SECOND SUBDIVISION OF LOGIC
The Doctrine of Essence
§SL112
The terms in Essence are always mere pairs of correlatives, and yet not 
absolutely reflected in themselves: hence in essence the actual unity of the 
notion is not yet realised, but only postulated by reflection. Essence - which 
is Being coming into mediation with itself through the negativity of itself - 
is self-relatedness, only in so far as it is relation to an Other - this Other 
however coming to view at first not as something which is, but as 
postulated and hypothesised.
Being has not vanished: but, firstly, Essence, as simple self-relation, is 
Being, and secondly as regards its one-sided characteristic of immediacy, 
Being is deposed to a mere negative, to a seeming or reflected light - 
Essence accordingly is Being thus reflecting light into itself.
The Absolute is the Essence. This is the same definition as the previous one 
that the Absolute is Being, in so far as Being likewise is simple self-
relation. But it is at the same time higher, because Essence is Being that 
has gone into itself: that is to say, the simple self-relation (in Being) is 
expressly put as negation of the negative, as immanent self-mediation. 
Unfortunately, when the Absolute is defined to be Essence, the negativity 
which this implies is often taken only to mean the withdrawal of all 
determinate predicates. This negative action of withdrawal or abstraction 
thus falls outside of the Essence - which is thus left as a mere result apart 
from its premises - the caput mortuum of abstraction. But as this negativity, 
instead of being external to Being, is its own dialectic, the truth of the 
latter, viz., Essence, will be Being as retired within itself - immanent Being.
That reflection,, or light thrown into itself, constitutes the distinction 
between Essence and immediate Being, and is the peculiar characteristic of 
Essence itself.
§SL112n
Any mention of Essence implies that we distinguish it from Being: the 
latter is immediate, and, compared with the Essence, we look upon it as 
mere seeming. But this seeming is not an utter nonentity and nothing at all, 
but Being superseded and put by. The point of view given by the Essence is 
in general the standpoint of 'Reflection'. This word 'reflection' is originally 
applied, when a ray of light in a straight line impinging upon the surface of 
a mirror is thrown back from it. In this phenomenon we have two things - 
first an immediate fact which is, and secondly the deputed, derivated, or 
transmitted phase of the same. Something of this sort takes place when we 
reflect, or think upon an object: for here we want to know the object, not in 
its immediacy, but as derivative or mediated. The problem or aim of 
philosophy is often represented as the ascertainment of the essence of 
things: a phrase which only means that things, instead of being left in their 
immediacy, must be shown to be mediated by, or based upon, something 
else. The immediate Being of things is thus conceived under the image of a 
rind or curtain behind which the Essence is hidden.
Everything, it is said, has an Essence; that is, things really are not what they 
immediately show themselves. There is something more to be done than 
merely rove from one quality to another, and merely to advance from 
qualitative to quantitative, and vice versa: there is a permanence in things, 
and that permanence is in the first instance their Essence.
With respect to other meanings and uses of the category of Essence, we 
may note that in the German auxiliary verb, sein (to be), the past tense is 
expressed by the term for Essence (wesen): we designate past being as 
gewesen. This anomaly of language implies to some extent a correct 
perception of the relation between Being and Essence. Essence we may 
certainly regard as past Being, remembering however meanwhile that the 
past is not utterly denied, but only laid aside and thus at the same time 
preserved.
... the category of Essence is often liable to an abstract use, by which, in the 
study of anything, its Essence is held to be something unaffacted by, and 
subsisting in independence of, its definite phenomenal embodiment. Thus 
we say, for example, of people, that the great thing is not what they do or 
how they behave, but what they are. This is correct, if it means that a man's 
conduct should be looked at, not in its immediacy, but only as it is 
explained by his inner self, and as a relevation of that inner self. Still it 
should be remembered that the only means by which the Essence and the 
inner self can be verified is their appearance in outward reality; whereas 
the appeal which men make to the essential life, as distinct from the 
material facts of conduct, is generally prompted by a desire to assert their 
own subjectivity and to elude an absolute and objective judgement.
§SL113
Identity
Self-relation in Essence is the form of Identity or of reflection-into-self, 
which has here taken the place of the immediacy of Being. They are both 
the same abstraction - self-relation.
The unintelligence of sense, to take everything limited and finite for Being, 
passes into the obstinacy of understanding, which views the finite as self-
identical, not inherently self-contradictory.
The Unessential
§SL114
This identity, as it descended from Being, appears not in the first place only 
charged with the characteristics of Being, and referred to Being as to 
something external. This external Being, if taken in separation from the 
true Being (of Essence), is called the Unessential. But that turns out to be a 
mistake. Because Essence is Being-in-self, it is essential only to the extent 
that it has in itself its negative, i.e. reference to another, or mediation. 
