II.3.3. The Absolute Relation

Absolute Necessity is not the Necessary, and still less a Necessary: it is Necessity—Being simply as Reflection. It is Relation because it is distinguishing, the moments of which process are themselves its whole totality; these therefore absolutely persist, but there is only one persistence,—distinction is only the Show of Exposition, and Show is the Absolute itself.—Essence as such is Reflection or showing; but Essence as Absolute Relation is Show posited as Show, which, as this self-relating, is Absolute Actuality.—The Absolute, first expounded by external reflection, now, as Absolute Form or as Necessity, expounds itself; this self-expounding is its self-positing, and it is only this self-positing.—Natural light is not Something, nor Thing, but its being is just its showing; and similarly manifestation is self-equal Absolute Actuality.

Consequently the sides of the Absolute Relation are not Attributes. In the Attribute, the Absolute shows only in one of its moments, which is taken as presupposed and picked up by external reflection. That, however, which expounds the Absolute is Absolute Necessity which is self-identical as being self-determining. Since this is showing which is posited as Show, the sides of this Relation are totalities because they are as Show; for, as Show, the distinctions are each itself and its opposite, or they are each the whole;—and conversely they are Show in this manner because they are totalities. Thus this distinguishing or showing of the Absolute is only the identical positing of itself.

This Relation in its immediate concept is the Relation of Substance and Accidents, the immediate vanishing and becoming in itself of Absolute Show. Substance determines itself as Being-for-Self as against an Other; or, the Absolute Relation determines itself as real; and thus the relation is the Relation of Causality. This as self-relating finally passes over into Reciprocity, and thus the Absolute Relation hereby is also posited according to the determinations which it contains; and next this posited unity of itself in its determinations (which are themselves posited as the Whole and therefore equally as determinations) is the Notion.

Absolute Necessity is Absolute Relation because it is not Being as such, but Being which is because it is—Being as absolute self-mediation. This Being is Substance; as ultimate unity of Essence and Being it is the Being in all Being; it is not the unreflected immediate nor an abstract something which stands behind existence and appearance—it is immediate Actuality itself, and this as absolute intro-reflectedness, as a persistence which is in and for itself.—Substance, as this unity of Being and Reflection, is essentially the showing and positedness of these. Showing is self-related showing, and thus it is; this Being is Substance as such. Conversely this Being is only self-identical positedness: it is thus showing totality, or Accidentality.

This showing is identity as formal identity—the unity of Possibility and Actuality. It is, first, Becoming, contingency as the sphere of arising and passing away; for, according to the determination of immediacy, the relation of Possibility and Actuality is immediate conversion of one into the other (as existents), or of each into that which is only Other to it.—But Being is Show, and therefore their mutual relation is one of identical or showing terms; it is Reflection. Consequently the movement of Accidentality represents in each of its moments the showing of the categories of Being and the Reflection-determinations of Essence into one another.—The immediate Something has a content; its immediacy at the same time is reflected indifference to form. This content is determinate; and, since this is determinateness of Being, the Something passes over into an Other. But Quality is also determinateness of Reflection; it is thus indifferent Variety. This however animates itself into opposition and passes back into Ground, which is Nothing and also intro-Reflection. The latter transcends itself; but it is itself reflected Being-in-Self; it is thus Possibility, and this Being-in-Self in its transition (which is equally intro-Reflection) is the necessary Actual.

This movement of Accidentality is the Actuosity of Substance as quiet emergence of itself. It is not active against Something, but only against itself as simple unresisting element. The transcendence of a presupposed term is vanishing Show; and only in the process which transcends the immediate does this immediate itself become, or that showing achieve being; the beginning from self is only the positing of that self from which the beginning takes place.

