When we thus keep both moments in this immediate unity, it is Understanding, to which the conception of force belongs, that is, properly speaking, the principle which carries the difierent moments qua different. For per se they should not be different; the distinction consequently exists only in thought. Stated otherwise, only the mere conception of force has been put forward in the above, not its reahsation. In point of fact, however, force is the rmconditioned universal, which is in itself just what it is for something else, or which holds its difference within itself — for it is nothing else than existence-for-an-other. Hence for force to be what it truly is, it has to be completely set free from thought, and put forward as the substantial reality of these differences, that is, first the substance qua the entire force remaining essentially self-contained (an und fiir sich), and then its differences as substantial entities, or as moments subsisting each on its own account. Force as such, force as driven back within itself, is in this way by itself an excluding unit, for which the unfolding of the elements or differences is another thing subsisting separately; and thus there are set up two sides, distinct and independent. But force is also the whole, or it remains what, in its very conception, it is; that is to say, these differences remain VOL. I. — K 130 Phenomenology of Mind mere forms, superficial vanishing " moments. ^ Ine differences between force proper, withdrawn into itself, and force unfolded and expressed in independent constituent elements, would at the same time have no being at all if they had no subsistence; i.e. force would have no being if it did not really exist in these opposite ways. But to exist in this way as opposite aspects means nothing else than that both moments are themselves at the same time independent. It is this process we have now to deal with — the process by which both moments get themselves fixed as independent and then cancel their independence again.
Looked at broadly, it is manifest that this process is nothing else than the process of perceiving, where the aspects, both percipient and content perceived, are at once inseparably miited as regards the process of grasping the truth, and yet, by that very fact, each aspect is at the same time reflected into itself, is something on its own account. In the present case these two aspects are elements or moments of force; they subsist within one unity, just as much as this unity, which appears as the middle term for the distinct and independent extremes, always gets broken up into these very extremes, which only become such through this taking place. Thus the process, which formerly took the shape of the self-negation of contradictory conceptions, here assumes objective form, and is a movement of force, the result of which is to bring out the " unconditioned imiversal " as something which is not objective — which is the inner (unperceived) being of things..^^ Force, as thus determined, since it is taken as force, or as reflected into itself, is the one side of its notion and meaning: but a substantiated extreme, Understanding 131 and, moreover, the extreme established with the characteristic of oneness. In virtue of this, the subsistence of the elements which have arisen falls outside it, and is something other than it. Since of necessity it has to he this subsistence, i.e. to express, externaUse itself, its expression takes the form that the other approaches it and incites it. But, in point of fact, since it must necessarily express itself, it has within itself this other, which to begin with took up a position as something outside it. The latter (this other) must be retracted, in order that force should be estabhshed as a single " one," and its essential nature — which consists in self-expression — put forward as an other, approaching it externally. Force itself is rather this universal medium for the subsistence of the moments as constituent elements; or, in other words, it has expressed or externalised itself, and what was to be something outside it attracting or inciting it is really force itself.
It exists now as the medium of the constituent elements which have been evolved. But at the same time it is in its very nature one and single, and has essentially the form of being that in which these various elements are superseded. This oneness is in consequence now something other than, external to, force, since force takes its place as the medium for the elements to exist in; and force therefore has this its essential being outside itself. Since, however, it must of necessity be this essential nature, which as yet it is not affirmed to be, this other comes forward soliciting or inciting it to reflect into self, to turn this pseudo-external factor into an aspect of itself; in other words, this other cancels its external expression. In point of fact, however, it is force itself that is thus reflected into self, 132 Plienmnenology of Mind that is the sublation of the external expression. The oneness vanishes as it appeared, viz. as something external; force is that very other, is force thrust back into itself.
What took the character of an external other, and incited force at once to expression and to return into self, turns out directly to be itself force: for the other shows itself to be luiiversal medium as well as one and single, and shows this in such a way that each of the forms assumed appears at the same time to be merely a vanishing moment. Consequently force, in that there is an other for it, and it is for an other, has as a whole not yet developed its complete meaning. There are two forces present at the same time; the notion of both is no doubt the same notion, but it has passed out of its unity into duality. Instead of the opposition continuing to be entirely and essentially a mere moment, it appears to have escaped from the control of the unity and to have become, owing to this diremption, two quite independent forces. We have now to see more precisely what sort of situation this independence introduces.
