III.1.1. The Notion

The capacity of forming Notions in general is usually expressed as Understanding; and in this respect Understanding is distinguished from the power of Judgment and the capacity of Syllogisms, which is formal Reason. But chiefly it is contrasted with Reason; but in so far it does not mean the capacity of the Notion in general, but of determinate Notions: it is here imagined that the Notion is only a determinate entity. If Understanding in this meaning is distinguished from formal power of Judgment and formal Reason, then it must be taken as the capacity of the individual determinate Notion. For Judgment and Syllogism (or Reason itself) are, even as formal, only of understanding nature, because they stand under the form of abstract Notion-determinateness. But here the Notion is not counted as merely abstractly determinate entity; consequently Understanding must be distinguished from Reason only by the definition that the former is only the capacity of the Notion in general.

Now this general Notion which is here to be considered contains the three moments of Universality, Particularity, and Individuality. The distinction, and the determinations which result in the process of distinguishing, constitute the side which before was called positedness. This is in the Notion identical with Being-in-and-for-Self, and therefore each of these moments is whole Notion as much as determinate Notion or as one determination of the Notion.

At first it is pure Notion or the determination of Universality. But the pure or Universal Notion is also only a determinate or Particular Notion, which places itself alongside of the others. The Notion is the totality, and thus in its universality or pure identical self-relation is essentially the fact of determining and distinguishing; and therefore it contains in itself the standard by means of which this form of its self-identity, penetrating and comprehending all the moments, equally immediately determines itself to be only the Universal as against the distinctness of the moments.

Secondly, the Notion is hereby as this Particular Notion, or as the determinate Notion which is posited as distinct from others.

Thirdly, Individuality is the Notion which reflects itself out of distinction into absolute negativity. This at the same time is the moment in which it has passed out of its identity into its otherness, and becomes the Judgment.

The pure Notion is the absolutely infinite, unconditioned, and free. At this point, where the treatment which has the Notion for content begins, its genesis must once more be reviewed. Essence grew out of Being, and the Notion out of Essence and, in consequence, out of Being too. But this process of becoming is equivalent to the recoil of itself, so that what has become is now rather unconditioned and original. Being in its transition to Essence has become a show or positedness, and Becoming (or the transition to other) has become a positing; and conversely positing, or the Reflection of Essence, has transcended itself and has reconstructed itself to be a non-posited and original Being. The Notion is the interpenetration of these moments:—the Qualitative which has original being is only as a positing and return upon itself, and this pure intro-Reflection is simply other-becoming, or determinateness which consequently is equally infinite and self-relating determinateness.

The Notion then is, first, absolute self-identity, in such a manner that the identity is self-identity only as negation of negation, or as the infinite self-unity of negativity. This pure self-relation of the Notion, which thus this relation is as positing itself through negativity, is the Universality of the Notion.

Universality is the most simple determination, and therefore seems incapable of explanation: for an explanation must enter upon determinations and distinctions and must predicate about its object; but what is simple is changed rather than explained by such a process. But it is precisely the nature of the universal to be such a simple entity as contains in itself the highest degree of distinctness and determinateness by virtue of absolute negativity. Being is simple because it is immediate; consequently it is only intended, and it is impossible to say of it what it is; it is therefore immediately one with its Other, Not-being. Just this is its Notion, to be such a simple entity as vanishes immediately into its opposite; this Notion is Becoming. The universal on the other hand is that simple entity which also is richest within itself, because it is the Notion.

For this reason it is, first, simple self-relation: it is in itself only. But, secondly, this identity is in itself absolute mediation, though it is not a mediated entity. That universal which is a mediated universal, because abstract and opposed to the particular and the individual, will not be discussed until the Determinate Notion is reached.—But the abstract already contains this, that, in order that it may be preserved, it is required that other determinations of the concrete be omitted. These determinations, as determinations, are negations; and, further, their omission also is a negating. Thus in the abstract too the negation of negation occurs. But this double negation is imagined as external to it, and as though the further properties of the concrete, which are omitted, were different from that which is retained (which is the content of the abstract); and it is also imagined that this operation of omission of the remaining properties and retention of the one takes place externally to the latter. The universal has not yet determined itself to such an externality as against this movement: as yet, it is still in itself that absolute mediation which is precisely negation of negation, or absolute negativity.

According to this original unity the first negative, or determination, is, first, no barrier for the universal, which preserves itself within it and is positively self-identical. The categories of Being as Notions were essentially these self-identities of determinations in their barrier or their otherness: but this identity was Notion only in itself; it was not yet manifested. Hence the qualitative determination as such perished in its other, and had for its truth a determination different from it. The universal, on the other hand, even if it posits itself into a determination, remains in it what it is. It is the soul of the concrete in which it dwells, unimpeded and self-equal in the latter’s multiplicity and variety. It is not dragged into Becoming, but continues through it undisturbed, and has the force of unchangeable and immortal self-preservation.

