Second subdivision of the Logic: The doctrine of essence

 Addition. Any talk of essence entails distinguishing it from being as immediate and considering the latter as a mere semblance in regard to the essence. This semblance, however, is not by any means denied; it is not nothing, but is instead being as sublated. – In general, the standpoint of the essence is that of reflection. The expression 'reflection' is initially used of light insofar as, in its rectilinear progression, it hits upon a mirroring surface that casts it back. We have here, accordingly, two things: first, something immediate, a being [Seiendes], and then, second, the same being as something mediated or posited. But now this is precisely the case when we reflect on an object or (as one would also say) think it over [nachdenken]. For what matters here is not the object in its immediacy; we want instead to know [wissen] it as mediated. Indeed, according to the common construal of the task or purpose of philosophy, it is supposed to come to know the essence of things and that simply means that things are not supposed to be left in their immediacy but instead demonstrated to be mediated or justified by something else. The immediate being of things is represented here, as it were, as a crust or as a curtain behind which the essence is hidden. – The further claim that 'all things have an essence' is a way of declaring that they are not truly what they immediately show themselves to be. It then is also not enough merely to traipse from one quality to another and merely proceed from the qualitative to the quantitative and vice versa; instead, there is something enduring in things and this primarily is the essence. As far as the remaining meaning and the use of the category of essence are concerned, it may be first recalled how, in German, we make use of Wesen [the German word for 'essence'] for the auxiliary verb sein ['to be'] to designate the past of the expression, by designating being that has elapsed as gewesen ['having been']. Underlying this irregularity of the use of language is a proper view of the connection of being to essence, insofar as we are able to consider the essence as being that has elapsed, whereby it needs to be noted that what is past is, therefore, not abstractly negated but instead only sublated and accordingly conserved at the same time. If we say, for example, 'Caesar has been in Gaul [ist in Gallien gewesen]', only the immediacy of what is asserted here of Caesar is thereby negated, but not his sojourn in Gaul altogether. For it is, indeed, precisely this that forms the content of this assertion, content that is here represented as lifted up [aufgehoben] into another dimension. – Talk of essence in common life frequently has only the meaning of a group or a sum. Accordingly, one speaks, for example, of the 'press' [Zeitungswesen], the 'post office' [Postwesen], or 'revenue service' [Steuerwesen], and so forth. What is understood by these expressions is simply that these things are not to be taken in their immediacy, as single items, but instead as a complex, and then further in their diverse relations as well. Such use of language contains only in this approximate fashion what essence has come to mean for us. – One speaks also of finite essences and names human beings finite essences [i.e. finite beings]. But in speaking of essences, one is actually beyond finitude and this designation of the human being is to that extent imprecise. If it is said further that there is [es gibt] a highest essence [i.e. supreme being] and God is supposed to be designated by this, then two sorts of things need to be noted about this. First, the expression for 'there is' [the giving, geben of 'es gibt'] is the sort of expression that points to something finite; we say, for example, 'there are so and so many planets' or 'there are plants of such and such constitution'. What there is in this way, is accordingly something outside of and next to which there is still something else. But now God, as the unqualifiedly infinite, is not the sort of entity that there simply is and outside of and next to which there are also still other essences [i.e. beings]. Whatever there otherwise is outside of God, nothing essential accrues to it in its separation from God; in this isolation it is to be considered far more to be something devoid of support and essence, a mere semblance. For this reason then, second, talk of God as the highest essence [i.e. supreme being] must be deemed inadequate. Indeed, the category of quantity applied here has place only in the realm of the finite. Thus we say, for example, 'this is the highest mountain on earth' and thereby entertain the representation that, outside this highest mountain, there are also still other, similarly high mountains. The same sort of thing obtains when we say of someone that he is the richest or most learned man in his country. But God is not simply one and also not simply the highest; God is instead far more the essence, whereby then, however, the following must also be immediately noted. Although this conception of God forms an important and necessary step in the development of religious consciousness, by no means does it exhaust the depths of the Christian representation of God. If we consider God only as the essence without qualification and remain with this, then we know [wissen] him only as the universal power that cannot be withstood or, otherwise expressed, as the Lord. Now fear of the lord is, indeed, the beginning, but only the beginning of wisdom. – It is first the Jewish and then, further, the Moslem religion in which God is construed as the Lord and essentially only as the Lord. The deficiency of these religions consists in general in the fact that here the finite does not get its due; maintaining this finitude for itself (be it as something natural or as a finite character of the spirit) constitutes a characteristic of pagan and hereby, at the same time, polytheistic religions. – Furthermore, the claim has also frequently been made that God, as the highest essence, cannot be known. This is generally the standpoint of the modern Enlightenment and, more precisely, of the abstract understanding that is satisfied with saying 'il y a un être suprême', and then lets it go at that. If said in this way and if God is considered as the highest, other-worldly essence, then one has the world before oneself as something solid, something positive, and thereby forgets that the essence is precisely what sublates everything immediate. As the abstract, other-worldly essence whose difference and determinacy thus fall outside itself, God is in fact a mere name, a mere caput mortuum of the abstracting understanding. The true knowledge of God begins with knowing [wissen] that things in their immediate being have no truth.