Substance as this identity of showing is the totality of the whole and comprehends Accidentality; and Accidentality is the whole of Substance. Its distinction into simple identity of Being and the alternation of Accidents in it is a form of its Show. The former is the formless Substance of imagination for which Show has not determined itself as Show; it clings to such an indeterminate identity as though it were an Absolute, although this identity has no truth; it is only the determinateness of immediate Actuality or, equally, of Being-in-Self or Possibility—form-determinations which fall within Accidentality.—

The other determination, the alternation of Accidents, is the absolute formal unity of Accidentality, Substance as absolute power.—When the Accident passes away, this is the retrogression of itself as Actuality into itself as into its Being-in-Self or into its Possibility; but this its Being-in-Self is itself only a positedness, and is therefore also Actuality; and, since these form-determinations are, equally, content-determinations, this possible is an actual (otherwise determined) even according to content. Through Actuality with its content (into which it translates the possible) Substance manifests itself as creative, and through Possibility (into which it leads back the actual) as destructive, power. But both are identical: creation is destructive and destruction creative; for negative and positive—that is, Possibility and Actuality—are absolutely united in substantial Necessity.

The Accidents as such—and there are more than one, since plurality is one of the determinations of Being—have no power over one another. They are the Something which is or is for itself, existing things with manifold properties, or wholes which consist of parts; independent parts, forces which require solicitation by one another and have one another for condition. In so far as such an Accidental seems to exercise power over an Other, it is the power of Substance which comprehends both within itself: as negativity it posits an unequal value, determining the one as passing away and the other (with a different content) as arising, or the former as passing over into its Possibility and the latter as passing over therein into Actuality,—ever sundering itself into the distinctions of form and content and ever purifying itself of this one-sidedness, though in this purification itself it has fallen back into determination and division.—Thus one Accident only extrudes another because its own subsisting is itself this totality of form and content, in which it perishes as much as its other.

Because of this immediate identity and this presence of Substance in the Accidents no real distinction yet exists. In this first determination Substance is not yet manifested according to its full concept. When Substance as self-identical Being-in-and-for-Self is distinguished from itself as totality of Accidents, then, as power, it is the mediator. This is Necessity—its positive endurance in the negativity of the Accidents and its mere positedness in their persistence: accordingly this mean is unity of Substantiality and Accidentality itself, and its extremes have no peculiar persistence. Substantiality therefore is only the Relation as immediately vanishing; it is not related to itself as negative, and, as immediate self-unity of power, is only in the form of its identity and not of its negative Essence: one moment only, namely the negative, or distinction, is that which utterly vanishes, but not the other, the identical.—This can also be considered in the following manner. Show or Accidentality in itself is, indeed, Substance through power, but it is not thus posited as this self-identical Show; and thus Substance has only Accidentality for its shape or positedness, and not itself; it is not Substance as Substance. Here then it is the Relation of Substantiality only in this, that it discloses itself as formal power the distinctions of which are not substantial: in fact it exists only as Inner of the Accidents, and these are only in Substance. In other words, this Relation is only Showing Totality as Becoming; but equally it is Reflection. Accidentality, which in itself is Substance, is for this very reason also posited as such; it is thus determined as self-relating negativity as against itself; it is determined as self-relating simple self-identity, and thus is Substance which is for itself and has power. Thus the Relation of Substantiality passes over into the Relation of Causality.

Substance is power—power which is intro-reflected and not merely transitory, but posits determinations and distinguishes them from itself. In its determining it relates itself to itself, and therefore is itself that which it posits as a negative, or makes into positedness. Hence this in general is transcended Substantiality, the merely posited entity, or Effect, while Substance which is for itself is Cause.

Here this Relation of Causality is only this relation of Cause and Effect; it is thus Formal Relation of Causality.

1. Cause stands against Effect as the original.—Substance, as power, is Showing, or has Accidentality. But as power it is equally intro-Reflection in its Show; it thus expounds its transition, and this Showing is determined as Show, or the Accident is posited as just this—that it is only something posited.—But, while it determines, Substance does not proceed from Accidentality as though Accidentality were previously an Other and were now first posited as determinateness; on the contrary both are one Actuosity. Substance as power determines itself; but this determining is itself immediately the transcendence of determining and is the return. It determines itself,—and it, the determinant, is thus the immediate and the already determinate;—and since it determines itself it posits this already determinate entity as determinate: it has thus transcended positedness and has returned to itself.—Conversely this return, because it is the negative self-relation of Substance, is itself a determining or self-repulse; by virtue of this return the determinate entity, from which Substance seems to begin and seems now to posit it simply as a determinate already given, becomes.—Thus absolute Actuosity is Cause,—the power of Substance in its truth as manifestation, which immediately also expounds in its Becoming that which is in itself the Accident (which is positedness), and posits it as positedness, or Effect.—Effect, then, first is that which the Accidentality of the Relation of Substantiality is, namely Substance as positedness; but secondly the Accident exists as such substantially only through its disappearance, as transitory. As Effect, however, it is positedness as self-identical; Cause is manifested in Effect as whole Substance, namely as reflected into itself in positedness itself as such.

