FIRST SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC
THE DOCTRINE OF BEING
§ 84
Being is the notion implicit only: its special forms have the predicate 'is'; 
when they are distinguished they are each of them an 'other': and the shape 
which dialectic takes in them, i.e. their further specialisation, is at once a 
forth-putting and in that way a disengaging of the notion implicit in being; 
and at the same time the withdrawing of being inwards, its sinking deeper 
into itself. Thus the explication of the notion in the sphere of being does 
two things: it brings out the totality of being, and it abolishes the 
immediacy of being, or the form of being as such.
§ 85
Being itself and the special sub-categories of it which follow, as well as 
those of logic in general, may be looked upon as definitions of the Absolute
, or metaphysical definitions of God: at least the first and third categories in 
every triad may - the first, where the thought-form of the triad is formulated 
in its simplicity, and the third, being the return from differentiation to a 
simple self-reference. For a metaphysical definition of God is the 
expression of his nature in thoughts as such: and logic embraces all 
thoughts so long as they continue in the thought-form. The second sub-
category in each triad, where the grade of thought is in its differentiation, 
gives, on the other hand, a definition of the finite.
The objection to the form of definition is that it implies a something in the 
mind's eye on which these predicates may fasten. Thus even the Absolute 
(though it purports to express God in the style and character of thought) in 
comparison with its predicate (which really and distinctly expresses in 
thought what the subject does not) is as yet only an inchoate pretended 
thought - the indeterminate subject of predicates yet to come. The thought, 
which is here the matter of sole importance, is contained only in the 
predicate: and hence the propositional form, like the said subject, viz., the 
Absolute, is a mere superfluity.
QUANTITY, QUALITY AND MEASURE
§ 85n
Each of the three spheres of the logical idea proves to be a systematic 
whole of thought-terms, and a phase of the Absolute. This is the case with 
Being, containing the three grades of quality, quantity and measure.
Quality is, in the first place, the character identical with being: so identical 
that a thing ceases to be what it is, if it loses its quality. Quantity, on the 
contrary, is the character external to being, and does not affect the being at 
all. Thus, e.g. a house remains what it is, whether it be greater or smaller; 
and red remains red, whether it be brighter or darker. 
Measure, the third grade of being, which is the unity of the first two, is a 
qualitative quantity. All things have their measure: i.e. the quantitative 
terms of their existence, their being so or so great, does not matter within 
certain limits; but when these limits are exceeded by an additional more or 
less, the things cease to be what they were. From measure follows the 
advance to the second subdivision of the idea, Essence.
The three forms of being here mentioned, just because they are the first, are 
also the poorest, i.e. the most abstract. Immediate (sensible) consciousness, 
in so far as it simultaneously includes an intellectual element, is especially 
restricted to the abstract categories of quality and quantity.
The sensuous consciousness is in ordinary estimation the most concrete and thus also the richest; but 
that is true only as regards materials, whereas, in reference to the thought it contains, it is really the 
poorest and most abstract.
A. QUALITY
(a) Being
§ 86
Pure Being makes the beginning: because it is on the one hand pure thought
, and on the other immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate; and the first 
beginning cannot be mediated by anything, or be further determined. 

All doubts and admonitions, which might be brought against beginning the 
science with abstract empty being, will disappear if we only perceive what 
a beginning naturally implies. It is possible to define being as 'I = I', as 
'Absolute Indifference' or Identity, and so on. Where it is felt necessary to 
begin either with what is absolutely certain, i.e. certainty of oneself, or with 
a definition or intuition of the absolute truth, these and other forms of the 
kind may be looked on as if they must be the first. But each of these forms 
contains a mediation, and hence cannot be the real first: for all mediation 
implies advance made from a first on to a second, and proceeding from 
something different. If I = I, or even the intellectual intuition, are really 
taken to mean no more than the first, they are in this mere immediacy 
identical with being: while conversely, pure being, if abstract no longer, but 
including in it mediation, is pure thought or intuition. 
If we enunciate Being as a predicate of the Absolute, we get the first 
definition of the latter. The Absolute is Being. This is (in thought) the 
absolutely initial definition, the most abstract and stinted. It is the 
definition given by the Eleatics, but at the same time is also the well-known 
definition of God as the sum of all realities. It means, in short, that we are 
to set aside that limitation which is in every reality, so that God shall be 
only the real in all reality, the superlatively real. Or, if we reject reality, as 
implying a reflection, we get a more immediate or unreflected statement of 
the same thing, when Jacobi says that the God of Spinoza is the principium 
of being in all existence.
§ 86n1
When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought in its merest 
indeterminate: for we cannot determine unless there is both one and 
another: and yet in the beginning there is yet no other. The indeterminate, 
as we have it, is the blank we begin with, not a featurelessness reached by 
abstraction, not the elimination of all character, but the original 
featurelessness which precedes all definite character and is the very first of 
all. And this we call Being. It is not to be felt, or perceived by sense, or 
pictured in imagination: it is only and merely thought, and as such it forms 
the beginning. Essence also is indeterminate, but in another sense: it has 
traversed the process of mediation and contains implicit the determination 
it has absorbed.