But equally it does not only show into its Other, as does the Reflection-determination. The latter, as relative, relates itself not only to itself, but also is an attitude. In its Other it manifests itself, but only shows in it; and, because of their independence, the showing of each in the other (or their mutual determining) has the form of an external activity.—On the other hand the universal is posited as the Essence of its determination, as its peculiar positive nature. For the determination which constitutes its negative element is in the Notion simply as a positedness, or, essentially, only as the negative of the negative; and it is only as this self-identity of the negative, which the universal is. The latter to this extent too is the substance of its determinations, but in such a manner that what for Substance as such was contingent is the proper self-mediation of the Notion, its peculiar immanent Reflection. But this mediation which here raises the contingent to necessity, is the manifested relation; the Notion is not the abyss of formless Substance, or necessity as the inner identity of things and circumstances which are distinct from one another and self-restrictive: as absolute negativity it forms and creates; and, because the determination is not a barrier, but is transcended as much as it is positedness, therefore the show is appearance as appearance of the identical.

The universal consequently is free power. It is itself and it encroaches upon its Other, but not by force: in its Other it is quiescent and at home. It has been called free power, but it might also have been called free love or unbounded bliss, for it is an attitude of itself to what is distinct as though it were itself; in this it has returned to itself.

Mention has been made of determinateness, although the Notion, being universal as yet and only self-identical, has not yet advanced to it. But mention of the universal involves mention of determinateness, which more closely considered is Particularity and Individuality; for, in its absolute negativity, it contains these in and for itself; therefore if determinateness is mentioned with the universal, it is not imported from without. The universal, as negativity in general (or according to first and immediate negation), has determinateness in general in the shape of Particularity; in its second quality, and as negation of negation, it is absolute determinateness, or Individuality and concretion.—Thus the universal is the totality of the Notion; it is concrete, not empty, but rather, by virtue of its Notion, has content—a content in which it not merely preserves itself, but which is peculiar and immanent to it. Abstraction can indeed be made from the content; but the result is not the Universal of the Notion, but the Abstract, which is an isolated and incomplete moment of the Notion and has no truth.

This, in detail, is how the universal turns out to be this totality. In so far as it contains determinateness, it is not only first negation but also its intro-Reflection. Taken by itself with this first negation, it is particular (and, as such, it will be discussed forthwith); but in this determinateness it is still essentially universal; and this side still remains to be appreciated here.—For, since this determinateness is in the Notion, it is total Reflection, double Show, namely (1) Show outwards or Reflection into other, and (2) Show inwards or intro-Reflection. The external showing constitutes a distinction against Other; and accordingly the universal has a Particularity which has its solution in a higher universal. It is now only relatively universal, but in so far it does not lose its character of universal; it preserves itself in its determinateness,—and not only in such a manner as it would if remaining indifferent to while connected with it (for then it would only be composite with it), but it is that which has just been called showing inwards. Determinateness as determinate Notion has been bent back into itself out of externality; it is peculiar and immanent character, which is essential because it has been taken up into universality and penetrated by it, and thus has a like scope, is identical with it, and equally penetrates it; it is the character which belongs to the genus as a determinateness not severed from the universal. It is in so far not a barrier acting outwards, but is positive, since this character by virtue of universality stands in a free relation to itself. And thus the determinate Notion too remains in itself infinitely free Notion.

But in regard to the other side, in which the genus is limited by its definitive character, it has been observed that, as lower genus, it has its solution in a higher universal. This can in turn be taken as genus, but as a more abstract genus; but it always belongs to that side only of the determinate Notion which goes outwards. The truly higher universal is that in which this side which goes outwards is taken back inwards,—the second negation, in which determinateness is simply only as posited or as Show. Life, Ego, Spirit, and Absolute Notion are universals not only as higher genera: they are concrete entities whose determinatenesses are not only genera or inferior species, but, in their reality, they are altogether only in themselves and filled by themselves. In so far as Life, Ego, and finite Spirit must be admitted to be only determinate Notions, their absolute solution is found in that universal which must be taken as veritably Absolute Notion, as Idea of infinite Spirit, whose positedness is infinite and transparent Reality, in which it contemplates its creation and, in it, itself.

And now the veritable infinite universal, which, immediately, is in itself Particularity as much as Individuality, must be considered more closely as Particularity. It determines itself freely: when it becomes finite, this is not a transition, which takes place only within the sphere of Being: it is creative power as absolute negativity which relates itself to itself. As such it is a process of internal distinguishing, and this is a determining because distinguishing is at one with Universality. It is thus a positing of the distinctions themselves as universal and self-relating distinctions. Hereby they become fixed and isolated distinctions. The isolated persistence of the finite, which, before, determined itself as its Being-for-Self (or as Thinghood, or Substance), is, in its truth, the Universality with which form the infinite Notion clothes its distinctions—a form which, precisely, is one of its own distinctions. Herein consists the creative activity of the Notion, which can be conceived only in this innermost core of itself.

Determinateness as such belongs to Being and to the Qualitative; as determinateness of the Notion it is Particularity. It is not a limit: it is not related to any Other as its beyond; but, as has just been seen, it is the peculiar immanent moment of the universal, which latter, therefore, in Particularity is not with an Other but just with itself.