Not only in relation to God but also in relation to other things, it often happens that one makes use of the category of essence in an abstract manner and then, in the course of considering things, fixes their essence as something obtaining for itself and indifferent to the determinate content of their appearance. For example, it is customarily said that what matters in human beings is their essence and not their action and deportment. What is right about this resides, to be sure, in the fact that what a human being does should be considered, not in its immediacy, but only as mediated by his inner make-up and as a manifestation of his inner make-up. Only it should not be overlooked thereby that the essence and then, further, the inner make-up confirm themselves as such only by virtue of the fact that they make their appearance. In contrast to this, underlying that appeal of human beings to their essence, as distinct from the content of their action, is merely the intention of validating their sheer subjectivity and evading what is valid in and for itself.

 Addition. Identity is, first, again the same as what we earlier had as being, but as having become [what it is] through sublation of the immediate determinacy. – It is accordingly being as ideality. It is enormously important to come to a proper understanding of the true meaning of identity. What pertains, above all things, to this is that it be construed not merely as abstract identity, i.e. not as identity to the exclusion of difference. This is the point by means of which all bad philosophy distinguishes itself from what alone deserves the name of philosophy. The identity in its truth, as ideality of what immediately is, is an eminent determination as much for our religious consciousness as for all other thinking and consciousness generally. One can say that true knowledge [Wissen] of God begins with knowing [wissen] him as identity – as absolute identity, in which at the same time it lies that all power and all splendour of the world sinks away in the face of God and can only obtain as the shining [Scheinen] of his power and his splendour. – It is the same, too, for the identity that is the consciousness of itself, through which human beings distinguish themselves from nature in general and from animals in particular (since an animal does not manage to grasp itself as an I, i.e. as pure unity of itself in itself). As for what further concerns the meaning of identity in relation to thinking, it is a matter here, above all things, of not confusing the true identity (the identity containing in itself being and its determinations as sublated) with the abstract, merely formal identity. All those reproaches so frequently made against thinking, namely, from the standpoint of sentiment and immediate intuition, reproaches of one-sidedness, rigidity, emptiness, and so forth are grounded in the perverted presupposition that the activity of thinking is only that of abstractly positing identity, and it is formal logic itself that confirms this presupposition by setting up the allegedly highest law of thinking, illumined in the above section. If thinking were nothing more than that abstract identity, then it would have to be declared the most superfluous and most boring business. To be sure, the concept and, further, the idea are self-identical, but only insofar as they contain the difference in themselves at the same time.

 Addition. If someone asks: 'How does identity come to difference?', he presupposes that the identity, as mere, i.e. abstract identity, is something for itself, and that difference then is also something else, equally for itself. By means of this presupposition, meanwhile, answering the proposed question is rendered impossible, for if the identity is regarded as distinct from the difference, then one has in fact thereby merely the difference and, for that reason, the progression to the difference cannot be demonstrated since the point of departure for it is not on hand for anyone who inquires into the manner of the progression. On closer inspection, this question proves to be quite thoughtless and anyone who proposes it should first be confronted with the other question, namely, what he understands by identity, in which case it would turn out that he understands precisely nothing in this connection by it and that identity for him is simply an empty name. In addition, to be sure, identity is something negative, as we have seen; nevertheless, it is not the abstract, empty nothing in general but instead the negation of being and its determinations. As such, identity is at the same time relation, and indeed negative relation, to itself or the distinguishing of itself from itself.

