(3) It may perhaps be said that nobody can form a notion of the unity of Being and Nought. As for that, the notion of the unity is stated in the sections preceding, and that is all: apprehend that, and you have comprehended this unity. What the objector really means by comprehension--by a notion--is more than his language properly implies: he wants a richer and more complex state of mind, a pictorial conception which will propound the notion as a concrete case and one more familiar to the ordinary operations of thought. And so long as incomprehensibility means only the want of habituation for the effort needed to grasp an abstract thought, free from all sensuous admixture, and to seize a speculative truth, the reply to the criticism is, that philosophical knowledge is undoubtedly distinct in kind from the mode of knowledge best known in common life, as well as from that which reigns in the other sciences. But if to have no notion merely means that we cannot represent in imagination the oneness of Being and Nought, the statement is far from being true; for every one has countless ways of envisaging this unity. To say that we have no such conception can only mean, that in none of these images do we recognise the notion in question, and that we are not aware that they exemplify it. The readiest example of it is Becoming.; Every one has a mental idea of Becoming, and will even allow that it is _one_ idea: he will further allow that, when it is analysed, it involves the attribute of Being, and also what is the very reverse of Being, viz. Nothing: and that these two attributes lie undivided in the one idea: so that Becoming is the unity of Being and Nothing.--Another tolerably plain example is a Beginning. In its beginning, the thing is not yet, but it is more than merely nothing, for its Being is already in the beginning. Beginning is itself a case of Becoming; only the former term is employed with an eye to the further advance.--If we were to adapt logic to the more usual method of the sciences, we might start with the representation of a Beginning as abstractly thought, or with Beginning as such, and then analyse this representation, and perhaps people would more readily admit, as a result of this analysis, that Being and Nothing present themselves as undivided in unity.
(4) It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are the same,' or 'The unity of Being and Nothing'--like all other such unities, that of subject and object, and others--give rise to reasonable objection. They misrepresent the facts, by giving an exclusive prominence to the unity, and leaving the difference which undoubtedly exists in it (because it is Being and Nothing, for example, the unity of which is declared) without any express mention or notice.
It accordingly seems as if the diversity had been unduly put out of court and neglected. The fact is, no speculative principle can be correctly expressed by any such propositional form, for the unity has to be conceived _in_ the diversity, which is all the while present and explicit. 'To become' is the true expression for the resultant of 'To be' and 'Not to be'; it is the unity of the two; but not only is it the unity, it is also inherent unrest,--the unity, which is no mere reference-to-self and therefore without movement, but which, through the diversity of Being and Nothing that is in it, is at war within itself.--Determinate being, on the other hand, is this unity, or Becoming in this form of unity: hence all that 'is there and so,' is one-sided and finite. The opposition between the two factors seems to have vanished; it is only implied in the unity, it is not explicitly put in it.
(5) The maxim of Becoming, that Being is the passage into Nought, and Nought the passage into Being, is controverted by the maxim of Pantheism, the doctrine of the eternity of matter, that from nothing comes nothing, and that something can only come out of something. The ancients saw plainly that the maxim, 'From nothing comes nothing, from something something,' really abolishes Becoming: for what it comes from and what it becomes are one and the same. Thus explained, the proposition is the maxim of abstract identity as upheld by the understanding. It cannot but seem strange, therefore, to hear such maxims as, 'Out of nothing comes nothing: Out of something comes something,' calmly taught in these days, without the teacher being in the least aware that they are the basis of Pantheism, and even without his knowing that the ancients have exhausted all that is to be said about them.
Becoming is the first concrete thought, and therefore the first notion: whereas Being and Nought are empty abstractions. The notion of Being, therefore, of which we sometimes speak, must mean Becoming; not the mere point of Being, which is empty Nothing, any more than Nothing, which is empty Being. In Being then we have Nothing, and in Nothing Being: but this Being which does not lose itself in Nothing is Becoming. Nor must we omit the distinction, while we emphasise the unity of Becoming: without that distinction we should once more return to abstract Being. Becoming is only the explicit statement of what Being is in its truth.
We often hear it maintained that thought is opposed to being. Now in the face of such a statement, our first question ought to be, what is meant by being. If we understand being as it is defined by reflection, all that we can say of it is that it is what is wholly identical and affirmative. And if we then look at thought, it cannot escape us that thought also is at least what is absolutely identical with itself. Both I therefore, being as well as thought, have the same attribute.