The particular contains Universality, which constitutes its substance; the genus is unchanged in its species; and the species are not different from the universal, but only one from another. The particular has one and the same universality with the other particulars, with which it is related. At the same time their difference, because of their identity with the universal, is, as such, universal; it is totality.—Thus the particular not only contains the universal, but also exhibits it through its determinateness; and, in so far, the universal constitutes a sphere which the particular must exhaust. In so far as the determinateness of the particular is taken as mere variety, this totality appears as completeness. In this respect the species are complete, since there just are no more of them. For these there is no inner standard nor principle, because Variety is, precisely, Difference lacking unity, where Universality, which for itself is absolute unity, is merely external reflex and an unrestricted and contingent completeness. But Variety passes over into Opposition—into an immanent relation of the various entities. But Particularity is such immanent relation as Universality in and for itself, and not by transition; it is totality in itself and simple determinateness: essentially it is principle. It has no other determinateness than such as is posited by the universal itself and results from it in the following manner.

The particular is the universal itself, but it is its difference or relation to an Other, its showing outwards] but there is no Other from which the particular could be different, except the universal itself.—The universal determines itself, and so it is itself the particular: the determinateness is its own difference, and it is different only from itself. Its species therefore are only (a) the universal itself and (b) the particular. The universal as the Notion is both itself and its opposite, which again is itself as its posited determinateness; it thus extends beyond the latter and in it is with itself. It is thus the totality and principle of its variety, which is determined quite by itself alone.

There is therefore no other valid classification but this, that the Notion itself stands aside as immediate and indeterminate Universality; and this very indetermination makes its determinateness, or makes it a particular. Both together are the particular and are therefore coordinated. Also both, as the particular, are the determinate as against the universal; and in so far the former ranks as subordinate to the latter. But this universal against which the particular is determined is itself thereby one only of the two opposed terms. And if we speak of two opposed terms, we must then also say again that they constitute the particular; and not only together (in which case they would be equal only for external reflection in the fact of their particularity), but their determinateness as against each other is essentially also one determinateness, or negativity which, in the universal, is simple.

Difference, as it shows itself here, is in its Notion and therefore in its truth. All former difference has this unity in the Notion. As immediate difference in Being, it is as the limit of an Other; in Reflection, it is relative and posited as essentially relating itself to its Other; here accordingly the unity of the Notion begins to be posited, but, at first, it is only Show in an Other.—The transition and solution of these determinations has only this true meaning, that they reach their Notion, their truth; Being, Determinate Being, Something, Whole and Parts, and so on, Substance and Accidents, Cause and Effect, are for themselves intellectual determinations: they are taken as determinate Notions in so far as each is recognized in unity with its Other or opposite.—Thus for example Whole and Parts, Cause and Effect, and the rest, are not yet various terms determined (as against each other) as particular; for although they constitute one Notion in themselves their unity has not yet reached the form of universality; and similarly the difference which is in these relations has not yet the form of being one determinateness. For example, Cause and Effect are not two different Notions but only one determinate Notion, and Causality, like every Notion, is simple.

With regard to completeness, the result has been reached that the element of determinateness in Particularity lies completely in the difference between universal and particular, and that these two alone constitute the particular species. In Nature indeed a genus has more than two species, and also these many species cannot be related to one another in the manner demonstrated. This is the impotence of Nature to hold fast and to represent the austerity of the Notion, so that it wastes away into this notionless and blind multiplicity. In the multiplicity of its genera and species and in the infinite variety of its formations we may admire Nature, for admiration is without Notion and its object is the irrational. Nature is the self-externality of the Notion, and therefore it is free to disport itself in this variety, like Spirit which, although it has the Notion in the shape of the Notion, enters upon sensuous representation and runs wild in the infinite multiplicity thereof. The various natural genera or species must rank as nothing higher than the arbitrary conceits of Spirit in its ideations. Both indeed show traces and premonitions everywhere of the Notion, but they do not represent it in its true image, because they are the side of its free self-externality; it is absolute power just because it can freely discharge its distinction into the shape of independent variety, external necessity, contingency, caprice, or opinion; but these must not be taken for anything more than the abstract side of nullity.

The determinateness of the particular is simple as principle (as was seen); but it is simple also as moment of totality—as determinateness against the other determinateness. The Notion, in so far as it determines or distinguishes itself, points negatively at its unity and takes the form of one of its moments (which is of ideal nature) of Being: as determinate Notion it has a Determinate Being in general. But this Being no longer signifies bare immediacy but Universality—immediacy which through absolute mediation is equal to itself and equally contains the other moment, Essence or intro-Reflection. This Universality which clothes the determinate is abstract Universality. The particular contains Universality as its Essence; but, in so far as the determinateness of the difference is posited, and thereby has Being, this Universality is related to the difference as form, and the determinateness as such is content. Universality becomes form in so far as the difference exists as the essential; whereas in the purely universal it exists only as absolute negativity, and not as difference which is posited as such.