 Addition. In committing itself to the consideration of identity, the understanding is in fact already beyond that and what it has before it is difference in the form of mere diversity. If, for example, following the so-called principle of identity, we say 'the sea is the sea', 'the air is the air', 'the moon is the moon', and so forth, then these objects hold for us in the sense of being indifferent to one another and, in this way, it is not the identity, but instead the difference that we have before us. But then we also do not stand pat, regarding the things merely as diverse. Instead we compare them with one another and by this means acquire the determinations of likeness and unlikeness. A large part of the business of the finite sciences consists in the application of these determinations and nowadays, in speaking of a scientific treatment, one would be inclined to understand by this primarily the procedure that aims at comparing with one another the objects that have been taken into consideration. There can be no mistake that, by following this path, one has arrived at several, very important results and, in this connection, the enormous achievements of modern times deserve to be called to mind, particularly in the domains of comparative anatomy and the comparative study of language. Nevertheless, by the same token, it should not only be noted that one goes too far if one thinks that this comparative procedure is to be applied to all domains of knowing with the same success, but beyond that it should also be particularly emphasized that the mere comparing still cannot ultimately satisfy the scientific need and that results of the previously mentioned sort are to be considered merely as (to be sure, indispensable) preliminary labours for the sort of knowing that truly comprehends matters. – Insofar, moreover, as the point of comparing is to trace differences on hand back to identity, mathematics must be regarded as the science in which this goal is most perfectly attained and, to be sure, by reason of the fact that the quantitative difference is merely the entirely external difference. Thus, for example, in geometry a triangle and a rectangle, while qualitatively diverse, are equated with one another with respect to their size, in abstraction from that qualitative difference. Mention has already been made earlier (§ 99 Addition) of the fact that mathematics is not to be envied on account of this advantage, either from the side of the empirical sciences or from the side of philosophy; moreover, it also follows from what was previously noted about the mere identity of the understanding. – The story is told that, as Leibniz propounded the principle of diversity [i.e. the identity of indiscernibles] at court one day, gentlemen and ladies of the court, walking around in the garden, attempted to find two leaves indistinguishable from one another, in order to refute the philosopher's principle by displaying them. This is without doubt a convenient, and still popular manner of occupying oneself with metaphysics even today. Nevertheless, with regard to the Leibnizian principle, it should be noted that the difference is precisely not to be construed merely as the external and indifferent diversity, but is to be construed instead as difference in itself and that it is inherent in the things in themselves to be different.

 Addition. While mere diversities prove to be indifferent to one another, likeness and unlikeness are, by contrast, a pair of determinations that refer straightforwardly to one another, neither of which can be thought without the other. This movement from mere diversity to opposition can also already be found in ordinary consciousness to the extent that we grant that comparing makes sense only on the supposition that some difference is present and, conversely, that distinguishing makes sense only on the supposition that some likeness is present. Accordingly, when the task of indicating a difference is posed, no great acuity is ascribed to someone who merely distinguishes objects whose difference is immediately evident (as, for example, a pen and a camel). By the same token, someone who only knows [weiß] how to compare what lies close to one another – a beech with an oak, a temple with a church – will not be said to have made much progress in comparing. We accordingly require identity together with the difference and the difference together with the identity. Nevertheless, it happens quite frequently in the domain of the empirical sciences that one of these two determinations is forgotten over the other and that scientific interest is at one time only set on tracing differences on hand back to some identity and, at another time, is just as one-sidedly set on finding new differences. This is notably the case in the natural sciences. Here one first makes it one's business to discover new and more and more new materials, forces, genera, species, and so forth or, in a different turn, to prove that bodies, previously held to be simple, are composite. Modern physicists and chemists smile bemusedly at the ancients who were satisfied only with four (and not even simple) elements. But then, on the other side, people have their eyes set on the mere identity. Accordingly, for example, not only are electricity and chemical transformations regarded as essentially the same, but even the organic processes of digestion and assimilation are regarded as a merely chemical process. It was already noted earlier (§ 103 Addition) that, if more recent philosophy is frequently mocked as a 'philosophy of identity', it is precisely philosophy and, indeed, in the first place, the speculative logic that points up the nullity [Nichtigkeit] of the mere identity of understanding, abstracting as it does from difference, and that also urges just as much for not leaving things with the mere diversity but instead for knowing the inner unity of everything that is there.

