this took place in the former case — i.e. not as if the truth of perception fell within it. Rather consciousness is aware that the untruth, that comes out there, falls within it. By knowing this, however, consciousness is able to cancel and supersede this untruth. It distinguishes its apprehension of the truth from the untruth of its perception, corrects this untruth, and, so far as itself takes in hand to make this correction, the truth, qua truth of perception, certainly falls within its own consciousness. The procedure of consciousness, which we have now to consider, is thus so constituted that it no longer merely perceives, but is also conscious. of its reflection into self, and keeps this apart from the simple apprehension proper.
To begin with, then, I am aware of the " thing " as a " one," and have to keep it fixed in this true character as " one." If in the course of perceiving something crops up contradicting that, then I must take it to be due to my reflection. Now, in perception various different properties also turn up, which seem to be properties of the thing. But the thing is a " one "; and we are aware in ourselves that this diversity, by which the thing ceases to be a unity, falls in us. This thing, then, is, in point of fact, merely white to our eyes, also sharp to our tongue, and also cubical to our feehng, and so on. The entire diversity of these aspects comes not from the thing, but from us; and we find them falling apart thus from one another, because the organs they affect are quite distinct inter se, the eye is entirely distinct from the tongue, and so on. We are, consequently, the imiversal medium where such elements get dissociated, and exist each by itself. By the fact, then, that we regard the characteristic of being a universal VOL, I,— I 114 Phenomenology of Mind medium as our reflection, we preserve and maintain the self-sameness and truth of the thing, its being a " one." These diverse aspects, which consciousness puts to its side of the account, are, however, each by itself just as it appears in the universal medium, specifically determined. White is only in opposition to black, and so on, and the thing is a " one " just by the fact that it is opposed to other things. It does not, however, exclude others from itself, so far as it is " one "; for to be " one " is to be in a universal relation of self to self, and hence by the fact of its being " one " it is rather like all. It is through the determinate characteristic that the thing excludes other things. Things themselves are thus determinate in and for themselves; they have properties by which they distinguish themselves from one another. Since the property is the special and peculiar property [the proper property] of, the thing, or a specific characteristic in the thing itself, the thing has several properties. For, in the first place, the thing is true being, is a being inherently in itself; and what is in it is so as its own essential nature, and not on account of other things.
Hence, in the second place, the determmate properties are not on account of other things and for other things, but inherent in that thing itself. They are, however, determinate properties in it only by the fact that they are several, and maintain their distinction from one another. And, in the third place, since they are thus within " thinghood," they are self-contained, each in and for itself, and are indifferent to one another. It is, then, in truth the thing itself which is white, and also cubical, and also sharp, and so on; in other words, the thing is the " also," the general medium, wherein Perception 115 the many properties subsist externally to one another, without touching or aSecting one another, and without cancelhng one another; and, so taken, the " also " is accepted as the true being of the thing.
Now, on this mode of perception arising, consciousness is at the same time aware that it reflects itself also into itself, and that, in perceiving, the opposite moment to the " also " crops up. This moment, however, is the unity of the thing with itself, an unity which excludes distinction from itself. It is consequently this unity which consciousness has to take upon itself; for the thing as such is the subsistence of many different and independent properties. Thus we say of the thing, " it is white, and also cubical, and also sharp," and so on. But so far as it is white it is 7wt cubical, and so far as it is cubical and also white, it is not sharp, and so on. Putting these properties into a " one " belongs solely to consciousness, which, therefore, has to avoid letting them coincide and be one (i.e. one and the same property) in the thing. In the long run it introduces the idea of " in-so-far " to meet the difficulty; and by this means it keeps the quahties apart, and preserves the thing in the sense of the " also." Quite properly consciousness at first makes itself responsible for the " oneness " in such a way that what was called a property is represented as being " free matter " {materia libera).* In this way the thing is raised to the level of a true " also," since it thus becomes a collection of component elements (materials or matters), and instead of being a " one " becomes a mere enclosure, a circumscribing surface.
* All expression dreiwu from the physics of Hegel's day.
