for the positive element only is by being related to a negative; in other words, the positive element in its very self involves difference from itself, just in the same way as the negative does. But that electricity as such should break itself up into parts in this way — this is not in itself a necessity. Electricity qua simple force is indifferent to its law — to be in the form of positive and negative; and if we call the former its notion and the latter its being, then its notion is indifferent to its being; it merely has this as a property, which just means that this is not per se necessary to it. This indifference takes another form when it is said that to be positive and negative is involved in the definition of electricity, or that this is neither more nor less than its notion and its essence. Its being in that case would mean its existence in general. But in that definition the necessity of its existence is not contained; it exists either because we find it, i.e. its existence is not necessary at all, or else it exists through other forces, i.e. the necessity of its existence is an external necessity. But in that Understanding 147 the determinateness of being through another is what the necessity consists in, we are back again to the plurahty of determinate laws, which we have just left in order to consider law as law. It is only with the latter that we can compare its notion as notion, or its necessity. This necessity, however, has in all these forms shown itself to be just an empty phrase. • There is still another way than that just indicated in which the indifference of law and force, or of notion and being, is found. In the law of motion, e.g., it is necessary for motion to be broken up into the elements time and space, or again, into distance and velocity. Since motion is merely the relation of these factors, motion, the universal, has in this way certainly distinct parts in its own self. But now these parts, time and space, or distance and velocity, do not express in themselves this origination from a single unity. They are indifferent the one to the other. Space is thought of as able to be without time, time without space, and distance at least without velocity — just as their magnitudes are indifferent the one to the other, since they are not related like positive and negative, and consequently do not refer to one another by their very nature. The necessity of partition into distinct factors, then, we certainly do have here; but not the necessity of the parts as such for one another. On that account, however, that first necessity too is itself a merely delusory false necessity. For motion is not itself thought of as something simple or as bare essence, but as, from the first, divided into elements; time and space are in themselves its independent parts or its real elements: in other words, distance and velocity are modes of being, or ways of thinking, each of which 148 Phenomenology of Mind can very well be without the other; and motion is consequently no more than their superficial relation, not their true nature. If it is represented as simple essence or as force, motion is no doubt gravity; but this does not, properly spealdng, contain these distinctions.
The distinction is, then, in both cases no distinction of an inherent or essential kind. Either the universal, force, is indifferent to the division into parts, which is found in the law, or else the distinctions, the parts of the law, are indifferent to one another. Understanding, however, does have the notion of this distinction per se, just by the fact that law is in part the inner being, the inherent nature, but is in it at the same time distinguished. That this distinction is in this way mner distinction is shown by the fact that law is bare and simple force, or is the notion of that distinction, and thus is a distinction of the notion. But still this inner distinction falls to begin with only within understanding, and is not yet estabhshed in the fact itself. It is thus only its own necessity to which un.derstanding gives expression — the distinction, that is to say, is one which it makes only so as at the same time to express that the distinction is not to be a distinction in the nature of the fact itself. This necessity, which is merely verbal, is thus a rehearsal of the moments which make up the cycle of necessity. They are no doubt distinct, but their distinction is at the same time explicitly stated to be not a distinction of the fact itself, and consequently is itself again straightway cancelled and transcended. This process is called Explanation. A law is expressed; from this its inherently universal element, or the ground in the sense Understanding 149 Understanding 149 of force, is distinguished; but, regarding this distinction, it is asserted that it is no distinction, rather that the ground has entirely the same constitutive nature as the law. For example, the particular occurrence of hghtning is apprehended as universal, and this universal is expressed as the law of electricity; the explanation thereupon merges the law in force as the essence of the law. This force is, then, so constituted that, when it finds expression, opposite electrical discharges appear, and these again disappear into one another. In other words, force has exactly the same constitutive character as law; both are thus declared to be in no way distiuct. The distinctions are pure universal expression or law and pure force; but both have the same content, the same constitutive character; thus the distinction between them qua distinction of content, i.e. of fact, is also again withdrawn.