Now although determinateness is the abstract as against the other determinateness, yet the other is only Universality itself. In so far this latter is also abstract, and the determinateness of the Notion (that is, Particularity) is again no more than determinate Universality. In it the Notion is outside itself; and in so far as it is the Notion which here is outside itself, the abstract-universal contains all the moments of the Notion: it is (α) universality, (β) determinateness, and (γ) simple identity of the two; but this unity is immediate, and for this reason Particularity is not as totality. In itself it is this totality, and is mediation; it is, essentially, exclusive relation to other or transcendence of negation, that is, of the other determinateness,—which other however merely hovers before the imagination, for it vanishes immediately and shows itself as that which its other was to be. What therefore makes this Universality abstract is the fact that mediation is only condition, or is not posited of it itself. And because it is not posited, the unity of the abstract has the form of immediacy, and the content has the form of indifference to its Universality, because it is not as that totality which is the Universality of absolute negativity. Thus, although the abstractly universal is the Notion, it is Notion only as notionless, as Notion which is not posited as such.

If mention is made of the Determinate Notion, what is meant is generally only such a purely abstractly universal entity. And by “the Notion” in general only this notionless Notion as a rule is understood; and “Understanding” denotes the capacity of such Notions. Demonstration belongs to this understanding in so far as it is said to proceed along a chain of Notions, that is, along mere determinations. Such a process therefore does not pass beyond finitude and necessity; and its highest point is the negative infinite, the abstraction of the highest essence, which itself is the determinateness of indeterminateness. Absolute Substance too is, it is true, not this empty abstraction: according to its content it is, indeed, totality, but it is abstract because it is without absolute form; the Notion does not constitute its innermost truth; and although it is the identity of Universality and Particularity (or of thought and mutual externality), yet this identity is not the determinateness of the Notion; outside it there is an understanding (which, precisely because it is outside it, is contingent) in and for which it exists in various Attributes and Modes.

For the rest, abstraction is not rightly called empty, as is commonly done: it is the Determinate Notion, and has some determinateness for content; and even the highest essence (pure abstraction) has, as was mentioned, the determinateness of indeterminateness; but a determinateness is indeterminateness, because it is supposed to stand opposite to the determinate. But, even while that which it is is being pronounced, this, which it is supposed to be, cancels itself; it is pronounced to be one with determinateness, and in this manner the Notion and the truth of indeterminateness are constructed out of abstraction.—But every determinate Notion is of course empty in so far as it does not contain the totality but only a one-sided determinateness. Even though it otherwise has a concrete content, like man, state, animal, and so forth, yet it remains an empty Notion in so far as its determinateness is not the principle of its distinctions: the principle contains the beginning and the essence of its development and realization, and any other determinateness of the Notion is barren. If therefore the Notion is ever denounced as empty, that absolute determinateness of it is misunderstood which is the differentia of the Notion and the sole true content in its element.

This is the proper place also to mention the circumstance which has caused Understanding latterly to be held in such small esteem and to be ranked after Reason,—namely the fixity which it imparts to the determinatenesses, and hence to the finitudes. This fixity consists in the form of abstract Universality which has just been considered: by virtue of it they become immutable. For qualitative determinateness, and Determination of Reflection, exist essentially as limited, and, in their barrier, have a relation to their Other; they thus contain the necessity of transition and passing away. But Universality (which they have in Understanding) gives them the form of intro-Reflection, which withdraws them from the relation to other and renders them imperishable. Now in the pure Notion this eternity belongs to its own nature, and so its abstract determinations would be eternal essentialities only according to their form; but their content is not adequate to this form, and consequently they are not truth and imperishability. Their content is not adequate to the form, because it is not determinateness itself as universal; that is, it is not as totality of the differentia of the Notion, or not itself the whole form; now the form of Understanding which is subject to a barrier is itself incomplete (that is, abstract) Universality.—But further, it must be counted as the infinite force of Understanding to divide the concrete into abstract determinatenesses, and to comprehend the depth of the distinction which at the same time is the power that effects its transition. The concrete of intuition is totality, but sensuous totality—an indifferent juxtaposition of real matters in space and time. Now surely this lack of unity in the manifold, in which it is the content of intuition, should not be counted to it for merit and for an advantage over the understandable. That mutability which it shows in intuition already points to the universal; that part of it which comes into intuition is only another and equally mutable entity—that is, the self-same thing; it is not the case that the universal takes its place and appears. But least of all should the intuitive element in a science (such as geometry or arithmetic), which its material brings with it, be counted as a merit, or its propositions be imagined as being thereby substantiated. On the contrary, the material of these sciences is for that very reason of a lower nature: to intuit figures or numbers does not lead to knowledge of them, which is only produced by thought on these matters.—But, in so far as objective totality is meant by intuition, and not only the merely sensuous, this intuition is intellectual, that is, it has for object Determinate Being not in its external existence, but that which in it is imperishable reality and truth;—reality only in so far as it is essentially in the Notion and is determined by it; the Idea, whose further nature must be reached at a later point. What is supposed to exalt intuition as such above the Notion is external reality—that notionless something which has value only through the Notion.