116 Phenomenology of Mind If we look back on what consciousness formerly took upon itself, and now takes upon itself, what it previously ascribed to the thing, and now ascribes to it, we see that consciousness alternately makes itself, as well as the thing, into both a pure atomic many-less " one," and an " also " resolved into independent constituent elements (materials or matters). Consciousness thus finds through this comparison that not only its way of taking the truth contains the diverse moments of apprehension and return upon itself, but that the truth itself, the thing, manifests itself in this twofold manner. Here we find, as a result of experience, that the thing exhibits itself, in a determinate and specific manner, to the consciousness apprehending it, but at the same time is reflected back into itself out of that manner of presenting itself to consciousness; in other words, the thing contains within it opposite aspects of truth, a truth whose elements are in antithesis to one another.
Consciousness, then, gets away also from this second form of perceptual procedure, that, namely, which takes the thing as the true selfsame, and itself as the reverse, as the factor that leaves sameness behind and goes back into self. Its object is now the entire process which was previously shared between the object and consciousness. The thing is a "one," reflected into self; it is for itself; but it is also for an other; and, further, it is an other for itself as it is for another. The thing is, hence, for itself and also for another, a being that has difference of a twofold kind. But it is also "one." Its being "one," however, contradicts the diversity it has. Consciousness would, consequently, have again to make itself answerable for Perception' 117 Perception' 117 putting the diversity into the "one," and would have to keep this apart from the thing. It would thus be compelled to say that the thing " in-so-far as " it is for itself is not for another. But the oneness belongs to the thing itself, too, as consciousness has found out; the thing is essentially reflected into self. The " also," the distinction of elements indifferent to one another, falls doubtless within the thing, too, qua oneness, but since both are different, they do not fall within the same thing, but in different things. The contradiction which is found in the case of the objective content as a whole is assigned to and shared by two objects. The thing is, thus, doubtless as it stands {an und fur sich) selfsame, but this unity with itself is disturbed by other things. In this way the unity of the thing is preserved, and, at the same time, the otherness that is external to the thing, and also outside consciousness.
Now, although the contradiction in the object is in this way allotted to difierent things, yet the isolated individual thing will still be affected with distinction. The different things have a subsistence on their own account {fur sich); and the conflict between them takes place on both sides in such a way that each is not different from itself, but only from the other. Each, however, is thereby characterised as a something distinctive, and contains in it essential distinction from the others; but at the same time not in such a way that this is an opposition within its being; on the contrary, it is by itself a simple determinate characteristic which constitutes its essential character, distinguishing it from others. As a matter of fact, since the diversity lies in it, this diversity does indeed necessarily assume 118 Phenomenology of Mind the form of a real distinction of manifold quaUties within it. But because the determinate characteristic gives the essence of the thing, by which it is distinguished from others, and has a being all its own, this further manifold constitution is something indifferent. The thing thus no doubt contains in its unity the quaHfying " in-so-far " in two ways, which have, however, unequal significance; and by that quahfication this oppositeness becomes not a real opposition on the part of the thing itself, but — so far as the thing comes into a condition of opposition through its absolute distinction — this opposition belongs to the thing with reference to an other thing lying outside it. The further manifoldness is doubtless necessarily in the thing too, and cannot be left out; but it is unessential to the thing.
This determinate characteristic, which constitutes the essential character of the thing and distinguishes it from all others, is now so defined that thereby the thing stands in opposition to others, but must therein preserve itself for itself {filr sicli). It is, however, a thing, a self-existent "one," only so far as it does not stand in relation to others. For in this relation, the connection with another is rather the point emphasised, and connection with another means giving up selfexistence, means ceasing to have a being on its own account. It is precisely through the absolute character and its opposition that the thing relates itself to others, and is essentially this process of relation, and only this. The relation, however, is the negation of its independence, and the thing collapses through its own essential property.
The necessity of the experience which consciousness has to go through in finding that the thing is destroyed Perception 119 just by the very characteristic which constitutes its essential nature and its distinctive existence on its own account, may, as regards the bare principle it imphes, be shortly stated thus. The thing is set up as having a being of its own, as existing for itself, or as an absolute negation of all otherness; hence it is absolute negation merely relating itself to itself. But this kind of negation is the cancelling and superseding of itself, or means that it has its essential reality in an other.
In point of fact the determination of the object^ as it (the object) has turned out, contains nothing else. It aims at having an essential property, constituting its bare existence for itself, but with this bare self-existence it means also to embrace and contain diversity, which is to be necessary, but is at the same time not to constitute its essential characteristic. But this is a distinction that only exists in words; the TCOM-essential, which has all the same to be necessary, cancels its own meaning, or is what we have just called the negation of itself.
