II.2.1. Existence

The proposition of Ground states that whatever is has a Ground, or is posited or mediated; similarly a proposition of Existence should be formulated and expressed in these terms: Whatever is, exists. The truth of Being is, not that it is a primary immediate, but that it is Essence which has emerged into immediacy.

It was further said, Whatever exists has a Ground and is conditioned’ but it must also be added that it has no Ground and is unconditioned. For Existence is that immediacy which emerged from the transcendence of the mediation whose relating activity operates by means of Ground and Condition, and in emerging it transcends this emergence.

In so far as this is the proper place to mention the proofs of the existence of God, it must first be recalled that besides (a) immediate Being and (b) Existence (Being which emerges from Essence) there is a third Being which emerges from the Notion—Objectivity.—Demonstration in general is mediated cognition. The various kinds of Being demand or contain each its own kind of mediation; consequently the nature of demonstration too is different for each. The ontological proof attempts to begin from the concept; its basis is the sum-total of all realities, and it proceeds to subsume existence under reality. It is therefore that kind of mediation which is Syllogism: this as yet need not here be considered. Kant’s objections to this have already been considered above, and it was remarked that by Existence Kant understands determinate existence, whereby something enters into the fabric of the totality of experience, that is, into the determination of an otherness and into the relation to other. As existing, something is mediated through an other; and existence in general is the side of its mediation. Now what Kant calls concept—namely something taken as related simply to itself, or image as such—does not contain its mediation; in abstract self-identity opposition is omitted. It would be the business of the ontological proof to demonstrate that the absolute concept—namely the concept of God—reaches determinate existence, or mediation, or how simple Essence mediates itself with mediation. This is effected, as was pointed out, by the subsumption of existence under its universal, namely reality, which is taken as the mean between (a) God in his concept and (b) existence.—This kind of mediation, in so far as it is cast in the form of a syllogism, is not here in question, as was stated. And our exposition up to this point has shown what is the true nature of this mediation of Essence with Existence. The nature of demonstration itself is to be considered under the doctrine of Cognition. Here we have only to indicate what is relevant to the nature of mediation in general.

The proofs of the existence of God indicate a ground for this existence. This ground is not supposed to be an objective ground of the existence of God; for this existence is in and for itself. It is therefore a ground merely for cognition. It thus announces itself as an entity which vanishes in the object which prima facie appears as grounded by it. Now the Ground which is derived from the contingent nature of the world contains the regress of the world into absolute Essence; for the contingent is that which is groundless in itself and transcends itself. In this manner then it is true that absolute Essence emerges from the groundless: Ground transcends itself, and immediately the illusion vanishes of the relation which was attributed to God, of being something grounded in an Other. It is thus seen that this mediation is true mediation. But this nature of its mediation is not known to this kind of demonstrative reflection: on the one hand it takes itself as being merely subjective, and thus removes its mediation from God himself, but on the other it for that reason does not recognize the mediating movement, nor that it is in Essence and how it is in Essence itself. Its true relation consists in this, that it is both in one; it is mediation as such, but it is also of course a mediation which is subjective and external—external to itself—and which in itself again transcends itself. But in the proof just discussed Existence is in the false relation of appearing only as mediated or posited.

Thus on the other side Existence cannot be considered as merely immediate. Taken in the determination of an immediacy, the comprehension of the existence of God has been expressed as something undemonstrable, and the knowledge of it as a merely immediate consciousness, as an act of faith. Knowledge is to come to the conclusion that it knows nothing, that is, that it again renounces its mediating movement and the determinations which occur in it. This has already appeared above; but it must be added that reflection, when it thus ends with its own cancellation, does not have Nothing for result; (if this were true, positive knowledge about Essence, being an immediate relation to it, would be severed from this result and would be an independent emergence, an act beginning with itself;) on the contrary, this end itself, this perishing of mediation, is at the same time the Ground out of which the immediate emerges. Language, as was observed above, combines the signification of this perishing and of Ground; the essence of God, it is said, is the abyss (der Abgrund) for finite reason. And this it is indeed, in so far as reason here surrenders its finitude and sinks its mediating movement; but this abyss, or negative Ground, is also the positive Ground of the emergence of the Existent, of Essence immediate in itself; mediation is essential moment. Mediation by means of Ground transcends itself, but does not make of Ground a substratum, in which case that which emerges from Ground would be something posited, having its Essence elsewhere, namely in Ground; but in fact this Ground, as abyss, is vanished mediation. Conversely only vanished mediation is also Ground, and is the self-identical and immediate only by virtue of this negation.