In this tautological process understandiug, as the above shows, holds fast to the changeless unity of its object, and the process takes effect solely within understanding itself, not in the object. It is an explanation that not only explains nothing, but is so plain that, while it makes as if it would say something different from what is already said, it really says nothing at all, but merely repeats the same thing over again. So far as the fact itself goes, this process gives rise to nothing new; the process is only of account as a process of understanding. In it, however, we now get acquainted with just what we missed in the case of the law — absolute change itself; for this process, when looked at more narrowly, is directly the opposite of itself. It sets up, that is, a distinction which is not only for us no distinction, but which it itself cancels 150. Phenomenology of Mind as distinction. This is the same process of change which was formerly manifested as the play of forces. In the latter we found the distinction of inciting and incited force, or force expressing itself, and force withdrawn into itself; but these were distinctions which in reality were no distinctions, and therefore were also immediately cancelled again. We have here not merely the naked unity, so that no distinction could be set up at all; the process we have is rather this, that a distinction is certainly made, but because it is no distinction, it is again superseded.
Thus, then, with the process of explaining, we see the ebb and flow of change, which was formerly characteristic of the sphere of appearance, and lay outside the inner world, finding its way into the region of the supersensible itself. Our consciousness, however, has passed from the inner being as an object over to understanding on the other side, and finds the changing process there.
The change is in this way not yet a process of the fact itself, but rather presents itself before us as pure change, just by the content of the moments of change remaining the same. Since, however, the notion qua notion of understanding is the same as the inner nature of things, this change becomes for understanding the law of the inner world. Understanding thus learns that it is a law in the sphere of appearance for distinctions to come about which are no distinctions. In other words, it learns that what is selfsame is self-repulsive, and, similarly, that the distinctions are only such as in reality are none and cancel one another, or that what is not selfsame is self-attractive. Here we have a second law, whose content is the opposite of Understanding I5I Understanding I5I what formerly was called law, viz. the invariable and unchanging self-identical distinction; for this new law expresses rather the process of Hke becoming unUke, and unhke becoming hke. The notion demands of the unreflective mind to bring both laws together, and become conscious of their opposition. Of course the second is also a law, an inner self-identical bemg; but it is rather a selfsameness of the unlike, a constancy of inconstancy. In the play of forces this law turned out to be just this absolute transition and pure change; the selfsame, force, spht into an opposition, that in the first instance appeared as a substantial independent distinction, which, however, in point of fact proved to be none. For it is the selfsame which repels itself from itself, and this element repelled is in consequence essentially self-attracted, for it is the same; the distinction made, since it is none, thus cancels itself again. The distinction is hence set forth as a distinction on the part of the fact itself, or as an absolute (objective) distinction; and this distinction on the part of the fact is thus nothing but the selfsame, that which has repelled itself from itself, and consequently only set up an opposition which is none.
By means of this principle, the first supersensible world, the changeless kingdom of laws, the immediate ectype and copy of the world of perception, has turned round into its opposite. The law was in general, hke its differences, self-identical; now, however, it is established that each side is, on the contrary, the opposite of itself. The self-identical repels itself from itself, and the self-discordant sets up to be selfsame. In truth, with a characteristic of this kind, distinction is only inner distinction, or immanent distinction, 152 Phenomenology of Mind since the like is unlike itself, and the unlike like itself.
This second supersensible world is in this way the inverted world {verkehrte Welt), and, moreover, since one aspect is abeady present in the first supersensible world, the inverted form of this first. The inner being is, thereby, in its character of appearance, completed. For the first supersensible world was only the immediate raising of the world of perception into the element of universahty. It had its necessary counterpart in this world of perception, which still retains as its own the principle of change and alteration. The first kingdom of laws dispenses with this principle, but preserves it in the form of an inverted world.