 Addition 1. The positive is the identity again but in its higher truth as the identical relation to itself and, at the same time, such that it is not the negative. The negative for itself is nothing other than the difference itself. The identical as such is, in the first place, devoid of determination; the positive, by contrast, is identical with itself but is determined as opposite an other and the negative is the difference as such in the determination of not being identity. This is the difference of the difference in itself. – With the positive and the negative, one thinks that one has an absolute difference. Both, however, are in themselves the same and one could, for that reason, name the positive also the negative and, vice versa, the negative the positive. In this way, too, assets and debts are not two particular types of assets, obtaining for themselves. The same thing that in the case of the one, as debtor, is something negative is, in the case of the other, the creditor, something positive. Something similar holds for a path to the east that is at the same time a path to the west. Positive and negative are thus essentially conditioned by one another and only are [what they are] in their relation to one another. The north pole on a magnet cannot be without the south pole and the south pole cannot be without the north pole. If one cuts a magnet in half, one does not have the north pole in the one piece and the south pole in the other. So, too, in the case of electricity, the positive and the negative electricity are not two diverse flows, each obtaining for itself. In the opposition, what is differentiated has not only an other but its other opposite it. Ordinary consciousness regards what is differentiated as indifferent to one another. Thus, one says: I am a human being, and around me are air, water, animals, and other things generally. Here, everything falls apart. The aim of philosophy, by contrast, is to ban the indifference and come to know the necessity of things so that the other appears standing opposite it as its other. Thus, for example, inorganic nature is to be considered, not merely as something other than the organic, but instead as the necessary other of the latter. Both are in essential relation to one another, and one of the two is only to the extent that it excludes the other from itself and, precisely by this means, relates itself to the other. In a similar way nature, too, is not without the spirit and the latter not without nature. It is generally an important step if, in thinking, one has got away from saying: 'Now, something else is still possible, too.' For by speaking in this manner, one is still burdened by the contingent, in contrast to which, as was previously noted, true thinking is a thinking of necessity. – If, in more recent natural science, one has come to recognize as a universal law of nature the opposition first perceived in magnetism as polarity and to recognize this opposition as running through nature in its entirety, then this is to be regarded without doubt as an essential progress of science. Except that in this case it should be a prime concern not to let mere diversity stand, without further ado, alongside the opposition. Thus, for example, while on the one hand one at first correctly considers colours as standing opposite each other in polar opposition (as so-called 'complementary colours'), on the other hand one then turns around and considers them as the indifferent and merely quantitative difference of red, yellow, green, and so forth.

 Addition 2. Instead of speaking in terms of the principle of excluded middle (the principle of abstract understanding), one should rather say: everything is opposed. Indeed, neither in heaven nor on earth, neither in the spiritual nor in the natural world, is there any such abstract either/or of the sort that the understanding maintains. Everything that is some sort of thing is something concrete, something that is in itself thereby differentiated and opposed. The finitude of things consists then in the fact that their immediate existence [Dasein] does not correspond to what they are in themselves. Thus, for example, in inorganic nature, an acid is in itself at the same time a base, that is to say, its being is simply only this, to be related to its other. With this, however, an acid is also not something quietly perduring in opposition but instead is striving to posit itself as what it is in itself. Contradiction is what moves the world in general and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction cannot be thought. What is right about this claim is merely this: that the matter does not end there in the contradiction and that the contradiction sublates itself through itself. The sublated contradiction is then, however, not the abstract identity, for this is itself only the one side of the opposition. The most immediate result of the opposition posited as a contradiction is the ground, which contains in itself both the identity and the difference as sublated and set down as merely ideal moments.