Existence here then must not be taken as a predicate or as determination of Essence, so that a proposition about Essence would be: Essence exists or has existence.—On the contrary, Essence has passed over into Existence; Existence is its absolute externalization, nor has it remained on the further side of it. The proposition would be: Essence is existence; it is not distinct from its existence.—Essence has passed over into Existence in so far as Essence, as Ground, is no longer distinct from itself as Grounded, or in so far as this Ground has transcended itself. But this negation is equally its position or absolute positive self-continuity; Existence is the intro-Reflection of Ground, its self-identity which came into being in its negation; it is thus mediation which has posited itself as self-identical and thereby is immediacy.

Now Existence essentially is self-identical mediation, and therefore the determinations of mediation belong to it; but they belong to it in such a manner that at the same time they are intro-reflected entities and have essential and immediate persistence. Existence, as immediacy which posits itself through transcendence, is negative unity and Being-in-Self; it therefore immediately determines itself as an Existent and as Thing.

Existence as existing entity is posited in the form of negative unity, and it is this essentially. But as yet this negative unity is only immediate determination—it is the One of the Something in general. But the existing Something is different from the Something which is. The former is essentially that kind of immediacy which arose through the Reflection of mediation in itself. Thus the existing Something is a Thing.

The Thing is distinct from its Existence as the Something can be distinguished from its Being. Immediately, the Thing and the Existent are one and the same. But Existence is not the first immediacy of Being; the moment of mediation is part of it; and therefore its determination as Thing, and the distinction of the two, is not a transition but, properly, an analysis; and Existence as such contains this distinction itself in the moment of its mediation: the distinction, then, is between Thing-in-itself and External Existence.

1. The Thing-in-itself is the existing entity as the essential immediate which is given as the result of the transcendence of mediation. To the Thing-in-itself here mediation is equally essential; but this distinction, in this first or immediate Existence, falls apart into indifferent determinations. One side, namely the mediation of the Thing, is its non-reflected immediacy, and so its Being in general; and this—since it is also determined as mediation—is a Determinate Being which is other to itself and in itself manifold and external. But it is not only Determinate Being; it stands in relation to transcended mediation and essential immediacy; and consequently it is Determinate Being as unessential, or as positedness.—(If the Thing is distinguished from its Existence, then it is the possible the Thing of imagination or thought, which as such is supposed not to exist at the same time. But the determination of Possibility and the opposition of the Thing and its Existence come later.)—But the Thing-in-itself and its mediated Being are both contained in Existence, and each is an Existence; the Thing-in-itself exists and is the essential Existence of the Thing, while mediated Being is its unessential Existence.

The Thing-in-itself, as the simple reflectedness of Existence in itself, is not the Ground of unessential Determinate Being; it is motionless, indeterminate unity, because it has precisely this determination, that it is transcended mediation, and therefore it is only foundation of Determinate Being. And for this reason too, Reflection, as Determinate Being which mediates itself through other, falls outside the Thing-in-itself. The latter is not supposed to contain in itself any determinate multiplicity, and consequently obtains this only when brought under external reflection, but remains indifferent to it. (—The Thing-in-itself has colour only in relation to the eye, smell in relation to the nose, and so forth.) Its variety is a collection of respects taken by an Other, certain relations to the Thing-in-itself in which this Other places itself; and these are not its own determinations.