By the law of this inverted world, then, the selfsame in the first world is the unhke of itself, and the unhke in the first is equally unlike. to itself, or it becomes like itself. Expressed in determinate moments, this will assume the form that what by the law of the first is sweet, is, in this inner, inverted reality, sour; what is there black is here white. What, by the law of the first, was north pole in the case of the magnet, is, in its other supersensible inner world (viz. in the earth), south pole; while what was there south pole is here north pole. Similarly, what by the first law is in the case of electricity the oxygen pole becomes in its other supersensible reahty hydrogen pole; and conversely, what is there the pole of hydrogen, becomes here the pole of oxygen. To take another sphere of experience: revenge on an enemy is, according to the primitive immediate law, the supreme satisfaction of injured individuality. This law, however — that of standing up against one who Understanding 153 Understanding 153 does not treat me as a substantial self, letting him see that I am a substantial being, and even doing away with him as a reahty— this law is converted, by the principle of the other world, into the very opposite, viz., into the reinstatement of myself as the true reality through the removal of the alien hostile being in self-destruction.* If now this inversion, which is brought out in the punishment of crime, is made into a law, it also is again only the law of a world which has an inverted supersensuous world standing in antithesis to itself, where that which is despised in the former comes to honour, and that which in the former is honoured meets with contempt. The punishment which, by the law of the former, disgraces a man and annihilates him, turns round in its inverted world into the pardoning grace which preserves his being and brings him to honour.
Looked at on the surface, this inverted world is the antithesis of the first in the sense that it has the latter outside itself, and repels that world from itself as an inverted reahty; that the one is the sphere of appearance, while the other is the inherent being; that the one is the world as it is for an other, the other again the world as it is for itself. In this way, to use the previous examples, what tastes sweet is properly, or inwardly in the thing, sour; or what is north pole in the case of the actual magnet belonging to the sphere of appearance, would be, in the inner or essential being, south pole. What is shown to be oxygen pole * The primitive procedure of individual vengeance finds its inner meaning revealed in the ethically justifiable ^jrocedure of punishment. But ethical punishment is really self-punishment (cp. Plato's Gorgias). Punishment, however, Hegel goes on to say, has an inner meaning of its own too.
154 Phenomenology of Mind in electricity as a phenomenon, would be hydrogen pole in the case of electricity not falhng within the sphere of appearance. Or again, an act which m appearance is a crime would m its inner nature be capable of being really good — a bad act may have a good intention; punishment is only in appearance punishment; in itself or in another world it might well be, for the criminal, a benefit. But such oppositions of inner and outer, appearance and supersensible, in the sense of two sorts of reahty, are no longer to be found here. The differences repelled are not divided anew and assigned to two substances such as would support them and lend them a separate subsistence, the result of which would be that understandiag would leave the iuner region, and fall back again on its previous position. The one aspect or substance would be once more the world of perception, where the one of those two laws would carry on its existence, and in opposition to it an inner world, just such a sensible world as the first, but in the sphere of ideas; one that could not be indicated, seen, heard, and tasted as a sensible world, and yet would be thought of as such a sensible world. But in point of fact, if the one element set up is a perceived reahty, and its inherent being, as its inverted form, is at the same time a sensuously represented element, then sour, which would be the inherent nature of the sweet thing, is a real thing just as much as the latter would be a sour thing; black, which would be the inherent nature of white, is the actual black; the north pole, which is the true reahty of the south pole, is the north pole present in the same magnet; the oxygen pole, the inherent nature of the pole of hydrogen, is the given oxygen pole of the same voltaic pile. The actual Understanding 155 crime, however, finds its inversion, and its inherent nature qua possibihty, in the intention as such, but not in a good intention; for the truth of intention is simply the deed itself. The crime, so far as its content goes, recoils upon itself, finds its inversion in actual punishment; this is the reconcihation of the law with the reality set up against it in crime. Finally, the actual punishment carries its inverted reality with it, in such a way that it is a kind of realisation of the law, whereby the activity, which the law exercises in the form of punishment, is cancelled in the process, a manner of realisation through which the law, from being actively operative, becomes again quiescent and authoritative, and the conflict of individuality with it, and of it with individuality, is extinguished.
