If we follow the so-called law of Identity, and say,--The sea is the sea, The air is the air, The moon is the moon, these objects pass for having no bearing on one another. What we have before us therefore is not Identity, but Difference. We do not stop at this point however, or regard things merely as different. We compare them one with another, and thus discover the features of likeness and unlikeness. The work of the finite sciences lies to a great extent in the application of these categories, and the phrase 'scientific treatment' generally means no more than the method which has for its aim comparison of the objects under examination. This method has undoubtedly led to some important results;--we may particularly mention the great advance of modern times in the provinces of comparative anatomy and comparative linguistic.
But it is going too far to suppose that the comparative method can be employed with equal success in all branches of knowledge. Nor--and this must be emphasised--can mere comparison ever ultimately satisfy the requirements of science. Its results are indeed indispensable, but they are still labours only preliminary to truly intelligent cognition.
If it be the office of comparison to reduce existing differences to Identity, the science, which most perfectly fulfils that end, is mathematics. The reason of that is, that quantitative difference is only the difference which is quite external. Thus, in geometry, a triangle and a quadrangle, figures qualitatively different, have this qualitative difference discounted by abstraction, and are equalised to one another in magnitude. It follows from what has been formerly said about the mere Identity of understanding that, as has also been pointed out (§ 99, note), neither philosophy nor the empirical sciences need envy this superiority of Mathematics.
The story is told that, when Leibnitz propounded the maxim of Variety, the cavaliers and ladies of the court, as they walked round the garden, made efforts to discover two leaves indistinguishable from each other, in order to confute the law stated by the philosopher. Their device was unquestionably a convenient method of dealing with metaphysics,--one which has not ceased to be fashionable. All the same, as regards the principle of Leibnitz, difference must be understood to mean not an external and indifferent diversity merely, but difference essential.
Hence the very nature of things implies that they must be different.
118.] Likeness is an Identity only of those things which are not the same, not identical with each other: and Unlikeness is a relation of things unlike. The two therefore do not fall on different aspects or points of view in the thing, without any mutual affinity: but one throws light into the other. Variety thus comes to be reflexive difference, or difference (distinction) implicit and essential, determinate or specific difference.
* * * * * * While things merely various show themselves unaffected by each other, likeness and unlikeness on the contrary are a pair of characteristics which are in completely reciprocal relation. The one of them cannot be thought without the other. This advance from simple variety to opposition appears in our common acts of thought, when we allow that comparison has a meaning only upon the hypothesis of an existing difference, and that on the other hand we can distinguish only on the hypothesis of existing similarity.
Hence, if the problem be the discovery of a difference, we attribute no great cleverness to the man who only distinguishes those objects, of which the difference is palpable, _e.g._ a pen and a camel: and similarly, it implies no very advanced faculty of comparison, when the objects compared, _e.g._ a beech and an oak, a temple and a church, are near akin. In the case of difference, in short, we like to sec identity, and in the case of identity we like to see difference. Within the range of the empirical sciences however, the one of these two categories is often allowed to put the other out of sight and mind. Thus the scientific problem at one time is to reduce existing differences to identity; on another occasion, with equal one-sidedness, to discover new differences. We see this especially in physical science. There the problem consists, in the first place, in the continual search for new 'elements,' new forces, new genera, and species. Or, in another direction, it seeks to show that all bodies hitherto believed to be simple are compound: and modern physicists and chemists smile at the ancients, who were satisfied with four elements, and these not simple. Secondly, and on the other hand, mere identity is made the chief question. Thus electricity and chemical affinity are regarded as the same, and even the organic processes of digestion and assimilation are looked upon as a mere chemical operation. Modern philosophy has often been nicknamed the Philosophy of Identity. But, as was already remarked (§ 103, note), it is precisely philosophy, and in particular speculative logic, which lays bare the nothingness of the abstract, undifferentiated identity, known to understanding; though it also undoubtedly urges its disciples not to rest at mere diversity, but to ascertain the inner unity of all existence.
119.] Difference implicit is essential difference, the Positive and the Negative: and that is this way. The Positive is the identical self-relation in such a way as not to be the Negative, and the Negative is the different by itself so as not to be the Positive.
Thus either has an existence of its own in proportion as it is not the other. The one is made visible in the other, and is only in so far as that other is. Essential difference is therefore Opposition; according to which the different is not confronted by _any_ other but by _its_ other. That is, either of these two (Positive and Negative) is stamped with a characteristic of its own only in its relation to the other: the one is only reflected into itself as it is reflected into the other.