Consequently, it has the unessential as its own proper seeming (reflection) 
in itself. But in seeming or mediation there is distinction involved: and 
since what is distinguished (as distinguished from identity out of which it 
arises, and in which it is not, or lies as seeming) receives itself the form of 
identity, the semblance is still not in the mode of Being, or of self-related 
immediacy.
The sphere of Essence thus turns out to be a still imperfect combination of 
immediacy and mediation. In it every term is expressly invested with the 
character of self-relatedness, while yet at the same time one is forced 
beyond it. It has Being - reflected being, a being in which another shows, 
and which shows in another. And so it is also the sphere in which the 
contradiction, still implicit in the sphere of Being, is made explicit.
As this one notion is the common principle underlying all logic, there 
appear in the development of Essence the same attributes or terms as in the 
development of Being, but in reflex form. Instead of Being and Nought we 
have now the forms of Positive and Negative; the former at first as Identity 
corresponding to pure and uncontrasted Being, the latter developed 
(showing in itself) as Difference. So also, we have Being represented by the 
Ground of determinate Being: which shows itself, when reflected upon the 
Ground, as Existence.
The theory of Essence is the most difficult branch of Logic. It includes the 
categories of metaphysic and of the sciences in general. These are the 
products of reflective understanding, which, while it assumes the 
differences to possess a footing of their own, and at the same time also 
expressly affirms their relativity, still combines the two statements, side by 
side, or one after the other, by an 'also', without bringing these thoughts into 
one, or unifying them into the notion.

A. ESSENCE AS GROUND OF EXISTENCE
(a) The pure principle or categories of Reflection 
(i) Identity: 
§SL115
The Essence lights up in itself or is mere reflection: and therefore is only 
self-relation, not as immediate but as reflected. And that reflex relation is 
self-identity.
This identity becomes an Identity, in form only, or of the understanding, if 
it be held hard and fast, quite aloof from difference. Or, rather, abstraction 
is the imposition of this Identity of form, the transformation of something 
inherently concrete into this form of elementary simplicity. And this may 
be done in two ways. Either we may neglect a part of the multiple features 
which are found in the concrete thing (by what is called analysis) and select 
only one of them; or, neglecting their variety, we may concentrate the 
multiple character into one.
If we associate Identity with the Absolute, making the Absolute the subject 
of a proposition, we get: The Absolute is what is identical with itself. 
However, true this proposition may be, it is doubtful whether it be meant in 
its truth: and therefore it is at least imperfect in the expression. For it is left 
undecided, whether it means the abstract Identity of understanding- 
abstract. that is, because contrasted with the other characteristics of 
Essence - or the Identity which is inherently concrete. In the latter case, as 
will be seen, true identity is first discoverable in the Ground, and, with a 
higher truth, in the Notion. Even the word Absolute is often used to mean 
more than 'abstract'. Absolute space and absolute time, for example, is 
another way of saying abstract space and abstract time.
When the principles of Essence are taken as essential principles of thought 
they become predicates of a presupposed subject, which, because they are 
essential, is 'everything'. The propositions thus arising have been stated as 
universal Laws of Thought. Thus the first of them, the maxim of Identity, 
reads: Everything is identical with itself, A = A: and negatively, A cannot at 
the same time be A and Not-A. This maxim, instead of being a true law of 
thought, is nothing but the law of abstract understanding. The propositional 
form itself contradicts it: for a proposition always promises a distinction 
between subject and predicate; while the present one does not fulfil what 
its form requires. But the Law is particularly set aside by the following so-
called Laws of Thought, which make laws out of its opposite. It is asserted 
that the maxim of Identity, though it cannot be proved, regulates the 
procedure of every consciousness, and that experience shows it to be 
accepted as soon as its terms are apprehended. To this alleged experience 
of the logic-books may be opposed the universal experience that no mind 
thinks or forms conceptions or speaks in accordance with this law, and that 
no existence of any kind whatever conforms to it.
Utterances after the fashion of this pretended law (A planet is a planet; 
Magnetism is magnetism; Mind is Mind) are, as they deserve to be, reputed 
silly. That is certainly a matter of general experience. The logic which 
seriously propounds such laws and the scholastic world in which alone they 
are valid have long been discredited with practical common sense as well 
as with the philosophy of reason.