2. Now this Other is Reflection, which, determined as external, is, first, external to itself, and is determinate variety. Next it is external to the essentially existing, and relates itself to it as to its absolute presupposition. But these two moments of External Reflection—its own multiplicity and its relation to the Thing-in-itself which is other to it—are one and the same. For this Existence is external only in so far as it relates itself to essential identity as to an Other. Multiplicity therefore has not its own independent persistence beyond the Thing-in-itself, but exists only as Show in opposition to it, in its necessary relation to it of reflex refracting itself against it. We have, then, variety as the relation of an Other to the Thing-in-itself; but this Other is nothing persisting for itself, but is only as relation to the Thing-in-itself; but also it is only as the repulsion from this; thus it is the unsupported recoil of itself on itself.

Now the Thing-in-itself is essential identity of Existence, and so this unessential Reflection does not apply to it, but remains external to it and collapses into itself. It perishes, and thus itself becomes essential identity or Thing-in-itself.—This may also be considered in the following manner: unessential Existence has its intro-Reflection in the Thing-in-itself; it is primarily related to it as to its Other; but as being Other to that which is in itself, it is nothing but its own transcendence and the becoming of Being-in-self. Thus the Thing-in-itself is identical with External Existence.

In the Thing-in-itself this appears in the following manner. The Thing-in-itself is self-relating essential Existence; it is self-identity only in so far as it contains the negativity of intro-Reflection; therefore, that which appeared as Existence external to it is a moment which it contains. For this reason too it is self-repellent Thing-in-itself, which stands in the attitude of an Other to itself. There is thus now a plurality of Things-in-themselves, which stand in the relation of External Reflection to one another. This unessential Existence is their relation to one another as to other; but, further, it is essential to them,—in other words, this unessential Existence, collapsing into itself, is Thing-in-itself, but another Thing-in-itself than the first; for this first is immediate essentiality, while the latter is that which emerges from unessential Existence. But this other Thing-in-itself is only an other in general; for, being a self-identical Thing, it has no further determinateness as against the first; and like the first it is the intro-Reflection of unessential Existence. Hence the determinateness of the various Things-in-themselves against one another falls within External Reflection.

3. At this point this External Reflection is an attitude of the Things-in-themselves to one another: as Others, they mediate one another. The Things-in-themselves are thus the extreme terms of a syllogism, the middle term of which is constituted by their external Existence—that Existence through which they are Others to one another and distinct entities. This their distinctness falls only within their relation: they depute, as it were, determinations into the relation from their surface only, themselves remaining indifferent to it, since they are absolutely intro-reflected.—Now this relation constitutes the totality of Existence. The Thing-in-itself stands in relation to a Reflection which is external to it; in this Reflection it has manifold determinations. This is its self-repulsion into another Thing-in-itself,—a repulsion which is the recoil of itself on itself, each being an Other only because it shows over against itself out of the Other; it has its positedness not in itself but in the Other, and is determinate only through the determinateness of the Other; and equally this Other is determinate only through the determinateness of the first. Accordingly the two Things-in-themselves do not contain variety in themselves; each has it only in the other; they are therefore not distinct entities. The Thing-in-itself is supposed to be related to the other extreme as to another Thing-in-itself; but in fact it is related to it as to something not distinct from it, and External Reflection, which was supposed to constitute the mediating relation between extremes, is an attitude of the Thing-in-itself only to itself: it is essentially its intro-Reflection. It is thus self-existent determinateness, or the determinateness of the Thing-in-itself. Accordingly the Thing-in-itself has determinateness not in a reciprocated relation, external to it, to another Thing-in-itself; determinateness is not merely a surface of the Thing-in-itself, but is its essential self-mediation with itself as with an Other.—The two Things-in-themselves, which are supposed to constitute the extremes of the relation because they are supposed to have in themselves no determinateness against each other, coincide, in fact, and are one: it is only one Thing-in-itself which in External Reflection has an attitude to itself, and it is its own relation to itself as to an other which constitutes its determinateness.

This determinateness of the Thing-in-itself is the Property of the Thing.

Quality is the immediate determinateness of the Something—that very negative by virtue of which Being is Something. Similarly the Property of the Thing is the negativity of Reflection, whereby Existence succeeds in becoming existing entity and—as simple self-identity—Thing-in-itself. But the negativity of Reflection, or transcended mediation, is itself essentially mediation and relation, not to an Other in general (as is Quality, since it is non-reflected determinateness), but to itself as to an Other, or mediation which immediately is equally self-identity. The abstract Thing-in-itself is itself this attitude which returns out of other to itself; hence it is determinate in itself. But its determinateness is Modification, which, as such, is itself determination, and, as attitude to Other, does not pass over into otherness and is removed beyond change.

