III.2.1. Mechanism

Objectivity is the totality of the Notion, which has passed back into its unity; thus something immediate is posited, which is this totality in and for itself and is also posited as such, although in it the negative unity of the Notion has not yet severed itself from the immediacy of this totality;—or Objectivity is not yet posited as Judgment. The Notion is immanent in it, and, to this extent, Objectivity contains the distinction of the Notion; but, because of the objective totality, the distinct terms are complete and independent Objects, which consequently, when they are related, are related only as independent, and in every connexion remain external to one another.—And this constitutes the characteristic of Mechanism, which is, that whatever relation relates the terms is foreign to them and does not concern their nature; even if it involves the appearance of a One, it remains nothing else than a collocation, mixture, heap, or the like. Spiritual like material Mechanism consists in this, that the terms which are related in spirit remain external to it and to one another. A mechanical idea or memory, habit, or a mechanical manner of acting, denotes that the peculiar penetration and presence of spirit is lacking in that which it apprehends or does. Though its theoretical or practical mechanism cannot occur without its self-activity or without an impulse or consciousness, yet the freedom of individuality is lacking, and, because it is not found there, such activity appears to be merely external.

It has resulted that the Object is the Syllogism whose mediation has been equalized and has become immediate identity. It is therefore universal in and for itself; universality not in the meaning of a community of properties, but one which penetrates particularity and in it is immediate individuality.

1. First, then, the Object does not divide itself into matter and form, of which the former would be the independent universal part of the Object and the latter the particular and individual; such an abstract distinction between individuality and universality is not, according to its Notion, present in it; if it is considered as matter, it must be taken as matter formed in itself. It may also be determined as a Thing with Properties, as a Whole consisting of Parts, as Substance with Accidents, or according to the other relations of Reflection. But these relations have altogether perished in the Notion; hence the Object has neither properties nor accidents, for these may be separated from the thing or the substance, whereas in the Object particularity is simply reflected into totality. The same independence is indeed present in the parts of a whole as belongs to the distinctions of the Object; but these distinctions are also themselves essentially Objects or totalities, which have not—as the parts have—this determinateness as against the whole.

Consequently the Object is at this point indeterminate in so far as it has no determinate opposite in itself; for it is mediation which has collapsed into immediate identity. In so far as the Notion is essentially determinate, it has determinateness as a complete but otherwise indeterminate, that is, relationless, multiplicity, which constitutes a totality that in turn is itself as yet not further determined: such side or parts as may be distinguished in it belong to an external reflection. This wholly indeterminate distinction, then, is only this, that there is a plurality of Objects each of which contains its determinateness reflected only into its universality and does not show outwards.—This indeterminate determinateness is essential to it; it is therefore such an agglomeration in itself, and must consequently be regarded as composite or as an aggregate.—It does not however consist of atoms, since these are not Objects because they are not totalities. Leibniz’s monad would more nearly be an Object, since it is a totality of representation of the world; but, locked up in its intensive subjectivity, it is supposed to be at least essentially One in itself. The monad, however, determined as exclusive One, is only a principle which reflection assumes. But it is Object; partly in so far as the ground of its manifold images, of the developed, that is, the posited, determinations of its totality (which is merely in itself), lies outside it; and partly in so far as it is indifferent to the monad whether it constitutes an Object together with others; thus in fact it is not exclusive or determinate for itself.

2. Now the Object is the totality of determinateness, but not its negative unity, because of its indeterminateness and immediacy; and consequently it is indifferent to the determinations as individual entities determined in and for themselves, and these themselves are indifferent to one another. Consequently neither the Object nor the determinations themselves can serve as basis from which Notions may be formed about them; the totality of the Object is the form of general reflectedness of its multiplicity into individuality in general which is not determined in itself. Consequently every determinateness which it has is proper to it; but the form which constitutes their distinction and connects them into a unity is external and indifferent; whether this form is that of a mixture, order, or certain arrangement of parts and sides, these all are connexions which are indifferent to the related terms.

Thus the Object has the determinateness of its totality, as well as a Determinate Being in general, outside itself—in other Objects; these have theirs in yet other Objects, and so to infinity. The return upon itself of this egress into infinity must indeed also be assumed, and must be imagined as a totality or a world; but this world is just universality bounded in itself by indeterminate individuality; it is a Universe.

