the truth of its object. But that pure being is not in the form of something immediate, but of something in which the process of negation and mediation is essential. Consequently it is not what we intend or " mean " by being, but being with the characteristic that it is an abstraction, the purely universal ; and our intended " meaning," which takes the truth of sense-certainty to be not something universal, is alone left standing in contrast to this empty, indifferent Now and Here. If we compare the relation in which knowledge and the object first stood with the relation they have come to assume in this result, it is found to be just the reverse of what first appeared. The object, which professed to be the essential reahty, is now the nonessential element of sense-certainty ; for the universal, which the object has come to be, is no longer such as the object essentially was to be for sense-certainty. The certainty is now found to lie in the opposite element, namely in knowledge, which formerly was the non-essential factor. Its truth lies in the object as my (meinem) object, or lies in the " meaning " (meinen), in what I " mean " ; it is, because I know it. Sense- certainty is thus indeed banished from the object, but it is not yet thereby done away with ; it is merely forced back into the I. We have still to see what experience reveals regarding its reality in this sense.

The force of its truth thus Hes now in the I, in the, immediate fact of my being conscious of seeing, hearing, ( and so on ; the disappearance of the particular Now ' and Here that we " mean " is prevented by the fact that / keep hold on them. The Now is daytime, because I see it; the Here is a tree for a similar reason. Sensecertainty, however, goes through, in this connection, 96 Phenomenology of Mind the same dialectic process as in the former case. I, tins I, see the tree, and assert the tree to be the Here ; another I, however, sees the house and maintains the Here is not a tree but a house. Both truths have the same authenticity — the immediacy of seeing and the certainty and assurance both have as to their specific way of knowing ; but the one certainty disappears in the other. In all this, what does not disappear is the I qua universal, whose seeing is neither the seeing of this tree nor of this house, but just seeing simpliciter, which is mediated through the negation of this house, etc., and, in being so, is all the same simple and indifferent to what is associated with it, the house, the tree, and so on. I is merely universal, like Now, Here, or This in general. No doubt I " mean " an individual I, but just as little as I am able to say what I " mean " by Now, Here, so it is impossible in the case of the I too. By saying " this Here," " this Now," " an individual thing," I say all Thises, Heres, Nows, or Individuals. In the same way when I say " I," " this individual I," I say quite generally " all I's," every one is what I say, every one is " I," this individual I. When philosophy is requested, by way of putting it to a crucial test — a test which it could not pqssibly sustain — to " deduce," to " construe," " to find a priori," or however it is put, a so-called this thing, or this particular man,'* it is quite fair to ask that this demand should say what " this thing," or what " this I " it means : but to say this is quite impossible.

Sense-certainty discovers by_ej;perimce, therefore, that its essential nature lies neither in the object nor * Cf. Encvclo. § 250. in the I ; and that the immediacy pecuhar to it is neither an immediacy of the one nor of the other. For, in the case of both, what I "mean" is rather something non-essential ; and the object and the I are universals, in which that Now and Here and I, which I "mean," do not hold out, do not exist. We arrive in this way at the result, that we have to put the whole of sense-certainty as its essential reahty, and no longer merely one of its moments, as happened in both cases, where first the object as against the I, and then the I, was to be its true reality. Thus it is only the whole sense- certainty itself which persists therein as immediacy, and in consequence excludes from itself all the opposition which in the foregoing had a place there. This pure immediacy, then, has nothing more to do with the fact of otherness, with Here in the form of a tree passing into a Here that is not a tree, with Now in the sense of day-time changing into a Now that is night-time, or with there being an other I to which something else is object. Its truth stands fast as a self-identical relation making no distinction of essential and non-essential, between I and object, and into which, therefore, in general, no distinction can find its way. I, this I, assert, then, the Here as tree, and do not turn round so that for me Here might become not a tree, and I take no notice of the fact that another I finds the Here as not-tree, or that I myself at some other time take the Here as not-tree, the Now as not-day. I am directly conscious, I intuit and nothing more, 1 1 am pure intuition ; I am — seeing, looking. For myself I stand by the fact, the Now is day-time, or, again, by the fact the Here is tree, and, again, do not compare Here and Now themselves with one another ; I take