With this the last qualifying " in-so-far," which separated self-existence and existence for another, drops away altogether. The object is really in one and the same respect the opposite of itself — for itself " so far as " it is for another, and for another " so far as " it is for itself. It is for itself, reflected into self, one; but all this is asserted along with its opposite, with its being for another, and for that reason is asserted merely to be superseded. In other words, this existence for itself is as much unessential as that which alone was meant to be unessential, viz. the relation to another.
By this process the object in its pure characteristics, in those features which were to constitute its essential 120 Phenomenology of Mind nature, is superseded, just as the object in its sensible mode of existence became transcended. From being sensible it passed into being a universal; but this universal, because derived from sense, is essentially conditioned by it, and hence is, in general, not a genuine self-identical universaHty, but one affected with an opposition. For that reason this universality breaks up into the extremes of singleness and universality, of the " one " of the properties and the " also " of the free constituents or "matters." These pure determinations appear to express the essential nature itself; but they are merely a self-existence which is fettered at the same time with existence for an other. Since, however, both essentially exist in a single unity, we have before us now unconditioned absolute universality; and it is here that consciousness first truly passes into the sphere of Understanding, of Intelligence.
Sensible singleness thus disappears in the dialectic process of immediate certainty, and becomes universality, but merely sensuous universality. The stage of " meaning " has vanished, and perceiving takes the object as it inherently is in itself, or, put generally, as a universal. Singleness, therefore, makes its appearance there as true singleness, as the inherent nature of the " one," or as reflectedness into self. This is still, however, a conditioned self-existence alongside which appears another self-existence, the universality opposed to singleness and conditioned by it. But these two contradictory extremes are not merely alongside one another, but within one unity; or, what is the same thing, the common element of both, selfexistence, is entirely fettered to its opposite, i.e. is, at the same time, not an existence-for-self. The Perception 121 Perception 121 Sophistry of perception seeks to save these moments from their contradiction, tries to keep them fixed by distinguishing between " aspects," by using terms hke " also " and " so far as," and seeks in hke manner to lay hold on the truth by distinguishing the unessential element from an essential nature opposed thereto. But these expedients, instead of keeping away deception from the process of apprehension, prove rather to be of no avail at all; and the real truth, which should be got at through the logic of the perceptual process, proves to be in one and the same "aspect" the opposite (of what those expedients imply), and consequently to have as its essential content undifferentiated and indeterminate universality.
These empty abstractions of " singleness " and its antithetic " universahty," as also of " essence," that is attended with a " non-essential " element, an element which is all the same " necessary," are powers the interplay of which constitutes perceptual understanding, often called " sound common sense " {Menschenver stand). This "healthy common sense," which takes itself for the sohd substantial type of conscious life, is, in the sphere of perception, merely the interplay of these abstractions; it is always poorest where it pretends to be richest. In that it is tossed about by these unreal entities, bandied from one to the other, and by its sophistry endeavours to affirm and hold fast alternately now one, then the exact opposite, it sets itself against the truth, and imagines philosophy has merely to do with " things of the intellect," (GedanJcendinge) merely manipulates " ideas." As a matter of fact, philosophy does have to do with them, too, and knows them to be the pure essential entities, the absolute powers and 122 Phenomenology of Mind ultimate elements. But, in doing so, pliilosophy knows them at the same time in their determinate and specific constitution, and is, therefore, master over them; while that perceptual understanding takes them for the real truth, and is led by them from one mistake to another. It does not get the length of being aware that there are such simple essentiahties operating within it and dominating its activity; it thinks it has always to do with quite sohd material and content, just as sense-certainty is unaware that its essence is the empty abstraction of pure being. But in point of fact it is these essential elements in virtue of which perceptual understanding makes its way hither and thither through every kind of material and content; they are its principle of coherence and control over its varied material; they alone are what constitutes for consciousness the essence of sensuous things, what determines their relation to consciousness, and they are that in the medium of which the process of perceiving, with the truth it contains, runs its course. The course of this process, a perpetual alternate determining of the truth and superseding of this determination, constitutes, properly speaking, the constant everyday life and activity of perceptual intelligence, of the consciousness that thinks it hves and moves in the truth.