Thus the Object in its determinateness is equally indifferent to them; and thereby it again points on beyond itself for its determinateness to Objects to which in their turn it is indifferent whether they determine or not. Hence there is nowhere a principle of self-determination; determinism—which is the point at which cognition stands in so far as the Object, as it has just turned out here to be, is the truth—indicates that its every determination is that of some other Object; but this other equally is indifferent both to its determinateness and to its activity.—For this reason determinism itself suffers from an indeterminateness which forces it to go on to infinity; at any point it may halt and rest satisfied, because the Object to which it has passed over is rounded in itself as a formal totality and is indifferent to determination by another. Hence the explanation of the determination of an Object, and the progress of this idea which is made for this purpose, is only an empty word, because there is no self-determination in the other Object to which it moves on.

3. Since the determinateness of an Object lies in another Object, there is no definite distinction between them; the determinateness is merely double, being first in the one and then in the other Object: it is just identical, and in so far any explanation made or Notion formed is tautological. This tautology is external and empty oscillation. The determinateness acquires no peculiar distinctness as against Objects which are indifferent to it, and therefore it is identical; there is consequently only one determinateness; and the fact that it is double expresses just this externality and nullity of a distinction. But at the same time the Objects are independent as against each other: hence in this identity they remain utterly external to each other.—Thus there is here a contradiction between the complete indifference of the Objects to each other and the identity of their determinateness; or of their complete externality in the identity of their determinateness. Thus this contradiction is the negative unity of a plurality of Objects mutually self-repellent in it,—that is, the Mechanical Process.

If the Objects are considered merely as totalities rounded off in themselves, they cannot act upon one another. In this determination they are as the monads, which for this same reason were looked on as quite without effect upon one another. But for this very reason the Notion of a monad is a faulty reflection. For, first, it is a definite image of its totality which is only in itself; as a certain degree of development and positedness of its image of the world it is determinate; and, since now it is a self-rounded totality, it is also indifferent to this determinateness; hence it is not its own determinateness, but one posited through another Object. Secondly, it is an immediate entity in general in so far as it is supposed to be only as imaging; its self-relation therefore is abstract universality; it is thus a Determinate Being which is open to others.—In order to win the freedom of substance, it is not sufficient to imagine it as a totality which, complete in itself, has need of no acquisitions from without. Rather, notionless and merely imaging self-relation is a passivity as against Other.—Similarly determinateness is external, whether it is taken as the determinateness of an existent or of an imaging entity, or again as a degree of a peculiar development which comes from within;—that degree which the development reaches has its limit in an Other. If the reciprocal action of substances is attributed to an external pre-established harmony, then it is simply made a presupposition, that is, something which is withdrawn from the Notion.—The need to escape from the interaction of the substances was due to the moment of absolute independence and originality, which was made the foundation. But the positedness—the degree of development—does not correspond to this Being-in-Self; and for this very reason the positedness has its ground in an Other.

It was shown in the proper place that the Relation of Substantiality passes over into the Relation of Causality. But here the existent entity has no longer the determination of a Substance, but of an Object; the causal relation has become submerged in the Notion; the originality of one substance as against another has proved to be a show, and its action a transition into the opposite. Consequently this relation has no objectivity. Hence in so far as the one Object is posited in the form of subjective unity as active cause, this no longer counts as an original determination, but as something mediated; the active Object has this its determination only through some other Object.—Mechanism, since it belongs to the sphere of the Notion, contains that posited in itself which turned out to be the truth of the causal relation, namely that the cause, which is supposed to be the term that is in and for itself, is essentially also effect, or positedness. Consequently in Mechanism the causality of the Object is, immediately, a nonoriginality; it is indifferent to this its determination; and the fact that it is cause is therefore contingent in it.—In so far it might well be said that the causality of substances is merely something imagined. But precisely this imagined causality is Mechanism; for Mechanism is this, that causality, as identical determinateness of various substances (that is, as submersion of their independence in this identity), is a mere positedness; the Objects are indifferent to this unity and preserve themselves against it. But equally this their indifferent independence is mere positedness: for this reason they admit of mingling and aggregation, and of becoming, as aggregate, one Object. By virtue of this indifference both to their transition and to their independence, the substances are Objects.

The Mechanical Process is the positing of that which is contained in the Notion of Mechanism; the positing, first, then, of a contradiction.

