Just as the proposition of ground states that whatever is has a ground, or is something posited or mediated, so too we must formulate a proposition of Existence, and in these terms: whatever is, exists. The truth of being is to be, not a first immediate, but essence that has emerged into immediacy.
But when further it was also said, 'Whatever exists has a ground and is conditioned', then equally it must also be said that it has no ground and is unconditioned. For Existence is the immediacy that has emerged from the sublating of the mediation by which ground and condition are related, and in emerging it sublates this emergence itself.
In so far as the proofs of the existence of God may be mentioned here, we may begin by recalling that besides immediate being and Existence (the being that proceeds from essence), there is yet a third being that proceeds from the Notion, namely, objectivity. Proof is, in general, mediated cognition. The various kinds of being demand or imply their own kind of mediation, so that the nature of proof too, will differ in respect of each. The ontological proof proposes to start from the Notion; it makes the sum total of all realities its basis and then proceeds to subsume existence, too, under reality. It is therefore the mediation that is syllogism and that does not as yet come up for consideration here. We have already considered above Kant's objections to this proof and have remarked that Kant understands by Existence, the determinate being whereby something enters into the context of the totality of experience, that is, into the determination of an otherness and into relation to an other. Thus something, as existent, is mediated by an other, and existence in general is the side of its mediation. Now what Kant calls a concept, namely, something taken as only simply self-related, or conception as such, does not contain its mediation; in abstract self-identity, opposition is left out. The ontological proof would now have to demonstrate that the absolute concept, namely the concept of God, attains to a determinate being, to a mediation, or how simple essence mediates itself with mediation. This is effected by the stated subsumption of existence under its universal, namely, reality, which is assumed as the middle term between God in his concept, on the one hand, and existence on the other. This mediation, in so far as it has the form of a syllogism, is, as we have said, not under discussion here. But the preceding exposition has shown what is the true nature of this mediation of essence with Existence. The nature of proof itself will be considered in the doctrine of cognition. Here we have only to indicate what is relevant to the nature of mediation in general.
The proofs of the existence of God adduce a ground for this existence. It is not supposed to be an objective ground of God's existence; for this existence is in and for itself. Thus it is merely a ground for cognition. It thereby declares itself to be a ground that vanishes in the object which at first appears to be grounded by it. Now the ground that is derived from the contingency of the world implies the regress of the contingency into absolute essence; for the contingent is that which is in itself groundless and self-sublating. In this way, therefore, absolute essence does in fact proceed from the groundless; the ground sublates itself and with this there also vanishes the illusion of the relation that was given to God, to be that which is grounded in an other. This mediation is therefore true mediation. But this nature of its mediation is unknown to that ratiocinative [beweisende] reflection; on the one hand, it takes itself to be something merely subjective and by so doing removes its mediation from God himself, but, on the other hand, it does not for that reason recognise the mediating movement, that it is and how it is in essence itself. Its true relationship consists in this, that it is both of these things in one: mediation as such but, of course, at the same time a subjective, external, that is, self-external, mediation, which sublates itself again within itself. But in the above proof, existence is given the false relationship of appearing only as mediated or posited.
Thus, on the other side, Existence also cannot be considered merely as an immediate. Taken in the determination of an immediacy, the comprehension of God's existence has been declared to be unprovable and knowledge of it to be only an immediate consciousness, a belief in it. Knowing is supposed to have reached this conclusion, that it knows nothing, that is to say, that it surrenders again its mediating movement and the determinations that crop up in it. This is also evident from the foregoing; only we must add that reflection, in ending with the sublating of itself, does not therefore have for result nothing (for in that case the positive knowledge of essence as an immediate relation to it would be separate from that result and a spontaneous emergence, an act starting only from itself); on the contrary, this end itself, this falling to the ground of the mediation, is at the same time the ground from which the immediate proceeds. Language, as was remarked above, combines the meaning of this downfall [Untergang] and of ground; the essence of God, it is said, is the abyss [Abgrund] for finite reason. This it is, indeed, in so far as finite reason surrenders its finitude and sinks its mediating movement therein; but this abyss, the negative ground, is also the positive ground of the emergence of simply affirmative being [Seienden], of essence which is in its own self immediate; mediation is an essential movement. Mediation through ground sublates itself, but does not leave the ground behind as a substrate; in that case, what proceeded from the ground would be something posited, having its essence elsewhere, namely in the ground; but on the contrary, this ground, as an abyss, is the vanished mediation; and conversely, it is only the vanished mediation that is at the same time ground, and only through this negation the self-equal and immediate.