 Addition. If it is said of the ground 'it is the unity of identity and difference', then by this unity is not to be understood the abstract identity, since we would then have merely another name and, as far as the thought is concerned, we would merely have once again the identity of the understanding itself that has been recognized to be untrue. For this reason, in order to avoid that misunderstanding, one can also say that the ground is not merely the unity, but just as much the difference of the identity and the difference. By this means, the ground, which first presented itself to us as the sublation of the contradiction, thus appears as a new contradiction. But as such it is not something persisting [Beharrende] peacefully in itself but rather the repelling [Abstoßen] of itself from itself. The ground is only ground insofar as it grounds [begründet]. However, what has emerged from the ground is itself and therein lies the formalism of the ground. The grounded and ground are one and the same content and the difference between both is the mere difference of form between the simple relation to itself and the mediation or state of being posited. If we ask for the grounds of things, then this is generally the already earlier mentioned (§112 Addition) standpoint of reflection. We want to see the basic matter then, as it were, doubled, first in its immediacy and second in its ground where it is no longer immediate. This is then also the simple sense of the so-called principle [Denkgesetz] of sufficient reason, by means of which it is simply expressed that things must be considered essentially as mediated. Formal logic, incidentally, provides the other sciences with a bad example, inasmuch as it demands that the sciences not allow their content to be immediately valid, and nonetheless sets up this principle without deriving it and pointing out its mediation. With the same reason that the logician maintains that our capacity of thinking is simply so constituted that we have to ask for a ground in every case, the physician, asked why someone who falls into the water drowns, could also answer that human beings are simply so constructed not to be able to live under water. So, too, a judge, if asked why a criminal is punished, could answer that civil society is simply so constituted that criminals are not allowed to go unpunished.
But even if one is to set aside the demand addressed to the logic for a justification of the principle of the ground, then logic must at least answer the question of what one is to understand by the 'ground'. The usual explanation, namely that the ground is what has a consequence [Folge], seems at first glance to be more illuminating and comprehensible than the determination of the concept given above. If, however, one asks further, what 'consequence' is, and receives the answer, the consequence is what has a ground, then it becomes apparent that the ease of comprehending this explanation consists merely in the fact that in it is presupposed what emerged for us as the result of a foregoing movement of thought. But, now, the business of logic is precisely this alone, to point up the merely represented and, as such, uncomprehended and unproven thoughts as stages of thinking that determines itself, so that they can then be at the same time comprehended and proven. – In ordinary life and equally in the finite sciences one quite frequently avails oneself of this form of reflection with the intention, by applying it, of getting to the bottom of how matters actually stand with the objects under consideration. Now, there is nothing objectionable about this manner of consideration insofar as it merely concerns the immediate, everyday need [Hausbedarf] of knowing, so to speak. Nevertheless, at the same time it must be noted that this manner of consideration can guarantee a definitive satisfaction neither in a theoretical nor in a practical respect and, indeed, cannot because the ground still has no content, determinate in and for itself, and by considering something as grounded, we accordingly preserve the merely formal difference between immediacy and mediation. One thus sees, for example, an electrical phenomenon, and asks for the ground of it; if we receive the answer, the electricity is the ground of this phenomenon, then this is the same content that we had immediately before us, merely translated into the form of something internal. – Furthermore, however, the ground is not merely what is simply identical with itself, but also different from itself and, for this reason, diverse grounds can be put forward for one and the same content, a diversity of grounds that proceeds according to the concept of difference, then further to opposition in the form of grounds for and against the same content. – If, for example, we consider an action, more specifically a theft, then this is a content relative to which several sides can be distinguished. By means of it, property has been violated; but by means of it as well the thief who was in need obtained the means to satisfy his needs; and it can also be the case that the person from whom he stole did not make good use of his property. Now, to be sure, it is right that the violation of property that has taken place here constitutes the decisive point of view; other points of view must withdraw into the background relative to it. But this decision does not lie in the principle of the ground. To be sure, according to the ordinary construal of this principle, one speaks not merely of the ground but of the sufficient ground and, hence, one might think that, in the case of the action mentioned as an example, viewpoints other than the violation of property that were also mentioned might well be grounds, but that these grounds are not sufficient. In this regard it should be noted, however, that if one speaks of the sufficient ground, this predicate is either pointless or of the sort that, by means of it, one has already passed beyond the category of ground as such. The predicate thought of here is pointless and tautological if it is merely supposed to express the capacity of grounding [begründen] at all, since the ground is only ground to the extent that it expresses this capacity. If a soldier runs away from a battle in order to save his life, then he acts in a manner that is contrary to his duty, but it must not be maintained that the ground that determined him to act in this manner was not sufficient, for otherwise he would have remained at his post. Furthermore, it must then also be said that just as, on the one hand, all grounds suffice, so, on the other hand, no ground as such suffices and, indeed, precisely because, as already noted above, the ground still has no content determinate in and for itself and, hence, is not active on its own and productive. It is the concept that will subsequently present itself to us as content that is determinate in and for itself and thereby active on its own, and it is this that matters for Leibniz when he speaks of the sufficient ground and urges that things be considered from this viewpoint.