98 Phenomenology of Mind my stand on one immediate relation : the Now day. Since, then, this certainty will cease to exist if m^ direct its attention to a Now that is night or an I to whoi it is night, let us go to it and try to point to the No that is asserted. We must let ourselves foint it oh for the truth of this immediate relation is the trul of this ego which restricts itself to a Now or a Here. Were we to examine this truth afterwards, or stand at a distance from it, it would have no meaning at all ; for that would do away with the immediacy, which is of its essence. We have therefore to enter the same point of time or of space, indicate them, show them to ourselves, i.e. turn ourselves into the very same I, the very same This, which is the subject knowing with certainty. Let us, then, see how that immediate is constituted, which is shown to us. The Now is pointed out ; this Now. " Now " ; it has already ceased to be when it is pointed out. The Now that is, is other than the one indicated, and we see that the Now is just this — to be no longer the very time when it is. The Now as it is shown to us is one that has been, and that is its truth ; it does not have the truth of being, of something that is. No doubt this is true, that it has been ; but what has been is in point of fact not genuinely real, it is not, and the point in question concerned what is, concerned being.

In thus pointing out the Now we see then merely a process which takes the following course : First I point out the Now, and it is asserted to be the truth. I point it out, however, as something that has been, or as something cancelled and done away with. I thus annul and pass beyond that first truth and in the second place I now assert as the second truth that it has been, that it is superseded. But, thirdly, what has been is not ; I then supersede, cancel, its having been, the fact of its being annulled, the second truth, negate thereby the negation of the Now and return in so doing to the first position : that Now is. The Now and pointing out the Now are thus so constituted that neither the one nor the other is an immediate simple fact, but a process with diverse moments in it. A This is set up ; it is, however, rather an other tliat is set up ; the This is superseded : and this otherness, this cancelhng of the former, is itself again annulled, and so turned back to the first. But this first, reflected thus into itself, is not exactly the same as it was to begin with, namely something immediate : rather it is a something reflectedinto-self, a simple entity which remains in its otherness, what it is : a Now which is any number of Nows. And that is the genuinely true Now ; the Now is simple daytime which has many Nows within it — hours. A Now of that sort, again — an hour — is similarly many minutes ; and this Now — a minute — in the same way many Nows and so on. Showing, indicating, pointing out [the Now] is thus itself the very process which expresses what the Now in truth really is : namely a result, or a plurality of Nows all taken together. And the pointing out is the way of getting to know, of experiencing, that Now is a universal.

The Here poiuted out, which I keep hold of, is hkewise a this Here which, in fact, is not this Here, but a Before and Behind, an Above and Below, a Eight and Left. The Above is itself likewise this manifold otherness — above, below, etc. The Here, which 100 Phenomenology of Mind was to be pointed out, disappears in other Heres, and these disappear similarly. What is pointed out, held fast, and is permanent, is a negative This, which only is so when the Heres are taken as they should be, but therein cancel one another ; it is a simple complex of many Heres. The Here that is " meant " would be the point. But it is not : rather, when it is pointed out as being, as having existence, that very act of pointing out proves it to be not immediate knowledge, but a process, a movement from the Here " meant " through a plurality of Heres to the universal Here, which is a simple plurality of Heres, just as day is a simple plurality of Nows. It is clear from all this that the dialectic process involved in sense-certainty is nothing else than the mere history of its process — of its experience ; and sensecertainty itself is nothing else than simply this history. The naive consciousness, too, for that reason, is of itself always coming to this result, which is the real truth in this case, and is always having experience of it : but is always forgetting it again and beginning the process all over. It is therefore astonishing when, in defiance of this experience, it is announced as " universal experience " — nay, even as a philosophical doctrine, the outcome, in fact, of scepticism — that the reality or being of external things in the sense of " Thises," particular sense objects, has absolute validity and truth for consciousness. One who makes such an assertion really does not know what he is saying, does not know that he is stating the opposite of what he wants to say. The truth for consciousness of a " This " of sense is said to be universal experience ; but the very opposite is universal experience. Every consciousness of itself