Existence, then, is not to be taken here as a predicate or as a determination of essence, the proposition of which would run: essence exists, or has existence; on the contrary, essence has passed over into Existence; Existence is essence's absolute emptying of itself or self-alienation, nor has it remained behind on the further side of it. The proposition should therefore run: essence is Existence; it is not distinct from its Existence. Essence has passed over into Existence in so far as essence as ground no longer distinguishes itself from itself as the grounded, or in so far as this ground has sublated itself. But this negation is equally essentially its position, or absolutely positive continuity with itself; Existence is the reflection of the ground into itself, its identity-with-self achieved in its negation, and therefore the mediation that has posited itself as identical with itself and thereby is an immediacy.
Now because Existence is essentially mediation-with-self, the determinations of the mediation are present in it, but in such a manner that they are also reflected into themselves and their subsistence is essential and immediate. As the immediacy that posits itself through sublation, existence is negative unity and a being-within-self; it therefore determines itself immediately as an Existent and as thing.
Existence as an existent is posited in the form of the negative unity which it essentially is. But this negative unity is at first only an immediate determination, hence the one of something in general. But the existent something is distinct from the something that has simply affirmative being [dem seienden Etwas]. The former is essentially that immediacy which has arisen through the reflection of mediation into itself. The existent something is thus a thing.
The thing is distinct from its Existence just as something can be distinguished from its being. The thing and the existent are immediately one and the same. But because Existence is not the first immediacy of being but has within itself the moment of mediation, its further determination as thing and the distinguishing of both, is not a transition but really an analysis; and Existence as such contains this distinction itself in the moment of its mediation; the distinction of thing-in-itself and of external Existence.
1. The thing-in-itself is the existent as the essential immediate which has resulted from the sublated mediation. Thus mediation is equally essential to the thing; but this difference in this first or immediate Existence falls apart into indifferent determinations. The one side, namely the mediation of the thing, is its non-reflected immediacy, and therefore its being as such which, because it is at the same time determined as mediation, is a determinate being which is other to itself and within itself manifold and external. But it is not only determinate being; it stands in relation to the sublated mediation and is an essential immediacy; consequently it is determinate being as an unessential, as a positedness. (If the thing is distinguished from its Existence, it is the possible, the thing of ordinary conception or figment of thought which, as such, is at the same time supposed not to exist. However, the determination of possibility and the opposition of the thing to its Existence come later.) the thing-in-itself and its mediated being are both contained in Existence and both are themselves existences; the thing-in-itself exists and is the essential Existence of the thing, but the mediated being is its unessential existence.
The thing-in-itself as the simple reflectedness of Existence within itself is not the ground of the unessential determinate being: it is the unmoved, indeterminate unity precisely because it has the determination of being sublated mediation and therefore of being only the substrate of the determinate being. For this reason reflection, too, as determinate being that mediates itself through other, falls outside the thing-in-itself. This is not supposed to contain within it any specific manifoldness; and it therefore only obtains this when brought into relationship with external reflection; but it remains indifferent to the, latter. (The thing-in-itself has colour only in relation to the eye, smell in relation to the nose, and so on). Its diversity consists of the ways in which it is regarded by an other, specific relations which this other forms with the thing-in-itself and which are not the latter's own determinations.