And so with the other. Either in this way is the other's _own_ other.
Difference implicit or essential gives the maxim, Everything is essentially distinct; or, as it has also been expressed, Of two opposite predicates the one only can be assigned to anything, and there is no third possible. This maxim of Contrast or Opposition most expressly controverts the maxim of Identity: the one says a thing should be only self-relation, the other says that it must be an opposite, a relation to its other. The native unintelligence of abstraction betrays itself by setting in juxtaposition two contrary maxims, like these, as laws, without even so much as comparing them.--The Maxim of Excluded Middle is the maxim of the definite understanding, which would fain avoid contradiction, but in so doing falls into it. A must be either + A or - A, it says. It virtually declares in these words a third A which is neither + nor--, and which at the same time is yet invested with + and - characters. If + W mean 6 miles to the West, and - W mean 6 miles to the East, and if the + and - cancel each other, the 6 miles of way or space remain what they were with and without the contrast. Even the mere _plus_ and _minus_ of number or abstract direction have, if we like, zero, for their third: but it need not be denied that the empty contrast, which understanding institutes between _plus_ and _minus,_ is not without its value in such abstractions as number, direction, &c.
In the doctrine of contradictory concepts, the one notion is, say, blue (for in this doctrine even the sensuous generalised image of a colour is called a notion) and the other not-blue. This other then would not be an affirmative, say, yellow, but would merely be kept at the abstract negative.--That the Negative in its own nature is quite as much Positive (see next §), is implied in saying that what is opposite to another is _its_ other. The inanity of the opposition between what are called contradictory notions is fully exhibited in what we may call the grandiose formula of a general law, that Everything has the one and not the other of _all_ predicates which are in such opposition. In this way, mind is either white or not-white, yellow or not-yellow, &c, _ad infinitum._ It was forgotten that Identity and Opposition are themselves opposed, and the maxim of Opposition was taken even for that of Identity, in the shape of the principle of Contradiction. A notion, which possesses neither or both of two mutually contradictory marks, _e.g._ a quadrangular circle, is held to be logically false. Now though a multangular circle and a rectilineal arc no less contradict this maxim, geometers never hesitate to treat the circle as a polygon with rectilineal sides. But anything like a circle (that is to say its mere character or nominal definition) is still no notion. In the notion of a circle, centre and circumference are equally essential: both marks belong to it: and yet centre and circumference are opposite and contradictory to each other.
The conception of Polarity, which is so dominant in physics, contains by implication the more correct definition of Opposition. But physics for its theory of the laws of thought adheres to the ordinary logic; it might therefore well be horrified in case it should ever work out the conception of Polarity, and get at the thoughts which are implied in it.
(1) With the positive we return to identity, but in its higher truth as identical self-relation, and at the same time with the note that it is not the negative. The negative _per se_ is the same as difference itself. The identical as such is primarily the yet uncharacterised: the positive on the other hand is what is self-identical, but with the mark of antithesis to an other. And the negative is difference as such, characterised as not identity. This is the difference of difference within its own self.
Positive and negative are supposed to express an absolute difference.
The two however are at bottom the same: the name of either might be transferred to the other. Thus, for example, debts and assets are not two particular, self-subsisting species of property. What is negative to the debtor, is positive to the creditor. A way to the east is also a way to the west. Positive and negative are therefore intrinsically conditioned by one another, and are only in relation to each other. The north pole of the magnet cannot be without the south pole, and _vice versâ._ If we cut a magnet in two, we have not a north pole in one piece, and a south pole in the other. Similarly, in electricity, the positive and the negative are not two diverse and independent fluids.
In opposition, the different is not confronted by any other, but by _its_ other. Usually we regard different things as unaffected by each other. Thus we say: I am a human being, and around me are air, water, animals, and all sorts of things. Everything is thus put outside of every other. But the aim of philosophy is to banish indifference, and to ascertain the necessity of things. By that means the other is seen to stand over against _its_ other. Thus, for example, inorganic nature is not to be considered merely something else than organic nature, but the necessary antithesis of it. Both are in essential relation to one another; and the one of the two is, only in so far as it excludes the other from it, and thus relates itself thereto. Nature in like manner is not without mind, nor mind without nature. An important step has been taken, when we cease in thinking to use phrases like: Of course something else is also possible. While we so speak, we are still tainted with contingency: and all true thinking, we have already said, is a thinking of necessity.