2. This intro-reflected positedness (the determinate as determinate) stands opposed by Substance as non-posited Original. As absolute power Substance is return to itself, but this return is itself a determining; hence it is no longer merely the in-itself of its Accident, but is also posited as this Being-in-Self. Consequently Substance attains Actuality only when it has become Cause. But this Actuality, in that its Being-in-Self (its determinateness in the Relation of Substantiality) is now posited as determinateness, is Effect; hence Substance has the Actuality which it has as Cause only in its Effect.—This is the Necessity which is Cause.—It is actual Substance because Substance as power determines itself, but it is also Cause because it expounds this determinateness or posits it as positedness: thus it posits its actuality as positedness, or as Effect. This is the Other of Cause—positedness as against Original and mediated by it. But Cause as Necessity equally cancels this its mediation, and in the process of determining itself it is—as the originally self-relating as against the mediated—the return to self; for positedness is determined as positedness and is therefore self-identical; consequently Cause is veritably actual and self-identical only in its Effect.—Effect therefore is necessary just because it is manifestation of Cause, or because it is that Necessity which is Cause.—Cause is self-moving only as this Necessity and only as this begins from itself without solicitation from an Other, and is independent source of production out of itself;—it must act; its originality is this, that its intro-Reflection is determinant positing, and that conversely both are one unity.

Hence Effect contains nothing whatever which Cause does not contain. Conversely Cause contains nothing which is not in its Effect. Cause is Cause only in so far as it brings about an Effect; and Cause is nothing but this determination, that it has an Effect, while Effect is nothing but that it has a Cause. Cause as such implies its Effect, and Effect Cause; in so far as Cause does not yet act or has ceased to act, it is not Cause,—and Effect, in so far as its Cause has vanished, is no longer Effect, but an indifferent actuality.—

3. In this identity of Cause and Effect, the form in which they are distinguished as the self-existent and as positedness is transcended. Cause is extinguished in its Effect; and simultaneously Effect has been extinguished, for it is no more than the determinateness of Cause. This Causality which has been extinguished in Effect is thus an immediacy which is indifferent to the relation of Cause and Effect and is connected to it externally.

1. The self-identity of Cause in its Effect is the transcendence of its power and negativity; consequently it is unity which is indifferent to form-distinctions, or content,—It is therefore related to form (that is, here, Causality) only in itself. They are thus posited as various, and form itself is, as against content, a Causality which is only immediately actual, or a contingent Causality.

Further, content thus determinate is a content various in itself; and Cause is determined according to its content, and so therefore equally is Effect.—Content (since reflectedness here is also immediate Actuality) is to this extent actual but also finite Substance.

This now is the Relation of Causality in its reality and finitude. As formal, it is the infinite relation of absolute power, whose content is pure manifestation or Necessity. As finite Causality on the contrary it has a given content, and exhausts itself as an external distinction upon that identity which in its determinations is one and the same Substance.

