consciousness that thinks it hves and moves in the truth. In that process it advances, without halt or stay, till the final result is reached, when these essential ultimate elements or determinations are all alike superseded; but in each particular moment it is merely conscious of one given characteristic as the truth, and then, again, of the opposite. It no doubt suspects their unessentiality; and, to save them from the impending danger, it takes to the sophistry of Perception 123 now asserting to be true what it had just affirmed to be not true. What the nature of these untrue entities wants really to force this understanding to do — viz. to bring together and thereby cancel and transcend the ideas about that " universahty " and " singleness," about " also " and " one " — about that " essentiahty " which is " necessarily " connected with an " unessentiahty," and an " unessential " that is yet " necessary " — understanding strives to resist by leaning for support on the quahfying terms " in-so- far," " a diiierence of aspect," or by making itself answerable for one idea in order to keep the other separate and preserve it as the true one. But the very nature of these abstractions brings them together as they stand and of their own accord. Sound common sense robs these abstractions of their real nature. They compel understanding to go round in their whirhng circle. When understanding tries to give them truth by at one time taking their untruth upon itself, at another by calling deception a mere appear- ance due to the uncertainty and unrehabihty of things, and, again, by separating the essential from what is necessary, and yet is to be unessential, hold- ing the former to be their truth as against the latter: — when understanding takes this hne, it does not secure them their truth, but convicts itself of untruth.
Ill FORCE AND UNDERSTANDING— THE WORLD OF APPEARANCE AND THE SUPERSENSIBLE WORLD * [The term "force" holds primarily with reference to the realm of Nature, whether physical or vital: but it is also used, more or less analogically, in reference to other spheres, e.g. morality. It is the objective counterpart of the activity of "understanding "; it is objectively the same kind of relation of unity to differences which is subjectively realised when the mind "understands." "Force" is a self-conditioned principle of unity; the differences are the "expressions of force,'' the unity evolves the diiferences out of itself. Understanding similarly is a self-conditioned process; it consists in "reducing" differences to some ultimate unity, which is capable of " deriving " or " e.-tplaining " those differences from itself. The ''' unconditioned universal '' to which we are led by tlie analysis of perception takes shape, therefore, as " force." The question is. How are the elements of this "unconditioned universal" related, and how do they hold together? The answer is found in the highest achievement of the operation of understanding — the establishment of a " kingdom of laws," which in its entirety is the meaning of the world so far as understanding goes. But laws pej- se are looked on as an inner realm, which merely "appears" in the detailed particulars which those laws control, and in which those laws are made manifest. Tlie differences, in fact, are "' phenomena," the laws per se are behind the scenes: — the world as a whole thus becomes distinguished into a realm of phenomena and a realm of noumena. These two realms set a new problem to the mind, and must again be brought together in a completer way than understanding can do. This new state of consciousness is " self-consciousness."
In this section we have at once an analysis of empiricism and a critici.sm of the Kantian solution of the problem of empiricism. It is shown that if phenomena are appearances of noumena, then the noumena do appear, and are, in fact, nothing except so far as they appear: — otherwise the noumena, so far being "hidden,"' are worse than appearances, they are illusion. The phenomena arc not merely appearances "to the mind," but appearances of something that does make itself manifest. If phenomena * Cp. Wisseiu-chaft dcr Logik, Buch 2, Absch. 2, Kap 3. 124 Understanding 125 are thus not external to and still less independent of noumena, noumena are just as truly immanent in plienomena. Treated in any other way, noumena can at best be only another kind of phenomena; and this raises anew precisely the problem which the opposition of phenomena or noumena was intended to solve. Phenomena are related to noumena as the trees to the wood, not as a compound to its atoms. The solution of the diffi- culty is thus only to be found in the type of consciousness which contains both — and this, Hegel says, is self-consciousness.]
CONSCIOUSNESS lias found "seeing" and "hearing," etc., pass away in the dialectic process of sense- experience, and has, at the stage of perception, arrived at thoughts which, however, it brings together in the first instance in the unconditioned universal. This unconditioned element, again, if it were taken as inert essence bare and simple, would itself be nothing else than the one-sided extreme of self-existence (Fiirsich- seyn); for the non-essential would then stand over against it. But if thus related to the latter, it would be itself unessential, and consciousness would not have got disentangled from the deceptions of perception; whereas this universal has proved to be one which has passed out of such conditioned separate existence and returned into itself.