1. The interaction of the Objects, as it results from the Notion which has been explained, is the positing of the identical relation of the Objects. This consists in this alone, that the determinateness which is determined is given the form of universality,—a communication which is without any transition into opposite.—Spiritual communication, which in any case takes place in that element which is the universal in the form of universality, is, by itself, a relation of ideal nature, wherein a determinateness continues itself unclouded from one person into another, and, without any change, universalizes itself—as an odour spreads freely in the unresisting atmosphere. But even in the communication between material Objects, their determinateness spreads out (so to speak) in a manner which is of equally ideal nature; and personality is an infinitely more intensive hardness than that which belongs to Objects. The formal totality of the Object in general, which is indifferent to determinateness and therefore is not a self-determination, makes it an entity undistinguished from the other, so that the interaction at this point is an unhindered continuation of the determinateness of the one in the other.

In the spiritual sphere now the communicable content is infinitely manifold; for, being taken up into intelligence, it achieves this form of universality in which it becomes communicable. But that which is universal not only through its form but in and for itself, is (as well in the spiritual as in the material sphere) the objective as such, against which the individuality of external Objects (and also of persons) is something unessential that can offer it no resistance. Laws, manners, and reasonable ideas in general are, in the spiritual sphere, such communicable entities, which penetrate individuals unconsciously and assert themselves in them. In the material sphere, movement, heat, magnetism, electricity, and the like—which must be determined as imponderable agents even if it is attempted to imagine them as stuff or matter—are agents lacking that part of materiality which is the foundation of their individualization.

2. Now if in the interaction of Objects their identical universality is posited first, it is equally necessary to posit the other moment of the Notion, namely particularity: the Objects consequently also demonstrate their independence, preserve themselves as external to one another, and, in that universality, establish individuality. This reconstitution is reaction in general. This must not be taken as a mere cancellation of action and of the communicated determinateness; that which has been communicated is universal, and as such is positive in the particular Objects, and particularizes itself only in their variety. In so far, then, that which is communicated remains what it is; only, it distributes itself over the Objects, or is determined by their particularity.—Cause perishes in its Other, or effect, and the activity of the causal substance is lost in its action; but the Object which acts upon others merely becomes universal; its action, at first, is not a loss of its determinateness but a particularization; by means of it the Object, which at first was the whole of that determinateness individual in itself, now becomes a species of it; and it is only through this that the determinateness is posited as universal. Both, the elevation of the individual determinateness into universality (in communication), and its particularization, or degradation, from having been one, into a species (in distribution), are one and the same process.

Now reaction is equal to action.—This at first shows itself in this manner, that the other Object has absorbed within itself the whole universal, and thus is now the active term as against the first. Thus its reaction is the same as the action—a reciprocal repulsion of the impulse. Secondly, that which is communicated is the objective; thus, while their difference is presupposed, it remains substantial determination of the Objects; and so the universal forthwith specifies itself in them; each Object in consequence not merely gives back the whole of the action, but each also has its specific share. Thirdly, however, the reaction is wholly negative action in so far as each, through the elasticity of its independence, ejects from itself the positedness of an other, and preserves its self-relation. The specific particularity of the communicated determinateness in the Objects (which was called species above) returns to individuality, and the Object upholds its externality as against the universality which was communicated. Hereby action passes over into rest. It turns out to be a change which is merely superficial and transient in the self-rounded and indifferent totality of the Object.

3. This regress constitutes the Product of the Mechanical Process. Immediately the Object is presupposed (1) as individual, (2) also as particular against others, and (3) as indifferent to its particularity, as universal. The Product is this presupposed totality of the Notion as a totality which now is posited. It is the conclusion in which the communicated universal is bound together with individuality through the particularity of the Object; but at the same time, in rest mediation is posited as such as has transcended itself; or it is posited that the Product is indifferent to this its process of determination, and that the determinateness which it receives is external to it.

Thus the Product is the same as is the Object which is just entering into the Process. But at the same time it is determined only through this movement: the Mechanical Object is Object only as Product, because that which it is is in it only through the mediation of an Other. Thus, as Product, it is what it was to have been in and for itself—a conglomerate or mixture, a certain order and arrangement of the parts; it is, altogether, an entity whose determinateness is not self-determination, but something posited.

On the other side the result of the Mechanical Process equally is not already present before itself; its ending is not in its beginning, as in the End. The Product is a determinateness, as posited externally, in the Object. Thus according to the Notion this Product is what the Object is already from its beginning. But in the beginning external determinateness does not yet exist as posited. In so far the result is something wholly different from the first existence of the Object, and exists as something utterly contingent for it.