A Thing has Properties. These are, first, its determinate relations to Other; Property is given only as a mode of attitude of one towards an Other; it is therefore External Reflection and the side of positedness of the Thing. But, secondly, in this positedness the Thing is in itself; it preserves itself in relation to Other. Thus it is admittedly only a surface, and now Existence exposes itself to the becoming of Being and to change; but Property is not lost in it. A Thing has the Property of effecting this or that in an Other, and of disclosing itself in a peculiar manner in its relation. It manifests this Property only under one condition,—the other Thing must have a corresponding nature; but also it is peculiar to the first Thing and is its own self-identical foundation;—for this reason this reflected quality is called Property. The Thing here passes over into an externality, but the Property preserves itself. Through its Properties the Thing becomes cause; and cause is this, that it preserves itself as effect. At this point, however, the Thing is only the stable Thing of many Properties, and it is not yet determined as actual cause; it is Reflection of its determinations, but Reflection which is in itself, and is not yet Positing Reflection.

It has resulted, then, that the Thing-in-itself is essentially not only Thing-in-itself in such a manner that its Properties are the positedness of an External Reflection: they are its own determinations, which give it a particular attitude. It is not an indeterminate foundation lying beyond its external Existence, but is found in its Properties as Ground; that is, it is self-identity in its positedness. But it is also found as Conditioned Ground, that is, its positedness is equally self-external Reflection; it is intro-reflected, and is in itself, only in so far as it is external.—The Thing-in-itself enters into external relations through Existence, and Existence consists in this externality; it is the immediacy of Being, and through it the Thing is subjected to change; but it is also the reflected immediacy of Ground, and the Thing is thus in itself in its change.—But this mention of the Ground-relation must not be taken as meaning that the Thing is in general determined as Ground of its Properties; its Thinghood itself is as such the Ground-determination, and Property is not distinct from its Ground, nor does it merely constitute positedness: it is Ground which has passed over into its externality and has thus become veritably intro-reflected Ground; the Property itself as such is Ground, self-existent positedness, in other words Ground constitutes the Form of its self-identity; its determinateness is the self-external Reflection of Ground; and the whole is Ground which, in its repulsion and determination and its external immediacy, relates itself to itself—The Thing-in-itself thus exists essentially, and the fact that it exists means, conversely, that Existence, as external immediacy, is also Being-in-Self.

Mention has already been made above (Vol. I, p. 133) (under the moment of Determinate Being, Being-in-Self) of the Thing-in-itself, and it was observed that the Thing-in-itself as such is no more than the empty abstraction from all determinateness, of which it is admitted that nothing can be known just because it is meant to be the abstraction from all determination.—The Thing-in-itself being thus presupposed as the indeterminate, all determination falls outside it into a Reflection which is foreign to it, while it is indifferent to the Reflection. In transcendental idealism this External Reflection is consciousness. This philosophical system places all determinateness of things (both with regard to form and to content) in consciousness; and accordingly, from this point of view, it falls within me, the subject, that I see the leaves of a tree not as black but as green, the sun as round and not as square, and taste sugar as sweet and not as bitter; that I determine the first and second strokes of a clock as successive and not as simultaneous, and determine the first to be neither the cause nor the effect of the second, and so forth.—This crude presentation of subjective idealism is in immediate contradiction to the consciousness of freedom, according to which the ego knows itself to be the universal and indeterminate, and casts off these manifold and necessary determinations, recognizing them to be external to itself and applicable only to things.—In this consciousness of its freedom the ego is that true and intro-reflected identity which the Thing-in-itself was supposed to be.—I have shown elsewhere that this transcendental idealism does not emancipate itself from the limitation of the ego by the object, or, generally, from the finite world; it only changes the form of the barrier (which remains absolute for it), translating it from the objective to the subjective shape, and making into determinatenesses of the ego and into a wild change raging within it (the ego being treated as a Thing) that which ordinary consciousness knows as a multiplicity and change belonging to Things which are merely external to it.—At the point here reached only the Thing-in-itself and Reflection (which is as yet external to it) are opposed to each other; the latter has not yet determined itself as consciousness, nor the former as ego. It has resulted from the nature of the Thing-in-itself and from External Reflection that this very externality determines itself as Thing-in-itself, or, conversely, becomes the peculiar determination of that primary Thing-in-itself. The essential inadequacy of the standpoint at which this philosophy halts consists in this, that it clings to the abstract Thing-in-itself as to an ultimate determination; it opposes Reflection, or the determinateness and multiplicity of the Properties, to the Thing-in-itself; while in fact the Thing-in-itself essentially has this External Reflection in itself, and determines itself as an entity endowed with its proper determinations, or Properties; whence it is seen that the abstraction of the Thing, which makes it pure Thing-in-itself, is an untrue determination.