This identity of being and thought is not however to be I taken in a concrete sense, as if we could say that a stone, so far as it has being, is the same as a thinking man. A concrete thing is always very different from the abstract category as such. And in the case of being, we are speaking of nothing concrete: for being is the utterly abstract.
So far then the question regarding the _being_ of God--a being which is in itself concrete above all measure--is of slight importance.
As the first concrete thought-term, Becoming is the first adequate vehicle of truth. In the history of philosophy, this stage of the logical Idea finds its analogue in the system of Heraclitus. When Heraclitus says 'All is flowing' (πάντα ῥεῖ), he enunciates Becoming as the fundamental feature of all existence, whereas the Eleatics, as already remarked, saw the only truth in Being, rigid processless Being. Glancing at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then goes on to say: Being no more is than not-Being (οὐδὲν μᾶλλon τὸ όν τοῦ μὴ ὅντos ἐστί): a statement expressing the negativity of abstract Being, and its identity with not-Being, as made explicit in Becoming: both abstractions being alike untenable. This maybe looked at as an instance of the real refutation of one system by another. To refute a Philosophy is to exhibit the dialectical movement in its principle, and thus reduce it to a constituent member of a higher concrete form of the?
Idea. Even Becoming however, taken at its best on its own ground, is an extremely poor term: it needs to grow in depth and weight of meaning.
Such deepened force we find _e.g._ in Life. Life is a Becoming; but that is not enough to exhaust the notion of life. A still higher form is found in Mind. Here too is Becoming, but richer and more intensive than mere logical Becoming. The elements, whose unity constitutes mind, are not the bare abstracts of Being and of Nought, but the system of the logical Idea and of Nature.
89.] In Becoming the Being which is one with Nothing, and the Nothing which is one with Being, are only vanishing factors; they are and they are not. Thus by its inherent contradiction Becoming collapses into the unity in which the two elements are absorbed. This result is accordingly Being Determinate (Being there and so).
In this first example we must call to mind, once for all, what was stated in § 82 and in the note there: the only way to secure any growth and progress in knowledge is to hold results fast in their truth. There is absolutely nothing whatever in which we cannot and must not point to contradictions or opposite attributes; and the abstraction made by understanding therefore means a forcible insistence on a single aspect, and a real effort to obscure and remove all consciousness of the other attribute which is involved. Whenever such contradiction, then, is discovered in any object or notion, the usual inference is, _Hence_ this object is _nothing._ Thus Zeno, who first showed the contradiction native to motion, concluded that there is no motion: and the ancients, who recognised origin and decease, the two species of Becoming, as untrue categories, made use of the expression that the One or Absolute neither arises nor perishes. Such a style of dialectic looks only at the negative aspect of its result, and fails to notice, what is at the same time really present, the definite result, in the present case a pure nothing, but a Nothing which includes Being, and, in like manner, a Being which includes Nothing. Hence Being Determinate is (1) the unity of Being and Nothing, in which we get rid of the immediacy in these determinations, and their contradiction vanishes in their mutual connexion,--the unity in which they are only constituent elements. And (2) since the result is the abolition of the contradiction, it comes in the shape of a simple unity with itself: that is to say, it also is Being, but Being with negation or determinateness: it is Becoming expressly put in the form of one of its elements, viz. Being.
Even our ordinary conception of Becoming implies that somewhat comes out of it, and that Becoming therefore has a result. But this conception gives rise to the question, how Becoming does not remain mere Becoming, but has a result The answer to this question follows from what Becoming has already shown itself to be. Becoming always contains Being and Nothing in such a way, that these two are always changing into each other, and reciprocally cancelling each other.
Thus Becoming stands before us in utter restlessness--unable however to maintain itself in this abstract restlessness: for since Being and Nothing vanish in Becoming (and that is the very notion of Becoming), the latter must vanish also. Becoming is as it were a fire, which dies out in itself, when it consumes its material. The result of this process however is not an empty Nothing but Being identical with the negation,--what we call Being Determinate (being then and there): the primary import of which evidently is that it _has become._ 90.] (α) Determinate Being is Being with a character or mode--which simply _is_; and such un-mediated character is Quality. And as reflected into itself in this its character or mode, Determinate Being is a somewhat, an existent.--The categories, which issue by a closer analysis of Determinate Being, need only be mentioned briefly.