Understanding then represents the infinite force which determines the universal, or conversely imparts fixed persistence through the form of Universality to what in determinateness has in and for itself no stability; and it is not the fault of understanding if no further progress is made. It is a subjective impotence of reason which allows these determinatenesses to count in this manner, and is unable to lead them back to unity through the dialectic force which is opposed to this abstract Universality, that is, through the peculiar nature (in other words, the Notion) of these determinatenesses. It is true that through the form of abstract Universality understanding gives them what may be called such a hardness of Being as they do not possess in the spheres of Quality and of Reflection; but by this simplification understanding also spiritualizes them and so sharpens them that they receive only at this extreme point the capacity of dissolving and passing over into their opposite. The highest maturity or stage which any Something can reach is that in which it begins to perish. That fixed element of determinateness upon which understanding seems to wreck itself (namely the form of the imperishable) is the form of self-relating Universality. But this is the peculiar property of the Notion; and consequently the dissolution of the finite lies expressed in it itself, and in infinite proximity. This Universality immediately argues the determinateness of the finite and expresses its inadequacy to itself.—Or rather, the adequacy of the finite is already given; the abstract determinate is posited as being one with Universality, and as not for itself alone, for then it would be only determinate, but only as unity of itself and of the universal,—that is, as Notion.

The ordinary practice of separating understanding and reason must therefore be condemned in every respect. If the Notion is considered as reasonless, this should rather be considered as an incapacity of reason to recognize itself in the Notion. The determinate and abstract Notion is the condition, or rather essential moment, of reason; it is the spiritualized form in which the finite, by virtue of the Universality in which it relates itself to itself, kindles itself in itself, is posited as dialectic, and thus is the beginning itself of the appearance of reason.

So far the Determinate Notion has been represented in its truth, and it only remains to indicate what has been implied about it in this positing.—Difference is an essential moment of the Notion, but is not yet posited as such in the purely universal; in the Determinate Notion it comes into its own. Determinateness in the form of Universality is compounded with it, and a simplicity results; this determinate universal is self-relating determinateness; determinate determinateness, or absolute negativity posited for itself. But self-relating determinateness is Individuality. Universality is immediately and in and for itself Particularity; but Particularity is also, equally immediately, and in and for itself, Individuality,—which now must be considered as third moment of the Notion in so far as it is retained as against the first two, but also as the absolute return of the Notion to itself and, at the same time, as the posited loss of itself.

It follows from what has gone before that Universality, Particularity, and Individuality are the three determinate Notions,—if indeed it is desired to count them. It has already been shown that number is not a form fit to hold notional determinations, and is least of all fit to hold determinations of the Notion itself; for number, having One for principle, makes the numbered entities wholly separate and wholly indifferent to one another. It has already resulted from our survey that the various determinate Notions are in fact simply one and the same Notion, rather than that they fall apart into number.

In other ordinary treatises about logic many divisions and species of Notions occur. Here one is immediately struck by the inconsistency with which the species are introduced, when it is said that “according to Quantity, or Quality, and so on, there are the following Notions.” “There is” expresses no other kind of justification except that such species are found and that they show themselves in experience. In this manner an empirical logic is obtained;—a peculiar science, an irrational knowledge of the Rational. Herein logic affords a very poor example of how it follows its own precepts: for its own benefit it allows itself to do the opposite of what it prescribes as rule, namely, that Notions must be derived and that scientific propositions must be demonstrated (and among them the proposition which says that there are so-and-so many kinds of Notion).—In this matter Kant’s philosophy commits a further inconsistency: for Transcendental Logic it borrows the categories, as so-called root-notions, from Subjective Logic, into which they were admitted empirically. Since it confesses this last step, it is not clear why Transcendental Logic troubles to borrow from such a science, and does not immediately help itself empirically.

Some parts of this process may here be detailed. The Notions are chiefly classified according to their clarity into clear and obscure, definite and indefinite, and adequate and inadequate. Complete and superfluous Notions and other irrelevancies may also be mentioned in this place.—With regard to this classification according to clarity, it soon appears that this point of view and the distinctions which are related to it are derived from psychological and not from logical determinations. The so-called clear Notion is supposed to suffice to distinguish one object from another: but this cannot yet be called a Notion; it is nothing more than subjective mental representation. What an obscure Notion is must remain its -own secret, otherwise it would be a definite and not an obscure Notion.—The definite Notion is supposed to be a Notion of which the criteria can be stated. Thus it is really the Determinate Notion. The criterion (that is, if that which is correct in it is taken up) is just the determinateness or simple content of the Notion in so far as it is distinguished from the form of Universality. But in the first instance the criterion has not this more precise significance; it is merely any determination which serves for the observer to note an object, or the Notion; it may therefore be some quite accidental circumstance. And altogether it does not express the immanence and essentiality of the determination so much as its relation to an external understanding. If this is really an understanding, then it has the Notion before itself and notes this Notion solely by virtue of its content. But if the criterion is distinct from it, then it is a token or some other determination which belongs to the image of the thing and not to its Notion.—As to the meaning of the indefinite Notion, this may be passed over as superfluous.