This unconditioned universal, which henceforward is the true object of consciousness, is still object of consciousness; consciousness has not yet grasped its principle, or notion, qua notion. There is an essential distinction between the two which must be drawn. On the one hand, consciousness is aware that the object has passed from its relation to an other back into itself, and thereby become inherentlj^ and implicitly {an sich) notion; but, on the other hand, consciousness is not yet the notion explicitly or for itself, and consequently it does not know itself in that reflected object. We 126 Phenomenology of Mind (who are analysing experience) found this object arise through the process of consciousness in such a way that consciousness is imphcated and involved in the development of the object, and the reflection is the same on both sides, i.e. there is only one reflection. But because in this movement consciousness had as its content merely the objective entity, and not conscious- ness as such, the result has to be given an objective significance for consciousness; consciousness, however, still withdrawing from what has arisen, so that the latter in objective form is the essential reahty to consciousness.
Understanding has, indeed, eo if so, done away with its own untruth and the untruth in its object. What has thereby come to view is the notion of the truth as imphcit inherent truth, which is not yet notion, or lacks a consciously explicit existence for itself (Fiirsichseyn), and is something which under- standing allows to have its way without knowing itself in it. It works out its own reality for itself, so that consciousness has no share in its process of free reahsation, but merely looks on and apprehends that reahsation as a naked fact. It is, consequently, our business in the first instance to step into its place and be the notion, which works up into shape what is contained in the result. With this complete forma- tion of the object, which is presented to consciousness as a bare existent fact {ein Seyendes), mere conscious awareness becomes for the first time conceptual con- sciousness, conscious comprehension.
The result arrived at was an unconditioned universal, in the first instance in the negative and abstract sense that consciousness negated its one-sided notions and Understanding 127 Understanding 127 abstracted them: it surrendered them. This result, however, has inherently a positive significance; it has established the unity of existence-for-self, and existence-for-another; in other words, absolute oppo- sites are immediately posited as one and the same reality. At first this seems to affect merely the formal relation of the moments to one another. But to be for-self and to be for-another constitutes the content itself as well, because the opposition, looked at truly, can have no other nature than what has come about in the result — viz. that the content, taken in perception for truth, belongs, in point of fact, solely to the form, and is dissipated into its unity. This content is at the same time universal; there can be no other content which by its peculiar constitution would refuse to return into this unconditioned universahty. Such a content would be some specific way or other of being for-itself and taking up a relation to some- thing else. But to be in general for-self and to stand in relation to something else constitutes the very nature and meaning of that whose truth lies in being unconditionally universal; and the result is through and through universal.
Since, however, this unconditioned universal is an object for consciousness, the distinction of form and content makes its appearance within it; and, in the shape of content, the moments have the aspect in which they were first presented — that of being on one side a universal medium of many substantial elements, and, on the other, a unit reflected into self, where their substantial independence is overthrown and done away with. The former dissolves the inde- pendence of the thing, is the condition of passivity 128 Phenomenology of Mind which consists in being something for something else; the latter is its individual subsistence, its being some- thing on its own account {fiir sicli). We have to see what shape these moments take in the unconditioned universal which is their essential nature. It is obvious at the outset that, by existing only in this universal, they do not in general he any longer apart from one another, but rather are in themselves essentially self- cancelhng aspects, and what is estabhshed is only their transition into one another.