§ 86n2
In the history of philosophy the different stages of the logical idea assume 
the shape of successive systems, each based on a particular definition of the 
Absolute. As the logical Idea is seen to unfold itself in a process from the 
abstract to the concrete, so in the history of philosophy the earliest systems 
are the most abstract, and thus at the same time the poorest. The relation 
too of the earlier to the later systems of philosophy is much like the relation 
of the corresponding stages of the logical Idea: in other words, the earlier 
are preserved in the later: but subordinated and submerged. This is the true 
meaning of a much misunderstood phenomenon in the history of 
philosophy - the refutation of one system by another, of an earlier by a 
later. Most commonly the refutation is taken in a purely negative sense to 
mean that the system refuted has ceased to count for anything, has been set 
aside and done for. Were it so, the history of philosophy would be, of all 
studies, most saddening, displaying, as it does, the refutation of every 
system which time has brought forth. Now although it may be admitted that 
every philosophy has been refuted, it must be in an equal degree 
maintained that no philosophy has been refuted. And that in two ways. For 
first, every philosophy that deserves the name always embodies the Idea: 
and secondly, every system represents one particular factor or particular 
stage in the evolution of the Idea. The refutation of a philosophy, therefore, 
only means that its barriers are crossed, and its special principle reduced to 
a factor in the completer principle that follows. 
Thus the history of philosophy, in its true meaning, deals not with a past, 
but with an eternal and veritable present: and, in its results, resembles not a 
museum of the aberrations of the human intellect, but a Pantheon of 
godlike figures. These figures of gods are the various stages of the Idea, as 
they come forward one after another in dialectical development.
To the historian of philosophy it belongs to point out more precisely how 
far the gradual evolution of his theme coincides with, or swerves from, the 
dialectical unfolding of the pure logical Idea. It is sufficient to mention 
here, that logic begins where the proper history of philosophy begins. 
Philosophy began in the Eleatic school, especially with Paremenides. 
Parmenides, who conceives the absolute as Being, says that 'Being alone is 
and Nothing is not'. Such was the true starting point of philosophy, which is 
always knowledge by thought: and here for the first time we find pure 
thought seized and made an object to itself. 
Men indeed thought from the beginning (for thus only were they 
distinguished from the animals). But thousands of years had to elapse 
before they came to apprehend thought in its purity, and to see it in the 
truly objective. The Eleatics are celebrated as daring thinkers. But this 
nominal admiration is often accompanied by the remark that they went too 
far, when they made Being alone true, and denied the truth of every other 
object of consciousness. We must go further than mere Being, it is true: and 
yet it is absurd to speak of the other contents of our consciousness as 
somewhat as it were outside and beside Being, or to say that there are other 
things, as well as Being. The true state of the case is rather as follows. 
Being, as Being, is nothing fixed or ultimate: it yields to dialectic and sinks 
into its opposite, which, also taken immediately, is Nothing. After all, the 
point is that Being is the pure Thought; whatever else you may begin with 
(the I = I, the absolute indifference, or God himself), you begin with a 
figure of materialised conception, not a product of thought; and that, so far 
as its thought-content is concerned, such beginning is merely Being.
§ 87
Nothing
But this mere Being, as it is mere abstraction, is therefore the absolutely 
negative: which, in a similarly immediate aspect, is just Nothing.
(1) Hence was derived the second definition of the Absolute: the Absolute 
is the Nought. In fact this definition is implied in saying that the 
thing-in-itself is the indeterminate, utterly without form and so without 
content - or in saying that God is only the supreme Being and nothing 
more; for this is really declaring him to be the same negativity as above. 
The which the Buddhists make the universal principle, as well as the final 
aim and goal of everything, is the same abstraction.
(2) If the opposition in thought is stated in this immediacy as Being and 
Nothing, the shock of its nullity is too great not to stimulate the attempt to 
fix Being and secure it against the transition into Nothing.
With this intent, reflection has recourse to the plan of discovering some 
fixed predicate for Being, to mark it off from Nothing. Thus we find Being 
identified with what persists amid all change, with matter, susceptible of 
innumerable determinations - or even, unreflectingly, with a single 
existence, any chance object of the senses or of the mind. But every 
additional and more concrete characterisation causes Being to lose that 
integrity and simplicity it had in the beginning. Only in, and by virtue of, 
this mere generality is it Nothing, something inexpressible, whereof the 
distinction from Nothing is a mere intention or meaning.
All that is wanted is to realise that these beginnings are nothing but these 
empty abstractions, one as empty as the other. The instinct that induces us 
to attach a settled import to Being, or to both, is the very necessity which 
leads to the onward movement of Being and Nothing, and gives them a true 
ort concrete significance. This advance is the logical deduction and the 
movement of thought exhibited in the sequel. The reflection which finds a 
profounder connotation for Being and Nothing is nothing but logical 
thought, through which such connotation is evolved, not, however, in an 
accidental, but a necessary way.