In modern physical science the opposition, first observed to exist in magnetism as polarity, has come to be regarded as a universal law pervading the whole of nature. This would be a real scientific advance, if care were at the same time taken not to let mere variety revert without explanation, as a valid category, side by side with opposition.
Thus at one time the colours are regarded as in polar opposition to one another, and called complementary colours: at another time they are looked at in their indifferent and merely quantitative difference of red, yellow, green, &c.
(2) Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the maxim of abstract understanding) we should rather say: Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'Either--or' as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will then lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and what they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature, the acid is implicitly at the same time the base: in other words, its only being consists in its relation to its other. Hence also the acid is not something that persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort to realise what it potentially is. Contradiction is the very moving principle of the world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction is unthinkable. The only thing correct in that statement is that contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself. But contradiction, when cancelled, does not leave abstract identity; for that is itself only one side of the contrariety. The proximate result of opposition (when realised as contradiction) is the Ground, which contains identity as well as difference superseded and deposed to elements in the completer notion.
120.] Contrariety then has two forms. The Positive is the aforesaid various (different) which is understood to be independent, and yet at the same not to be unaffected by its relation to its other. The Negative is to be, no less independently, negative self-relating, self-subsistent, and yet at the same time as Negative must on every point have this its self-relation, _i.e._ its Positive, only in the other. Both Positive and Negative are therefore explicit contradiction; both are potentially the same. Both are so actually also; since either is the abrogation of the other and of itself. Thus they fall to the Ground.--Or as is plain, the essential difference, as a difference, is only the difference of it from itself, and thus contains the identical: so that to essential and actual difference there belongs itself as well as identity. As self-relating difference it is likewise virtually enunciated as the self-identical. And the opposite is in general that which includes the one and its other, itself and its opposite. The immanence of essence thus defined is the Ground.
(γ) _The Ground._ 121.] The Ground is the unity of identity and difference, the truth of what difference and identity have turned out to be,--the reflection-into-self, which is equally a reflection-into-an-other, and _vice versâ._ It is essence put explicitly as a totality.
The maxim of the Ground runs thus: Everything has its Sufficient Ground: that is, the true essentiality of any thing is not the predication of it as identical with itself, or as different (various), or merely positive, or merely negative, but as having its Being in an other, which, being its self-same, is its essence. And to this extent the essence is not abstract reflection into self, but into an other. The Ground is the essence in its own inwardness; the essence is intrinsically a ground; and it is a ground only when it is a ground of somewhat, of an other.
We must be careful, when we say that the ground is the unity of identity and difference, not to understand by this unity an abstract identity. Otherwise we only change the name, while we still think the identity (of understanding) already seen to be false. To avoid this misconception we may say that the ground, besides being the unity, is also the difference of identity and difference. In that case in the ground, which promised at first to supersede contradiction, a new contradiction seems to arise. It is however a contradiction which, so far from persisting quietly in itself, is rather the expulsion of it from itself. The ground is a ground only to the extent that it affords ground: but the result which thus issued from the ground is only itself. In this lies its formalism. The ground and what is grounded are one and the same content: the difference between the two is the mere difference of form which separates simple self-relation, on the one hand, from mediation or derivativeness on the other. Inquiry into the grounds of things goes with the point of view which, as already noted (note to § 112), is adopted by Reflection. We wish, as it were, to see the matter double, first in its immediacy, and secondly in its ground, where it is no longer immediate. This is the plain meaning of the law of sufficient ground, as it is called; it asserts that things should essentially be viewed as mediated. The manner in which Formal Logic establishes this law of thought, sets a bad example to other sciences.
Formal Logic asks these sciences not to accept their subject-matter as it is immediately given; and yet herself lays down a law of thought without deducing it,--in other words, without exhibiting its mediation.
With the same justice as the logician maintains our faculty of thought to be so constituted that we must ask for the ground of everything, might the physicist, when asked why a man who falls into water is drowned, reply that man happens to be so organised that he cannot live under water; or the jurist, when asked why a criminal is punished, reply that civil society happens to be so constituted that crimes cannot be left unpunished.