One moment, then, appears as imiversal medium, or as the subsistence of independent constituents, as the reahty that has stepped aside. The independence of these constituent elements, however, is nothing else than this medium; i.e. this universal is simply and entirely the plurality of such diverse universals. That the miiversal is fcr se in -undivided unity with this plurality means, however, that these elements are each where the other is; they m.utually permeate one another — without touching one another, because, conversely, the manifold diversity is equally independent. Along with that, too, goes the fact that they are absolutely pervious and porous, or are cancelled and superseded. To be thus superseded, again, or the reduction of this diversity to bare and simple self-existence, is nothing else than the medium itself, and this is the independence of the different elements. In otlier words, the elements set up as independent pass directly over into their unity, and their unity directly into its exphcit diversity, and the latter back once again into the reduction to unity. This process is what is called Force. One of its moments, where Force takes the form of a dispersion of the independent elements each with a Understanding 129 Understanding 129 being of its own, is the Expression of Force; when, however, force takes the form of that wherein they disappear and vanish, it is Force proper, force with- drawn from expressing itself and driven back into itself. But in the first place force driven back into itself must express itself; and, secondly, in that expression it is still force existing within itself, as much as in thus being within itself it is expression. " When we thus keep both moments in this immediate unity, it is Understanding, to which the conception of force belongs, that is, properly speaking, the principle which carries the difierent moments qua different. For per se they should not be different; the distinction consequently exists only in thought. Stated otherwise, only the mere conception of force has been put forward in the above, not its reahsation. In point of fact, however, force is the rmconditioned universal, which is in itself just what it is for something else, or which holds its difference within itself — for it is nothing else than existence-for-an-other. Hence for force to be what it truly is, it has to be completely set free from thought, and put forward as the substantial reality of these differences, that is, first the substance qua the entire force remaining essentially self-contained (an und fiir sich), and then its differences as substantial entities, or as moments subsisting each on its own account. Force as such, force as driven back within itself, is in this way by itself an excluding unit, for which the unfolding of the elements or differences is another thing subsisting separately; and thus there are set up two sides, distinct and independent. But force is also the whole, or it remains what, in its very conception, it is; that is to say, these differences remain VOL. I. — K 130 Phenomenology of Mind mere forms, superficial vanishing " moments. ^ Ine differences between force proper, withdrawn into itself, and force unfolded and expressed in independent con- stituent elements, would at the same time have no being at all if they had no subsistence; i.e. force would have no being if it did not really exist in these opposite ways. But to exist in this way as opposite aspects means nothing else than that both moments are themselves at the same time independent. It is this process we have now to deal with — the process by which both moments get themselves fixed as inde- pendent and then cancel their independence again.
Looked at broadly, it is manifest that this process is nothing else than the process of perceiving, where the aspects, both percipient and content perceived, are at once inseparably miited as regards the process of grasping the truth, and yet, by that very fact, each aspect is at the same time reflected into itself, is something on its own account. In the present case these two aspects are elements or moments of force; they subsist within one unity, just as much as this unity, which appears as the middle term for the distinct and independent extremes, always gets broken up into these very extremes, which only become such through this taking place. Thus the process, which formerly took the shape of the self-negation of contradictory conceptions, here assumes objective form, and is a movement of force, the result of which is to bring out the " unconditioned imiversal " as something which is not objective — which is the inner (unperceived) being of things..^^ Force, as thus determined, since it is taken as force, or as reflected into itself, is the one side of its notion and meaning: but a substantiated extreme, Understanding 131 and, moreover, the extreme established with the char- acteristic of oneness. In virtue of this, the subsistence of the elements which have arisen falls outside it, and is something other than it. Since of necessity it has to he this subsistence, i.e. to express, externaUse itself, its expression takes the form that the other approaches it and incites it. But, in point of fact, since it must necessarily express itself, it has within itself this other, which to begin with took up a position as something outside it. The latter (this other) must be retracted, in order that force should be estabhshed as a single " one," and its essential nature — which consists in self-expression — put forward as an other, approaching it externally. Force itself is rather this universal medium for the subsistence of the moments as con- stituent elements; or, in other words, it has expressed or externalised itself, and what was to be something outside it attracting or inciting it is really force itself. It exists now as the medium of the constituent elements which have been evolved. But at the same time it is in its very nature one and single, and has essentially the form of being that in which these various elements are superseded. This oneness is in consequence now something other than, external to, force, since force takes its place as the medium for the elements to exist in; and force therefore has this its essential being outside itself. Since, however, it must of necessity be this essential nature, which as yet it is not affirmed to be, this other comes forward soliciting or inciting it to reflect into self, to turn this pseudo-external factor into an aspect of itself; in other words, this other cancels its external expression. In point of fact, however, it is force itself that is thus reflected into self, 132 Plienmnenology of Mind that is the sublation of the external expression. The oneness vanishes as it appeared, viz. as something external; force is that very other, is force thrust back into itself.