Here Leibniz has in mind a merely mechanical manner of construing things that many still cherish even today and that he rightly declares insufficient. Thus it is, for example, a merely mechanical construal of the organic process of the circulation of blood if it is reduced simply to the contraction of the heart. Equally mechanical are those theories of punishment that consider the purpose of punishment to be neutralization, deterrence, or other external grounds of that sort. One does Leibniz an injustice if one thinks that he was satisfied with something so scanty as the formal principle of the ground is. The manner of considering things that he advocates is precisely the opposite of that formalism that, where it is a matter of knowing conceptually, lets mere grounds suffice. In this respect Leibniz contrasts causas efficientes and causas finales with one another and makes the demand that one not stand pat with the former, but press on to the latter. According to this distinction, for example, light, warmth, moistness are, of course, to be considered as causae efficientes but not as the causa finalis of the plant's growth, the causa finalis being, of course, nothing other than the concept of the plant itself. – Here it can be noted that standing pat with mere grounds, precisely in the domain of the juridical and the ethical, is generally the standpoint and the principle of the Sophists. When one speaks of sophism, one frequently understands it to be merely the sort of consideration that is concerned with twisting what is right and what is true and presenting things generally in a false light. This tendency, however, does not lie immediately in sophism, the standpoint of which is nothing other than that of rationalization [Räsonnement]. The Sophists made their appearance among the Greeks at a time when mere authority and tradition no longer sufficed for them in religious and ethical domains, and they felt the need to be aware of what was supposed to hold for them and aware of it as a content mediated by thinking. The Sophists met this demand by giving directions for looking for the various viewpoints from which things might be considered, various viewpoints that then are precisely nothing other than grounds. Since, as was previously noted, the ground still has no content, determinate in and for itself, and grounds are to be found for the unlawful and unjust no less than for the ethical and lawful, the decision about what grounds are supposed to hold falls to the subject and it is a matter of the subject's individual disposition and intentions, which grounds it will settle for. By this means, then, the objective basis of what is valid in and for itself, recognized by everyone, is undermined and it is this negative side of sophism that has deservedly given it the previously mentioned, bad reputation. As is well known, Socrates battled the Sophists everywere, not indeed by simply opposing their rationalization with authority and tradition, but rather by dialectically pointing out the untenability of mere grounds and by urging, to the contrary, the consideration of the just and the good, in general the universal and the concept of willing. When one often prefers nowadays not only in discussions about worldly things but even in sermons to go to work in a rationalizing manner and, for example, all possible grounds are given for gratitude to God, then Socrates and even Plato would not have hesitated to declare this as sophistry. For, as I have said, in this case it has to do, not with the content, which can even be the true content, but with the form of the grounds through which everything can be defended, but also attacked. In our rationalizing time, so rich in reflection, one need not have advanced very far in order to know [weiß] how to produce a good ground for everything, even for the worst and most perverted position. Everything that has been ruined in the world has been ruined on good grounds. If one is confronted with specific grounds, one is initially inclined to step back in the face of this; but if one has had the experience of how this works, then one becomes hard of hearing towards this and does not let oneself be further impressed by it.