Yet even if logic be excused the duty of giving a ground for the law of the sufficient ground, it might at least explain what is to be understood by a ground. The common explanation, which describes the ground as what has a consequence, seems at the first glance more lucid and intelligible than the preceding definition in logical terms. If you ask however what the consequence is, you are told that it is what has a ground; and it becomes obvious that the explanation is intelligible only because it assumes what in our case has been reached as the termination of an antecedent movement of thought. And this is the true business of logic: to show that those thoughts, which as usually employed merely float before consciousness neither understood nor demonstrated, are really grades in the self-determination of thought.
It is by this means that they are understood and demonstrated.
In common life, and it is the same in the finite sciences, this reflective form is often employed as a key to the secret of the real condition of the objects under investigation. So long as we deal with what may be termed the household needs of knowledge, nothing can be urged against this method of study. But it can never afford definitive satisfaction, either in theory or practice. And the reason why it fails is that the ground is yet without a definite content of its own; I so that to regard anything as resting upon a ground merely gives the formal difference of mediation in place of immediacy. We see an electrical phenomenon, for example, and we ask for its ground (or reason): we are told that electricity is the ground of this phenomenon.
What is this but the same content as we had immediately before us, only translated into the form of inwardness?
The ground however is not merely simple self-identity, but also different: hence various grounds may be alleged for the same sum of fact. This variety of grounds, again, following the logic of difference, culminates in opposition of grounds _pro_ and _contra._ In any action, such as a theft, there is a sum of fact in which several aspects may be distinguished. The theft has violated the rights of property: it has given the means of satisfying his wants to the needy thief: possibly too the man, from whom the theft was made, misused his property. The violation of property is unquestionably the decisive point of view before which the others must give way: but the bare law of the ground cannot settle that question. Usually indeed the law is interpreted to speak of a sufficient ground, not of any ground whatever: and it might be supposed therefore, in the action referred to, that, although other points of view besides the violation of property might be held as grounds, yet they would not be sufficient grounds. But here comes a dilemma. If we use the phrase 'sufficient ground,' the epithet is either otiose, or of such a kind as to carry us past the mere category of ground. The predicate is otiose and tautological, if it only states the capability of giving a ground or reason: for the ground is a ground, only in so far as it has this capability. If a soldier runs away from battle to save his life, his conduct is certainly a violation of duty: but it cannot be held that the ground which led him so to act was insufficient, otherwise he would have remained at his post. Besides, there is this also to be said. On one hand any ground suffices: on the other no ground suffices as mere ground; because, as already said, it is yet void of a content objectively and intrinsically determined, and is therefore not self-acting and productive. A content thus objectively and intrinsically determined, and hence self-acting, will hereafter come before us as the notion: and it is the notion which Leibnitz had in his eye when he spoke of sufficient ground, and urged the study of things under its point of view. His remarks were originally directed against that merely mechanical method of conceiving things so much in vogue even now; a method which he justly pronounces insufficient. We may see an instance of this mechanical theory of investigation, when the organic process of the circulation of the blood is traced back merely to the contraction of the heart; or when certain theories of criminal law explain the purpose of punishment to lie in deterring people from crime, in rendering the criminal harmless, or in other extraneous grounds of the same kind. It is unfair to Leibnitz to suppose that he was content with anything so poor as this formal law of the ground. The method of investigation which he inaugurated is the very reverse of a formalism which acquiesces in mere grounds, where a full and concrete knowledge is sought. Considerations to this effect led Leibnitz to contrast _causae efficientes_ and _causae finales,_ and to insist in the place of final causes as the conception to which the efficient were to lead up. If we adopt this distinction, light, heat, and moisture would be the _causae efficientes,_ not the _causa finalis_ of the growth of plants: the _causa finalis_ is the notion of the plant itself.
To get no further than mere grounds, especially on questions of law and morality, is the position and principle of the Sophists. Sophistry, as we ordinarily conceive it, is a method of investigation which aims at distorting what is just and true, and exhibiting things in a false light. Such however is not the proper or primary tendency of Sophistry: the standpoint of which is no other than that of 'Raisonnement.' The Sophists came on the scene at a time when the Greeks had begun to grow dissatisfied with mere authority and tradition and felt the need of intellectual justification for what they were to accept as obligatory.
That desideratum the Sophists supplied by teaching their countrymen to seek for the various points of view under which things may be considered: which points of view are the same as grounds. But the ground, as we have seen, has no essential and objective principles of its own, and it is as easy to discover grounds for what is wrong and immoral as for what is moral and right. Upon the observer therefore it depends to decide what points are to have most weight. The decision in such circumstances is prompted by his individual views and sentiments.