From the idea, then, of inversion which constitutes the essential nature of one aspect of the supersensible world, we must dissociate the sensuous idea of keeping distinctions substantively fixed in a difierent element that sustains them; and this absolute notion of distinction must be set forth and apprehended purely as inner distinction, self-repulsion of the selfsame as selfsame, and likeness of the unhke as unlike. We have to think pure flux, opposition within opposition itself, or Contradiction. For in the distinction, which is an internal distinction, the opposite is not only one of two factors — if so, it would not be an opposite, but a bare existent — it is the opposite of an opposite, or the other is itself directly and immediately present within it. No doubt I put the opposite here and the other, of which it is the opposite, there; that is, I place the opposite on one side, taking it by itself 156 Phenomenology of Mind without the other. Just on that account, howev?, since I have here the opposite all by itself, it is the opposite of its own self, that is, it has in point of fact the other immediately within itself. Thus the supersensible world, which is the inverted world, has at the same time reached out beyond the other world and has in itself that other; it is to itself conscious of being inverted {fiir sick verhelirte), i.e. it is the inverted form of itself; it is that world itself and its opposite in a single unity. Only thus is it distinction as internal distinction, or distinction fer se; in other words, only thus is it in the form of Infinity.
By means of infinity we see law attaining the form of inherent necessity, and so reahsing its complete nature; and all moments of the sphere of appearance are thereby taken up into the inner realm. That the simple and ultimate nature of law is necessity means, according to the foregoing analysis, (a) that it is a self-identical element, which, however, is inherently distinction; or that it is selfsameness which repels itself from itself, breaks asunder into two factors. What was called simple force duplicates itself, and through its infinity is law. It means (6) that what is thus sundered, constituting as it does the parts which are thought of as in the law, puts itself forward as subsisting, as stable; and, if the parts are considered without the conception of internal distinction, then space and time, or distance and velocity, which appear as moments of gravity, are just as much indifferent and without necessary relation to one another as to gravity itself, or again as this bare gravity is indifferent to them, or as simple electricity is indifferent to positive and negative. But (c) by this conception of internal distinction, this unUke Understanding I57 Understanding I57 and indifierent factor, space and time, etc., becomes a distinction, which is no distinction, or merely a distinction of what is selfsame, and whose essence lies in tinity. They are reciprocally awakened into activity as positive and negative by each other, and their being lies rather in their setting themselves up as not-being, and cancelhng themselves in the common unity. Both the factors distinguished subsist; they are per se, and they are fer se as opposites, that is, are the oppositea of themselves; they have their antithesis withia. them, and are merely one single unity.
This bare and simple infinity, or the absolute notion, may be called the ultimate nature of hfe, the soul of the world, the universal hfe-blood, which courses everywhere, and whose flow is neither disturbed nor checked by any obstructing distinction, but is itself every distinction that arises, as well as that into which all distinctions are dissolved; pulsating within itself, but ever motionless, shaken to its depths, but still at rest. It is self -identical, for the distinctions are tautological; they are distinctions that are none. This self-identical reahty stands, therefore, in relation solely to itself. To itself; which means this is an other, to which the relation points; and relation to itself is, more strictly, breaking asunder; in other words, that very self-identity is internal distinction. These sundered factors have, hence, each a separate being of their own; each is an opposite— of an other; and thus with each the other is therein if so facto expressly given; or it is not the opposite of an other, but only the pure opposite; and thus each is, therefore, in itself the opposite of itself. Or, agam, each is not an opposite at all, but exists purely for itself, a pure self-identical reahty, with no distinction 158 Phenomenology of Mind in it. This being so, we do not need to ash, still less to treat anxiety over such a question as philosophy, — or even regard this as a question philosophy cannot answer, — ' how distinction or otherness is to come out of this pure essence, how these are to be really got out of it/ For the process of disruption has already taken place; distinction has been excluded from the selfidentical entity, and put on one side so far as it is concerned; what should have been taken as the selfidentical is thus already one of the sundered elements, instead of being the absolute essential reality. That the self-identical breaks asunder means, therefore, juSt as truly that it supersedes itself as already sundered, that it cancels itself qua otherness. The unity which people usually have in mind when they say distinction cannot come out of unity, is, in poiut of fact, itself merely one moment of the process of disruption; it is the abstraction of simpHcity, which stands in contrast with distinction. But in that it is abstraction, is merely one of the two opposed elements, the statement thus already imphes that the unity is the process of breaking asunder; for if the imity is a negative element, an opposite, then it is put forward precisely as that which contains opposition withiu it. The different aspects of diremption and of becoming self-identical are therefore hkewise merely this process of self- cancelling. For since the self-identical element, which should first divide itself asunder or pass into its opposite, is an abstraction, i.e. is already itself a sundered element, its diremption is eo if so a cancelUng of what it is, and thus the cancelhng of its being srmdered. The process of becoming selfidentical is likewise a process of diremption; what becomes identical with itself thereby opposes itself to Understanding 159 disruption, that is, itself thereby puts itself on one side; in other words, it becomes really something sundered.