 Addition. The expression 'existence' (derived from existere) points to a having-gone-forth [Hervorgegangensein] and the concrete existence [Existenz] is the being that has gone forth from the ground, the being re-established through the sublation of the mediation. The essence, as the sublated being, has demonstrated itself to us first as a shining in itself and the determinations of this shining are the identity, the difference, and the ground. This [the ground] is the unity of the identity and the difference and, as such, at the same time the differentiating of itself from itself. But now, as what is differentiated from ground it is just as little the mere difference as it is itself the abstract identity. The ground is the sublating of itself and that in relation to which it sublates itself, the result of its negation, is concrete existence. As what has gone forth from the ground, this [concrete existence] contains the same [the ground] in itself and the ground does not remain back behind concrete existence; instead it is precisely and merely this, to sublate itself and translate itself into concrete existence. This can also be found then in ordinary consciousness to the extent that, when we consider the ground of something, this ground is not something abstractly internal but instead itself in turn something existing concretely [Existierendes]. Thus, for example, we consider a bolt of lightning that has set a building on fire to be the ground of a blaze and, equally, a people's customs and vital connections to be the ground of its constitution. This is now generally the form under which the concretely existing world first presents itself to reflection, as an indeterminate set of concretely existing entities that, as at once reflected in themselves and the other, behave towards one another reciprocally as ground and grounded. In this colourful play of the world as the sum of concretely existing things, a firm foothold nowhere presents itself, everything appearing here merely as relative, conditioned by another and equally conditioning the other. The reflecting understanding makes it its business to investigate and pursue these ubiquitous relations; but the question concerning the final purpose remains unanswered in the process and, hence, with the further development of the logical idea, reason's need to grasp matters conceptually passes beyond this standpoint of mere relativity.

 Addition. When the claim is made that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, this is to be conceded insofar as, by 'knowing', one is supposed to understand apprehending an object in its concrete determinacy; but the thing-in-itself is nothing other than the completely abstract and indeterminate thing in general. Moreover, just as one speaks of the thing-in-itself, one might by the same right also speak of the quality-in-itself, the quantity-in-itself, and equally of all the remaining categories, whereby these categories would have to be understood in their abstract immediacy, that is to say, apart from their development and inner determinacy. To this extent, it must be considered an arbitrary act of the understanding to fix precisely upon the in-itself of the thing alone. Furthermore, the in-itself is also customarily employed for the content of the natural as much as the spiritual world; thus, one speaks of electricity in itself or the plant in itself, for example, and equally of the human being or the state in itself. What is understood by the 'in-itself' of these objects is what rightly and properly pertains to them. The case is here no different from that of the thing-in-itself in general. More specifically, if one stands pat with the mere in-itself of the objects, they are construed, not in terms of the truth about them, but in the one-sided form of mere abstraction. Thus, for example, the human being-in-itself is the child whose task consists, not in obdurately persisting in this abstract and undeveloped in-itselfness, but in becoming also for itself what it is initially in itself – namely, a free and rational being. Similarly, the state-in-itself is the still undeveloped, patriarchal state in which the various political functions residing in the concept of the state have not yet attained their constitutional form in keeping with the concept of them. In the same sense the seed can also be regarded as the plant-in-itself. What should be taken from these examples is that one finds oneself very much in error if one thinks that the in-itself of things or the thing-in-itself in general is something inaccessible for our cognizing. All things are initially in themselves but they are not thereby left at that, and just as the seed which is the plant in itself is only this, to develop itself, so too the thing in general advances beyond its mere in-itself as the abstract reflection-in-itself, proving itself to be reflection-in-another as well, and thus it has properties.

 Addition. All the determinations of reflection recur, as concretely existing, in the thing. Thus, the thing, initially as thing-in-itself, is what is identical with itself. However, the identity is, as we have seen, not devoid of difference, and the properties the thing has are the concretely existing difference in the form of diversity. While the diverse [aspects] earlier proved to be indifferent to one another, and their relation to one another was posited merely by the comparison external to them, we now have in the thing a bond which links the diverse properties to one another. The property, moreover, is not to be confused with the quality. To be sure, one also says that something has qualities. Yet this designation is inappropriate insofar as 'having' suggests a self-standing status that does not yet pertain to something immediately identical with its quality. Something is what it is, thanks to its quality alone; by contrast, the thing, while also existing concretely only insofar as it has properties, is nevertheless not bound to this or that determinate property and thus can even lose that very property without ceasing for that reason to be what it is.