2. Now this other is reflection which, determined as external, is first, external to itself and determinate manifoldness. Secondly, it is external to the essential existent and relates itself to it as to its absolute presupposition. But these two moments of external reflection, its own manifoldness and its relation to the thing-in-itself which is other to it, are one and the same. For this Existence is only external in so far as it relates itself to essential identity as to an other. Diversity, therefore, does not have an independent subsistence of its own on the further side of the thing-in-itself, but is only as illusory being over against it, in its necessary relation to it as reflex refracting itself on it. Diversity is therefore present as the relation of an other to the thing-in-itself; but this other is not anything subsisting on its own account but is only as relation to the thing-in-itself; but at the same time it is only as the repelling from this; it is thus the unsupported counter-thrust of itself within itself.
Now since the thing-in-itself is the essential identity of Existence, this essenceless reflection does not attach to it but collapses within itself externally to it. It falls to the ground and thus itself becomes essential identity or thing-in-itself. This can also be considered in the following manner: essenceless Existence has in the thing-in-itself its reflection-into-self; it is related to it in the first instance as to its other; but as the other over against that which is in itself, it is the sublating of its own self and the becoming of being-in-self. The thing-in-itself is therefore identical with external existence.
In the thing-in-itself this is displayed in the following manner. The thing-in-itself is self-related, essential Existence; it is identity-with-self only in so far as it contains within itself the negativity of reflection-into-itself; consequently that which appeared as an Existence external to it is a moment within it. It is, therefore, also a self-repelling thing-in-itself which therefore is related to itself as to an other. Hence there are now a plurality of things-in-themselves standing in the relation of external reflection to one another. This unessential Existence is their relation to one another as to others; but further, it is essential to these others themselves-or, in other words, this unessential Existence in collapsing within itself is a thing-in-itself, but an other than the first thing-in-itself; for the former is an immediate essentiality, the latter, however, the essentiality that has emerged from unessential Existence. But this other thing-in-itself is only an other in general; for as a self-identical thing it has no further determinateness over against the first; it is the reflection of unessential Existence into itself like the first. The determinateness of the various things-in-themselves over against one another falls therefore into external reflection.
3. This external reflection is now a relating of the things-in-themselves to one another, their reciprocal mediation as others. The things-in-themselves are thus the extremes of a syllogism whose middle term constitutes their external Existence, the Existence through which they are others for one another and distinct from one another. This their difference falls only in their relation; they send, as it were, determinations only from their surface into the relation and remain themselves, as absolutely reflected into themselves, indifferent towards the relation. Now this relationship constitutes the totality of Existence. The thing-in-itself stands in relation to a reflection external to it in which it possesses a multiplicity of determinations; this is the repelling of itself from itself into another thing-in-itself; this repelling is the counter-thrust of itself internally, since each is only an other, as a reflecting of itself out of the other; it has its positedness not in its own self but in the other, is determined only by the determinateness of the other; this other is equally determined only by the determinateness of the first. But the two things-in-themselves, since thus they do not contain the difference within themselves but each has it only in the other, are not distinguished from one another; the thing-in-itself, since it is supposed to be related to the other extreme as to another thing-in-itself, is related to it as something that is not distinguished from it, and the external reflection, which should constitute the mediating connection between the extremes, is only a relating of the thing-in-itself to itself, or essentially its reflection into itself; it is therefore only an implicit determinateness, or the determinateness of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself, therefore, has the determinateness, not in a relation (external to it) to another thing-in-itself, and of this other to it; the determinateness is not merely a surface of the thing-in-itself but is the essential mediation of itself with itself as with an other. The two things-in-themselves which are supposed to constitute the extremes of the relation, since they are supposed not to possess in themselves any determinateness over against one another, intact collapse into one; there is only one thing-in-itself, which in external reflection is related to itself, and it is its own self-relation as to an other that constitutes its determinateness.
This determinateness of the thing-in-itself is the property of the thing.
Quality is the immediate determinateness of something, the negative itself through which being is something. Thus the property of the thing is the negativity of reflection through which Existence in general is an existent and, as simple self-identity, a thing-in-itself. But the negativity of reflection, the sublated mediation, is essentially itself a mediation and a relation, though not to an other in general like quality as the non-reflected determinateness, but relation to itself as to an other; or, a mediation which immediately is no less identity-with-self. The abstract thing-in-itself is itself this relationship in which it returns into itself out of the other; it is thereby determinate in its own self; but its determinateness is a constitution which, as such, is itself a determination, and in its relationship to the other does not pass over into otherness and is free from alteration.