Quality may be described as the determinate mode immediate and identical with Being--as distinguished from Quantity (to come afterwards), which, although a mode of Being, is no longer immediately identical with Being, but a mode indifferent and external to it. A Something is what it is in virtue of its quality, and losing its quality it ceases to be what it is. Quality, moreover, is completely a category only of the finite, and for that reason too it has its proper place in Nature, not in the world of Mind. Thus, for example, in Nature what are styled the elementary bodies, oxygen, nitrogen, &c, should be regarded as existing qualities. But in the sphere of mind, Quality appears in a subordinate way only, and not as if its qualitativeness could exhaust any specific aspect of mind. If, for example, we consider the subjective mind, which forms the object of psychology, we may describe what is called (moral and mental) character, as in logical language identical with Quality. This however does not mean that character is a mode of being which pervades the soul and is immediately identical with it, as is the case in the natural world with the elementary bodies before mentioned. Yet a more distinct manifestation of Quality as such, in mind even, is found in the case of besotted or morbid conditions, especially in states of passion and when the passion rises to derangement. The state of mind of a deranged person, being one mass of jealousy, fear, &c, may suitably be described as Quality.
91.] Quality, as determinateness which _is,_ as contrasted with the Negation which is involved in it but distinguished from it, is Reality. Negation is no longer an abstract nothing, but, as a determinate being and somewhat, is only a form on such being--it is as Otherness. Since this otherness, though a determination of Quality itself, is in the first instance distinct from it, Quality is Being-for-another--an expansion of the mere point of Determinate Being, or of Somewhat. The Being as such of Quality, contrasted with this reference to somewhat else, is Being-by-self.
The foundation of all determinateness is negation (as Spinoza says, _Omnis determinatio est negatio_). The unreflecting observer supposes that determinate things are merely positive, and pins them down under the form of being. Mere being however is not the end of the matter:--it is, as we have already seen, utter emptiness and instability besides.
Still, when abstract being is contused in this way with being modified and determinate, it implies some perception of the fact that, though in determinate being there is involved an element of negation, this element is at first wrapped up, as it were, and only comes to the front and receives its due in Being-for-self.--If we go on to consider determinate Being as a determinateness which _is,_ we get in this way what is called Reality. We speak, for example, of the reality of a plan or a purpose, meaning thereby that they are no longer inner and subjective, but have passed into being-there-and-then. In the same sense the body may be called the reality of the soul, and the law the reality of freedom, and the world altogether the reality of the divine idea. The word 'reality' is however used in another acceptation to mean that something behaves conformably to its essential characteristic or notion. For example, we use the expression: This is a real occupation: This is a real man. Here the term does not merely mean outward and immediate existence: but rather that some existence agrees with its notion. In which sense, be it added, reality is not distinct from the ideality which we shall in the first instance become acquainted with in the shape of Being-for-self.
92.] (ß) Being, if kept distinct and apart from its determinate mode, as it is in Being-by-self (Being implicit), would be only the vacant abstraction of Being. In Being (determinate there and then), the determinateness is one with Being; yet at the same time, when explicitly made a negation, it is a Limit, a Barrier. Hence the otherness is not something indifferent and outside it, but a function proper to it. Somewhat is by its quality,--firstly finite,--secondly alterable; so that finitude and variability appertain to its being.
In Being-there-and-then, the negation is still directly one with the Being, and this negation is what we call a Limit (Boundary). A thing is what it is, only in and by reason of its limit. We cannot therefore regard the limit as only paternal to being which is then and there. It rather goes through and through the whole of such existence. The view of limit, as merely an external characteristic of being-there-and-then, arises from a confusion of quantitative with qualitative limit. Here we are speaking primarily of the qualitative limit. If, for example, we observe a piece of ground, three acres large, that circumstance is its quantitative limit. But, in addition, the ground is, it may be, a meadow, not a wood or a pond. This is its qualitative limit.--Man, if he wishes to be actual, must be-there-and-then, and to this end he must set a limit to himself. People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger lost in abstraction, and their light dies away.
If we take a closer look at what a limit implies, we see it involving a contradiction in itself, and thus evincing its dialectical nature. On the one side the limit makes the reality of a thing; on the other it is its negation. But, again, the limit, as the negation of something, is not an abstract nothing but a nothing which _is,--_what we call an 'other.' Given something, and up starts an other to us: we know that there is not something only, but an other as well. Nor, again, is the other of such a nature that we can think something apart from it; a something is implicitly the other of itself, and the somewhat sees its limit become objective to it in the other. If we now ask for the difference between something and another, it turns out that they are the same: which sameness is expressed in Latin by calling the pair _aliud--aliud._ The other, as opposed to the something, is itself a something, and hence we say some other, or something else; and so on the other hand the first something when opposed to the other, also defined as something, is itself an other. When we say 'something else' our first impression is that something taken separately is only something, and that the quality of being another attaches to it only from outside considerations. Thus we suppose that the moon, being something else than the sun, might very well exist without the sun.