Every signification, therefore, in which they afterwards appear, is only a 
more precise specification and truer definition of the Absolute. And when 
that is done, the mere abstract Being and Nothing are replaced by a 
concrete in which both these elements form an organic part. The supreme 
form of Nought as a separate principle would be Freedom: but Freedom is 
negativity in that stage, when it sinks self-absorbed to supreme intensity, 
and is itself an affirmation, and even absolute affirmation.
§ 87n
The distinction between Being and Nought is, in the first place, only 
implicit, and not yet actually made: they only ought to be distinguished. A 
distinction of course implies two things, and that one of them possesses an 
attribute which is not found in the other. Being however is an absolute 
absence of attributes, and so is Nought. Hence the distinction between the 
two is only meant to be; it is a quite nominal distinction, which is at the 
same time no distinction. In all other cases of difference there is some 
common point which comprehends both things. 
Suppose e.g. we speak of two different species: the same genus forms a 
common ground between both. But in the case of mere Being and Nothing, 
distinction is without a bottom to stand upon: hence there can be no 
distinction, both determinations being the same bottomlessness. If it be 
replied that Being and Nothing are both of them thoughts, so that thought 
may be reckoned common ground, the objector forgets that Being is not a 
particular or definite thought, and hence, being quite indeterminate, is a 
thought not to be distinguished from Nothing> It is natural too for us to 
represent Being as absolute riches, and nothing as absolute poverty. But if 
when we wish to view the whole world we can only say that everything is, 
and nothing more, we are neglecting all speciality and, instead of plenitude, 
we have absolute emptiness. The same stricture is applicable to those who 
define God to be mere Being; a definition not a whit better than that of the 
Buddhists, who make God to be Nought, and who from that principle draw 
the further conclusion that self-annihilation is the means by which man 
becomes God.
Becoming 
§ 88
Nothing, if it be thus immediate and equal to itself, is also conversely the 
same as Being is. The truth of Being and of Nothing is accordingly the 
unity of the two: and this unity is Becoming.
(1) The proposition that Being and Nothing is the same seems so 
paradoxical to the imagination or understanding, that it is perhaps taken for 
a joke. And indeed it is one of the hardest things thought expects itself to 
do: for Being and Nothing exhibit the fundamental contrast in all its 
immediacy - that is, without the one term being invested with any attribute 
which would involve its connection with the other. This attribute however, 
as the above paragraph points out, is implicit in them - the attribute which 
is just the same in both. So far the deduction of their unity is completely 
analytical: indeed the whole progress of philosophising in every case, if it 
be a methodical, that is to say a necessary, progress, merely renders explicit 
what is implicit in a notion. It is as correct however to say that Being and 
Nothing are altogether different, as to assert their unity. The one is not 
what the other is. But since the distinction has not at this point assumed 
definite shape (Being and Nothing are still the immediate), it is, in the way 
that they have it, something unutterable, which we merely mean.
(2) No great expenditure of wit is needed to make fun of the maxim that 
Being and Nothing are the same, or rather to adduce absurdities which, it is 
erroneously asserted, are the consequences and illustrations of that maxim.
If Being and Nought are identical, say these objectors, it follows that it 
makes no difference whether my home, my property, the air I breathe, this 
city, the sun, the law, God, are or are not. Now in some of these cases the 
objectors foist in private aims, the utility a thing has for me, and then ask, 
whether it be all the same to me if the thing exist and if it do not. For that 
matter indeed, the teaching of philosophy is precisely what frees man from 
the endless crowd of finite aims and intentions, by making him so 
insensible to them that their existence or non-existence is to him a matter 
of indifference. But it is never to be forgotten that, once mention something 
substantial, and you thereby create a connection with other existences and 
other purposes which are ex hypothesi worth having: and on such 
hypothesis it comes to depend whether the Being or not-Being of a 
determinate subject are the same or not. A substantial distinction is in these 
cases secretly substituted for the empty distinction of Being and Nought.
When a concrete existence is disguised under the name of Being and not-
Being, empty-headedness makes its usual mistake of speaking about, and 
having in mind, an image of something else than what is in question: and in 
this place the question is about abstract Being and Nothing. In others of the 
cases referred to, it is virtually absolute existences and vital ideas and aims, 
which are placed under the mere category of Being and not-Being. But 
there is no more to be said of these concrete objects, than that they merely 
are or are not. Barren abstractions, like Being and Nothing - the initial 
categories which, for that reason, are the scantiest anywhere to be found - 
are utterly inadequate to the nature of these objects. Substantial truth is 
something far above these abstractions and their oppositions. And always 
when a concrete existence is disguised under the name of Being and not-
Being, empty-headedness makes its usual mistake of speaking about, and 
having in mind an image of, something else than what is in question: and in 
this place the question is about abstract Being and Nothing.