In that process it advances, without halt or stay, till the final result is reached, when these essential ultimate elements or determinations are all alike superseded; but in each particular moment it is merely conscious of one given characteristic as the truth, and then, again, of the opposite. It no doubt suspects their unessentiality; and, to save them from the impending danger, it takes to the sophistry of Perception 123 now asserting to be true what it had just affirmed to be not true. What the nature of these untrue entities wants really to force this understanding to do — viz. to bring together and thereby cancel and transcend the ideas about that " universahty " and " singleness," about " also " and " one " — about that " essentiahty " which is " necessarily " connected with an " unessentiahty," and an " unessential " that is yet " necessary " — understanding strives to resist by leaning for support on the quahfying terms " in-sofar," " a diiierence of aspect," or by making itself answerable for one idea in order to keep the other separate and preserve it as the true one. But the very nature of these abstractions brings them together as they stand and of their own accord. Sound common sense robs these abstractions of their real nature. They compel understanding to go round in their whirhng circle. When understanding tries to give them truth by at one time taking their untruth upon itself, at another by calling deception a mere appearance due to the uncertainty and unrehabihty of things, and, again, by separating the essential from what is necessary, and yet is to be unessential, holding the former to be their truth as against the latter: — when understanding takes this hne, it does not secure them their truth, but convicts itself of untruth.
Ill FORCE AND UNDERSTANDING— THE WORLD OF APPEARANCE AND THE SUPERSENSIBLE WORLD * [The term "force" holds primarily with reference to the realm of Nature, whether physical or vital: but it is also used, more or less analogically, in reference to other spheres, e.g. morality. It is the objective counterpart of the activity of "understanding "; it is objectively the same kind of relation of unity to differences which is subjectively realised when the mind "understands." "Force" is a self-conditioned principle of unity; the differences are the "expressions of force,'' the unity evolves the diiferences out of itself. Understanding similarly is a self-conditioned process; it consists in "reducing" differences to some ultimate unity, which is capable of " deriving " or " e.-tplaining " those differences from itself. The ''' unconditioned universal '' to which we are led by tlie analysis of perception takes shape, therefore, as " force." The question is. How are the elements of this "unconditioned universal" related, and how do they hold together? The answer is found in the highest achievement of the operation of understanding — the establishment of a " kingdom of laws," which in its entirety is the meaning of the world so far as understanding goes. But laws pej- se are looked on as an inner realm, which merely "appears" in the detailed particulars which those laws control, and in which those laws are made manifest. Tlie differences, in fact, are "' phenomena," the laws per se are behind the scenes: — the world as a whole thus becomes distinguished into a realm of phenomena and a realm of noumena. These two realms set a new problem to the mind, and must again be brought together in a completer way than understanding can do. This new state of consciousness is " self-consciousness."
In this section we have at once an analysis of empiricism and a critici.sm of the Kantian solution of the problem of empiricism. It is shown that if phenomena are appearances of noumena, then the noumena do appear, and are, in fact, nothing except so far as they appear: — otherwise the noumena, so far being "hidden,"' are worse than appearances, they are illusion. The phenomena arc not merely appearances "to the mind," but appearances of something that does make itself manifest. If phenomena * Cp. Wisseiu-chaft dcr Logik, Buch 2, Absch. 2, Kap 3.
Understanding 125 are thus not external to and still less independent of noumena, noumena are just as truly immanent in plienomena. Treated in any other way, noumena can at best be only another kind of phenomena; and this raises anew precisely the problem which the opposition of phenomena or noumena was intended to solve. Phenomena are related to noumena as the trees to the wood, not as a compound to its atoms. The solution of the difficulty is thus only to be found in the type of consciousness which contains both — and this, Hegel says, is self-consciousness.]
CONSCIOUSNESS lias found "seeing" and "hearing," etc., pass away in the dialectic process of senseexperience, and has, at the stage of perception, arrived at thoughts which, however, it brings together in the first instance in the unconditioned universal. This unconditioned element, again, if it were taken as inert essence bare and simple, would itself be nothing else than the one-sided extreme of self-existence (Fiirsichseyn); for the non-essential would then stand over against it. But if thus related to the latter, it would be itself unessential, and consciousness would not have got disentangled from the deceptions of perception; whereas this universal has proved to be one which has passed out of such conditioned separate existence and returned into itself.