By virtue of this identity of content this Causality is an analytic proposition. It is the same fact which displays itself first as Cause and then as Effect,—here as peculiar persistence and there as positedness or determination in an Other. These determinations of form are an external reflection, and consequently it is in the circumstances a tautological consideration, made by a subjective understanding, when a phenomenon is determined as effect and the ascent is thence made to its cause, in order that the fact may be understood and explained: one and the same content is repeated, and the cause is no richer than the effect.—-For example, rain is the cause of dampness, and dampness is its effect. “Rain moistens”; this is an analytic proposition: the same water which is rain is dampness; only as rain this water has the form of a fact by itself, while as wateriness or dampness it is adjectival, something posited, which is no longer supposed to have its persistence in itself; and both determinations are equally external to it.—Similarly the cause of a given colour is a colouring agent, a pigment which is one and the same actuality (1) in the form (which is external to it) of an active principle—that is, as externally connected with an agent which is different from it—and (2) in the determination of effect, which is equally external to it.—The cause of a deed is the inner disposition of an active subject, and this remains the same content and value in the shape of the external existence which it acquires through performance. If the movement of a body is considered as effect, then a propulsive force is its cause; but the same quantum of movement is there before and after the impulse—the same existence which the propelling body contained and communicated to the impelled body; and itself it loses as much as it communicates.

It is true that the cause—the painter or the propelling body, for example—has a further content, besides the colours and their form which combines them into a picture (in the case of the former), and besides a movement of definite strength and direction (in the case of the latter). But this further content is a contingent accessory which does not concern the cause: the qualities of the painter, apart from this quality that he is the painter of the given picture, are irrelevant to the picture; only those of his properties which are displayed in the effect are present in him as cause; he is not cause in his remaining properties. Similarly, whether the propelling body is of stone or wood, is green or yellow, and so on, is irrelevant to the impulse which it communicates; and to this extent it is not cause.

With respect to this tautology of the Relation of Causality, the observation must be made that it does not seem to contain the tautology if the remote and not the proximate cause of an effect is adduced. The change of form which the fundamental fact undergoes in this passage through a series of intermediate members disguises the identity which it therein retains. At the same time, in this multiplication of causes which have entered between it and the ultimate effect, it connects itself with other things and circumstances, so that the complete effect is contained not in that first term which is pronounced to be the cause, but only in this plurality of causes together.—If, for example, a man came into circumstances where his talent developed because he lost his father who was hit by a bullet in battle, then this shot (or, further back, the war, or a cause of the war, and so on to infinity) might be assigned as the cause of the man’s skill. But it is clear that the shot (for example) is not by itself the cause, but only the connexion of the shot with other effective determinations. Or rather, it is not cause at all, but only an individual moment which belonged to the circumstances of the possibility.

Further, and above all, we must consider the inadmissible application of the Relation of Causality to relations of physico-organic and of spiritual life. Here that which is called cause does, indeed, show itself as having a different content from the effect; but the reason is that that which acts upon living matter is independently determined, changed, and transmuted by such matter, because whatever has life does not allow the cause to reach its effect, that is, cancels it as cause. Thus it is inadmissible to say that food is the cause of blood, or certain dishes or cold or damp the cause of fever, and so on; and it is equally inadmissible to find in the Ionic climate the cause of the works of Homer, or in the ambition of Caesar the cause of the downfall of the republican constitution of Rome. In history in general intellectual quanta, and individuals, are in play and in reciprocal determination with one another; but it is the nature of spirit, in a sense far higher than it is the character of living matter in general, not to absorb another original entity, or not to allow a cause to continue into itself, but to break it off and to transmute it.—These relations however belong to the Idea, and are not to be considered till that has been reached.—But we may here and now observe that, in so far as the relation of cause and effect is admitted (although in an improper sense), effect cannot be greater than cause; for effect is nothing further than the manifestation of cause. It has become a popular jest in history to allow great effects to spring from small causes, and to quote for first cause of a comprehensive and profound event an anecdote. Such a so-called cause is to be looked upon as nothing more than an occasion or external stimulus; the inner spirit of the event would not have required it, or might have used an indefinite number of other such in order to begin from them in appearance, to unfold and to manifest itself. Much rather such an essentially petty and contingent matter is, conversely, only determined by the event itself as its occasion. Consequently these arabesques of history, where a huge shape is depicted as growing from a slender stalk, are a sprightly but a most superficial treatment. In this growth of great out of small, the conversion certainly is present which spirit applies to the external; but for this very reason the small is not cause in itself, or this conversion itself transcends the relation of causality.