A thing has properties; they are, first, the determinate relations of the thing to another thing; property exists only as a mode of relationship between them and is therefore the external reflection and the side of the thing's positedness. But, secondly, the thing in this positedness is in itself; it maintains itself in the relation to the other and is, therefore, admittedly only a surface with which Existence is exposed to the becoming and alteration of being; but the property is not lost in this. A thing has the property of effecting this or that in another thing and of expressing itself in a peculiar manner in its relation to it. It demonstrates this property only under the condition that the other thing has a corresponding constitution, but at the same time the property is peculiar to the first thing and is its self-identical substrate [Grundlage]; it is for this reason that this reflected quality is called property. In this the thing passes over into an externality in which, however, the property is preserved. Through its properties the thing becomes cause, and cause is this, that it preserves itself as effect. Here, however, the thing is so far only the quiescent thing of many properties and is not yet determined as actual cause; it is so far only the implicit reflection of its determinations, not yet itself the reflection which posits them.
The thing-in-itself is, therefore, as we have seen not merely thing-in-itself in such a manner that its properties are the positedness of an external reflection; on the contrary, they are its own determinations through which it enters into relationships in a determinate manner; it is not a substrate devoid of determinations and lying beyond its external Existence, but is present in its properties as ground, that is, it is identity-with-self in its positedness; but it is, at the same time, conditioned ground, that is, its positedness is equally a self-external reflection; it is reflected into itself and is in itself only in so far as it is external. Through Existence, the thing-in-itself enters into external relationships and Existence consists in this externality; it is the immediacy of being and so the thing is subject to alteration; but Existence is also the reflected immediacy of the ground, and the thing is therefore in itself in its alteration. But this mention of the ground-relation is not to be taken here as meaning that the thing is determined simply as ground of its properties; thinghood itself is, as such, the ground-determination, the property is not distinct from its ground, nor does it constitute merely the positedness, but is the ground that has passed over into its externality and is therefore truly ground reflected into itself. Property itself, as such, is ground, implicitly a positedness, or, it constitutes the form of its identity with itself; its determinateness is the self-external reflection of the ground; and the whole is ground that in its repelling and determining, in its external immediacy, is self-related ground. The thing-in-itself exists, therefore, essentially, and that it does exist means, conversely, that Existence is, as an external immediacy, at the same time being-in-self.
Mention has already been made above of the thing-in-itself in connection with the moment of determinate being, of being-in-self, and it was remarked that the thing-in-itself as such is nothing else but the empty abstraction from all determinateness, of which admittedly we can know nothing, for the very reason that it is supposed to be the abstraction from every determination. The thing-in-itself being thus presupposed as the indeterminate, all determination falls outside it into an alien reflection to which it is indifferent. For transcendental idealism this external reflection is consciousness. Since this philosophical system places every determinateness of things both as regards form and content, in consciousness, the fact that I see the leaves of a tree not as black but as green, the sun as round and not square, and taste sugar as sweet and not bitter, that I determine the first and second strokes of a clock as successive and not as one beside the other, nor determine the first as cause and the second as effect, and so on, all this is something which, from this standpoint, falls in me, the subject. This crude presentation of subjective idealism is directly contradicted by the consciousness of freedom, according to which I know myself rather as the universal and undetermined, and separate off from myself those manifold and necessary determinations, recognising them as something external for me and belonging only to things. In this consciousness of its freedom the ego is to itself that true identity reflected into itself, which the thing-in-itself was supposed to be. I have shown elsewhere that this transcendental idealism does not get away from the limitation of the ego by the object, in general, from the finite world, but only changes the form of the limitation, which remains for it an absolute, merely giving it a subjective instead of an objective shape and making into determinatenesses of the ego and into a turbulent whirlpool of change within it (as if the ego were a thing) that which the ordinary consciousness knows as a manifoldness and alteration belonging only to things external to it. At present we are considering only the thing-in-itself and the reflection which is in the first instance external to it; this reflection has not yet determined itself to consciousness, nor the thing-in-itself to ego. We have seen from the nature of the thing-in-itself and of external reflection that this same external reflection determines itself to be the thing-in-itself, or, conversely, becomes the first thing-in-itself's own determination. Now the inadequacy of the standpoint at which this philosophy stops short consists essentially in holding fast to the abstract thing-in-itself as an ultimate determination, and in opposing to the thing-in-itself reflection or the determinateness and manifoldness of the properties; whereas in fact the thing-in-itself essentially possesses this external reflection within itself and determines itself to be a thing with its own determinations, a thing endowed with properties, in this way demonstrating the abstraction of the thing as a pure thing-in-itself to be an untrue determination.