But the adequate Notion is a higher concept; the correspondence of the Notion with reality is really here before the mind, and this is not the Notion as such but the Idea.

If the criterion of the definite Notion really is the determination itself of the Notion, then logic would be in difficulties with the simple Notions, which according to another classification are opposed to compound Notions. For if a true, that is, an immanent, criterion were to be given of the simple Notion, then it would become undesirable to look upon it as simple; and in so far as no criterion were given, it would not be a definite Notion. Here only the clear Notion avails. Unity, reality, and similar determinations are supposed to be simple Notions, presumably because logicians did not succeed in finding their determination, and consequently were content to have merely a clear Notion of them—that is, none at all. A definition, that is, a statement of the Notion, is commonly held to demand that the genus and the specific difference be indicated. Definition therefore gives the Notion, not as something simple, but in two distinct parts, of which it consists. But surely it must not be supposed that for this reason such a Notion must be looked upon as a compound.—In the simple Notion, abstract simplicity seems to be present before the imagination,—a unity which does not contain distinction and determinateness and therefore is not that unity which is proper to the Notion. In so far as an object exists in imagination, and especially in memory, or in so far as it is abstract thought-determination, it may be perfectly simple. Even objects which in themselves are of richest content, like Spirit, Nature, World, or God—if they are comprehended without any Notion in the simple image of the equally simple expressions Spirit Nature, World, God—are something simple where consciousness can halt without elaborating the peculiar determination, or a criterion. But it is improper that the objects of consciousness should thus remain simple and be images or abstract thought-determinations: Notions ought to be formed about them, that is, their simplicity ought to be determined from their inner distinction.—As for the compound Notion, it would appear to be no better than wooden iron. It is possible to have a Notion about a compound; but a compound Notion would be something worse than that materialism which assumes only the substance of the soul to be a compound, but nevertheless takes thought to be simple. Uncultivated reflection first has recourse to composition, as a wholly external relation, which is the worst form under which things can be considered; even the lowest natures must be an inner unity. But if, to crown all, the form of the untruest existence is applied to Ego, to the Notion, this is more than was to be expected: it must be considered as unseemly and barbarous.

Notions are further divided into contrary and contradictory.—If, in treating the Notion, it were necessary to state what kinds of determinate Notions there are, it would be necessary to enumerate every possible determination (for all determinations are Notions and consequently determinate Notions); and all the categories of Being and determinations of Essence would have to be enumerated under the kinds of Notions. Indeed, treatises of logic rehearse, in greater or less detail, that there are affirmative, negative, identical, conditioned, necessary, and other Notions. Such determinations have already been surpassed by the nature of the Notion itself, and therefore, if they are recited here, they do not occur in their due place; they therefore admit only of superficial verbal explanations, and appear to be quite without interest here.—Contrary and contradictory Notions—a distinction which chiefly is noted here—are based upon the Reflection-determinations of Variety and Opposition. They are looked upon as two separate species, that is, as each fixed for itself and indifferent to the other, without any consideration of the dialectic and of the inner nullity of these distinctions,—as though that which is contrary must not equally be determined as contradictory. The nature and the essential transition of the forms of Reflection which they express, have been considered in their own place. In the Notion, Identity has been developed into Universality, Difference into Particularity, and Opposition (which passes back into Ground) into Individuality. In these forms the above-mentioned Determinations of Reflection exist as they are in their Notion. The universal turned out to be not only the identical, but also the different or contrary as against the particular and individual, and, further, to be opposed to them or contradictory; but in this opposition it is identical with them and is their true Ground, in which they are transcended. And the same holds of Particularity and Individuality, which also are the totality of the Determinations of Reflection.

Again, Notions are divided into subordinate and coordinate—a distinction which more closely concerns the determination of the Notion, namely the relation between Universality and Particularity, where in fact these expressions have been cursorily mentioned. Only, they too are usually considered as firmly fixed relations, and numerous barren propositions are put forward about them. The lengthiest treatment in this connexion again refers to the relation of contrariety and contradictoriness to subordination and coordination. Judgment is the relation of determinate Notions, and accordingly the true relationship can result only at that point. The fashion of comparing these determinations without any thought of their dialectic and of the progressive change of their determination, or, rather, of the connexion of opposite determinations which is present in them, renders barren and unsubstantial the whole consideration about their harmony and disharmony; as though such harmony or disharmony were something separate and enduring.—The great Euler, who was infinitely fruitful and ingenious in seizing and combining the profounder relations of algebraical magnitudes; more especially the dry intelligence of Lambert; and others, too, have attempted a notation by means of lines, figures, and the like for this kind of relation between the determinations of Notions: the general purpose was to raise the logical types of relation to a calculus,—or, rather, to reduce them to one. Even the attempt at notation immediately manifests its own nullity if the nature of the symbol is compared with that which it is to symbolize. The determinations of the Notion, Universality, Particularity, and Individuality, are indeed distinct, like lines, or the letters of algebra;—further they are opposite, and in so far would also admit the signs of plus and minus. But they themselves, and their relations much more (even if no progress is made beyond subsumption and inherence), are of an essential nature which is wholly different from letters and lines and their relations, like equality or difference of magnitude, plus and minus or the position of lines over one another, their connexion to form angles, and the dispositions of spaces which they enclose. Such objects have the peculiar distinction, as against them, that they are external to one another and have a fixed determination. Now if Notions are taken in this manner, so that they correspond to such symbols, then they cease to be Notions. Their determinations are not such dead matter as numbers and lines, in which their relation is not immanent; they are living movements; the different determinateness of one side is also immediately internal to the other; and what would be a complete contradiction with numbers and lines is essential to the nature of the Notion.—Higher mathematics, which also goes on to the infinite and permits itself contradictions, can no longer employ its former signs for the representation of such determinations. To denote the image (which is very far removed from the Notion) of the infinite approximation of two ordinates, it does no more than draw two straight lines outside of each other; or when it identifies a curve with an infinite number of infinitely small straight lines, it does no more than draw straight lines into a curve but different from it. For the infinite, which is the real matter here, it refers to imagination.