cancels again, as soon as made, such a truth as e.g. the Here is a tree, or the Now is noon, and expresses the very opposite : the Here is not a tree but a house. And similarly it straightway cancels again the assertion which here annuls the first, and which is also just such an assertion of a sensuous This. And in all sense-certainty what we find by experience is in truth merely, as we have seen, that " This " is a universal, the very opposite of what that assertion maintained to be universal experience. We may be permitted here, in this appeal to universal experience, to anticipate * with a reference to the practical sphere. In this connection we may answer those who thus insist on the truth and certainty of the reality of objects of sense, by saying that they had better be sent back to the most elementary school of wisdom, the ancient Eleusinian mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus ; they have not yet learnt the inner secret of the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. For those who are initiated into these mysteries not only come to doubt the being of things of sense, but get into a state of despair about them altogether ; and they themselves partly bring about the nothingness of those things, partly they see those things accomplish their own nothingness. Even animals are not shut off from this wisdom ; but show they are deeply initiated into it. For they do not stand stock still before things of sense as if these were things fer se, with being in themselves : they despair of this reality altogether, and in complete assurance of the nothingness of things they fall-to without more ado and eat them up. And all nature proclaims, as animals do, these open secrets, these

* Cf. Analysis of Desire, p. IGG fF. 102 Phenomenology of Mind mysteries revealed to all, which teach what the truth of things of sense is. Those who put forward such assertions really themselves say, if we bear in mind what we remarked before, the direct opposite of what they mean : — a fact which is perhaps best able to bring them to reflect on the nature of the certainty of sense-experience. They speak of the " existence " of external objects, which can be more precisely characterised as actual, absohitely particular, wholly personal, individual things, each of them not like anything or anyone else ; this is the existence which they say has absolute certainty and truth. They " mean " this bit of paper I am writing on, or rather have written on : but they do not say what they " mean." If they really wanted to say this bit of paper which they "mean," and they wanted to say so, that is impossible, because the This of sense, which is " meant," cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i.e. to what is inherently universal. In the very attempt to say it, it would, therefore, cruinble in their hands ; those who have begun to describe it would not be able to finish doing so : they would have to hand it over to others, who would themselves in the last resort have to confess to speaking about a thing that has no being. They " mean," then, doubtless this bit of paper here, which is quite different from that bit over there ; but they speak of actual things, external or sensible objects, absolutely individual, real, and so on; that is, they say about them what is simply universal. Consequently what is called mispeakable is nothing else than what is untrue, irrational, something barely and simply " meant."

If nothing is said of a thing except that it is an actual tiling, an external object, this only makes it the most imiversal of all possible things, and thereby we express its likeness, its identity, with everything, rather than its difference from everything else. When I say "an individual thing," I at once state it to be really quite a universal, for everything is an individual thing : and in the same way " this thing " is everything and anything we like. More precisely, as this bit of paper, each and every paper is a " this bit of paper," and I have thus said all the while what is universal. If I want, however, to help out speech — which has the divine nature of directly turning the mere " meaning " right round about, making it into something else, and so not letting it ever come the length of words at all — by pointing out this bit of paper, then I get the experience of what is, in point of fact, the real truth of sense-certainty. I point it out as a Here, which is a Here amongst other Heres, or is in itself simply many Heres together, i.e. is a universal. I take it up then, as in truth it is ; and instead of knowing something immediate, I " take " something " truly," I fer-ceive {wahrnehne, per-cipio).

[In this as in the preceding section apprehension is effected under conditions of sense. But whereas in the preceding type of consciousness the universality which knowledge implies and requires no sooner appeared than it melted away, here in Perception we start from a certain stahility in the manner of apprehension, and a certain constancy in the content apprehended. The universality in this case satisfies more completely the demands of knowledge. The problem for further analysis is to find the form which the universal here assumes and to determine the way in which the unity of the object (the "thing") holds together its essential differences. The result shows that the unity of the thing qua unity is only admissible as an unqualified or non-sensuous unity. It is an universal, but as such, not conditioned by sense; it is a pure or "unconditioned" universal — a thought proper. Being undetermined by^sense, it transcends sense-apprehension, and so transcends perception proper, and compels the mind to adopt another cognitive attitude in order to apprehend it. This new attitude is Understanding. The following section is thus indirectly an analysis of the principle and a criticism of the position of pure sensationalism. It shows that the doctrine "esse est percipi " must give way to the principle "esse est iutelligi.'']