To begin with, the second force stands towards the force incited in the character of inciting force, and, moreover, with respect to its content, plays the part of universal medium. But since that second force consists essentially in an alternation of these two moments and is itself force, it is likewise, in point of fact, their imiversal medium only then when it is incited or solicited to being so; and in the same way, too, it is negative unity, or incites and leads to the retraction of force, only by being incited thereto. As a result, this distinction, which took place between one force re- Understanding 133 garded as inciting and tlie other as incited, turns also into one and the same reciprocal interchange of characteristics.
The interplay of the two forces in this way arises from and consists in the two being thus determined with opposite characteristics, in their being for one another in virtue of this determination and in the complete and direct exchange of their characteristics— a transition from one to the other, whereby alone these determinations, in which the forces seem to appear independently, have being. For example, the inciting force is set up as universal medium, and, on the other hand, the force incited as a force repressed. But the former is universal medium just by the very fact of the latter being repressed: that is to say, this latter is really what incites the former, and makes it the medium it claims to be. The former gets the character it has only through the other, and is an inciting force only so far as it is incited by the latter to be so. And it loses just as readily this character given to it, for this character passes, or rather has already passed, into the character of the other. The former, acting in an external way, takes the part of universal medium, but only by its having been incited by the other force to do so. This means, however, that the latter gives it that position, and is really itselj essentially universal medium: it gives the inciting agency this character just because this other character is essentially its own, i.e. because it is really its own self.
To complete our insight into the principle of this process, we may notice, further, that the distinctions themselves reveal distinction in a twofold manner. They are, on the one hand, distinctions of 134 Phenomenology of Mind content, since one extreme is force reflected into itself, while the other is a medium for the constituent elements involved: on the other hand, they appear as distinctions of form, since one incites and the other is incited, the former being active, the latter passive. As regards the distinction of content, they are in a general way distinct, or distinct for us [who are analysing the process]; as regards form, however, they are independent, in their relation they break away from one another of themselves, and stand opposed. In the perception of the movement of force, consciousness becomes aware that the extremes, in both these aspects, are nothing fer se, that rather these sides, in which their distinction of nature was meant to consist, are merely vanishing moments, an immediate transition of each into its opposite. For us, however [who are analysing the process], it was also true, as stated above, that per se the distinctions, qiia distinctions of content and form, vanished: and on the side of form, the active, inciting, or independent factor was in its very nature the same as what, from the side of content, was presented as repressed force, force driven back into itself; the passive, incited, or related factor was, from the side of form, the same as what, from the side of content, took shape as universal medium for the many constituent elements.
^ From this we see that the notion of Force becomes actual when resolved into two forces, and we see too how it comes to be so. These two forces exist as independent entities: but their existence lies in a movement each towards each, of such a kind that in order to be, each has in reality to get its position purely through the other; that is to say, their being Understanding 135 has purely the significance of disappearance. They are not hke extremes, that keep to themselves something positively fixed, and merely transmit an external property to one another through their common medium and by external contact: they are what they are solely in this mediimi and in their contact with each other. We have there immediately both force as it is independently, force repressed within itself, and also its expression, force inciting and force being incited. These moments are thus not divided and set up as two extremes, offering each other only an opposite pole: rather their true nature is simply and solely to be each through the other, and to be in the first instance no more than just what each is thus through the other, since it is just that. They have thus, in point of fact, no substances of their own which could support and maintain them. The notion of force rather maintains itself as the essence in its very actuality: force when actual exists wholly and only in its expression; and this, at the same time, is nothing else than a process of cancelling itself. This actual force, when represented as detached from its expression and existing by itself, is force driven back into itseK; but this feature is itself, in point of fact, as appears from the foregoing, merely a moment in the expression of force. The true nature of force thus remains merely the thought or idea of force; the moments in its realisation, its substantial independence and its process, rush, without let or hindrance, together into one single undivided unity, a unity which is not force withdrawn into itself (for this is merely one of those moments), but is its notion qua notion. The realisation of force is, then, at the same time dissipation or loss of reality; 136 Phenomenology of Mind it has thereby become something quite different, viz. this universahty, which understanding knows from the start or immediately to be its essential nature, and which shows itself, too, to be the essence of it in what is supposed to be its reaHty, in the actual substances.