It is chiefly the quantitative relation, in which Universality, Particularity, and Individuality are supposed to stand to one another, that has led to this attempt; universal means wider than particular and individual, and particular wider than individual. The Notion is the concrete and richest entity because it is the ground and the totality of the earlier determinations—of the categories of Being and the Determinations of Reflection; the latter therefore may also chance to emerge in it. But the nature of the Notion is wholly misunderstood if these are retained in it in that abstraction, and if the further volume of the universal is taken as though it were something more, or a bigger quantum, than the particular and the individual. The Notion, as absolute Ground, is the possibility of quantity, but also of quality, that is, its determinations are also distinguished qualitatively; they are therefore considered in a manner which does not agree with their truth if they are posited under the form of quantity alone. And further the Determination of Reflection is something relative in which its opposite shows; unlike a quantum, it is not in the external relation. But the Notion is more than all this: its determinations are determinate Notions, and are essentially the totality itself of all determinations. It is therefore quite unfitting to attempt to apply numerical and spatial relations in order to apprehend such an intimate totality; in such relations all determinations fall apart, and they are indeed the last and worst medium that could be used. Natural relations like magnetism or colour-relations would be infinitely higher and truer symbols. Man has language as the means of designation peculiar to reason, and therefore it is an idle caprice to engage in a weary search for a less perfect manner of description. The Notion as such can essentially be apprehended only by Spirit, of which it is not only the peculiar property, but the pure self. It is in vain that an attempt is made to fix it by means of spatial figures and algebraical symbols for the purposes of the external eye and of a notionless mechanical treatment or calculus. And anything else which should serve for symbol (like symbols of the nature of God; can at best excite only presentiments and echoes of the Notion; but if it were a serious attempt to express and understand the Notion by their aid, then we must declare that the external nature of all symbols is inadequate: the relation is the opposite, and what in the symbols is echo of a higher determination is understood only through the Notion, and can be approximated to it only by the elimination of every sensuous accretion which was meant to express it.

Individuality, as was seen, is posited already by Particularity, which is determinate Universality, that is, self-relating determinateness or the determinate determinate.

1. At first therefore Individuality appears as the intro-Reflection of the Notion out of its determinateness. It is the self-mediation of the Notion in so far as its otherness has made itself into an Other, whence the Notion has been restored as self-equal, but is in the determination of absolute negativity.—The negative in the universal whereby this is a particular, was determined above as a double Show. In so far as it is a showing inwards, the particular remains a universal; by virtue of showing outwards, it is a determinate; and the return of this side into the universal is of double kind,—either by means of abstraction, which omits the particular and ascends to higher and highest genus,—or by means of Individuality, to which the universal itself descends in determinateness.—At this point the divagation occurs by which abstraction leaves the road of the Notion and deserts the truth. Its higher and highest universal to which it rises is but the surface which has less and less content; the Individuality which it scorns is that profundity in which the Notion comprehends itself and is posited as Notion.

Universality and Particularity on the one hand appeared as the moments of the becoming of Individuality. But it has already been shown that they are the total Notion in themselves, and therefore in Individuality do not pass over into an Other, but that only that is posited in Individuality which they are in and for themselves. The universal is for itself because in itself it is absolute mediation, self-relation only as absolute negativity. It is abstract universal in so far as this transcendence is an external act and therefore an omission of determinateness. Thus although this negativity is in the abstract, yet it remains external to and a mere condition of it: it is abstraction itself, which retains its universal over against itself, so that the latter has not in itself Individuality and remains notionless.—Life, Spirit, God, and also the pure Notion cannot therefore be apprehended by abstraction, because it keeps off from its products Individuality, the principle of singularity and personality, and thus reaches nothing but universalities lacking both life and spirit, colour and content.