IMMEDIATE certainty does not make the truth its own, for its truth is something universal, whereas certainty wants to deal with the This. Perception, on the other hand, takes what exists for it to be a universal. Universality being its principle in general, its moments immediately distinguished within it are also universal ; 7 is a imiversal, and the object is a universal. That * Cp. Wissenschaft der Logik, Buch 2, Absch. 2, Kap 1. Das Ding und seine Eigenschaften, etc. principle has arisen and come into being for us who are tracing the course of experience ; and our process of apprehending what perception is, therefore, is no longer a contingent series of acts of apprehension, as is the case with the apprehension of sense-certainty ; it is a logicalty necessitated process. With the origination of the principle, both the moments, which as phenomena merely fell at our feet as bare facts, have come into being : the one, the process of pointing out and indicating, the other the same process, but as a simple fact — the former the process of perceiving, the latter the object perceived. The object is in its essential nature the same as the process ; the latter is the unfolding and distinguishing of the elements involved ; the object is these same elements taken and held together as a single totality. For us (tracing the process) or in itself,* the universal, qua principle, is the essence of perception ; and, as against this abstraction, both the moments distinguished— that which perceives and that which is perceived — are what is non-essential. But in point of

* This expression refers to the distinction already made in tlie Introduction, between the point of view of the Fhenoincnology and that of the actual consciousness whose procedure is being analysed in the Phenomenology. That is "for us" which we (i.e. the philosophical "we") are aware of by way of anticipation, but which has not yet been evolved objectively and explicitly ; it is intellig-ible, but not yet intellectually realised. That is "in itself" (an sich), which is implicit, inherent or potential, and hence not yet explicitly developed. The terms "for us" and "in itself" are thus strictly alternative : the former looks at the matter from the point of view of the philosojjhical subject, the latter from the point of view of the object discussed by tlie philosopher. Tlie implicit nature of the object can only be "for us" who are tliinking about the object : and what m have in mind can only be implidtly true of the object. The alternative disappears when the explicit nature of the object is what "we" explicitly take the object to be. 106 Phenomenology of Mini fact, because both are themselves the universal, ol' the essence, they are both essential : but since they are related as opposites, only one can in the relation (constituting perception) be the essential moment ; and the distinction of essential and non-essential has to be shared between them. The one characterised as the simple fact, the object, is the essence, quite indifferent as to whether it is perceived or not : perceiving, on the other hand, being the process, is the insubstantial, the inconstant factor, which can be as ■well as not be, is the non-essential moment.

This object we have now to determine more precisely, and to develop this determinate character from the result arrived at : the more detailed development does not fall in place here. Since its principle, the universal, is in its simphcity a mediated principle, the object must express this explicitly as its own inherent natiu-e. The object shows itself by so doing to be the thing with many properties. The wealth of senseknowledge belongs to perception, not to immediate certainty, where all that wealth was merely something alongside and by the way ; for it is only perception that has negation, distinction, multiphcity in its very nature. The This, then, is estabhshed as not This, or as superseded, and yet not nothing {simfliciter) , but a determinate nothing, a nothing with a certain content, viz. the This. The sense-element is in this way itself still present, but not in the form of some particular that is "meant" — as had to be the case in immediate certainty— but as a universal, as that which will have the character of a property. Cancelhng, superseding, brings out and lays bare its true twofold meaning which we found contained in the negative : to supersede {aufheben) is at once to negate and to preserve. The nothing being a negation of the This, preserves immediacy and is itself sensuous, but a universal immediacy. Being, however, is a miiversal by its having in it mediation or negation. When it brings this exphcitly out as a factor in its immediacy, it is a specifically distinct determinate property. As a result, there are many such properties set up at once, one the negation of the other. Since they are expressed in the simple form of the universal, these determinate characters — which, strictly speaking, become properties only by a further additional characteristic— are self-related, are indifferent to each other, each is by itself, free from the rest. The simple selfidentical universahty, however, is itself again distinct and detached from these determinate characteristics it has. It is pure self-relation, the " medium " wherein all these characteristics exist : in it, as in a bare, simple unity, they interpenetrate without affecting one another; for just by participating in this universahty they are indifferent to each other, each by itself.