This unconditioned universal, which henceforward is the true object of consciousness, is still object of consciousness; consciousness has not yet grasped its principle, or notion, qua notion. There is an essential distinction between the two which must be drawn. On the one hand, consciousness is aware that the object has passed from its relation to an other back into itself, and thereby become inherentlj^ and implicitly {an sich) notion; but, on the other hand, consciousness is not yet the notion explicitly or for itself, and consequently it does not know itself in that reflected object. We 126 Phenomenology of Mind (who are analysing experience) found this object arise through the process of consciousness in such a way that consciousness is imphcated and involved in the development of the object, and the reflection is the same on both sides, i.e. there is only one reflection. But because in this movement consciousness had as its content merely the objective entity, and not consciousness as such, the result has to be given an objective significance for consciousness; consciousness, however, still withdrawing from what has arisen, so that the latter in objective form is the essential reahty to consciousness.
Understanding has, indeed, eo if so, done away with its own untruth and the untruth in its object. What has thereby come to view is the notion of the truth as imphcit inherent truth, which is not yet notion, or lacks a consciously explicit existence for itself (Fiirsichseyn), and is something which understanding allows to have its way without knowing itself in it. It works out its own reality for itself, so that consciousness has no share in its process of free reahsation, but merely looks on and apprehends that reahsation as a naked fact. It is, consequently, our business in the first instance to step into its place and be the notion, which works up into shape what is contained in the result. With this complete formation of the object, which is presented to consciousness as a bare existent fact {ein Seyendes), mere conscious awareness becomes for the first time conceptual consciousness, conscious comprehension.
The result arrived at was an unconditioned universal, in the first instance in the negative and abstract sense that consciousness negated its one-sided notions and Understanding 127 abstracted them: it surrendered them. This result, however, has inherently a positive significance; it has established the unity of existence-for-self, and existence-for-another; in other words, absolute opposites are immediately posited as one and the same reality. At first this seems to affect merely the formal relation of the moments to one another. But to be for-self and to be for-another constitutes the content itself as well, because the opposition, looked at truly, can have no other nature than what has come about in the result — viz. that the content, taken in perception for truth, belongs, in point of fact, solely to the form, and is dissipated into its unity. This content is at the same time universal; there can be no other content which by its peculiar constitution would refuse to return into this unconditioned universahty. Such a content would be some specific way or other of being for-itself and taking up a relation to something else. But to be in general for-self and to stand in relation to something else constitutes the very nature and meaning of that whose truth lies in being unconditionally universal; and the result is through and through universal.
Since, however, this unconditioned universal is an object for consciousness, the distinction of form and content makes its appearance within it; and, in the shape of content, the moments have the aspect in which they were first presented — that of being on one side a universal medium of many substantial elements, and, on the other, a unit reflected into self, where their substantial independence is overthrown and done away with. The former dissolves the independence of the thing, is the condition of passivity 128 Phenomenology of Mind which consists in being something for something else; the latter is its individual subsistence, its being something on its own account {fiir sicli). We have to see what shape these moments take in the unconditioned universal which is their essential nature. It is obvious at the outset that, by existing only in this universal, they do not in general he any longer apart from one another, but rather are in themselves essentially selfcancelhng aspects, and what is estabhshed is only their transition into one another.
One moment, then, appears as imiversal medium, or as the subsistence of independent constituents, as the reahty that has stepped aside. The independence of these constituent elements, however, is nothing else than this medium; i.e. this universal is simply and entirely the plurality of such diverse universals. That the miiversal is fcr se in -undivided unity with this plurality means, however, that these elements are each where the other is; they m.utually permeate one another — without touching one another, because, conversely, the manifold diversity is equally independent. Along with that, too, goes the fact that they are absolutely pervious and porous, or are cancelled and superseded. To be thus superseded, again, or the reduction of this diversity to bare and simple self-existence, is nothing else than the medium itself, and this is the independence of the different elements. In otlier words, the elements set up as independent pass directly over into their unity, and their unity directly into its exphcit diversity, and the latter back once again into the reduction to unity. This process is what is called Force. One of its moments, where Force takes the form of a dispersion of the independent elements each with a Understanding 129 Understanding 129 being of its own, is the Expression of Force; when, however, force takes the form of that wherein they disappear and vanish, it is Force proper, force withdrawn from expressing itself and driven back into itself. But in the first place force driven back into itself must express itself; and, secondly, in that expression it is still force existing within itself, as much as in thus being within itself it is expression. "