But the unity of the Notion is so inseparable that even these products of abstraction, while they are supposed to omit Individuality, are individuals themselves. It raises the concrete into Universality, and takes the universal only as determinate Universality: but then this is just Individuality which has resulted in the shape of self-relating determinateness. Consequently abstraction is a separation of the concrete and an isolation of its determinations: it seizes only individual properties and moments, for its product must contain that which it is itself. The distinction between this individuality of its products and the Individuality of the Notion is that, in the former, the individual as content and the universal as form are distinct from each other,—just because the former does not exist as absolute form, or as the Notion itself, nor the latter as the totality of form.—But this closer consideration shows the abstract itself as unity of the individual content and abstract Universality, that is, as concrete,—which is the opposite of what it is supposed to be.

For the same reason (because it is only the determinate universal) the particular too is individual; and, conversely, because the individual is the determinate universal, it is equally a particular. If this abstract determinateness is retained, the Notion has three separate determinations—universal, particular, and individual; whereas before universal and particular alone were enumerated as species of the particular. Individuality is the return of the Notion, as negative, to itself; and thus this return from abstraction, which really is transcended in it, may be placed and counted as an indifferent moment by the side of the others.

Individuality has been mentioned as one of the particular determinations of the Notion: Particularity is the totality which comprehends them all; and, as this totality, it is their concrete or Individuality itself. But it is concrete also from the side (noticed before) of determinate Universality; and thus it is immediate unity, in which no one of these moments is posited as distinct or as determining; and in this form it will constitute the middle of the formal Syllogism.

It is obvious that every determination which so far has been made in the exposition of the Notion has dissolved immediately and lost itself in its other. Every distinction confounds itself under the scrutiny which is meant to isolate and fix it. Only bare imagination, for which it has isolated the process of abstraction, can steadfastly keep apart universal, particular, and individual: thus they can be counted, and, for further distinction, imagination has recourse to perfectly external Being, to Quantity, whose place is nowhere less than here.—In Individuality the inseparability of the determinations of the Notion—their true relation—is posited; for, as negation of negation, it contains both their opposition and also the Notion in its Ground or unity: the completed coincidence of each one with its other. This Reflection contains Universality in and for itself: it is therefore essentially the negativity of the determinations of the Notion,—and this not only as though it were only a third and different term as against them, but it is posited that positedness is Being-in-and-for-Self; that is, that the determinations which belong to the distinction are each the totality. The return to itself of the Determinate Notion is this, that it has the determination of being, in its determinateness, the whole Notion.

2. But Individuality is not only the return of the Notion into itself; it is also immediately its loss. In Individuality it is in itself; and, because of the manner in which it is in itself, it becomes external to itself and enters into actuality. Abstraction is the soul of Individuality, and, as such, is the relation of negative to negative; and it, as has been seen, is not external to the universal and the particular but immanent; and they through it are concrete, content, and individual. And Individuality as this negativity is determinate determinateness, is distinguishing as such; through this intro-Reflection of distinction it becomes fixed; the determining of the particular takes place only through Individuality, for it is that abstraction which now, as Individuality, is posited abstraction.

The individual, then, as self-relating negativity, is immediate self-identity of the negative; it is-for-self. In other words, it is abstraction which determines the Notion, according to its moment (which is of ideal nature) of Being, as immediate.—Thus the individual is a qualitative One or This. According to this quality it is, first, self-repulsion, by which process the many other Ones are presupposed; and secondly it is negative relation against these presupposed others; and, in so far, the individual is exclusive. If Universality is related to these individuals as indifferent Ones (and it must be so related because it is a moment of the notion of Individuality), then it is merely their common element. If by the universal is meant that which is common to more than one individual, then the beginning is being made from their indifferent persistence, and the immediacy of Being is mixed with the determination of the Notion. The lowest possible image of the universal in its relation to the individual is this external relation of it as a mere common element.

The individual, which in the sphere of Reflection belonging to Existence is as This, has not the exclusive relation to other Ones which belongs to qualitative Being-for-Self. “This,” as intro-reflected One, is, for itself, without repulsion; or, repulsion in this Reflection is one with abstraction, and is reflecting mediation which appertains to This in such a manner that it is a posited immediacy, demonstrated by an external element. “This” is; it is immediate; but it is This only in so far as it is pointed at. And pointing is that reflecting movement which collects itself within itself and posits immediacy as something external to itself.—Now the individual is This, since it is an immediate constructed out of mediation; but mediation is not external to it: it is self-repelling separation, posited abstraction, but in its separation it is itself positive relation.

This abstracting of the individual is, first, as the intro-Reflection of distinction, a positing as independent and intro-reflected of the distinct terms. They are immediate; but, further, this separating is Reflection in general, the showing of one in another; they are thus in essential relation. But further they are not merely existent individuals as against one another; such manyness belongs to Being; Individuality which posits itself as determinate posits itself not in an external but in a notional distinction; thus it excludes the universal from itself, but, since this is a moment of itself, the latter also essentially relates itself to it.

The Notion as this relation between its independent determinations has vanished; for now it is no longer their posited unity, and they are no longer its moments or Show, but persist in and for themselves.—As Individuality the Notion returns to itself in determinateness; and thus the determinate has become totality itself. Its return to itself is therefore the absolute and original division of itself; or, as Individuality, it is posited as Judgment.