(3) It may perhaps be said that nobody can form a notion of the unity of 
Being and Nought. As for that, the notion of the unity is stated in the 
section preceding, and that is all: apprehend that, and you have 
comprehended this unity. What the objector really means by 
comprehension - by a notion - is more than his language properly implies: 
he wants a richer and more complex state of mind, a pictorial conception 
which will propound the notion as a concrete case and one more familiar to 
the ordinary operations of thought. And so long as ordinary 
incomprehensibility means only the want habituation for the effort needed 
to grasp an abstract thought, free from all sensuous admixture, and to seize 
a speculative truth, the reply to the criticism is that philosophical 
knowledge is undoubtedly distinct in kind from the mode of knowledge 
best known in common life, as well as from that which reigns in the other 
sciences. But if to have no notion merely means that we cannot represent in 
imagination the oneness of Being and Nought, the statement is far from 
being true; for everyone has countless ways of envisaging this unity. To say 
that we have no such conception can only mean that in none of these 
images do we recognise the notion in question, and that we are not aware 
that they exemplify it. The readiest example of it is Becoming. Everyone 
has a mental idea of Becoming, and will even allow that it is one idea: he 
will further allow that, when it is analysed, it involves the attribute of 
Being, and also what is the very reverse of Being, viz., Nothing: and that 
these two attributes lie undivided in the one idea: so that Becoming is the 
unity of Being and Nothing. Another tolerably plain example is a 
Beginning. In its beginning, the thing is not yet, but it is more than merely 
nothing, for its Being is already in the beginning. Beginning is itself a case 
of Becoming; only the former term is employed with an eye to the further 
advance. If we were to adopt logic to the more usual method of the 
sciences, we might start with the representation of a Beginning as 
abstractly thought, or with Beginning as such, and then analyse this 
representation; and perhaps people would more readily admit, as a result of 
this analysis, that Being and Nothing present themselves as undivided in 
unity.
(4) It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are the 
same'., or 'The unity of Being and Nothing' - like all other such unities, that 
of subject and object, and others - give rise to reasonable objection. They 
misrepresent the facts by giving an exclusive prominence to the unity and 
leaving the difference which undoubtedly exists in it (because it is Being 
and Nothing, for example, the unity of which is declared) without any 
express mention or notice. It accordingly seems as if diversity had been 
unduly put out of court and neglected. The fact is, no speculative principle 
can be correctly expressed by any such propositional form, for the unity has 
to be conceived in the diversity, which is all the while present and explicit.
'To become' is the true expression for the resultant of 'to be' and 'not to be'; 
it is the unity of the two; but not only is it the unity, it is also inherent 
unrest - the unity, which is no mere reference-to-self and therefore without 
movement, but which through the diversity of Being and Nothing that is in 
it, is at war with itself. Determinate Being on the other hand, is this unity, 
or Becoming in this form of unity: hance all that 'is there and so' is one-
sided and finite. The opposition between the two factors seems to have 
vanished; it is only implied in the unity, it is not explicitly put in it.
(5) The maxim of Becoming, that Being is the passage into Nought, and 
Nought the passage into Being, is controverted by the maxim of Pantheism, 
the doctrine of the eternity of matter, that from nothing comes nothing, and 
that something can only come out of something. The ancients saw plainly 
that the maxim, 'From nothing comes nothing, from something something', 
really abolishes Becoming: for what it comes from and what it becomes are 
one and the same. Thus explained, the proposition is the maxim of abstract 
identity as upheld by the understanding. It cannot but seem strange, 
therefore, to hear such maxims as 'Out of nothing comes nothing: Out of 
something comes something' calmly taught n these days, without the 
teacher being in the least aware that they are the basis of Pantheism, and 
even without his knowing that the ancients have exhausted all that is to be 
said about them.
§ 88n
Becoming is the first concrete thought, and therefore the first notion: 
whereas Being and Nought are empty abstractions. The notion of Being, 
therefore, of which we sometimes speak, must mean Becoming; not the 
mere point of Being, which is empty Nothing, any more than Nothing, 
which is empty Being> in Being then we have Nothing, and in Nothing, 
Being; but this Being which does not lose itself in Nothing is Becoming. 
Nor must we omit the distinction, while we emphasise the unity of 
Becoming; without that distinction we should once more return to abstract 
Being. Becoming is only the explicit statement of what Being is in its truth.
We often hear it maintained that thought is opposed to being. Now, in the 
face of such a statement, our first question ought to be, what is meant by 
being. If we understand being as it is defined by reflection, all that we can 
say of it is what is wholly identical and affirmative. And if we then look at 
thought, it cannot escape us that thought also is at least what is absolutely 
identical with itself. Both therefore, being as well as thought, have the 
same attribute. This identity of being and thought is not however to be 
taken in a concrete sense, as if we could say that a stone, so far as it has 
being, is the same as a thinking man. A concrete thing is always very 
different from the abstract category as such. And in the case of being, we 
are speaking of nothing concrete: for being is the utterly abstract. SO far 
then the question regarding the being of God - a being which is in itself 
concrete above all measure - is of slight importance.