But really the moon, as a something, has its other implicit in it: Plato says: God made the world out of the nature of the 'one' and the 'other' (τοῦ ἑτέρου): having brought these together, he formed from them a third, which is of the nature of the 'one' and the 'other.'
In these words we have in general terms a statement of the nature of the finite, which, as something, does not meet the nature of the other as if it had no affinity to it, but, being implicitly the other of itself, thus undergoes alteration. Alteration thus exhibits the inherent contradiction which originally attaches to determinate being, and which forces it out of its own bounds. To materialised conception existence stands in the character of something solely positive, and quietly abiding within its own limits: though we also know, it is true, that everything finite (such as existence) is subject to change.
Such changeableness in existence is to the superficial eye a mere possibility, the realisation of which is not a consequence of its own nature. But the fact is, mutability lies in the notion of existence, and change is only the manifestation of what it implicitly is. The living die, simply because as living they bear in themselves the germ of death.
93.] Something becomes an other: this other is itself somewhat: therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on _ad infinitum._ 94.] This Infinity is the wrong or negative infinity: it is only a negation of a finite: but the finite rises again the same as ever, and is never got rid of and absorbed. In other words, this infinite only expresses the _ought-to-be_ elimination of the finite. The progression to infinity never gets further than a statement of the contradiction involved in the finite, viz. that it is somewhat as well as somewhat else. It sets up with endless iteration the alternation between these two terms, each of which calls up the other.
If we let somewhat and another, the elements of determinate Being, fall asunder, the result is that some becomes other, and this other is itself a somewhat, which then as such changes likewise, and so on _ad infinitum._ This result seems to superficial reflection something very grand, the grandest possible. Besuch a progression to infinity is not the real infinite. That consists in being at home with itself in its other, or, if enunciated as a process, in coming to itself in its other. Much depends on rightly apprehending the notion of infinity, and not stopping short at the wrong infinity of endless progression. When time and space, for example, are spoken of as infinite, it is in the first place the infinite progression on which our thoughts fasten. We say, Now, This time, and then we keep continually going forwards and backwards beyond this limit. The case is the same with space, the infinity of which has formed the theme of barren declamation to astronomers with a talent for edification. In the attempt to contemplate such an infinite, our thought, we are commonly informed, must sink exhausted. It is true indeed that we must abandon the unending contemplation, not however because the occupation is too sublime, but because it is too tedious. It is tedious to expatiate in the contemplation of this infinite progression, because the same thing is constantly recurring. We lay down a limit: then we pass it: next we have a limit once more, and so on for ever. All this is but superficial alternation, which never leaves the region of the finite behind. To suppose that by stepping out and away into that infinity we release ourselves from the finite, is in truth but to seek the release which comes by flight. But the man who flees is not yet free: in fleeing he is still conditioned by that from which he flees. If it be also said, that the infinite is unattainable, the statement is true, but only because to the idea of infinity has been attached the circumstance of being simply and solely negative. With such empty and other world stuff philosophy has nothing to do. What philosophy has to do with is always--something concrete and in the highest sense present.
No doubt philosophy has also sometimes been set the task of finding an answer to the question, how the infinite comes to the resolution of issuing out of itself. This question, founded, as it is, upon the assumption of a rigid opposition between finite and infinite, may be answered by saying that the opposition is false, and that in point of fact the infinite eternally proceeds out of itself, and yet does not proceed out of itself. If we further say that the infinite is the not-finite, we have in point of fact virtually expressed the truth: for as the finite itself is the first negative, the not-finite is the negative of that negation, the negation which is identical with itself and thus at the same time a true affirmation.
The infinity of reflection here discussed is only an _attempt_ to reach the true Infinity, a wretched neither-one-thing-nor-another.
Generally speaking, it is the point of view which has in recent times been emphasised in Germany. The finite, this theory tells us, _ought_ to be absorbed; the infinite _ought_ not to be a negative merely, but also a positive. That 'ought to be' betrays the incapacity of actually making good a claim which is at the same time recognised to be right.
This stage was never passed by the systems of Kant and Fichte, so far as ethics are concerned. The utmost to which this way brings us is only the postulate of a never-ending approximation to the law of Reason: which postulate has been made an argument for the immortality of the soul.