 Addition. Making the properties which the thing has into self-sufficient sorts of matter or stuff of which it consists is grounded, to be sure, in the concept of the thing and, for that reason, is also found in experience. However, it runs counter to thought as well as experience to infer from the fact that certain properties of a thing (for example, the colour, the odour, and so forth) can be exhibited as particular colour-stuff, stuff-for-smelling, and so forth, that by this means everything is accomplished and that, in order to get to the bottom of how things actually are, one has nothing further to do than to analyse things into the sorts of stuff out of which those things are composed. This analysis into self-standing stuff has its proper place only in inorganic nature and it is the chemist's right to analyse cooking salts or gypsum, for example, into the stuff they consist of and then to say that the former consists of hydrochloric acid and sodium bicarbonate and the latter of sulphuric acid and calcium. Similarly, it is right for the geologist to regard granite to be composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica. The sorts of stuff, of which the thing consists, are then in turn themselves partially things that can be again analysed into more abstract sorts of stuff as, for example, sulphuric acid that consists of sulphur and oxygen. Now, while these sorts of stuff or matter can in fact be exhibited as subsisting for themselves, it also frequently happens that other properties of things are similarly regarded as particular materials which, however, are not self-standing in this way. One speaks, for example, of warmth-stuff, of electrical and magnetic matter, sorts of stuff and matter, meanwhile, that are to be considered mere fictions of the understanding. This is generally the manner of abstract reflection by the understanding, arbitrarily seizing upon individual categories that have validity only as determinate stages of development of the idea and then, as it is said, for the purposes of explanation, albeit in contradiction with the unprejudiced observation and experience, wielding these categories in such a way that every object considered is reduced to them. In this manner, then, the way a thing consists of self-standing stuff is also applied in multiple ways to the sorts of domains where it is no longer valid. Even within nature, in the case of organic life, this category proves to be insufficient. One says, indeed, that this animal consists of bones, muscles, nerves, and so forth, but it is immediately apparent that the context here is different from the piece of granite consisting of the aforementioned sorts of matter. These sorts of matter behave in a manner utterly indifferent to their unification and can just as well subsist without the latter. By contrast, the diverse parts and members of the organic body subsist only in their unification and, separate from one another, they cease to exist concretely as such.

 Addition. The diverse sorts of matter of which the thing consists are in themselves the same as one another. By this means we get the one matter in general [die eine Materie überhaupt] in which the difference is posited as external to it, that is to say, as mere form. The construal of things as having altogether one and the same matter and as being diverse merely externally, i.e. in terms of their form, is quite customary for the reflecting consciousness. Matter in this connection is held to be utterly indeterminate in itself yet capable of every determination and, at the same time, absolutely permanent and remaining self-same in every change and every alteration. This indifference of matter to determinate forms is to be found in finite things, to be sure; thus, for example, it is indifferent to a block of marble whether it is given the form of this or that statue or even a pillar. Yet in this connection it should not be overlooked that such matter as a block of marble is only relatively (in relation to the sculptor) indifferent to the form and that it is in no way altogether formless. The mineralogist accordingly considers the merely relatively formless marble as a determinate rock formation in its difference from other, equally determinate formations as, for example, sandstone, porphyry, and the like. Thus, it is merely the abstracting understanding that fixes the matter in isolation and as formless in itself. By contrast, the thought of the matter does indeed contain in itself the principle of the form and, for that reason, too, a formless matter does not occur anywhere, as concretely existing, in experience. Incidentally, the construal of matter as originally on hand and as in itself formless is quite ancient, and we meet it already among the Greeks, first in the mythical form of the chaos which is represented as the formless foundation of the concretely existing world. As a consequence of this representation, God is regarded not as the creator of the world but rather as the mere sculptor of the world, as the demiurge. The deeper intuition, by contrast, is this: that God created the world out of nothing. This is a means of generally articulating that, on the one hand, matter as such is not self-standing and, on the other hand, that the form does not reach the matter from the outside but instead, as a totality, bears within itself the principle of matter, the free and infinite form that will shortly turn out for us to be the concept.