The thing-in-itself essentially exists; the external immediacy and determinateness belongs to its in-itself or to its reflection-into-self. By virtue of this, the thing-in-itself is a thing which has properties, and hence there are a number of things which are distinguished from one another not in respect of something alien to them but through themselves. These many different things stand in essential reciprocal action their properties; the property is this reciprocal relation itself and apart from it the thing is nothing; the reciprocal determination, the middle terms of the things-in-themselves, which, as extremes, are supposed to remain indifferent to this their relation, is itself the self-identical reflection and the thing-in-itself which these extremes are supposed to be. Thinghood is thus reduced to the form of indeterminate identity-with-self which has its essentiality only in its property. If, therefore, one is speaking of a thing or things in general without any determinate property, then their difference is merely indifferent, quantitative. What is considered as one thing can equally be made into or considered as several things; the separation or union of them is external. A book is a thing and each of its leaves is also a thing, and so too is each bit of its pages, and so on to infinity. The determinateness through which one thing is this thing only, lies solely in its properties. Through them it distinguishes itself from other things, because property is negative reflection and a distinguishing; the thing therefore contains the difference of itself from other things solely in its property. This is the difference reflected into itself, through which the thing, in its positedness, that is, in its relation to another, is at the same time indifferent to the other and to its relation to it. All that remains therefore to the thing without its properties is abstract being-in-self or in-itselfness, an unessential compass and external holding together. The true in-itself is the in-itself in its positedness: and this is property. With this, thinghood has passed over into property.
The thing in its relationship to property should be an implicit extreme, and property should constitute the middle term between the related things. But it is in this relation that the things encounter one another as the self-repelling reflection in which they are distinguished and related. This their difference and relation is one reflection and one continuity of them. Accordingly the things themselves fall only within this continuity which is property; and as extremes which would have a continuing Existence apart from this property, they vanish.
Consequently property, which was supposed to constitute the relation of the self-subsistent extremes, is the self-subsistent itself. The things, on the other hand, are the unessential. They are an essential only as the reflection that is self-differentiating and self-relating; but this is property. This, therefore, is not that which is sublated in the thing, nor is it the thing's mere moment; on the contrary, the thing is, in truth, only that unessential compass which, though a negative unity, is only like the one of something, namely an immediate one. Previously the thing was determined as an unessential compass in so far as it was made such by external abstraction which strips it of its property; but now this abstraction has happened through the transition of the thing-in-itself into property itself, but with inversion of the values: whereas in the former act of abstraction the abstract thing without its property was still vaguely conceived of as the essential, but the property as an external determination, here the thing as such spontaneously determines itself into an indifferent external form of the property. Hence property is now freed from the indeterminate and impotent connection which is the one of the thing: it is that which constitutes the thing's subsistence, a self-subsistent matter. Since this is a simple continuity with itself it possesses form, in the first instance, only as diversity; consequently there are various self-subsistent matters of this kind and the thing consists of them.
The transition of property into a matter or into a self-subsistent stuff is the familiar transition performed on sensible matter by chemistry when it seeks to represent the properties of colour, smell, taste and so on, as luminous matter, colouring matter, odorific matter, sour, bitter matter and so on, or merely straightway postulates others like heat matter or caloric, electrical and magnetic matter, in the conviction that it has got hold of properties in their truth. Equally current is the expression that things consist of various matters. One is careful not to call these matters things; although it would certainly be admitted that, e.g. a pigment is a thing; but I do not know whether e.g. luminous matter, heat matter or electrical matter and so on, are also called things. Things and their constituents are distinguished without it being exactly stated whether and to what extent the latter are also things or perhaps only half things; but they are at least existents in general.