So far as we look on the first universal as the notion of understanding, where force does not yet exist for itself, the second is now its essential reahty, as it is revealed in and for itself. Or, conversely, if we look on the first universal as the immediate, which should be an actual object for consciousness, then this second has the characteristic of being the negative of sensuously objective force: it is force, in the form in which, in its true being, force exists merely as object for understanding. The first Vt^ould be force withdrawn into itself, i.e. force as substance; the second, however, is the inner being of things qua imier, which is one and the same with the notion qua notion.
This true being of things has here the characteristic that it does not exist immediately for consciousness; rather, consciousness takes up a mediated relation to the inner; in the form of understanding it looks through the intervening play of forces into the real and true backgromid of things. The middle term combining the two extremes, understanding and the inner of things, is the explicitly evolved being of force, which is now and henceforth a vanishing process for understanding itself. Hence it is called Appearance (Erscheinung); for being which is per se straightway non-being we call a show, a semblance (Schein). It is, however, not merely a show, but appearance, a totality of seeming {Schein). This totahty as totahty or universal is what makes up the inner world, the play of forces Understanding 137 in the sense of its rejlection into itself. There consciousness has before itself in objective form the things of perception as they truly are, i.e. as moments turning, without halt or separate subsistence, directly into their opposite, the "one" changing immediately into the universal, the essential becoming at once something unessential, and vice versa. This play of forces is consequently the development of the negative; but its true nature is the positive element, viz. the universal, the implicit object, the object existing 'per se.
The being of this object for consciousness is mediated through the movement of appearance, by which the content of perception and the sensuous objective world as a whole, get merely negative significance. There consciousness is turned back upon itself as the truth; but, being consciousness, it again makes this truth into an inner being of the object, and distinguishes this reflection of things from its own reflection into self: just as the mediating process likewise is for it still an objective process. This inner natm:e is therefore for it an extreme placed over against it. But it is on that accotmt the truth for it, because therein, as in something essentially real, it possesses at the same time the certainty of its own self, the moment of its own self-existence. But it is not yet conscious of this basis [its self-existence], for the independence, its being on its own account, v/hich should have the inner world within it, would be nothing else than the negative process. This negative process, however, is for consciousness still objective vanishing appearance, and not yet its own proper self-existence (Filrsichseyn). Hence the inner is no doubt taken to be 138 Phenomenology of Mind notion, but consciousness does not yet know the nature of the notion.
Within this inner truth, this absolute universal which has got rid of the opposition between imiversal and particular, and become the object of understanding, is a supersensible world which henceforth opens up as the true world, lying beyond the sensuous world which is the world of appearance. Away remote from the changing vanishing present (Diesseits) hes the permanent beyond (Jenseits): an immanent inherent reahty {ein Ansich), which is the first and therefore imperfect manifestation of Reason, i.e. it is merely the pure element where the truth finds its abode and its essential being.
Our object henceforward has thus the form of a syllogistic inference (Schluss), whose extremes are the inner being of things and understanding, and its middle term the sphere of appearance. The course of this inferential process, however, furnishes the further characterisation of what imderstanding detects in the inner world by the aid of the middle term; and gives rise to the experience understanding goes through regarding this relation of the combined and mutually inferrible terms.
The inner world is so far for consciousness a bare and simple beyond, because consciousness does not as yet find itself in it. It is empty, for it is merely the nothingness of appearance, and positively the naked universal. This type of inwardness suits those who say that the inner being of things cannot be known;* but the reason for the position would have to be taken in some other sense. Certainly there is no laiowledge to be had of this * Cp. Goethe, " /m innern der Natur," etc.
Understanding 139 inner world, as we have it here; not, however, owing to reason being too short-sighted, or limited, or whatever you care to call it (on this point there is as yet nothing known at this stage; we have not gone deep enough for that yet), but on account simply of the nature of the case, because in the void there is nothing known, or, putting it from the point of view of the other side, because its very characteristic lies in being beyond consciousness.