What took the character of an external other, and incited force at once to expression and to return into self, turns out directly to be itself force: for the other shows itself to be luiiversal medium as well as one and single, and shows this in such a way that each of the forms assumed appears at the same time to be merely a vanishing moment. Consequently force, in that there is an other for it, and it is for an other, has as a whole not yet developed its complete meaning. There are two forces present at the same time; the notion of both is no doubt the same notion, but it has passed out of its unity into duality. Instead of the opposition continuing to be entirely and essentially a mere mo- ment, it appears to have escaped from the control of the unity and to have become, owing to this diremp- tion, two quite independent forces. We have now to see more precisely what sort of situation this inde- pendence introduces.
To begin with, the second force stands towards the force incited in the character of inciting force, and, moreover, with respect to its content, plays the part of universal medium. But since that second force con- sists essentially in an alternation of these two moments and is itself force, it is likewise, in point of fact, their imiversal medium only then when it is incited or solicited to being so; and in the same way, too, it is negative unity, or incites and leads to the retraction of force, only by being incited thereto. As a result, this distinction, which took place between one force re- Understanding 133 garded as inciting and tlie other as incited, turns also into one and the same reciprocal interchange of characteristics.
The interplay of the two forces in this way arises from and consists in the two being thus determined with opposite characteristics, in their being for one another in virtue of this determination and in the complete and direct exchange of their characteristics— a transition from one to the other, whereby alone these determinations, in which the forces seem to appear independently, have being. For example, the inciting force is set up as universal medium, and, on the other hand, the force incited as a force repressed. But the former is uni- versal medium just by the very fact of the latter being repressed: that is to say, this latter is really what in- cites the former, and makes it the medium it claims to be. The former gets the character it has only through the other, and is an inciting force only so far as it is incited by the latter to be so. And it loses just as readily this character given to it, for this character passes, or rather has already passed, into the character of the other. The former, acting in an external way, takes the part of universal medium, but only by its having been incited by the other force to do so. This means, however, that the latter gives it that position, and is really itselj essentially universal medium: it gives the inciting agency this character just because this other character is essentially its own, i.e. because it is really its own self.
To complete our insight into the principle of this process, we may notice, further, that the dis- tinctions themselves reveal distinction in a twofold manner. They are, on the one hand, distinctions of 134 Phenomenology of Mind content, since one extreme is force reflected into itself, while the other is a medium for the constituent elements involved: on the other hand, they appear as distinc- tions of form, since one incites and the other is incited, the former being active, the latter passive. As regards the distinction of content, they are in a general way dis- tinct, or distinct for us [who are analysing the process]; as regards form, however, they are independent, in their relation they break away from one another of themselves, and stand opposed. In the perception of the movement of force, consciousness becomes aware that the extremes, in both these aspects, are nothing fer se, that rather these sides, in which their distinction of nature was meant to consist, are merely vanishing moments, an immediate transition of each into its opposite. For us, however [who are analysing the process], it was also true, as stated above, that per se the distinctions, qiia distinctions of content and form, vanished: and on the side of form, the active, in- citing, or independent factor was in its very nature the same as what, from the side of content, was presented as repressed force, force driven back into itself; the passive, incited, or related factor was, from the side of form, the same as what, from the side of content, took shape as universal medium for the many constituent elements.
^ From this we see that the notion of Force becomes actual when resolved into two forces, and we see too how it comes to be so. These two forces exist as independent entities: but their existence lies in a movement each towards each, of such a kind that in order to be, each has in reality to get its position purely through the other; that is to say, their being Understanding 135 has purely the significance of disappearance. They are not hke extremes, that keep to themselves some- thing positively fixed, and merely transmit an external property to one another through their common medium and by external contact: they are what they are solely in this mediimi and in their contact with each other. We have there immediately both force as it is independently, force repressed within itself, and also its expression, force inciting and force being incited. These moments are thus not divided and set up as two extremes, offering each other only an opposite pole: rather their true nature is simply and solely to be each through the other, and to be in the first instance no more than just what each is thus through the other, since it is just that. They have thus, in point of fact, no substances of their own which could support and maintain them. The notion of force rather maintains itself as the essence in its very actual- ity: force when actual exists wholly and only in its expression; and this, at the same time, is nothing else than a process of cancelling itself. This actual force, when represented as detached from its expression and existing by itself, is force driven back into itseK; but