As the first concrete thought-form, Becoming is the first adequate vehicle 
of truth. In the history of philosophy, this stage of the logical Idea finds its 
analogue in the system of Heraclitus. When Heraclitus says 'All is flowing', 
he enunciates Becoming as the fundamental feature of all existence, 
whereas the Eleatics, as already remarked, saw only truth in Being, rigid 
processless Being. Glancing at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then 
goes on to say: Being is no more than not-Being; a statement expressing the 
negativity of abstract Being, and its identity with not-Being, as made 
explicit in Becoming; both abstractions being alike untenable. This may be 
looked upon as the real refutation of one system by another. To refute a 
philosophy is to exhibit the dialectical movement in its principle, and thus 
reduce it to a constituent member of a higher concrete form of the Idea.
Even Becoming however, taken at its best on its own ground, is an 
extremely poor term: it needs to grow in depth and weight of meaning. 
Such deepened force we find e.g. in Life. Life is a Becoming but that is not 
enough to exhaust the notion of life. A still higher form is found in Mind. 
Here too is Becoming, but richer and more intensive than mere logical 
Becoming. The elements whose unity constitute mind are not the bare 
abstracts of Being and Nought, but the system of the logical Idea and of 
Nature.
(b) Being Determinate
§ 89
In Becoming, the Being which is one with Nothing, and the Nothing which 
is one with Being, are only vanishing factors; they are and they are not. 
Thus by its inherent contradiction Becoming collapses into the unity in 
which the two elements are absorbed. This result is accordingly Being 
Determinate (Being there and so).
In this first example we must call to mind, once for all, [that]: the only way 
to secure any growth and progress in knowledge is to hold results fast in 
their truth. There is absolutely nothing whatever in which we cannot and 
must not point to contradictions or opposite attributes; and the abstraction 
made by understanding therefore means a forcible insistence on a single 
aspect, and a real effort to obscure and remove all consciousness of the 
other attribute which is involved. Whenever such contradiction, then, is 
discovered in any object or notion, the usual inference is, Hence this object 
is nothing.
Thus Zeno, who first showed the contradiction native to motion, concluded 
that there is no motion; and the ancients, who recognised origin and 
decease, the two species of Becoming, as untrue categories, made use of 
the expression that the One or Absolute neither arises not perishes. Such a 
style of dialectic looks only at the negative aspect of its result, and fails to 
notice, what is at the same time really present, the definite result, in the 
present case a pure nothing, but a Nothing which includes Being, and, in 
like manner, a Being which includes Nothing. Hence Being Determinate is 
(1) the unity of Being and Nothing, in which we get rid of the immediacy in 
these determinations, and their contradiction vanishes in their mutual 
connection - the unity in which they are only constituent elements. And (2) 
since the result is the abolition of the contradiction, it comes in the shape of 
a simple unity with itself: that is to say, it also is Being with negation or 
determinateness: it is Becoming expressly put in the form of one of its 
elements, viz., Being.
§ 89n
Even our ordinary conception of Becoming implies that somewhat comes 
out of it, and that Becoming therefore has a result. But this conception 
gives rise to the question, how Becoming does not remain mere Becoming, 
but has a result?
The answer to this question follows from what Becoming has already 
shown itself to be. Becoming always contains Being and Nothing in such a 
way, that these two are always changing into each other, and reciprocally 
cancelling each other. Thus Becoming stands before us in utter restlessness 
- unable however to maintain itself in this abstract restlessness: for, since 
Being and Nothing vanish in Becoming (and that is the very notion of 
Becoming), the latter must vanish also. Becoming is as it were a fire, which 
dies out in itself, when it consumes its material. The result of this process 
however is not empty Nothing, but Being identical with the negation - what 
we call Being Determinate (being then and there): the primary import of 
which evidently is that it has become.
Quality
§ 90
(a) Determinate Being is Being with a character or mode - which simply is; 
and such unmediated character is Quality. And as reflected into itself in 
this its character or mode, Determinate Being is a somewhat, as existent. 
The categories, which issue by a closer analysis of Determinate Being, 
need only be mentioned briefly.
§ 90n
Quality may be described as the determinate mode immediate and identical 
with Being - as distinguished from Quantity (to come afterwards), which, 
although a mode of Being, is no longer immediately identical with Being, 
but a mode indifferent and external to it. A something is what it is in virtue 
of its quality, and losing its quality it ceases to be what it is.
Quality, moreover, is completely a category only of the finite, and for that 
reason too it has its proper place in Nature, not in the world of the Mind. 