2. But this determinateness of the Relation of Causality which makes content and form various and indifferent, extends further. Form-determination is also content-determination: cause and effect (the two sides of the relation) are also, therefore, another content. Or, the content, because it is only as content of a form, has the latter’s difference in itself and is essentially various. But, since this its form is the Relation of Causality, which is a content identical in cause and effect, therefore the various content is connected externally with the cause on the one hand and with the effect on the other hand; it does not therefore itself enter into the activity and into the relation.

This external content, then, is without relation,—an immediate existence;—or, because as content it is also the self-existent identity of cause and effect, it is also immediate, existent identity. Consequently this is any thing which has manifold determinations of its existence, and, among others, this, that it is cause or else effect in some respect or another. In it the form-determinations of cause and effect have their substratum, that is, their essential persistence, and each has a separate persistence,—for their identity is their persistence;—but at the same time it is their immediate persistence, and not their persistence as form-unity or as relation.

But this thing is not only substratum but also substance, for it is identical persistence only as persistence of the relation. It is, further, finite substance, for it is determined as immediate as against its causal nature. But at the same time it has causality, since it equally is identical only as the identical element of this relation.—Now as cause this substratum is negative self-relation. But it itself, to which it relates itself, is, first, a positedness, because it is determined as immediately actual; this positedness as content is any determination in general.—Secondly, causality is external to it: causality itself thus constitutes its positedness. Now since it is causal substance, its causality consists in this—that it relates itself negatively to itself, that is, to its positedness and external causality. Consequently the activity of this substance begins from an external term, and frees itself from this external determination; and its return to itself is the preservation of its immediate existence and the transcendence of its posited causality, and therefore of its causality in general.

Thus a stone in motion is cause; its movement is a determination which it has, while besides this it contains many other determinations of colour, shape, and so on, which do not enter into its causal nature. Its immediate existence is apart from its form-relation (causality), and therefore this is external; the movement of the stone and the causality which belongs to it in movement are only positedness in it.—But the causality is also peculiar to it; this is given in the fact that its substantial persistence is its identical self-relation; the latter however is now determined as positedness; it is therefore also negative self-relation.—Consequently its causality, which directs itself upon itself as upon positedness or as something external, consists in transcending it and, by its removal, returning to itself: therefore to this extent it is not self-identical in its positedness, but only reconstructs its abstract originality.—Or again, rain is the cause of dampness, which is the same water as the rain. This water has the determination of being rain and cause by virtue of the fact that the latter is posited in it by an Other;—some other force (or whatever else it may be) has raised it in the air and collected it into a mass, the gravity of which causes it to fall. Its distance from the earth is a determination foreign to its original self-identity (or, gravity); its causal nature consists in removing this determination and in reconstructing this identity; but in doing so it also cancels its causality.

The second determinateness of Causality which we have just considered concerns form; this relation is Causality as external to itself, as that originality which is equally in itself positedness or effect. This union of the opposite determinations as in the existent substratum constitutes the infinite regress from causes to causes.—We begin from the effect; as such it has a cause, which has a cause in turn, and so forth. Why has the cause a cause in turn? that is, why is the side which before was determined as cause now determined as effect, which involves the search for a new cause?—The reason is that cause is finite and determinate in general, determined as one moment of form as against effect; thus it has its determinateness or negation outside it; but for that very reason it is itself finite, has its determinateness in itself, and is thus positedness or effect. This its identity is also posited, but it is a third term, the immediate substratum; causality is therefore external to itself, since here its originality is an immediacy. The form-distinction is consequently first determinateness, it is not yet determinateness posited as determinateness; it is existent otherness. On the one hand finite reflection halts at this immediate, removes the form-unity from it, and allows it to be cause in one respect and effect in another; on the other hand it transfers the form-unity to the infinite, and by never-ending progress expresses its impotence to catch and to hold it.