The result is, of course, the same if you place a bhnd man amid the wealth of the supersensible world (if it has a wealth, whether this be a content peculiarly its own, or whether consciousness itself be this content), and if you place one with sight in absolute darkness, or, if you like, in pure light, supposing the supersensible world to be this. The seeing man sees in that pure light as little as in absolute darkness, and just as much as the blind man in the ample fulness which lay before him. If there were really nothing further ado with the inner sphere and with our being bound up along with it by means of the world of appearance, then there would be nothing left but to stop at the phenomenal world, i.e. take something for truth about which we know that it is not true. Or in order that there may be something in this empty void — which, while it originally came about as a state devoid of objective things, has, however, since it is emptiness pure and simple, to be taken to be also devoid of all mental relations and distinctions of consciousness qua consciousness — in order that in this complete vacuity, which is even called the holy of hohes, the inner sanctuary, there may yet be something, we should be driven to fill it up with dreamings, appearances, produced by consciousness itself. It 140 Phenomenology of Mind would have to be content with being treated so badly, for it would not deserve anything better, since even dreams are something better than its own barren emptiness.
The inner world, or the supersensible beyond, has, however, arisen: it comes to us out of the sphere of appearance, and the latter is its mediating agency: in other words, appearance is its essential nature and, in point of fact, its filhng. The supersensible is the estabhshed truth of the sensible and perceptual. The truth of the sensible and the perceptual lies, however, in being appearance. The supersensible is then appearance qua appearance. We distort the proper meanmg of this, if we take it to mean that the supersensible is therefore the sensible world, or the world as it is for immediate sense-certainty and perception. For, on the contrary, appearance is just not the world of sense-knowledge and perception as positively being, but this world as superseded or established in truth as an inner world. It is often said that the supersensible is not appearance; but by appearance is thereby meant not appearance, but rather the sensible world taken as itself real actuality.
Understanding, which is our object here, finds itself in this position, that, for it, the inner world has come about, to begin with, only as the imphcit inherent being, universal and still without a filling. The play of forces has simply and solely this negative significance of not being something j^er se; and its only positive significance is that of being the mediating agency, but outside understanding. The relation of understanding to the inner world through mediation is, however, its own process, by which the inner world will be found to receive fullness of content.
Understanding 141 The play of forces is what understanding has directly to do with; but the real truth for it is the inner world bare and simple. The movement of force is consequently the truth only by being in like manner something simple. Regarding this play of forces, however, we saw that its pecuharity lay in this, that the force which is awakened into activity by another force is just on that account the inciting agency for this other force, which thereby itself only then becomes an inciting force. We have here in this way merely direct and immediate interchange or complete exchange of the characteristic which constitutes the sole content of what comes before us, viz. the fact of being either universal medium or negative unity. It ceases immediately on its entrance in determinate form to be what it was on entering: it awakens or incites, by its appearance in determinate shape, the other side, which thereby gives itself expression, i.e. the latter is now directly what the first was to be. Each of these two sides, the relation of inciting and the relation of the opposed determinate content, is on its own account an absolute process of permutation and transposition. But these two relations are again themselves one and the same, and the formal distinction of being incited and of inciting to activity, is the same as the distinction of content, i.e. the distinction between the incited factor as such, viz. the passive medium, on the one side, and the inciting factor, viz. the active medium, the negative unity, or the "one" on the other side. In this way there disappears all distinction of contrasted and opposed particular forces, which were meant to be present in this process; for they rested solely on the above distinctions. And, along with both those distinctions, the distinction between 142 Phenomenology of Mind the forces collapses likewise into merely one. There is thus neither force nor inciting and being incited to action, nor the characteristic of being a stable medium and a unity reflected into self, there is neither a particular which is something on its own account, nor are there diverse opposites. What is found in this flux of thoroughgoing change is merely difference as universal difference, or difference into which the various opposites have been resolved. This difference as universal, consequently, is what constitutes the ultimate simple element in that play of forces, and is the resultant truth of that process. It is the Law of Force.* The absolute flux of the world of appearance passes into bare and simple difference through its relation to the simplicity of the inner being, the simplicity apprehended by understanding. The inner being is in the first instance merely the implicit universal. This implicit simple universal, however, is essentially absolute universal dift'erence as well; for it is the outcome of the change itself, or change is its very nature. But change, when planted in the inner reality as it [change] truly is, forthwith is taken up into that reality as equally absolute universal difference at peace with itself, and remaining at one with itself. In other words, negation is an essential moment of the universal; and negation, or mediation in the universal, is universal difference. This difference is expressed in the law, which is the stable presentment or * Cp. Helmholtz, "It is precisely in the purest form of the expression of force — viz. in mechanical force which acts on a mass-point — that we find most clearly brought out that force is merely the objectified law of action." — Lectures and Addresses, v., Eng. trans.. Vol. I., p. 326.