95.] (γ) What we now in point of fact have before us, is that somewhat comes to be an other, and that the other generally comes to be an other. Thus essentially relative to another, somewhat is virtually an other against it: and since what is passed into is quite the same as what passes over, since both have one and the same attribute, viz.
to be an other, it follows that something in its passage into other only joins with itself. To be thus self-related in the passage, and in the other, is the genuine Infinity. Or, under a negative aspect: what is altered is the other, it becomes the other of the other. Thus Being, but as negation of the negation, is restored again: it is now Being-for-self.
Dualism, in putting an insuperable opposition between finite and infinite, fails to note the simple circumstance that the infinite is thereby only one of two, and is reduced to a particular, to which the finite forms the other particular. Such an infinite, which is only a particular, is co-terminous with the finite which makes for it a limit and a barrier: it is not what it ought to be, that is, the infinite, but is only finite. In such circumstances, where the finite is on this side, and the infinite on that,--this world as the finite and the other world as the infinite,--an equal dignity of permanence and independence is ascribed to finite and to infinite. The being of the finite is made an absolute being, and by this dualism gets independence and stability.
Touched, so to speak, by the infinite, it would be annihilated. But it must not be touched by the infinite. There must be an abyss, an impassable gulf between the two, with the infinite abiding on yonder side and the finite steadfast on this. Those who attribute to the finite this inflexible persistence in comparison with the infinite are not, as they imagine, far above metaphysic: they are still on the level of the most ordinary metaphysic of understanding. For the same thing occurs here as in the infinite progression. At one time it is admitted that the finite has no independent actuality, no absolute being, no root and development of its own, but is only a transient.
But next moment this is straightway forgotten; the finite, made a mere counterpart to the infinite, wholly separated from it, and rescued from annihilation, is conceived to be persistent in its independence. While thought thus imagines itself elevated to the infinite, it meets with the opposite fate: it comes to an infinite which is only a finite, and the finite, which it had left behind, has always to be retained and made into an absolute.
After this examination (with which it were well to compare Plato's Philebus), tending to show the nullity of the distinction made by understanding between the finite and the infinite, we are liable to glide into the statement that the infinite and the finite are therefore one, and that the genuine infinity, the truth, must be defined and enunciated as the unity of the finite and infinite. Such a statement would be to some extent correct; but is just as open to perversion and falsehood as the unity of Being and Nothing already noticed. Besides it may very fairly be charged with reducing the infinite to finitude and making a finite infinite. For, so far as the expression goes, the finite seems left in its place,--it is not expressly stated to be absorbed. Or, if we reflect that the finite, when identified with the infinite, certainly cannot remain what it was out of such unity, and will at least suffer some change in its characteristics--as an alkali, when combined with an acid, loses some of its properties, we must see that, the same fate awaits the infinite, which, as the negative, will on its part likewise have its edge, as it were, taken off on the other. And this does really happen with the abstract one-sided infinite of understanding. The genuine infinite however is not merely in the position of the one-sided acid, and so does not lose itself. The negation of negation is not a neutralisation: the infinite is the affirmative, and it is only the finite which is absorbed.
In Being-for-self enters the category of Ideality.
Being-there-and-then, as in the first instance apprehended in its being or affirmation, has reality (§ 91): and thus even finitude in the first instance is in the category of reality. But the truth of the finite is rather its ideality. Similarly, the infinite of understanding, which is co-ordinated with the finite, is itself only one of two finites, no whole truth, but a non-substantial element. This ideality of the finite is the chief maxim of philosophy; and for that reason every genuine philosophy is idealism. But everything depends upon not taking for the infinite what, in the very terms of its characterisation, is.
at the same time made a particular and finite.--For this reason we have bestowed a greater amount of attention on this distinction. The fundamental notion of philosophy, the genuine infinite, depends upon it. The distinction is cleared up by the simple, and for that reason seemingly insignificant, but incontrovertible reflections, contained in the first paragraph of this section.
96.] (α) Being-for self, as reference to itself, is immediacy, and as reference of the negative to itself, is a self-subsistent, the One. This unit, being without distinction in itself, thus excludes the other from itself.
To be for self--to be one--is completed Quality, and as such, contains abstract Being and Being modified as non-substantial elements. As simple Being, the One is simple self-reference; as Being modified it is determinate: but the determinateness is not in this case a finite determinateness--a somewhat in distinction from an other--but infinite, because it contains distinction absorbed and annulled in itself.