The necessity of making the transition from properties to matters, or of postulating that properties are in truth matters, has resulted from the fact that properties are the essential and therefore the truly self-subsistent element of things. But at the same time, the reflection of property into itself constitutes only one side of the whole reflection; namely, the sublating of the difference and the continuity of the property (which was supposed to be an Existence for an other) with itself. Thinghood, as negative reflection-into-self and a distinguishing which repels itself from an other, is thereby reduced to an unessential moment; but in this process it has at the same time further determined itself. First, this negative moment has preserved itself; for property has become continuous with itself and a self-subsistent matter only in so far as the difference of things has sublated itself; the continuity of the property into otherness therefore itself contains the moment of the negative, and its self-subsistence is, as this negative unity, the restored something of thinghood; the negative self-subsistence over against the positive of matter. Secondly, through this the thing has advanced from its indeterminateness to complete determinateness. As thing-in-itself it is abstract identity, the simply negative Existence, or Existence determined as the indeterminate; next, the thing is determined by its properties, by which it is supposed to be distinguished from other things; but it is, in fact, through property that it is continuous with other things and consequently this incomplete difference sublates itself. Through this the thing has returned into itself and is now determined as determinate; it is in itself determinate or this thing.
But, thirdly, this return-into-self, though a self-related determination is at the same time unessential; the self-continuous subsistence constitutes the self-subsistent matter in which the difference of things, their intrinsic and explicit determinateness, is sublated and an externality. Therefore, though the thing as this thing is a complete determinateness, this determinateness is determinateness in the element of unessentiality.
Considered from the side of the movement of property, this results in the following manner. Property is not only an external determination but an intrinsic Existence. This unity of externality and essentiality, because it contains reflection-into-self and reflection-into-an-other, repels itself from itself, and is, on the one hand, determination as simple, self-identical, self-related self-subsistence in which the negative unity, the one of the thing, is sublated; on the other hand, it is this determination over against an other, but likewise as a one reflected into itself and intrinsically determinate; it is therefore the matters and this thing. These are the two moments of the externality which is identical with itself, or of the property reflected into itself. Property was that by which things were supposed to be distinguished; but now that it has freed itself from this its negative side, of inhering in an other, the thing, too, has been freed from its being determined by other things and has returned into itself from the relation to other; but it is at the same time only the thing-in-itself that has become an other to itself, because the manifold properties on their part have become independent and therefore their negative relation in the one of the thing is only a sublated relation. For this reason, the thing is a self-identical negation only as against the positive continuity of the matter.
The 'this' thus constitutes the complete determinateness of the thing, the determinateness being at the same time external. The thing consists of self-subsistent matters which are indifferent to their relation in the thing. This relation is therefore only an unessential combination of them and the difference of one thing from another depends on whether and in what amount a number of the particular matters are present in it. They pass out of and beyond this thing, continue themselves into other things, and the fact that they belong to this thing is not a limitation for them; and just as little are they a limitation for one another, because their negative relation is only the impotent 'this'. Therefore in their combination in the latter they do not sublate themselves; as self-subsistent they are impenetrable for one another, relate themselves in their determinateness only to themselves, and are a mutually indifferent manifoldness of subsistence; they are capable only of a quantitative limit. The thing as 'this' is this their merely quantitative relation, a mere collection, their 'also'. It consists of some quantum or other of a matter, also of a quantum of another, and again of others; this connection of having no connection alone constitutes the thing.
This thing, which has determined itself as the merely quantitative connection of free matters, is the simply alterable thing. Its alteration consists in the exclusion from the collection or the addition to this 'also,' of one or more matters, or in the alteration of their quantitative relationship to one another. The coming-to-be and passing away of 'this' thing is the external dissolution of such external combination or the combination of matters to which it is indifferent whether they are combined or not. Matters circulate freely out of or into 'this' thing; the thing itself is absolute porosity without measure or form of its own.