Thus, for example, in Nature what are styled elementary bodies, oxygen, 
nitrogen, etc., should be regarded as existing qualities. But in the sphere of 
mind, Quality appears in a subordinate way only, and not as if its 
qualitativeness could exhaust any specific aspect of mind. If, for example, 
we consider the subjective mind, which forms the object of psychology, we 
may describe what is called (moral and mental) character, as in logical 
language identical with Quality. This however does not mean that character 
is a mode of being which pervades the soul and is immediately identical 
with it, as is the case in the natural world with elementary bodies before 
mentioned. Yet a more distinct manifestation of Quality as such, in mind 
even, is found in the case of besotted or morbid conditions, especially in 
states of passion and when the passion rises to derangement. The state of 
mind of a deranged person, being one mass of jealousy, fear, etc., may 
suitably be described as Quality.
Reality, Being-for-another & Being-for-self
§ 91
Quality, as determinateness which is, as contrasted with the Negation 
which is involved in it but distinguished from it, is Reality. Negation is no 
longer an abstract nothing, but, as a determinate being and somewhat, is 
only a form of such being - it is as Otherness. Since this otherness, though a 
determination of Quality itself, is in the first instance distinct from it, 
Quality is Being-for-another - an expansion of the mere point of 
Determinate Being, or of Somewhat. The Being as such of Quality, 
contrasted with this reference to somewhat else, is Being-for-self 
§ 91n
The foundation of all determinateness is negation. The unreflecting 
observer supposes that determinate things are merely positive, and pins 
them down under the form of being. Mere being however is not the end of 
the matter: it is, as we have already seen, utter emptiness and instability 
besides. Still, when abstract being is confused in this way with being 
modified and determinate, it implies some perception of the fact that, 
though in determinate being there is involved an element of negation, this 
element is at first wrapped up, as it were, and only comes to the front and 
receives its due in Being-for-self. If we go on to consider determinate 
Being as a determinateness which is, we get in this way what is called 
Reality.
We speak, for example, of the reality of a plan or a purpose, meaning 
thereby that they are no longer inner and subjective, but have passed into 
being-there-and-then. In the same sense the body may be called the reality 
of the soul, and the law the reality of freedom, and the world altogether the 
reality of the divine idea. The word 'reality' is however used in another 
acceptation to mean that something behaves conformably to its essential 
characteristic or notion. For example, we use the expression: This is a real 
occupation; This is a real man. Here the term does not merely mean 
outward and immediate existence: but rather that some existence agrees 
with its notion. In which sense, be it added, reality is not distinct from the 
ideality which we shall in the first instance become acquainted with in the 
shape of Being-for-self.

[Omitted: §92 Limit, §93 Alteration, §94 Infinity, §95 Ideality]
(c) Being-for-self
§ 96
Being-for-self, as reference to itself, is immediacy, and as reference of the 
negative to itself, is a self-subsistent, the One. This unit, being without 
distinction in itself, thus excludes the other from itself.
To be for self - to be one - is completed Quality, and as such, contains 
abstract Being and Being modified a non-substantial elements. As simple 
Being, the One is simple self-reference; as Being modified it is 
determinate: but the determinateness is not in this case a finite 
determinateness - a somewhat in distinction from an other - but infinite, 
because it contains distinction absorbed and annulled in itself.
The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the 'I'. We know 
ourselves as existents, distinguished in the first place from other existents, 
and with certain relations thereto. But we also come to know this expansion 
of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it were, to a point in the simple 
form of being-for-self. When we say 'I', we express this reference-to-self 
which is infinite, and at the same time negative. Man, it may be said, is 
distinguished from the animal world, and in that way from our nature 
altogether, by knowing himself as 'I': which amounts to saying that natural 
things never attain free Being-for-self, but as limited to Being-there-and-
then, are always and only Being for another.
Again, Being-for-self may be described as ideality, just as Being-there-and-
then was described as reality. It is said that besides reality there is also an 
ideality. Thus the two categories are made equal and parallel. Properly 
speaking, ideality is not somewhat outside of and beside reality: the notion 
of ideality just lies in its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when 
reality is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, it is at once seen to be 
ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper estimation, when you 
allow that reality is not all in all, but that an ideality must be recognised 
outside of it. Such an ideality, external to or it may even be beyond reality, 
would be no better than an empty name. Ideality only has a meaning when 
it is the ideality of something: but this something is not a mere indefinite 
this or that, but existence characterised as reality, which, if retained in 
isolation, possesses no truth. The distinction between Nature and Mind is 
not improperly conceived, when the former is traced back to reality, and 
the latter so fixed and complete as to subsist even without Mind: in Mind it 
first, as it were, attains its goal and its truth. And similarly, Mind on its part 
is not merely a world beyond Nature and nothing more: it is really, and 
with full proof, seen to be mind, only when it involves Nature as absorbed 
in itself. Apropos of this, we should note the double meaning of the 
German word aufheben (to put by or set aside). We mean by it (1) to clear 
away, or annul: thus, we say, a law or regulation is set aside; (2) to keep, or 
preserve: in which sense we use it when we say: something is well put by. 