This abstract universal medium, which we can call " Thinghood " in general or pure essential reality, is nothing else than the Here and Now as this on analysis turned out to be, viz. a simple togetherness of many Heres and Nows. But the many (in the present case) are in their determinateness themselves simply universals. This salt is a simple Here and at the same time manifold : it is white, and also pungent, also cubical in shape, also of a specific weight, and so on. All these many properties exist in a simple Here, where they inter- penetrate each other. None of these has a different Here from the others ; each is every- 108 Phenomenology of Mind where in the same Here where the others are. And at the same thne, without being divided by different Heres, they do not affect each other in their interpenetration ; its being white does not affect or alter the cubical shape it has, and neither affects its sharp outhne, and so on : on the contrary, since each is simple relation to self, it leaves the others alone and is related to these merely by being also along with them, a relation of mere indifference. This " Also " is thus the pm:e universal itself, the " medium," the " Thinghood " keeping them together.

In this relation, which has emerged, it is merely the character of positive universality that is first noticed and developed. But there is still a side presented to view which must also be taken into account. It is this. If the many determinate properties were utterly indifferent to each other, and were entirely related to themselves alone, they would not be determinate ; for they are so, merely in so far as they are distinguished and related to others as their opposites. In view of this opposition, however, they cannot exist together in the bare and simple imity of their " medium," which unity is just as essential to them as negation. The process of distinguishing them, so far as it does not leave them indifferent, but effectually excludes, negates one fj'om another, thus falls outside this simple " medium." And this, consequently, is not merely an " also," an unity indifferent to what is in it, but a " one " as well, an excluding repelling imity. The " One " is the moment of negation, as, in a direct and simple manner, relating itself to itself, and excluding an other : and is that by Vvfliich " Thinghood " qua Thing is determined. In the case of the property,

negation becomes specified, assumes a determinate character, which is directly one with the inxmediacy of being, an immediacy which, by this unity with negation, is universahty. Qua the " one," however, negation takes a form in which it is freed from this unity with the object, and exists j^er se on its own account. These moments taken together exhaust the nature of the Thing, the truth of perception, so far as it is necessary to develop it here. It is (1) a universahty, passive and indifferent, the " also " which forms the sole bond of connection between the quahties, or rather constituent elements, " matters," existing together ; (2) negation, hkewise in a simple form, or the " one," which consists in excluding properties of an opposite character ; and (3) the many properties themselves, the relation of the two first moments — the negation, as it is related to that indifferent element, and in being so expands into a manifold of differences, the focal point of particularity radiating forth into plurality within the " medium " of subsistence. Taking the aspect that these differences belong to a "medium" indifferent to what is within it, they are themselves imiversal, they are related merely to themselves and do not affect each other. Taking, however, the other aspect, that they belong to the negative unity, they at the same time mutually exclude one another ; but do so necessarily in the shape of properties that have a separate existence apart from the " also " connecting them. The sensuous universahty, the immediate unity of positive being and negative exclusion, is only then a property, when oneness and pure universahty are evolved from it and distinguished from one another, and when that sensuous universality combines these with one another. Only

110 Phenomenology .of Mind after this relation of tlie unity to those pure essential moments is eiiccted, is the " Thing " complete. This, then, is the way the " Thing " in perception is constituted, and consciousness is perceptual in character so far as this " Thing '"' is its object : it has merely to " take " the object [ccvpio — ^QT-eeption'] and assume the attitude of pure apprehension, and what comes its way in so doing is truth {das Wahre). If it did something when taking the given, it would by such supplementation or elimination alter the truth. Since the object is the true and universal, the self-same, while consciousness is the variable and non-essential, it may happen that consciousness apprehends the object wrongly and deceives itself. The percipient is aware of the possibihty of deception ; for, in the universaHty forming the principle here, the percipient is directly aware of otherness, but aware of it as null and naught, as what is superseded. His criterion of truth is therefore scl/'-sameness, and his procedure is that of apprehending what comes before him as self-same. Since, at the same time, diversity is a fact for him, his procedure is a way of relating the diverse moments of his apprehension to one another. If, however, in this comparison a want of sameness comes out, this is not an untruth on the part of the object (for the object is the self-same), but on the part of perception.