The Mechanical Process passes over into rest. For that determinateness which the Object obtains through it is merely external. This rest itself is equally external to it, since it is the opposite determinateness to the action of the Object; but every determinateness is indifferent to the Object. Hence the rest may also be regarded as the effect of some external cause, just as much as it was indifferent to the Object to be active Object.

Now further the determinateness is a posited determinateness, and the Notion of the Object has passed back through mediation to itself; it is therefore an intro-reflected determinateness that applies to the Object. Consequently both the Objects in the Mechanical Process, and the Process itself, have now a more closely determined relation. They are not merely various; they are distinct in a determinate manner as against one another. Thus the result of the Formal Process is on the one hand determinationless rest; but on the other (by virtue of intro-reflected determinateness) it is the distribution among several Objects which are in a mechanical relation to one another, of the opposition which the Object in general has in itself. The Object is on the one hand determinationless and is inelastic and dependent; but on the other it has an independence through which other entities cannot break. And now also this more closely determined opposition of independent individuality and dependent universality belongs to the Objects as against one another.—The difference taken more closely may be apprehended as merely quantitative (as between the various mass-magnitudes of bodies), or as a difference in intensity, and in many other ways. But, in general, it must not be held fast merely in this abstraction: as Objects, both are also positively independent entities.

Here as before the first moment of this Real Process is communication. The weaker can be seized and penetrated by the stronger only in so far as it absorbs the latter and constitutes one sphere together with it. In the material world the weak is secured against what is incomparably stronger (as a linen cloth freely suspended in air is not pierced by a bullet, and a weak organic receptivity is susceptible to weak more than to strong irritants); and similarly a wholly feeble spirit is more secure against a strong than is one which stands closer to the latter. Imagine something wholly dull and ignoble: a high intelligence or nobility can make no impression upon it; and the only consistent expedient against reason is to have no traffic with it.—In so far as dependent and independent cannot coalesce, and no communication can take place between them, the latter also can offer no resistance; that is, it cannot specify for itself the universal which is communicated to it.—If they were not in the same sphere, their mutual relation would be an Infinite Judgment, and no Process would be possible between them.

Taken more closely, the moment of the overcoming of one Object by the other is resistance since it is the beginning moment of the distribution of the universal which has been communicated and of the positing of self-relating negativity, or of that individuality which is to be constructed. Resistance is overcome in so far as its determinateness is inadequate to the communicated universal which has been taken up by the Object and is supposed to singularize itself in it. The Object’s relative dependence manifests itself in this, that its individuality has no capacity for what is communicated and is consequently burst open by it, since it cannot, in this universal, constitute itself as subject, and cannot make the universal its predicate.—Force applied to an Object is foreign to it only from this second side. Power is an objective universality; and it becomes force in that it is identical with the nature of the Object, while its determinateness or negativity is not the negative intro-Reflection of the Object itself, according to which the Object is an individual. In so far as the negativity of the Object does not intro-reflect itself in power (or power is not its self-relation), it is as against power only abstract negativity, the manifestation of which is submergence.

Power, taken as objective universality and as force towards the Object, is what is called fate—a notion which falls within Mechanism in so far as it is called blind; that is, in so far as its objective universality is not recognized by the subject in its specific peculiarity.—To make some short observations on this head, the fate of the living entity in general is the genus, which manifests itself through the transitoriness of the living individuals, which do not possess it as genus in their actual individuality. As bare Objects, the merely living natures (like other things on a lower stage) have no fate; what happens to them is a contingency; but in their Notion as Objects they are external to themselves; the foreign power of fate is therefore entirely their own immediate nature, that is, externality and contingency itself. A real fate is peculiar to self-consciousness, since it is free, and therefore, in the individuality of its ego, is utterly in and for itself and can oppose itself to its objective universality and make itself alien to this. But by this very separation it excites against itself the mechanical relation of a fate. If therefore a fate is to have power over it, it must have given itself some determinateness against essential universality: it must have committed an act. Hereby it has made itself a particular; and this Determinate Being, as abstract universality, is at the same time that side which is open to communication from that Essence which has been alienated from it; it is here that it is snatched away into the Process. A people without deeds is blameless; it is wrapped in objective moral universality and dissolved in it; it is without that individuality which moves the unmoved, and gives itself a determinateness outwards, and a universality severed from objective universality and abstract. But in this process the subject becomes something which has shed its essence—an Object: it has entered into the relation of externality as against its own nature, and into that of Mechanism.