This double usage of language, which gives to the same word a positive 
and negative meaning, is not an accident, and gives no ground for 
reproaching language as a cause of confusion. We should rather recognise 
in it the speculative spirit of our language rising above the me 'either-or' of 
understanding.

[Omitted: §97 Many - §98 Repulsion & Attraction]
Attraction and Repulsion
SL§98n1
The Atomic philosophy forms a vital stage in the historical evolution of the 
Idea. The principle of that system may be described as Being-for-itself in 
the shape of the Many. At present, students of nature who are anxious to 
avoid metaphysics turn a favourable ear to Atomism. But it is not possible 
to escape metaphysics and cease to trace nature back to terms of thought, 
by throwing ourselves into the arms of Atomism. The atom, in fact, is itself 
a thought; and hence the theory which holds matter to consist of atoms is a 
metaphysical theory.
Newton gave physics an express warning to beware of metaphysics, it is 
true, but to his honour be it said, he did not by any means obey his own 
warning. The only mere physicists are the animals: they alone do not think: 
while man is a thinking being and a born metaphysician. The real question 
is not whether we shall apply metaphysics, but whether our metaphysics are 
of the right kind: in other words, whether we are not, instead of the 
concrete logical Idea, adopting one-sided forms of thought, rigidly fixed by 
understanding, and making these the basis of our theoretical as well as our 
practical work. It is on this ground that one objects to the Atomic 
philosophy.
To Kant we owe the completed theory of matter as the unity of repulsion 
and attraction. The theory is correct, so far as it recognises attraction to be 
the other of the two elements involved in the notion of being-for-self: and 
to be an element no less essential than repulsion to constitute matter. Still, 
this dynamic construction of matter, as it is termed, has the fault of taking 
for granted, instead of deducing, attraction and repulsion. Had they been 
deduced, we should then have seen the How and Why of a unity which is 
merely asserted. Kant ... [insisted that] matter must be regarded as 
consisting solely in their unity. ...
Quantity and Quality
SL§98n2
The transition from Quality to Quantity, indicated in the paragraph before 
us, is not found in our ordinary way of thinking, which deems each of these 
categories to exist independently beside the other. We are in the habit of 
saying that things are not merely qualitatively, but also quantitatively 
defined; but whence these categories originate, and how they are related to 
each other, are questions not further examined. The fact is, quantity just 
means quality superseded and absorbed: and it is by the dialectic of quality 
here examined that this supersession is effected.
First of all, we had Being: as the truth of Being, came Becoming: which 
formed the passage into Being Determinate: and the truth of that we found 
to be Alteration. And in its result Alteration showed itself to be Being-for-
self, finally, in the two sides of the process, Repulsion and Attraction, was 
clearly seen to annul itself, and thereby to annul quality in the totality of its 
stages.
Still this superseded and absorbed quality is neither an abstract nothing, nor 
an equally abstract and featureless being: it is only being as indifferent to 
determinateness or character. This aspect of being is also what appears as 
quantity in our ordinary conceptions. We observe things, first of all, with an 
eye to their quality - which we take to be the character identical with the 
being of the thing. If we proceed to consider their quantity, we get the 
conception of an indifferent and external character or mode, of such a kind 
that a thing remains what it is, though its quantity is altered, and the thing 
becomes greater or less.
B. QUANTITY
(a) Pure Quantity
§ 99
Quantity is pure Being, where the mode or character is no longer taken as 
one with the being itself, but explicitly put as superseded or indifferent.
(1) The expression Magnitude especially marks determinate Quantity, and 
is for that reason not a suitable name for Quantity in general. (2) 
Mathematics usually define magnitude as what can be increased or 
diminished. This definition has the defect of containing the thing to be 
defined over again: but it may serve to show that the category of magnitude 
is explicitly understood to be changeable and indifferent, so that, in spite of 
its being altered by an increased extension or intension, the thing - a house, 
for example - does not cease to be a house, and red to be red. (3) The 
Absolute is pure Quantity. This point of view is on the whole the same as 
when the Absolute is defined to be Matter, in which, though form 
undoubtedly is present, the form is a characteristic of no importance one 
way or another. Quantity too constitutes the main characteristic of the 
Absolute, when the Absolute is regarded as absolute indifference, and only 
admitting of quantitative distinction. Otherwise pure space, time, etc., may 
be taken as examples of Quantity, if we allow ourselves to regard the real 
as whatever fills up space and time, it matters not with what.