Let us now see what sort of experience consciousness forms in the course of its actual perception. We, who are analysing the process, find this experience already contained in the development (just given) of the object and of the attitude of consciousness towards it. The experience will be merely the development of the contradictions that appear there. The object which I apprehend, presents itself as purely " one " and single : also, I am aware of the " property " (Eigenschaft) in it, a property which is universal, thereby transcending the particularity of the object. The first form of being, in which the objective reahty has the sense of a " one," was thus not its true being ; and since the object is the true fact here, the untruth falls on my side, and the apprehension was not correct. On account of the universality of the property {Eigenschaft) I must rather take the objective entity as a commu7iity {Gemeinschaft) in general. I further perceive now the property to be determinate, opposed to another and excluding this other. Thus, in point of fact, I did not apprehend the object rightly when I defined it as a " commonness " or commimity with others, or as continuity; and must rather, taking account of the determinateness of the proj^erty, divide the continuity and set down the object as a " one " that excludes. In the divided " one " I find many such properties, which are not attached to one another, but indifferent to one another. Thus I did not apprehend the object correctly when I took it for something that excludes. The object, instead, just as formerly it was merely continuity in general, is now a universal common medium where many properties in the form of sense universals subsist, each for itself and on its own account, and, qua determinate, excluding the others. The simple and true fact, which I perceive, is, however, in virtue of this result, not a universal medium either, but the particular property by itself, which, again, in this form, is neither a property nor a determinate being, for it is now neither attached to a distinct "one" nor in relation to others. But the particular quahty is a property only when

112 Phenomenology of Mind attached to a " one,'' and determinate only by relation to others. By being this bare relation of self to self, it remains merely sensuous existence in general, smce it no longer contains the character of negativity ; and the mode of consciousness, which is now aware of a bemg of sense, is merely a way of " meaning " (Meinen) or " intending," i.e. it has left the attitude of perception entirely and gone back into itself. But sense existence and " meaning " themselves pass over into perception : I am thrown back on the beginning, and once more dragged into the same circuit, that supersedes itself in every moment and as a whole. Consciousness, then, has to go over this cycle again, but not in the same way as on the first occasion. For it has found out, regarding perception, that the truth and outcome of perception is its dissolution, is reflection out of and away from the truth into itself. In this way consciousness becomes definitely aware of how its perceptual process is essentially constituted, viz. that this is not a simple bare apprehension, but in its apprehension is at the same time reflected out of the true content back into itself. This return of consciousness into itself, which is immediately involved and implicated in that pure apprehension — for this return to self has proved to be essential to perception — alters the true content. Consciousness is aware that this aspect is at the same time its own, and takes it upon itself ; and by so doing consciousness will thus get the true object bare and naked.

In this way we have, now, in the case of perception, as happened in the case of sensuous certainty, the aspect of consciousness being forced back upon itself ; but, in the first instance, not in the sense in which this took place in the former case — i.e. not as if the truth of perception fell within it. Rather consciousness is aware that the untruth, that comes out there, falls within it. By knowing this, however, consciousness is able to cancel and supersede this untruth. It distinguishes its apprehension of the truth from the untruth of its perception, corrects this untruth, and, so far as itself takes in hand to make this correction, the truth, qua truth of perception, certainly falls within its own consciousness. The procedure of consciousness, which we have now to consider, is thus so constituted that it no longer merely perceives, but is also conscious. of its reflection into self, and keeps this apart from the simple apprehension proper. To begin with, then, I am aware of the " thing " as a " one," and have to keep it fixed in this true character as " one." If in the course of perceiving something crops up contradicting that, then I must take it to be due to my reflection. Now, in perception various different properties also turn up, which seem to be properties of the thing. But the thing is a " one " ; and we are aware in ourselves that this diversity, by which the thing ceases to be a unity, falls in us. This thing, then, is, in point of fact, merely white to our eyes, also sharp to our tongue, and also cubical to our feehng, and so on. The entire diversity of these aspects comes not from the thing, but from us ; and we find them falling apart thus from one another, because the organs they affect are quite distinct inter se, the eye is entirely distinct from the tongue, and so on. We are, consequently, the imiversal medium where such elements get dissociated, and exist each by itself. By the fact, then, that we regard the characteristic of being a universal