The Product of Formal Mechanism is the Object in general, an indifferent totality in which determinateness exists as posited. Hereby the Object, as determinate, has entered into the Process; hence (1) in its submersion, rest, as the original formalism of the object, and negativity of its determinedness-for-self, is the result; (2) the cancellation of determinedness, as its positive intro-Reflection, is determinateness which has entered into itself, or the posited totality of the Notion, the true individuality of the Object. The Object, determined first in its indeterminate universality and next as particular, is now determined as objectively individual; so that here that show of individuality is transcended which is only an independence opposing itself to substantial universality.

This intro-Reflection, in the shape which it has when reached as a result, is the objective unification of the Objects: this is individual independence, or the Centre. Secondly, the Reflection of negativity is universality which is a fate not opposed to determinateness but determinate in itself, and reasonable,—a universality which particularizes itself in itself, or a distinction which is at rest and fixed in the dependent particularity of the Objects and their Process: that is, Law. This result is the truth and therefore also the foundation of the Mechanical Process.

First, the empty manifoldness of the Object is now collected into objective individuality, into the simple self-determining middle-point. Secondly, in so far as the Object as immediate totality retains its indifference as against determinateness, in so far the latter also is present in it as unessential, or as the mutual externality of many Objects. The first, or essential, determinateness on the other hand constitutes the real mean between the many Objects which act upon one another mechanically: through it they are bound together in and for themselves, and it is their objective universality. Universality showed itself first, in the relation of communication, as one which is there through positing alone; while as objective it is the penetrating and immanent essence of the Objects.

In the material world it is the central body which is the genus but also the individual universality of the individual Objects and their Mechanical Process. The unessential individual bodies are related to one another as pushing and pressing: this relation does not subsist between the central body and the Objects of which it is the essence, for their externality no longer constitutes their fundamental determination. Consequently their identity with it is rather rest; they are in their Centre, and this unity is their Notion which is in and for itself. But it remains an Ought, since the externality of the Objects (which still remains posited) does not agree with this unity. Their tendency towards the Centre is therefore their absolute universality which is not posited through communication; this universality constitutes the true and concrete rest not posited from without, into which the Process of dependence must pass back.—It is on this account an empty abstraction when it is assumed in Mechanics that if a body is set in motion it would move in a straight line to infinity unless it lost its movement through external resistance. Friction and all other forms of resistance are only manifestations of centrality: it is this which absolutely brings resistance back to itself; for that against which the moving body exerts friction has the force of a resistance only because it is one with the Centre.—In the spiritual sphere the Centre and the unification with it assume higher forms; but the unity of the Notion and its reality (which here as yet is mechanical centrality) must constitute the fundamental determination there too.

In so far the central body has ceased to be a mere Object, for in a mere Object determinateness is unessential; it has no longer only the Being-in-Self, but also the Being-for-Self of the objective totality. For this reason it may be looked upon as an Individual. Its determinateness differs essentially from a mere order or arrangement or external coagulation of parts; as determinateness which is in and for itself it is an immanent form; it is itself a determining principle in which the Objects inhere, while by it they are connected into a true One.

But so far this Central Individual is only a mean which, as yet, has no true extremes; however, as negative unity of the total Notion it sunders itself into these. In other words the Objects which before were dependent and self-external are likewise determined as Individuals by the regress of the Notion; the self-identity of the central body, which still is a tendency, is infected with externality; and, since it has been absorbed into the objective individuality of the central body, this individuality is communicated to this externality. Thus, having a centrality of their own, they are placed outside the first Centre, and each is a Centre for the dependent Objects. These second Centres and the dependent Objects are bound together by this absolute mean.

But also the relative Central Individuals constitute the middle of a second syllogism, which (1) is subsumed under a higher extreme, namely the objective universality and power of the absolute Centre, and (2) subsumes under itself the dependent Objects, supporting their superficial or formal isolation.—These dependent entities too are the middle of a third syllogism, the Formal Syllogism; for they are the bond between absolute and relative Central Individuality in so far as the latter has in them its externality, by means of which self-relation also is a tendency towards an absolute middle-point. The formal Objects have for their essence the identical gravity of their immediate central body, in which they inhere, since it is their subject and the extreme of their individuality. By means of the externality which they constitute it is subsumed under the absolute central body; consequently they are the formal mean of particularity.—But the absolute individual is the objectively universal mean, which binds together and holds fast the Being-in-Self of the relative individual and its externality.—Similarly a Government, the individual citizens, and the needs or the external life of the individuals are three terms, each of which is the mean of the two others. The Government is the absolute Centre in which the extreme of the individuals is bound together with their external persistence; and similarly the individuals are mean: they manifest that universal individual in external existence and translate their moral essence into the extreme of actuality. The third is the Formal Syllogism or Syllogism of Show, showing that the individuals are connected with this universal and absolute individuality through their needs and external Determinate Being; which Syllogism as being merely subjective passes over into the others and has its truth in them.