The thing in its absolute determinateness through which it is 'this' thing, is thus the absolutely dissoluble thing. This dissolution is an external process of being determined, as also is the being of the thing; but its dissolution and the externality of its being is the essential element of this being; it is only the 'also', and consists only in this externality. But it also consists of its matters, and not only the abstract 'this' as such, but the whole of 'this' thing is the dissolution of itself. The thing, namely, is determined as an external collection of self-subsistent matters; these matters are not things, they do not have negative self-subsistence; but they are the properties as self-subsistents, that is, they are determinate and the determinateness is, as such, reflected into itself. The matters, therefore, are indeed simple and are only self-related; but their content is a determinateness; reflection-into-self is only the form of this content, which is not as such reflected into itself but, in accordance with its determinateness, relates itself to an other. The thing is, therefore, not merely the 'also' of the matters — their relation as mutually indifferent — but equally their negative relation; on account of their determinateness the matters themselves are this their negative reflection, which is the puncticity of the thing. One matter is not that which the other is, in accordance with the determinateness of their content as against one another; and one is not, in so far as the other is, in accordance with their self-subsistence.
The thing is, therefore, the interrelation of the matters of which it consists in such a manner that in it both the one and the other also subsist; and yet at the same time the one does not subsist in so far as the other does. In so far therefore as the one matter is in the thing, the other is thereby sublated; but the thing is at the same time the 'also', or the subsistence of the others. In the subsistence of the one matter, the other, therefore, does not subsist, and also it no less subsists in the former; and so with all these diverse matters reciprocally. Since, therefore, in the same respect as the one subsists the others also subsist, this one subsistence of them being the puncticity or negative unity of the thing, they thus simply interpenetrate one another; and since the thing is at the same time only the 'also' of them, and the matters are reflected into their determinateness, they are indifferent to one another and in their interpenetration do not touch one another. The matters are therefore essentially porous, so that one subsists in the pores or in the non-subsistence of the others; but these others are themselves porous; in their pores or non-subsistence the first and all the others also subsist; their subsistence is at the same time their sublatedness and the subsistence of others; and this subsistence of the others is equally this their sublatedness and the subsistence of the first, and in the same way of all the others. The thing is, therefore, the self-contradictory mediation of independent self-subsistence through its opposite, namely, through its negation, or of one self-subsistent matter through the subsistence and non-subsistence of an other. In this thing, Existence has reached its completion, namely, it is intrinsic being or independent subsistence, and unessential Existence in one; hence the truth of Existence is to have its being-in-self in unessentiality, or its subsisting in an other, and that, too, the absolute other, or that it has its own nullity for substrate. It is therefore Appearance.
It is one of the commonest determinations of ordinary thinking that a thing consists of a number of independent matters. On the one hand, the thing is considered to have properties, whose subsistence is the thing. But, on the other hand, these different determinations are regarded as matters whose subsistence is not the thing, but, conversely, the thing consists of them and is itself only their external combination and quantitative limit. Both properties and matters are the same content-determinations; only in the former case they are moments, that is, they are reflected into their negative unity as into a substrate distinct from them, namely, thinghood, and in the latter case they are self-subsistent, different determinations, each of which is reflected into its own unity-with-self. These matters are now further determined as an independent subsistence; but they are also together in a thing. This thing has the two determinations of being first, this thing, and secondly, the 'also'. The 'also' is that which presents itself in external intuition as spatial extension; but the 'this', the negative unity, is the puncticity of the thing. The matters are together in the puncticity, and their 'also' or the extension is everywhere this puncticity; for the 'also' as thinghood is essentially also determined as a negative unity. Therefore where one of these matters is, the other also is, in one and the same point; the thing does not have its colour in one place, its odorific matter in another, its heat matter in a third, and so on, but in the point in which it is warm, it is also coloured, sour, electric, and so on. Now because these matters are not outside one another but are in one 'this', they are assumed to be porous, so that one exists in the interstices of the other. But that which is present in the interstices of the other matter is itself porous; conversely, therefore, in its pores the other exists; but not only this matter but the third, tenth, and so on. They are all porous and in the interstices of each all the others are present, just as each, with all the rest, is present in the pores of every other. Accordingly they are a multiplicity which interpenetrate one another in such a manner that those which penetrate are equally penetrated by the others, so that each again penetrates its own penetratedness. Each is posited as its negation, and this negation is the subsistence of another; but this subsistence is equally the negation of this other, and the subsistence of the first.