Understanding 143 picture of unstable appearance. The supersensible world is in this way a quiescent " kingdom of laws," no doubt beyond the world of perception — for this exhibits the law only through incessant change — but likewise present in it, and its direct immovable copy or image.
This kingdom of laws is indeed the truth for understanding; and that truth finds its content in the distinction which lies in the law. At the same time, however, this kingdom of laws is only the prehminary truth, and does not give all the fullness of the world of appearance. The law is present therein, but is not all the appearance present; under ever- varying circumstances the law has an ever-varying actual existence. Thereby appearance continues to keep one aspect which is not in the inner world; i.e. appearance is not yet in very truth established as appearance, as that whose independent being has been done away with. This defect in the law has to be brought out in the law itself. What seems defective in it is that while it no doubt has difference within it, it contains this in a merely universal indeterminate way. So far, however, as it is not law in general, but a law, it has determinateness within it; and as a result there are found an indeterminate plurahty of laws. But this pluiahty is rather itself a defect; it contradicts the principle of understanding, for which, since it is consciousness of the simple inner being, truth is the inherently universal unity. It must, therefore, let the many laws coalesce into a single law, just as, e.g., the law by which a stone falls, and that by which the heavenly bodies move have been conceived as one law. When the laws thus coincide, however, they lose their specific character.
144 Phenomenology of Mind The law becomes more and more abstract and superficial, and in consequence we find as a fact, not the unity of these various determinate laws, but a law which leaves out their specific character; just as the one law, which combines in itself the laws of falhng terrestrial bodies, and of the movements of celestial bodies, does not, in point of fact, express both kinds of laws. The unification of all laws in universal attraction expresses no fiu'ther content than just the bare concept of the law itself, a concept which is therein set doAvn as existing. Universal attraction says merely that everything has a constant distinction for anything else. Understanding pretends by that to have found a universal law which gives expression to universal reality as such; but, in point of fact, it has merely found the conception of law itself, although in such a way that it at the same time thereby declares all reality to be in its very nature conformed to law. The idea of universal attraction has, therefore, to this extent great importance, that it is directed against that unthinking way of representing reality, to which everything appears in the shape of accident and chance, and for which determinateness, specificity, takes the form of sensuous independence.
In contrast, then, with determmate laws stands universal attraction, or the bare conception of law. In so far as this pure conception is looked on as the essentially real, or as the true inner being, the determinateness characterising the specific law itself belongs still to the sphere of appearance, or rather to sensible existence. But the pure conception of law transcends not merely the law, which, being itself a determinate law, stands contrasted with other determinate laws, but also transcends law as such. The Understanding 145 determinateness, of which we spoke, is itself strictly a mere vanishing moment, which can no longer come forward here as an essential entity {Wesenheit), for it is only the law which is the truth here: but the conception of law is turned against the law itself. That is to say, in the law distinction itself is immediately apprehended and taken up into the universal, thereby, however, making the moments, whose relation it expresses, subsist as mutually indifferent and inherently real entities. These parts of the distinction found in the law are, however, at the same time themselves determinate aspects. The pure concept of law, as universal attraction, must, to get its true significance, be so apprehended that in it, as the absolutely single and simple, the distinctions which are present in law as such, return again themselves into the inner being, qua bare and simple unity. This unity is the inner " necessity " of the law.
The law is thereby present in a twofold form. In one case it is there as law in which the differences are expressed as independent moments; in the other it is in the form of a simple withdrawal into itself, which agaia can be called Force, but in the sense not of repressed force [spoken of above], but force in general, or the concept of force, an abstraction which absorbs the distinctions involved in what attracts and is attracted. In this sense, e.g., simple electricity is force; the expression of difference falls, however, within the law; this difference is positive and negative electricity. In the case of the motion of falhng bodies force is the simple element, gravity, which has the law that the magnitudes of the different factors in the motion, the time spent, and the space traversed, are VOL, I.— L 146 Phenomenology of Mind to one another in the relation of root and square. Electricity itself is not difference fer se, is not in its essential natui'e a twofold entity consisting of positive and negative electricity; hence it is often said it has the law of being so and so in the way indicated, or again, that it has the property of expressing itself in this fashion. This property is doubtless the essential and pecuhar property of this force, i.e. it belongs to it necessarily. But necessity is here an empty phrase; force must, just because it must, duphcate itself in this manner. Of course, if positive electricity is given, negative electricity is inherently necessary;