This totality, whose moments are themselves the complete relations of the Notion—that is, syllogisms—where each of the three distinct Objects runs through the determination of middle and extremes, constitutes Free Mechanism. Here the distinct Objects have objective universality—penetrating gravity which preserves itself self-identical in particularization—for fundamental determination.—The relations of pressure, impulse, attraction, and the like, as well as aggregations or mixtures, belong to the relation of externality, which is the foundation of the third of the syllogisms which have been juxtaposed. The order, which is the merely external determinateness of the Objects, has passed over into immanent and objective determination: this is Law.

In Law the more closely determinate distinction between the ideal reality of objectivity and its external reality comes into view. As immediate totality of the Notion, the Object does not yet possess externality as distinct from the Notion which is not posited for itself. Through the Process it has passed into itself, and thus the opposition has arisen between simple centrality and an externality which is now determined as externality, that is, is posited as something which is not in and for itself. This identical or ideal element in individuality is an Ought, because of its relation to externality; it is the unity of the Notion, determinate in and for itself and self-determining, to which that external reality does not correspond, whence it becomes no more than a tendency. But in and for itself individuality is the concrete principle of negative unity, and as such is itself totality,—a unity which sunders itself into determinate Notion-distinctions and remains in its self-equal universality: it is thus the middle-point, extended, within its pure ideality, by distinction.—This reality, which corresponds to the Notion, is of ideal nature; it is distinct from that other reality which merely tends: it is distinction (which at first is a plurality of Objects) absorbed in its essentiality and into pure universality. This real ideality is the soul of the objective totality which was developed before: it is the identity, determined in and for itself, of the system.

Consequently objective Being-in-and-for-Self turns out, in its totality and in a more closely determinate manner, to be the negative unity of the Centre, which divides into subjective individuality and external objectivity, receiving the former in the latter and determining it in a distinction which is of ideal nature. This self-determining unity, which absolutely leads back external objectivity into ideality, is the principle of self-movement; the determinateness of this animation, which is the distinction of the Notion itself, is Law.—Dead Mechanism was the Mechanical Process of Objects which immediately appeared as independent (this has already been considered), but for this very reason are in truth dependent and have their Centre outside themselves: this Process, which passes over into Rest, shows either contingency and indeterminate inequality, or formal uniformity. This uniformity is a rule: it is not Law. Only Free Mechanism has a Law, the peculiar determination of pure individuality or of the Notion which is for itself: as distinction in itself it is the imperishable source of a self-kindling movement; and, relating itself to itself alone in the ideality of its distinction, it is free necessity.

But this soul is still drowned in its body; the Notion, determinate now but inner, of objective totality is free necessity which demands that the Law does not yet face its Object; it is concrete centrality as universality spread out immediately into its objectivity. Consequently this ideality has not the Objects themselves for its determinate distinction; these are independent individuals of the totality, or also (if we look back upon the formal stage) non-individual external Objects. Law is indeed immanent in them and constitutes their nature and power; but its distinction is locked up in its ideality, and the Objects themselves are not distinguished into the difference (which is of ideal nature) of Law. But the Object has its essential independence in ideal centrality and its Law alone; it has therefore no force to resist the judgment of the Notion and to preserve itself in abstract, indeterminate independence and aloofness. By virtue of the ideal distinction immanent in it its Determinate Being is a determinateness posited through the Notion. In this manner its dependence is no longer merely a tendency towards the middle-point, as against which it still has the appearance of an independent and external Object precisely because its relation is only a tendency: it is, on the contrary, a tendency towards an Object which is definitely opposed to it. And also the Centre through this fact has fallen apart, and its negative unity has passed over into the objectivated opposition. Consequently now Centrality is the relation of these objectivities which are negative and tense as against one another. Thus Free Mechanism determines itself to be Chemism.