The usual excuse by which ordinary thinking evades the contradiction of the independent subsistence of a number of matters in one thing, or their mutual indifference in their interpenetration, bases itself on the smallness of the parts and of the pores. Where difference-in-itself, contradiction, and the negation of negation occur, in general, where thinking should be in terms of the Notion, ordinary thinking falls back onto external, quantitative difference; in regard to coming-to-be and passing away, it has recourse to gradualness, and in regard to being, to smallness in which the vanishing element is reduced to an imperceptible and the contradiction to a confusion, and the true relationship is perverted into an ill-defined image which saves the self-sublating aspect of the relationship by its obscurity.
But when more light is thrown on this obscurity it is revealed as the contradiction which is partly subjective, stemming from pictorial thinking, and partly objective, stemming from the object; the elements of the contradiction are completely contained in the thinking itself. For pictorial thinking, in the first place contains the contradiction of wanting to hold on to perception and to have before it things that have real being, and secondly, of ascribing a sensible existence to the imperceptible, to what is determined by reflection; the minute parts and pores are at the same time supposed to be a sensible existence and their positedness is spoken of as if it had the same kind of reality as that which belongs to colour, heat, etc. If, further, pictorial thinking considered more closely this objective nebulosity, the pores and the minute particles, it would recognise in it not only a matter and also its negation, so that here there would be matter and alongside it its negation, the pore, and alongside this, matter again, and so on, but also that in this thing it has, in one and the same point, (1) self-subsistent matter, and (2) its negation or porosity and the other self-subsistent matter, and that this porosity and the independent subsistence of the matters in one another as in a single point is a reciprocal negation and a penetration of the penetration. Recent expositions in physics of the expansion of steam in atmospheric air and of various gases in one another give more distinct prominence to one side of the Notion concerning the nature of the thing that has here come to view. They show, namely, that for example a certain volume takes up the same amount of steam whether it is empty of atmospheric air or filled with it; and also that the various gases diffuse themselves in one another in such a manner that each is as good as a vacuum for the other, or at least that they are not in any kind of chemical combination with one another, each remains uninterrupted by the other and continuous with itself and in its interpenetration with the others keeps itself indifferent to them. But the further moment in the Notion of the thing is that in this thing one matter is present where the other matter is, and the matter that penetrates is also penetrated in the same point; in other words, the self-subsistent is immediately the self-subsistence of an other. This is contradictory; but the thing is nothing else but this very contradiction; and that is why it is Appearance.
Corresponding in the spiritual sphere to the conception of these matters, is the conception of forces or faculties of the soul. Spirit is, in a much deeper sense this one thing, the negative unity in which its determinations interpenetrate one another. But when it is thought of as soul, it is quite frequently taken as a thing. Just as man in general is made to consist of soul and body, each of which has an independent being of its own, so too the soul is made to consist of so-called soul-forces, each of which has a self-subsistence of its own, or is an immediate, separate activity with its own peculiar nature. It is imagined that the intellect acts separately in one place and the imagination by itself in another, that intellect, memory, and so on, are each cultivated separately, and for the time being the other forces are left inactive on one side until perhaps, or perhaps not, their turn comes. In placing them in the materially simple soul thing which as simple is immaterial, the faculties are not, it is true, represented as particular matters; but as forces they are taken as equally indifferent to one another as the said matters. But spirit is not that contradiction which the thing is, which dissolves itself and passes over into Appearance; on the contrary, it is already in its own self the contradiction that has returned into its absolute unity, namely, the Notion, in which the differences are no longer to be thought of as independent, but only as particular, moments in the subject, in the simple individuality.