The Thing-in-itself exists essentially;; external immediacy and determinateness belong to its Being-in-Self or intro-Reflection. Hence the Thing-in-itself is a Thing which has Properties; hence there are several Things, which are distinguished from one another not through some foreign respect but through themselves. These many different Things are in essential Reciprocal Action by virtue of their Properties; Property is this very reciprocal relation, and apart from it the Thing is nothing; the mutual determination, the middle term of the Things-in-themselves, which, as extremes, were supposed to remain indifferent as against this their relation, is itself that self-identical Reflection and Thing-in-itself which these extremes were supposed to be. Thinghood is thus degraded to the form of indeterminate self-identity which has its essentiality only in its Property. If therefore a Thing, or Things in general, be spoken of without determinate Property, then their distinction is merely indifferent and quantitative. What is considered as one Thing can equally be made into or considered as several Things: separation or union is here external.—A book is a Thing, and each of its pages is also a Thing, and so is each particle of its pages, and so to infinity. The determinateness by virtue of which one Thing is this Thing only, lies in its Properties alone. By means of them it distinguishes itself from other Things, because Property is negative Reflection and the very act of distinguishing; the Thing therefore contains its distinction from others only in its Property. Property is intro-reflected distinction by virtue of which the Thing in its positedness—that is, in its relation to other entities—becomes indifferent both to Other and to its relation. Consequently without its Properties the Thing retains nothing but abstract Being-in-Self, an unessential capacity and external holding-together. Veritable Being-in-Self is Being-in-Self in its positedness: and this is Property. Thus Thinghood has now passed over into Property.

The Thing was to have occupied the position of self-existent extreme as against Property, and Property was to have constituted the middle term between the related Things. But it is in this relation that the Things meet each other as self-repellent Reflection, and here they are distinguished and related. This their distinction and relation is one Reflection and one continuity of them. Accordingly the Things themselves fall only within this continuity, which is Property; and, considered as persistent extremes having existence apart from this Property, they vanish.

Consequently Property, which was meant to constitute the relation of independent extremes, is the Independent itself. Against it the Things are the unessential. They are an essential only as that Reflection which distinguishes itself and thus relates itself to itself; but this is Property. Property therefore is not that which is transcended in the Thing, nor is it a mere moment in it: in truth the Thing is only that unessential capacity, which is negative unity, but resembles only the One of the Something, that is, an immediate One. The Thing was determined above as unessential capacity in so far as it was made such by an external abstraction which detaches Property from it: now this abstraction has taken place by means of the transition of the Thing-in-itself into Property itself. But in this process the values have been inverted; in the first abstraction the abstract Thing without its Property was imagined as the essential, and Property as an external determination: here the Thing as such determines itself through itself as an indifferent external form of Property.—Property is now freed from the indeterminate and brittle connexion which is the One of the Thing: it is Property which constitutes the consistence of the Thing, an independent Matter.—This is simple self-continuity, and therefore contains form only as variety; there are consequently many independent Matters of this kind, and the Thing consists of them.