With Effect the case is immediately the same; or rather, the infinite progress from effect to effect is entirely the same as the regress from cause to cause. In the latter, cause became effect, which in turn has another cause; similarly effect conversely becomes cause, which in turn has another effect.—The determinate cause which has been considered begins from an externality, and in its effect does not return as cause into itself, but rather loses causality in the effect. But conversely effect comes into contact with a substratum, which is substance or originally self-relating persistence; consequently this positedness becomes positedness in it; that is, this substance, when an effect is posited in it, behaves as cause. But that first effect—positedness, which comes to it externally, is other than the second, which is produced by it; for this second is determined as its intro-Reflection, but the former as an externality in it.—But here Causality is self-external causativeness, and, therefore, equally it does not return to itself in its effect, and does become external to itself in the effect: its effect in turn becomes positedness in a substratum—in another substance, which, however, equally makes it a positedness or manifests itself as cause, again repels its effect from itself, and so on into bad infinity.

3. It remains to see what has arisen through the movement of the Determinate Relation of Causality.—Formal Causality is extinguished in the effect; and hereby the identical element of these two moments has become, but at the same time has become only as in itself the unity of cause and effect, in which the form-relation is external.—By virtue of this, the identical term is also immediate, according to the two determinations of immediacy, first as Being-in-Self, a content at which causality expires externally, and secondly as an existing substratum in which cause and effect inhere as distinct form-determinations. In it the latter are, in themselves, one one; but each by reason of this Being-in-Self or externality of form is external to itself, and hence in its unity with the other is also determined as other against it. Consequently, although cause has, and also is itself, an effect, and effect not only has but also itself is a cause, yet the effect which the cause has and that which it is are different;—and so with the cause which the effect has, and the cause which it is.

But the movement of the Determinate Relation of Causality has now resulted in this, that the cause is not merely extinguished in the effect—and with it the effect too (as happens in Formal Causality), but the cause in its extinction, in the effect, becomes again; that effect vanishes into cause, but equally becomes again in it. Each of these determinations cancels itself in its positing and posits itself in its cancellation: what takes place is not an external transition of causality from one substratum to another, but this its becoming other is at the same time its own positing. Causality, then, presupposes or conditions itself. The identity which before was only in itself (the substratum) is hence now determined as presupposition or as posited against effective causality; and the reflection which before was only external to the identical now stands in a relation to it.

Causality is a presupposing activity. The cause is conditioned; it is negative self-relation as being presupposed, as an external Other which in itself (but only in itself) is causality itself. It is (as has already resulted) substantial identity into which Formal Causality passes over; and now it has determined itself as against the latter as its negative. Or it is the same as the Substance of the Relation of Causality, only the power of Accidentality stands opposed to it as being itself a substantial activity.—It is passive substance.—That which is immediate, or in-itself, and is not also for-itself, is passive,—pure Being or Essence which is only in this determinateness of abstract self-identity.—Active substance, as negatively self-relating, stands opposed to passive substance. It is cause in so far as it has reconstructed itself in Determinate Causality through the negation of itself and out of effect; a reflected entity which in its otherness or as immediate essentially has a positing attitude and mediates itself with itself through its negation. For this reason Causality here no longer has a substratum in which it might inhere; and as against this identity it is not form-determination, but is itself substance; or, that which is original is only Causality.—The substratum is passive substance which has presupposed itself.

This cause now acts, for it is negative power exerted upon itself. At the same time it is its own presupposition; it thus acts upon itself as upon an Other—upon passive substance.—Accordingly, it transcends, first, the otherness of the latter, and in it returns to itself; secondly it determines it, positing this transcendence of its otherness (or the return to itself) as a determinateness. This positedness is at the same time its return to itself, and therefore is, at this point, its effect; but conversely, because, as presupposing, it determines itself as its Other, it posits effect in the other (or passive) substance.—In other words, passive substance itself is twofold (it is an independent Other, and also it is presupposed and in itself already identical with the active cause), and therefore the activity of substance is twofold. Two are here in one; the transcendence of its determinateness (that is, of its condition, or the transcendence of the independence of passive substance)—and the transcending of its identity with it, so that it presupposes itself or posits itself as Other.—Passive substance is preserved by the latter moment: its first transcendence appears, in reference to this, in this manner, that only some out of more determinations are transcended in it, and it becomes identical with the first substance in the effect, and in an external manner.