... If quantity is not reached through the action of thought, but taken 
uncritically from our generalised image of it, we are liable to exaggerate 
the range of its validity, or even to raise it to the height of an absolute 
category. And that such a danger id real, we see when the title of exact 
science is restricted to those sciences the objects of which can be submitted 
to mathematical calculation. Here we have another trace of the bad 
metaphysics (mentioned in s 98n) which replace the concrete idea by 
partial and inadequate categories of understanding. Our knowledge would 
be in a very awkward predicament if such objects as freedom, law, 
morality, or even God himself, because they cannot be measured and 
calculated, or expressed in a mathematical formula, were to be reckoned 
beyond the reach of exact knowledge, and e had to put up with a vague 
generalised image of them, leaving their details or particulars to the 
pleasure of each individual, to make out of them what he will. The 
pernicious consequences, to which such a theory gives rise in practice, are 
at once evident. And this mere mathematical view, which identifies with 
the Idea one of its special stages, viz., quantity, is no other than the 
principle of Materialism. Witness the history of the scientific modes of 
thought, especially in France since the middle of last century. Matter in the 
abstract is just what, though of course there is form in it, has that form only 
as an indifferent and external attribute. ...

[The remainder of this section has been omitted - including §101 Quantum, 
§102 Number, §103 Degree, §104 Infinite/Finite and §105 Quantitative 
Ratio, §106 - up to Measure, which completes THE DOCTRINE OF 
BEING] 
C. MEASURE
§107
Measure is the qualitative quantum, in the first place as immediate - a 
quantum, to which a determinate being or a quality is attached.
§107n
Measure, where quality and quantity are in one, is thus the completion of 
Being. Being, as we first apprehend it, is something utterly abstract and 
characterless; but it is the very essence of Being to characterise itself, and 
its complete characterisation is reached in Measure. Measure, like the other 
stages of Being, may serve as a definition of the Absolute; God, it has been 
said, is the Measure of all things. It is this idea which forms the ground-
note of many of the ancient Hebrew hymns, in which the glorification of 
God tends in the main to show that he has appointed to everything its 
bound: to the sea and the solid land, to the rivers and mountains; and also 
to the various kinds of plants and animals. To the religious sense of the 
Greeks the divinity of measure, especially in respect of social ethics, was 
represented by Nemesis. That conception implies a general theory that all 
human beings, riches, honour, and power, as well as joy and pain, have 
their definite measure, the transgression of which brings ruin and 
destruction. In the world of objects too, we have measure. We see, in the 
first place, existences in Nature, of which measure forms the essential 
structure. This is the case, for example, with the solar system, which may 
be described as the realm of free measures. As we next proceed to the study 
of inorganic nature, measure retires, as it were, into the background; at 
least we often find the quantitative and qualitative characteristics showing 
indifference to each other. Thus the quality of a rock or a river is not tied to 
a definite magnitude.
But even these objects when closely inspected are found to be not quite 
measureless: the water of a river, and the single constituents of a rock, 
when chemically analysed, are seen to be qualities conditioned by the 
quantitative ratios between the matters they contain. In organic nature, 
however, measure again rises into immediate perception. The various kinds 
of plants and animals, in the whole as well as in their parts, have a certain 
measure: though it is worth noticing that the more imperfect forms, those 
which are least removed from inorganic nature, are partly distinguished 
from the higher forms by the greater indefiniteness of their measure. Thus 
among fossils we find some ammonites discernible only by the microscope 
and others as large as a cart-wheel. The same vagueness of measure 
appears in several plants, which stand on a low level of organic 
development - for instance ferns.
[omitted: §108 - 111]
§ 111n
The process of measure, instead of being only the wrong infinite of an 
endless progression, in the shape of an ever-recurrent recoil from quality to 
quantity and from quantity to quality, is also a true infinity of coincidence 
with self in other. In measure, quality and quantity originally confront each 
other, like some and other. But quality is implicitly quantity and conversely 
quantity is implicitly quality. In the process of measure, therefore, these 
two pass into each other: each of them becomes what it already was 
implicitly: and thus we get Being thrown into abeyance and absorbed, with 
its several characteristics negatived. Such Being is Essence. Measure is 
implicitly Essence; and its process consists in realising what it is implicitly. 
The ordinary consciousness conceives things as being, and studies them in 
quality, quantity, and measure. These immediate characteristics, however, 
soon show themselves to be not fixed but transient; and Essence is the 
result of their dialectic.
In the sphere of Essence one category does not pass into another, but refers 
to another merely. In Being, the forms of reference is purely due to our 
reflection on what takes place: but it is the special and proper characteristic 
of Essence. In the sphere of Being, when somewhat becomes another, the 
somewhat has vanished. Not so in Essence: here there is no real other, but 
only diversity, reference of the one to its other. The transition of Essence is 
therefore at the same time no transition: for in the passage of different into 
different, the different does not vanish: the different terms remain in their 
relation. When we speak of Being and Nought, Being is independent, so is 
Nought. The case is otherwise with the Positive and the Negative. No doubt 
these possess the characteristic of Being and Nought. But the Positive by 
itself has no sense; it is wholly in reference to the negative. And it is the 
same with the negative. In the sphere of Being the reference of one term to 
another is only implicit; in Essence on the contrary it is explicit. And this in 
general is the distinction between the forms of Being and Essence: in Being 
everything is immediate, in Essence everything is relative.