The transition of Property into a Matter or independent material is the well-known transition which chemistry operates upon sensible matter when it attempts to represent the properties of colour, smell, taste, and so forth, as material of light, of colour, of smell, sour or bitter material, and so forth, while it simply postulates others like that of heat, or electrical and magnetic matter, under the conviction that now it is handling Properties in their very truth.—The expression that Things consist of various Matters or materials has equal currency. Good care is taken not to call these Matters or materials Things, though it would probably be admitted that a pigment, for instance, is a Thing; but I do not know whether, for example, the materials of light, heat, electricity, and so on, are called Things. Things and their constituents are distinguished, but it is not stated exactly whether and to what degree the latter are also Things, or perhaps only half-things; but certainly they are at least Existents.

The necessity of passing from Properties to Matters, or the fact that Properties in truth are Matters, resulted from the truth that they are the essential and therefore the veritably independent element of Things.—But at the same time the intro-Reflection of Property constitutes only one side of the whole Reflection, namely the transcendence of distinction and the self-continuity of Property, which was meant to be an existence for other. Hereby Thinghood, as negative intro-Reflection and as act of distinguishing which repels itself from other, is degraded to an unessential moment; but at the same time it has further determined itself in the degradation. First, this negative moment has preserved itself; for Property has become self-continuous, and independent Matter, only in so far as the distinction of Things has transcended itself; accordingly the continuity of Property into otherness contains itself the moment of the negative, and at the same time its independence, as being this negative unity, is the re-established Something of Thinghood: negative independence as against the positive independence of material. Secondly, the Thing has now advanced from its indeterminateness into perfect determinateness. As Thing-in-itself it is abstract identity, simply negative Existence, or Existence determined as the indeterminate. Next it is determined by its Properties, by means of which it is supposed to distinguish itself from others. But in fact it is by means of Property continuous with others, and thus this incomplete distinction transcends itself; through it the Thing has passed back into itself and is now determined as determinate. It is determinate in itself: it is this Thing.—

But, thirdly, although this return upon self is self-relating determination, it is also unessential; self-continuous consistence constitutes independent Matter, in which the distinction of Things—their determinateness which is in and for itself—is transcended and has become external. The Thing as “this” is thus perfect determinateness, but this determinateness is determinateness in the element of unessentiality.

This results in the following manner, if considered from the side of the movement of Property. Property is not only external determination but also self-being Existence. This unity of externality and essentiality contains intro-Reflection and Reflection into other, and therefore repels itself from itself; it is determination as a simple, identically self-related independent, in which negative unity (the One of the Thing) has been transcended, and, on the other hand, it is also this determination as against Other; and here too it is intro-reflected and self-determined One. We have, then, Matters, and “this” Thing. These are the two moments of self-identical externality or intro-reflected Property.—Property was that by means of which Things were to be distinct from one another; now Property has rid itself of this its negative side (namely inherence in an Other), and simultaneously the Thing too has been freed from its determination by other Things, and has passed back from relation to other upon itself. But at the same time it is only Thing-in-itself which has become Other to itself, since the manifold Properties for their part have become independent, and thereby their negative relation has become a merely transcended relation in the One of the Thing. For this reason the Thing is self-identical negation only as against the positive continuity of the material.

The “this” therefore constitutes the perfected determinateness of the Thing: the determinateness is now also external. The Thing consists of independent Matters which are indifferent to their relation in the Thing. Hence this relation is only an unessential collocation of these, and the distinction of one Thing from another depends upon the selection of the particular Matters, and their individual quantities, which it contains. These pass beyond “this” Thing and continue themselves into other Things; the fact that they belong to “this” Thing is not a barrier for them. And equally they are no barrier to one another, since their negative relation is no more than the impotent “this.” When therefore they are connected in this latter they do not cancel one another; they are independent and, as such, impenetrable to one another; each in its determinateness relates itself only to itself, and is a member of a multiplicity of consistence indifferent to the other members; they admit only quantitative limitation.—The Thing as “this” is this their merely quantitative relation; it is a mere collection, their “also.” It consists of any quantum of a material, and also of any quantum of another, and also of others; the Thing alone constitutes this connexion of having no connexion.