114 Phenomenology of Mind medium as our reflection, we preserve and maintain the self-sameness and truth of the thing, its being a " one." These diverse aspects, which consciousness puts to its side of the account, are, however, each by itself just as it appears in the universal medium, specifically determined. White is only in opposition to black, and so on, and the thing is a " one " just by the fact that it is opposed to other things. It does not, however, exclude others from itself, so far as it is " one " ; for to be " one " is to be in a universal relation of self to self, and hence by the fact of its being " one " it is rather like all. It is through the determinate characteristic that the thing excludes other things. Things themselves are thus determinate in and for themselves ; they have properties by which they distinguish themselves from one another. Since the property is the special and peculiar property [the proper property] of, the thing, or a specific characteristic in the thing itself, the thing has several properties. For, in the first place, the thing is true being, is a being inherently in itself ; and what is in it is so as its own essential nature, and not on account of other things. Hence, in the second place, the determmate properties are not on account of other things and for other things, but inherent in that thing itself. They are, however, determinate properties in it only by the fact that they are several, and maintain their distinction from one another. And, in the third place, since they are thus within " thinghood," they are self-contained, each in and for itself, and are indifferent to one another. It is, then, in truth the thing itself which is white, and also cubical, and also sharp, and so on ; in other words, the thing is the " also," the general medium, wherein

the many properties subsist externally to one another, without touching or aSecting one another, and without cancelhng one another ; and, so taken, the " also " is accepted as the true being of the thing. Now, on this mode of perception arising, consciousness is at the same time aware that it reflects itself also into itself, and that, in perceiving, the opposite moment to the " also " crops up. This moment, however, is the unity of the thing with itself, an unity which excludes distinction from itself. It is consequently this unity which consciousness has to take upon itself ; for the thing as such is the subsistence of many different and independent properties. Thus we say of the thing, " it is white, and also cubical, and also sharp," and so on. But so far as it is white it is 7wt cubical, and so far as it is cubical and also white, it is not sharp, and so on. Putting these properties into a " one " belongs solely to consciousness, which, therefore, has to avoid letting them coincide and be one (i.e. one and the same property) in the thing. In the long run it introduces the idea of " in-so-far " to meet the difficulty ; and by this means it keeps the quahties apart, and preserves the thing in the sense of the " also." Quite properly consciousness at first makes itself responsible for the " oneness " in such a way that what was called a property is represented as being " free matter " {materia libera).* In this way the thing is raised to the level of a true " also," since it thus becomes a collection of component elements (materials or matters), and instead of being a " one " becomes a mere enclosure, a circumscribing surface.

* All expression dreiwu from the physics of Hegel's day. 116 Phenomenology of Mind If we look back on what consciousness formerly took upon itself, and now takes upon itself, what it previously ascribed to the thing, and now ascribes to it, we see that consciousness alternately makes itself, as well as the thing, into both a pure atomic many-less " one," and an " also " resolved into independent constituent elements (materials or matters). Consciousness thus finds through this comparison that not only its way of taking the truth contains the diverse moments of apprehension and return upon itself, but that the truth itself, the thing, manifests itself in this twofold manner. Here we find, as a result of experience, that the thing exhibits itself, in a determinate and specific manner, to the consciousness apprehending it, but at the same time is reflected back into itself out of that manner of presenting itself to consciousness ; in other words, the thing contains within it opposite aspects of truth, a truth whose elements are in antithesis to one another. Consciousness, then, gets away also from this second form of perceptual procedure, that, namely, which takes the thing as the true selfsame, and itself as the reverse, as the factor that leaves sameness behind and goes back into self. Its object is now the entire process which was previously shared between the object and consciousness. The thing is a "one," reflected into self ; it is for itself ; but it is also for an other ; and, further, it is an other for itself as it is for another. The thing is, hence, for itself and also for another, a being that has difference of a twofold kind. But it is also "one." Its being "one," however, contradicts the diversity it has. Consciousness would, consequently, have again to make itself answerable for