The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the 'I.' We know ourselves as existents, distinguished in the first place from other existents, and with certain relations thereto. But we also come to know this expansion of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it were, to a point in the simple form of being-for-self. When we say 'I,' we express the reference-to-self which is infinite, and at the same time negative. Man, it may be said, is distinguished from the animal world, and in that way from nature altogether, by knowing himself as 'I': which amounts to saying that natural things never attain a free Being-for-self, but as limited to Being-there-and-then, are always and only Being for an other.--Again, Being-for-self may be described as ideality, just as Being-there-and-then was described as reality. It is said, that besides reality there is _also_ an ideality. Thus the two categories are made equal and parallel. Properly speaking, ideality is not somewhat outside of and beside reality: the notion of ideality just lies in its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when reality is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, it is at once seen to be ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper estimation, when you allow that reality is not all in all, but that an ideality must be recognised outside of it. Such an ideality, external to or it may be even beyond reality, would be no better than an empty name.
Ideality only has a meaning when it is the ideality of something: but this something is not a mere indefinite this or that, but existence characterised as reality, which, if retained in isolation, possesses no truth. The distinction between Nature and Mind is not improperly conceived, when the former is traced back to reality, and the latter to ideality as a fundamental category. Nature however is far from being so fixed and complete, as to subsist even without Mind: in Mind it first, as it were, attains its goal and its truth. And similarly, Mind on its part is not merely a world beyond Nature and nothing more: it is really, and with full proof, seen to be mind, only when it involves Nature as absorbed in itself.--_Apropos_ of this, we should note the double meaning of the German word _aufheben_ (to put by, or set aside). We mean by it (1) to clear away, or annul: thus, we say, a law or a regulation is set aside: (2) to keep, or preserve: in which sense we use it when we say: something is well put by. This double usage of language, which gives to the same word a positive and negative meaning, is not an accident, and gives no ground for reproaching language as a cause of confusion. We should rather recognise in it the speculative spirit of our language rising above the mere 'Either--or' of understanding.
97.] (β) The relation of the negative to itself is a negative relation, and so a distinguishing of the One from itself, the repulsion of the One; that is, it makes Many Ones. So far as regards the immediacy of the self-existents, these Many _are:_ and the repulsion of every One of them becomes to that extent their repulsion against each other as existing units,--in other words, their reciprocal exclusion.
Whenever we speak of the One, the Many usually come into our mind at the same time. Whence, then, we are forced to ask, do the Many come?
This question is unanswerable by the consciousness which pictures the Many as a primary datum, and-treats the One as only one among the Many.
But the philosophic notion teaches, contrariwise, that the One forms the pre-supposition of the Many: and in the thought of the One is implied that it explicitly make itself Many. The self-existing unit is not, like Being, void of all connective reference: it is a reference, as well as Being-there-and-then was, not however a reference connecting somewhat with an other, but, as unity of the some and the other, it is a connexion with itself, and this connexion be it noted is a negative connexion. Hereby the One manifests an utter incompatibility with itself, a self-repulsion: and what it makes itself explicitly be, is the Many. We may denote this side in the process of Being-for-self by the figurative term Repulsion. Repulsion is a term originally employed in the study of matter, to mean that matter, as a Many, in each of these many Ones, behaves as exclusive to all the others. It would be wrong however to view the process of repulsion, as if the One were the repellent and the Many the repelled. The One, as already remarked, just is self-exclusion and explicit putting itself as the Many. Each of the Many however is itself a One, and in virtue of its so behaving, this all-round repulsion is by one stroke converted into its 98.] (γ) But the Many are one the same as another: each is One, or even one of the Many; they are consequently one and the same. Or when we study all that Repulsion involves, we see that as a negative attitude of many Ones to one another, it is just as essentially a connective reference of them to each other; and as those to which the One is related in its act of repulsion are ones, it is in them thrown into relation with itself. The repulsion therefore has an equal right to be called Attraction; and the exclusive One, or Being-for-self, suppresses itself. The qualitative character, which in the One or unit has reached the extreme point of its characterisation, has thus passed over into determinateness (quality) suppressed, _i.e._ into Being as Quantity.
The philosophy of the Atomists is the doctrine in which the Absolute is formulated as Being-for-self, as One, and many ones. And it is the repulsion, which shows itself in the notion of the One, which is assumed as the fundamental force in these atoms. But instead of attraction, it is Accident, that is, mere unintelligence, which is expected to bring them together. So long as the One is fixed as one, it is certainly impossible to regard its congression with