“This” Thing has determined itself as the merely quantitative coherence of free materials, and as such is the absolutely variable Thing. Its variation consists in this, that one or more Matters are withdrawn from the collection or else are added to this “also,” or that their quantitative ratio is changed. The arising and passing away of “this” Thing is the external dissolution of this kind of external connexion, or the connexion of such terms as are indifferent to connexion. Materials circulate into and out of “this” Thing without hindrance; the Thing is absolute porosity having no measure nor form of its own.

The Thing then in its absolute determinateness, whereby it is “this,” is the absolutely soluble Thing. This dissolution, as well as its Being, is an external becoming-determinate; but the dissolution of the Thing and the externality of its Being is what is essential in this Being; it is “also” and no more, and consists only in this externality. But also it consists of its Matters; and not only the abstract “this” as such, but the whole “this” Thing is its own dissolution. For the Thing is determined as an external collection of independent Matters; these Matters are not Things, and have no negative independence: they are Properties as the independent, namely as determinateness which is intro-reflected as such. Accordingly the Matters are simple and relate only to themselves; but their content is a determinateness; intro-Reflection is only the form of this content, which is not intro-reflected as such, but relates itself to Other according to its determinateness. The Thing is therefore not only the “also” of the Matters (which is the relation of these as indifferent to one another), but is equally their negative relation; and the Matters, by virtue of their determinateness, are themselves this their negative Reflection, which is the puncticity of the Thing. One Matter is not what another is, according to their determinateness of content as against one another; and one is not in so far as another is, according to their independence.

The Thing therefore is the mutual relation of Matters out of which it is constituted in such a manner that in it one Matter and another “also” have persistence while at the same time one does not persist in it in so far as another does. Hence one Matter is cancelled in a Thing in the same measure in which another is in it; but simultaneously the Thing is the “also” or the persistence of that other. Hence in the persistence of one Matter the other does not persist, and equally it also does persist in the former; and so with all these different Matters reciprocally. In the same respect, then, in which one persists the others also persist, and this unified persistence is the puncticity or negative unity of the Thing; and in this regard they simply interpenetrate one another. Again, the Thing at the same time is only their “also,” and the Matters are reflected into their determinateness; and in this regard they are indifferent to one another and while interpenetrating one another are not in contact. The Matters therefore are essentially porous so that one persists in the pores (or non-persistence) of the others; but those others are porous themselves; in their pores, or non-persistence, the first and all the others persist; their persistence is also their cancellation and the persistence of others; and equally this persistence of others is their own cancellation and the persistence of the first, and similarly of all the rest. Consequently the Thing is the self-contradictory mediation of independent persistence with itself through its opposite (namely, through its negation), or of one independent Matter through the persistence and non-persistence of another.—In “this” Thing Existence has reached its completion; that is, in one entity it is self-being Being or independent persistence, and unessential Existence; hence the truth of Existence is that it has its Being-in-Self in unessentiality or its persistence in an Other (and indeed in the absolutely Other), or that it has its own nullity for foundation. It is therefore Appearance.

It is one of the commonest determinations of imagination that a Thing consists of many independent Matters. The Thing on the one hand is considered as having Properties, the Thing being their persistence. But on the other hand these different determinations are taken as Matters the persistence of which is not the Thing: the Thing, conversely, consists of them, and is itself no more than their external connexion and quantitative limit. Both Properties and Matters are the same content-determinations; but the former are moments, that is, entities reflected into their negative unity as into a foundation distinct from themselves (namely Thinghood); the latter are independent distinct entities each of which is reflected into its own self-unity. These Matters now further determine themselves as independent persistence; also, however, they are gathered together in one Thing. This Thing has the two determinations of being first “this” and secondly “also.” The “also” is that which occurs in external intuition as spatial extension; while “this,” or negative unity, is the puncticity of the Thing. The Matters are collected in the puncticity, and their “also,” or extension, is everywhere this puncticity; for the “also” as Thinghood is essentially also determined as negative unity. Therefore, where one of these Matters is, there, at one and the same point, is every other; the Thing has not its colour at one place, its material of heat at another and of smell at a third, and so on, but, at the point where it is warm, it is also coloured, acid, electric, and so on. Now these materials are not external to one another, but are in one single “this”; and therefore they are assumed to be porous, so that one Matter exists in the interstices between the others. But that Matter which is in the interstices between the others is porous itself; conversely, therefore, in its pores exists the other Matter; and not it alone, but also the third, the tenth, and so forth. They all are porous, and all the others are in the interstices of each, just as each, with all the rest, is in the pores of every other. Accordingly they form a mass which reciprocally interpenetrates itself in such a manner that the penetrating elements are equally penetrated by the others, whence each penetrates again its own penetratedness. Each is posited as its own negation, and this negation is the persistence of another; but this persistence is equally the negation of this other and the persistence of the first.