To this extent it is subjected to force.—Force is the appearance of power, or power as something external. But power is external only in so far as the causal substance in its activity (that is, in positing itself) at the same time presupposes itself, that is, posits itself as transcended. Conversely therefore the activity of force is an activity of power. The forceful cause acts only upon an Other presupposed by itself; its effect upon it is negative self-relation or the manifestation of itself. The passive is the independent which is only a posited entity, it is intro-refracted,—an actuality which is condition, and moreover condition in its truth: an actuality which is only a possibility, or, conversely, a Being-in-Self which is only the determinateness of Being-in-Self, or merely passive. Consequently that upon which force is exerted is not only capable of suffering force, but force must be applied to it; that which has force over the Other has it only because it is the latter’s power which therein manifests both itself and the Other. Passive substance is only posited by force as that which in truth it is: because it is the simple positive or immediate substance, for that very reason it is only something posited; as condition it is a prius which is the show of immediacy, and of this show active causality strips it.

Thus the influence of another force upon passive substance is no more than its due. What it loses is that immediacy, or substantiality which is foreign to it. And what comes to it as foreign—namely, to be determined as a positedness—is its proper determination.—But when now it is posited in its own positedness or in its proper determination, it is not transcended thereby, but merely coincides with itself, and thus, when subject to determination, is originality.—Thus passive substance on the one hand is preserved or posited by active substance, in so far, namely, as the latter constitutes itself transcended substance;—on the other hand it is the very activity of the passive to coincide with itself, and thereby to make itself original and cause. For it, to be posited by an Other, and to become, are one and the same thing.

Passive substance has now been converted into cause, and hereby, first, effect is transcended in it: in this consists its Reaction in general. In itself it is positedness, as passive substance; and also positedness has been posited in it through the other substance—that is, in so far as it received in itself the effect of the latter. Consequently its Reaction also contains this twofold fact, namely, first, that that which it is in itself is posited and secondly that that as which it is posited presents itself as its Being-in-Self. In itself it is positedness; and therefore it achieves for itself an effect through the other: but conversely this positedness is its own Being-in-Self; this is thus its own effect, and it itself presents itself as cause.

Secondly, Reaction is directed against the first acting cause. For that effect which substance (which before was passive) transcends within itself is precisely the effect of the first. But cause has its substantial actuality only in its effect, which being transcended, its causal substantiality is transcended. This happens, first, in itself through itself when it constitutes itself as effect; in this identity its negative determination vanishes and it becomes passive: secondly, this happens through substance which before was passive and now reacts and transcends its effect.—In Determinate Causality, too, the substance upon which action is exercised becomes cause again, and thus reacts to the fact that an effect was posited in it. But it did not react upon the cause, but in turn placed its effect in another substance,—which produced the infinite progress of effects; for here cause in its effect is only in itself self-identical, and, therefore, (1) vanishes in an immediate identity in its state of rest, and (2) resuscitates itself in another substance.—In conditioned causality, on the other hand, cause relates itself to itself in the effect, for it is its Other as condition (or presupposed term), so that its activity is becoming as much as positing and transcendence of the Other.

Further, it is thus in the attitude of passive substance; but (as already resulted) this arises through the activity which has been exercised upon it as causal substance. That first cause, which acts first and receives back into itself its Action in the shape of Reaction, thus reappears as cause; and hereby the activity, which in finite causality runs into a progress that is infinite in the bad sense, is bent round and becomes an activity which returns upon itself, an infinite Reciprocity.

In finite causality substances stand in a relation of activity to one another. The mechanism consists in this externality of causality, where the intro-Reflection of cause in its effect is, at the same time, a repellent Being, or where, in the self-identity which the causal substance has in its effect, it remains equally immediately external to itself, and effect has passed over into another substance. Now in Reciprocity this mechanism is transcended; for it contains, firstly, the disappearance of that original survival of immediate substantiality, and secondly the arising of cause, and thus also originality, as mediating itself with itself through its negation.