putting the diversity into the "one," and would have to keep this apart from the thing. It would thus be compelled to say that the thing " in-so-far as " it is for itself is not for another. But the oneness belongs to the thing itself, too, as consciousness has found out ; the thing is essentially reflected into self. The " also," the distinction of elements indifferent to one another, falls doubtless within the thing, too, qua oneness, but since both are different, they do not fall within the same thing, but in different things. The contradiction which is found in the case of the objective content as a whole is assigned to and shared by two objects. The thing is, thus, doubtless as it stands {an und fur sich) selfsame, but this unity with itself is disturbed by other things. In this way the unity of the thing is preserved, and, at the same time, the otherness that is external to the thing, and also outside consciousness. Now, although the contradiction in the object is in this way allotted to difierent things, yet the isolated individual thing will still be affected with distinction. The different things have a subsistence on their own account {fur sich) ; and the conflict between them takes place on both sides in such a way that each is not different from itself, but only from the other. Each, however, is thereby characterised as a something distinctive, and contains in it essential distinction from the others ; but at the same time not in such a way that this is an opposition within its being ; on the contrary, it is by itself a simple determinate characteristic which constitutes its essential character, distinguishing it from others. As a matter of fact, since the diversity lies in it, this diversity does indeed necessarily assume

118 Phenomenology of Mind the form of a real distinction of manifold quaUties within it. But because the determinate characteristic gives the essence of the thing, by which it is distinguished from others, and has a being all its own, this further manifold constitution is something indifferent. The thing thus no doubt contains in its unity the quaHfying " in-so-far " in two ways, which have, however, unequal significance; and by that quahfication this oppositeness becomes not a real opposition on the part of the thing itself, but — so far as the thing comes into a condition of opposition through its absolute distinction — this opposition belongs to the thing with reference to an other thing lying outside it. The further manifoldness is doubtless necessarily in the thing too, and cannot be left out ; but it is unessential to the thing. This determinate characteristic, which constitutes the essential character of the thing and distinguishes it from all others, is now so defined that thereby the thing stands in opposition to others, but must therein preserve itself for itself {filr sicli). It is, however, a thing, a self-existent "one," only so far as it does not stand in relation to others. For in this relation, the connection with another is rather the point emphasised, and connection with another means giving up selfexistence, means ceasing to have a being on its own account. It is precisely through the absolute character and its opposition that the thing relates itself to others, and is essentially this process of relation, and only this. The relation, however, is the negation of its independence, and the thing collapses through its own essential property.

The necessity of the experience which consciousness has to go through in finding that the thing is destroyed just by the very characteristic which constitutes its essential nature and its distinctive existence on its own account, may, as regards the bare principle it imphes, be shortly stated thus. The thing is set up as having a being of its own, as existing for itself, or as an absolute negation of all otherness ; hence it is absolute negation merely relating itself to itself. But this kind of negation is the cancelling and superseding of itself, or means that it has its essential reality in an other. In point of fact the determination of the object^ as it (the object) has turned out, contains nothing else. It aims at having an essential property, constituting its bare existence for itself, but with this bare self-existence it means also to embrace and contain diversity, which is to be necessary, but is at the same time not to constitute its essential characteristic. But this is a distinction that only exists in words ; the TCOM-essential, which has all the same to be necessary, cancels its own meaning, or is what we have just called the negation of itself.

With this the last qualifying " in-so-far," which separated self-existence and existence for another, drops away altogether. The object is really in one and the same respect the opposite of itself — for itself " so far as " it is for another, and for another " so far as " it is for itself. It is for itself, reflected into self, one ; but all this is asserted along with its opposite, with its being for another, and for that reason is asserted merely to be superseded. In other words, this existence for itself is as much unessential as that which alone was meant to be unessential, viz. the relation to another. By this process the object in its pure characteristics, in those features which were to constitute its essential 120 Phenomenology of Mind nature, is superseded, just as the object in its sensible mode of existence became transcended. From being sensible it passed into being a universal ; but this universal, because derived from sense, is essentially conditioned by it, and hence is, in general, not a genuine self-identical universaHty, but one affected with an opposition. For that reason this universality breaks up into the extremes of singleness and universality, of the " one " of the properties and the " also " of the free constituents or "matters." These pure determinations appear to express the essential nature itself ; but they are merely a self-existence which is fettered at the same time with existence for an other. Since, however, both essentially exist in a single unity, we have before us now unconditioned absolute universality ; and it is here that consciousness first truly passes into the sphere of Understanding, of Intelligence.