The contradiction of the independent persistence of several Matters in one whole, or of their indifference to one another in their interpenetration, is, as a rule, warded off by imagination by means of an excuse based on the smallness of the parts and of the pores. Here distinction in itself, contradiction, and the negation of negation come into play, and, in general, a notion is required to be formed; and here imagination allows itself to relapse into external or quantitative distinction; in respect of arising and passing away it has recourse to graduality, and in respect of Being, to smallness, where the vanishing term is degraded to the imperceptible, and contradiction to a confusion, and the true relation is shifted into a vague sensuous representation which saves the self-transcendent by its obscurity.

But if further light is thrown upon this obscurity it reveals itself as contradiction, partly subjective and springing from sensuous representation, and partly objective and springing from the object; sensuous representation itself completely contains its elements. For the action of this latter is, first, the contradiction of clinging to perception (wherein it has before it things of existence), and yet of ascribing sensuous existence to the imperceptible, which is determined only by reflection. The minute parts, and pores, are at the same time said to be a sensuous existence, and their positedness is spoken of in the same manner as is that mode of reality which belongs to colour, heat, and so forth. If, further, imagination were to consider this objectival mist (the pores and minute parts) more closely, it would there recognize one Matter and also its negation, since Matter would be found at one point, and by its side its negation, the pore, and by its side again Matter, and so forth; and besides this it would further perceive that in “this” Thing it has (1) independent Matter, and (2) its negation (or porosity) and the other independent Matter, at one and the same point, and that this porosity and the independent persistence of Matters in one another as in one entity are a reciprocal negation and penetration of penetration.—In physics, modern expositions of the expansion of steam in atmospheric air, and of various gases in one another, elaborate more exactly one side of the concept of the nature of the Thing which has here resulted. For they show that a certain volume, for instance, has a capacity for the same amount of steam whether it is empty or full of atmospheric air; and also that the various gases spread themselves in one another in such a manner that each is as good as a vacuum for the other, or at least that they are in no kind of chemical combination with one another, each remaining uninterrupted by the other and self-continuous, and preserving itself indifferent to, while penetrating, the others.—But in the concept of the Thing the further moment is this, that here one Matter is at the same point where the other is also; that at this point one Matter both penetrates and is penetrated, or that the independent immediately is also the independence of an Other. This is self-contradictory; but the Thing is this very contradiction, and for this reason it is Appearance.

In the sphere of spirit the idea of forces or faculties of the soul is of the same kind as that of these Matters. Spirit is “this” in a far deeper sense—the negative unity in which its determinations interpenetrate one another. But when imagined as soul it is frequently taken as a Thing. Man in general is allowed to consist of soul and body, and each of these is counted as independent by itself; and similarly the soul is allowed to consist of so-called soul-forces, each of which has an independence persisting by itself, or is an immediate activity operating for itself according to its determinateness. It is imagined that at one point understanding and at another fantasy is operating by itself, and that understanding, memory, and so on, are cultivated each by itself, while the other forces are left inactive on one side until their turn comes or does not come. The faculties are transposed into the materially-simple soul-thing (supposed to be immaterial because simple), and, though in this process they are not imagined as separate Matters, yet, as forces, they are assumed to be as indifferent to one another as these Matters. But spirit is not that contradiction which the Thing is, which dissolves and passes over into Appearance: it is already in itself contradiction which has passed back into its absolute unity—namely, the Notion, where distinctions must now be thought of no longer as independent, but only as separate moments in the subject, which is simple individuality.