At this point Reciprocity presents itself as a reciprocal causality of presupposed and self-conditioning substances; each is, in relation to the other, at once active and passive substance. Both being thus as well passive as active, every distinction between them is already transcended: it is a perfectly transparent Show: they are substances only inasmuch as they are the identity of active and passive. Consequently Reciprocity itself is still only an empty way and manner and all that is yet required is an external comprehension of what already is as much in itself as posited. First, it is no longer substrata that are here in relation, but substances; in the movement of conditioned Causality, presupposed immediacy (which still remained) has transcended itself, and the conditioning element of causal activity is now only influence or proper passivity. But, further, this influence is not derived from some other original substance, but from some causal nature which is conditioned by influence, or is a mediated entity. Consequently this entity, which is as yet external, but belongs to cause and constitutes the side of its passivity, is mediated through cause itself; it is produced by its own activity, and is thus passivity posited through its own activity.—Causality conditions and is conditioned; that which conditions is passive, but what is conditioned is passive equally. This conditioning (or passivity) is the self-negation of cause, when it essentially constitutes itself effect and for that very reason is cause. Thus Reciprocity is only Causality itself: cause not only has an effect, but in the effect stands related, as cause, to itself.

Hereby Causality has returned to its absolute notion, and at the same time has reached the Notion itself. At first it is Real Necessity, absolute self-identity, so that the differentiation of Necessity, and the determinations which in it are related to each other, are substances or free actualities as against each other. In this manner Necessity is inner identity; Causality is its manifestation, where its show of substantial otherness has transcended itself and Necessity is raised to the rank of Freedom.—In Reciprocity, original Causality presents itself as an arising out of its negation (or passivity) and as a passing away into it—as a Becoming, but in such a manner that this Becoming is equally only a showing; the transition into other is intro-Reflection; negation, which is the ground of cause, is its positive self-coincidence.

Necessity and Causality have, then, vanished in it; they contain both the immediate identity (as connexion and relation) and the absolute substantiality of distincts, and therefore their absolute contingency,—the original unity of substantial variety, in other words absolute contradiction. Necessity is Being, because it is,—the self-unity of Being, which has itself for ground; but, conversely, because it has a ground, it is not Being, it is nothing whatever but Show, relation or mediation. Causality is this posited transition of original Being, or cause, into Show or mere positedness, and conversely of positedness into originality; but the identity itself of Being and Show is, still, inner Necessity. This internality (or Being-in-Self) transcends the movement of Causality; and, concurrently, the substantiality of the sides which are in relation is lost—Necessity unveils itself. Necessity does not become Freedom because it vanishes, but only because its identity (as yet an inner identity) is manifested,—a manifestation which is the identical move-merit into themselves of the distincts, the intro-Reflection of Show as Show.—Conversely Contingency at the same time becomes Freedom, in that the sides of Necessity, which have the shape of actualities that are free for themselves and do not show in each other, are now posited as identity; so that these totalities of intro-Reflection in their distinction now also show as identical, or are posited as only one and the same Reflection.

Absolute Substance distinguishes itself from itself as Absolute Form; but in doing so it no longer repels itself as Necessity from itself, nor falls apart as Contingency into indifferent substances external to one another: it distinguishes itself (1) into the totality—passive substance above—which is something original as intro-Reflection out of determinateness, as simple whole containing its own positedness in itself and posited in it as self-identical,—the Universal; and (2) into totality—causal substance above—as into intro-Reflection equally out of determinateness to negative determinateness, which thus as self-identical determinateness is likewise the whole, but is posited as self-identical negativity: the Individual. But, immediately, the Universal is self-identical only because it contains determinateness as transcended; it is the negative as negative; and therefore it is that same negativity which Individuality is;—and Individuality is similarly the determinate Determinate, the negative as negative, and therefore is, immediately, that same identity which Universality is. This their simple identity is Particularity, which receives from the Individual the moment of determinateness, and from the Universal the moment of intro-Reflection, in immediate unity. These three totalities are consequently one and the same Reflection, which as negative self-relation distinguishes itself into these two; but the distinction is a completely transparent one, for it is only a distinction into determinate simplicity and simple determinateness, which are just one and the same identity.—This is the Notion the realm of Subjectivity or of Freedom.