Infinitude, this absolute unrest of pure self-movement, such that whatever is determined in any way, e.g., as being, is really the opposite of this determinateness — has from the start been no doubt the very soul of all that has gone before; but it is in the inner world that it has first come out exphcitly and definitely. The world of appearance, or the play of forces, aheady shows its operation; but it is in the first instance as Explanation that it comes openly forward. And since it is at length an object for consciousness, and consciousness is aware of it as what it is, consciousness is in this way Self -consciousness. Understanding's function of explaining furnishes in the first instance merely the description of what self-consciousness is. Understanding cancels the distinctions present in Law, distinctions which have aheady become pure distinctions but are still indifferent, and puts them inside a single unity. Force. To bring about this identification, however, is at the same time and immediately a process of diremption; for understanding removes the distinctions and sets up the oneness of force only by the fact that it creates a new distinction of force and law, which at the same time, however, is no distinction.
And in spite of the fact that this distinction is at the same time no distinction, it goes on to deal with it and to cancel this distinction again, since it lets force have just the same constitutive character as law. This process or necessity is, however, in this form, still a necessity and a process of imderstanding, or the process as such is not the 'object of understanding; instead, 160 Phenmnenology of Miiid understanding has as its objects in that process positive and negative electricity, distance, velocity, force of attraction, and a thousand other things — objects which make up the content of the moments of the process. It is just for that reason that there is so much satisfaction in explanation, because consciousness being there, if we may use such an expression, in direct conununion with itself, enjoys itself only. No doubt it there seems to be occupied with something else, but in point of fact it is busied all the while merely with itself.
In the opposite law, as the inversion of the first law, or in internal distinction, infinitude doubtless becomes itself object of understanding. But once more understanding fails to do justice to infinity as such, since understanding assigns again to two worlds, or to two substantial elements, that which is distinction per se, — the self-repulsion of the selfsame, and the self-attraction of unhke factors. To understanding the process, as it is found in experience, is here an event that happens, and the selfsame and the unhke are predicates, whose reality is an underlying substratum. What is for understanding an object in a covering veil of sense, now comes before us in its essential form as a pure notion. This apprehension of distinction as it truly is, the apprehension of infinitude as such, is something for us [observing the course of the process], or is implicit, immanent. The exposition of its notion belongs to science. Consciousness, however, in the way it immediately has this notion, again appears as a peculiar form or new attitude of consciousness, which does not recognise its own essential nature in what has gone before, but looks upon it as something quite different.
Understanding 1 6 1 Understanding 1 6 1 In that this notion of infinitude is its object, it is thus a consciousness of the distinction as one which at the same time is at once cancelled. Consciousness is for itself and on its own account, it is a distinguishiag of what is undistinguished, it is Self-consciousness. I distinguish myself from myself; and therein I am immediately aware that this factor distinguished from me is not distinguished. I, the selfsame being, thrust myself away from myself; but this which is distinguished, which is set up as unlike me, is immediately on its being distinguished no distinction for me. Consciousness of an other, of an object in general, is indeed itself necessarily self-consciousness, reflectedness into self, consciousness of self in its otherness. The necessary advance from the previous attitudes of consciousness, which found their true content to be a thing, something other than themselves, brings to hght this very fact that not merely is consciousness of a thing only possible for a self-consciousness, but that this selfconsciousness alone is the truth of those attitudes. But it is only for us [who trace this process] that this truth is actually present; it is not yet so for the consciousness immersed in the experience. Self-consciousness has in the first iustance become a specific reahty on its own account {fiir sich), has come into being for itself; it is not yet in the form of unity with consciousness in general.
We see that in the inner being of the sphere of appearance, understanding gets to know in truth nothing else but appearance itself, not, however, appearance in the shape of a play of forces, but that play of forces in its absolutely universal moments and in the process of those moments; in fact, understanding merely experiences itself. Kaised above perception, con- VOL. I.— M 162 Phenomenology of Mind