Thus the objective foundation of what ought to have been of absolute and essential obligation, accepted by all, was undermined: and Sophistry by this destructive action deservedly brought upon itself the bad name previously mentioned. Socrates, as we all know, met the Sophists at every point, not by a bare re-assertion of authority and tradition against their argumentations, but by showing dialectically how untenable the mere grounds were, and by vindicating the obligation of justice and goodness,--by reinstating the universal or notion of the will. In the present day such a method of argumentation is not quite out of fashion. Nor is that the case only in the discussion of secular matters. It occurs even in sermons, such as those where every possible ground of gratitude to God is propounded. To such pleading Socrates and Plato would not have scrupled to apply the name of Sophistry.
For Sophistry has nothing to do with what is taught:--that may very possibly be true. Sophistry lies in the formal circumstance of teaching it by grounds which are as available for attack as for defence. In a time so rich in reflection and so devoted to _raisonnement_ as our own, he must be a poor creature who cannot advance a good ground for everything, even for what is worst and most depraved. Everything in the world that has become corrupt has had good ground for its corruption.
An appeal to grounds at first makes the hearer think of beating a retreat: but when experience has taught him the real state of these matters, he closes his ears against them, and refuses to be imposed upon any more.
122.] As it first comes, the chief feature of Essence is show in itself and intermediation in itself. But when it has completed the circle of intermediation, its unity with itself is explicitly put as the self-annulling of difference, and therefore of intermediation. Once more then we come back to immediacy or Being,--but Being in so far as it is intermediated by annulling the intermediation. And that Being is Existence.
The ground is not yet determined by objective principles of its own, nor is it an end or final cause: hence it is not active, nor productive. An Existence only _proceeds from_ the ground. The determinate ground is therefore a formal matter: that is to say, any point will do, so long as it is expressly put as self-relation, as affirmation, in correlation with the immediate existence depending on it. If it be a ground at all, it is a good ground: for the term 'good' is employed abstractly as equivalent to affirmative; and any point (or feature) is good which can in any way be enunciated as confessedly affirmative. So it happens that a ground can be found and adduced for everything: and a good ground (for example, a good motive for action) may effect something or may not, it may have a consequence or it may not. It becomes a motive (strictly so called) and effects something, _e.g._ through its reception into a will; there and there only it becomes active and is made a cause.
(b) _Existence._ 123.] Existence is the immediate unity of reflection-into-self and reflection-into-another. It follows from this that existence is the indefinite multitude of existents as reflected-into-themselves, which at the same time equally throw light upon one another,--which, in short, are co-relative, and form a world of reciprocal dependence and of infinite interconnexion between grounds and consequents. The grounds are themselves existences: and the existents in like manner are in many directions grounds as well as consequents.
The phrase 'Existence' (derived from _existere_) suggests the fact of having proceeded from something. Existence is Being which has proceeded from the ground, and been reinstated by annulling its intermediation.
The Essence, as Being set aside and absorbed, originally came before us as shining or showing in self, and the categories of this reflection are identity, difference and ground. The last is the unity of identity and difference; and because it unifies them it has at the same time to distinguish itself from itself. But that which is in this way distinguished from the ground is as little mere difference, as the ground itself is abstract sameness. The ground works its own suspension: and when suspended, the result of its negation is existence. Having issued from the ground, existence contains the ground in it 'the ground does not remain, as it were, behind existence, but by its very nature supersedes itself and translates itself into existence.
This is exemplified even in our ordinary mode of thinking, when we look upon the ground of a thing, not as something abstractly inward, but as itself also an existent. For example, the lightning-flash which has set a house on fire would be considered the ground of the conflagration: or the manners of a nation and the condition of its life would be regarded as the ground of its constitution. Such indeed is the ordinary aspect in which the existent world originally appears to reflection,--an indefinite crowd of things existent, which being simultaneously reflected on themselves and on one another are related reciprocally as ground and consequence. In this motley play of the world, if we may so call the sum of existents, there is nowhere a firm footing to be found: everything bears an aspect of relativity, conditioned by and conditioning something else. The reflective understanding makes it its business to elicit and trace these connexions running out in every direction; but the question touching an ultimate design is so far left unanswered, and therefore the craving of the reason after knowledge passes with the further development of the logical Idea beyond this position of mere relativity.
124.] The reflection-on-another of the existent is however inseparable from the reflection-on-self: the ground is their unity, from which existence has issued. The existent therefore includes relativity, and has on its own part its multiple interconnexions with other existents: it is reflected on itself as its ground. The existent is, when so described, a Thing.
The 'thing-by-itself' (or thing in the abstract), so famous in the philosophy of Kant, shows itself here in its genesis. It is seen to be the abstract reflection-on-self, which is clung to, to the exclusion of reflection-on-other-things and of all predication of difference. The thing-by-itself therefore is the empty substratum for these predicates of relation.
If to know means to comprehend an object in its concrete character, then the thing-by-itself, which is nothing but the quite abstract and indeterminate thing in general, must certainly be as unknowable as it is alleged to be. With as much reason however as we speak of the thing-by-itself, we might speak of quality-by-itself or quantity-by-itself, and of any other category. The expression would then serve to signify that these categories are taken in their abstract immediacy, apart from their development and inward character. It is no better than a whim of the understanding, therefore, if we attach the qualificatory 'in or by-itself' to the _thing_ only. But this 'in or by-itself' is also applied to the facts of the mental as well as the natural world: as we speak of electricity or of a plant in itself, so we speak of man or the state in itself. By this 'in-itself' in these objects we are meant to understand what they strictly and properly are. This usage is liable to the same criticism as the phrase 'thing-in-itself.' For if we stick to the mere 'in-itself' of an object, we apprehend it not in its truth, but in the inadequate form of mere abstraction. Thus the man, by or in himself, is the child. And what the child has to do is to rise out of this abstract and undeveloped 'in-himself,' and become 'for himself what he is at first only 'in-himself,' a free and reasonable being. Similarly, the state-in-itself is the yet immature and patriarchal state, where the various political functions, latent in the notion of the state, have not received the full logical constitution which the logic of political principles demands. In the same sense, the germ may be called the plant-in-itself. These examples may show the mistake of supposing that the 'thing-in-itself' or the 'in-itself' of things is something inaccessible to our cognition. All things are originally in-themselves, but that is not the end of the matter. As the germ, being the plant-in-itself, means self-development, so the thing in general passes beyond its in-itself, (the abstract reflection on self,) to manifest itself further as a reflection on other things. It is in this sense that it has properties.
(c) _The Thing._ 125.] (α) The Thing is the totality--the development in explicit unity--of the categories of the ground and of existence. On the side of one of its factors, viz. reflection-on-other-things, it has in it the differences, in virtue of which it is a characterised and concrete thing. These characteristics are different from one another; they have their reflection-into-self not on their own part, but on the part of the thing. They are Properties of the thing: and their relation to the thing is expressed by the word 'have.'
As a term of relation, 'to have' takes the place of 'to be.' True, somewhat has qualities on its part too: but this transference of 'Having' into the sphere of Being is inexact, because the character as quality is directly one with the somewhat, and the somewhat ceases to be when it loses its quality. But the thing is reflection-into-self: for it is an identity which is also distinct from the difference, _i.e._ from its attributes.--In many languages 'have' is employed to denote past time. And with reason: for the past is absorbed or suspended being, and the mind is its reflection-into-self; in the mind only it continues to subsist,--the mind however distinguishing from itself this being in it which has been absorbed or suspended.
* * * * * In the Thing all the characteristics of reflection recur as existent.
Thus the thing, in its initial aspect, as the thing-by-itself, is the self-same or identical. But identity, it was proved, is not found without difference: so the properties, which the thing has, are the existent difference in the form of diversity. In the case of diversity or variety each diverse member exhibited an indifference to every other, and they had no other relation to each other, save what was given by a comparison external to them. But now in the thing we have a bond which keeps the various properties in union. Property, besides, should not be confused with quality. No doubt, we also say, a thing has qualities. But the phraseology is a misplaced one: 'having' hints at an independence, foreign to the 'Somewhat,' which is still directly identical with its quality. Somewhat is what it is only by its quality: whereas, though the thing indeed exists only as it has its properties, it is not confined to this or that definite property, and can therefore lose it, without ceasing to be what it is.
126.] (ß) Even in the ground, however, the reflection-on-something-else is directly convertible with reflection-on-self. And hence the properties are not merely different from each other; they are also