Identity is, in the first place, the repetition of what we had earlier as Being, 
but as become, through supersession of its character of immediateness. It is 
therefore Being as Ideality. It is important to come to a proper 
understanding on the true meaning of Identity; and, for that purpose, we 
must especially guard against taking it as abstract identity, to the exclusion 
of all Difference. That is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad 
philosophy from what alone deserves the name of philosophy. Identity in its 
truth, as an Ideality of what immediately is, is a high category for our 
religious modes of mind as well as all other forms of thought and mental 
activity. The true knowledge of God, it may be said, begins when we know 
him as identity - as absolute identity. To know so much is to see all the 
power and glory of the world sinks into nothing in God's presence, and 
subsists only as the reflection of his power and his glory. In the same way, 
Identity, as self-consciousness, is what distinguishes man from nature, 
particularly from the brutes which never reach the point of comprehending 
themselves as 'I'; that is, pure self-contained unity. So again, in connection 
with thought, the main thing is not to confuse the true Identity, which 
contains Being and its characteristics ideally transfigured in it, with an 
abstract Identity, identity of bare form. All the charges of narrowness, 
hardness, meaninglessness, which are so often directed against thought 
from the quarter of feeling and immediate perception rest on the perverse 
assumption that thought acts only as a faculty of abstract Identification. 
The Formal Logic itself confirms this assumption by laying down the 
supreme law of thought (so-called) which has been discussed above. If 
thinking were no more than an abstract Identity, we could not but own it to 
be a most futile and tedious business. No doubt the notion, and the idea too, 
are identical with themselves: but identical only in so far as they at the 
same time involve distinction.
(ii) Difference
§SL116
Essence is mere Identity and reflection in itself only as it is self-relating 
negativity, and in that way self-repulsion. It contains therefore essentially 
the characteristic of Difference.
Other-being is here no longer qualitative, taking the shape of the character 
or limit. It is now in essence, in self-relating essence, and therefore the 
negation is at the same time a relation - is, in short, Distinction, Relativity, 
Mediation.
To ask 'How Identity comes to Difference' assumes that Identity as mere 
abstract Identity is something of itself, and Difference also something else 
equally independent. This supposition renders an answer to the question 
impossible. If Identity is viewed as diverse from Difference, all that we 
have in this way is but Difference; and hence we cannot demonstrate the 
advance to difference, because the person who asks for the How of the 
progress thereby implies that for him the starting-point is non-existent. The 
question then when put to the test has obviously no meaning, and its 
proposer may be met with the question what he means by Identity; 
whereupon we should soon see that he attaches no idea to it at all, and that 
Identity is for him an empty name. As we have seen, besides, Identity is 
undoubtedly a negative - not however an abstract empty Nought, but the 
negation of Being and its characteristics. Being so, Identity is at the same 
time self-relation, and, what is more, negative self-relation; in other words, 
it draws a distinction between it and itself.
Diversity
§SL117
Difference is first of all (1) immediate difference, i.e. Diversity or Variety. 
In Diversity the different things are each individually what they are, and 
unaffected by the relation in which they stand to each other. This relation is 
therefore external to them. In consequence of the various things being thus 
indifferent to the difference between them, it falls outside them into a third 
thing, the agent of Comparison. This external difference, as an identity of 
the objects related, is Likeness; as a non-identity of them, is Unlikeness.
The gap which understanding allows to divide these characteristics is so 
great that although comparison has one and the same substratum for 
likeness and unlikeness, which are explained to be different aspects and 
points of view in it, still likeness by itself is the first of the elements alone, 
viz., identity, and unlikeness by itself is difference.
Diversity has, like Identity, been transformed into a maxim: 'Everything is 
various or different': or 'There are no two things completely like each other'. 
Here Everything is put under a predicate, which is the reverse of the 
identity attributed to it in the first maxim: and therefore under a law 
contradicting the first. However, there is an explanation. As the diversity is 
supposed due only to external circumstances, anything taken per se is 
expected and understood always to be identical with itself, so that the 
second law need not interfere with the first. But, in that case, variety does 
not belong to the something or everything in question: it constitutes no 
intrinsic characteristic of the subject: and the second maxim on this 
showing does not admit of being stated at all. If, on the other hand, the 
something itself is, as the maxim says, diverse, it must be in virtue of its 
own proper character: but in this case the specific difference, and not 
variety as such, is what is intended. And this is the meaning of the maxim 
of Leibniz.
§SL117n
When understanding sets itself to study Identity, it has already passed 
beyond it, and is looking at Difference in the shape of bare Variety. If we 
follow the so-called law of Identity, and say, The sea is the sea, The air is 
the air, The moon is the moon, these objects pass for having no bearing on 
one another. What we have before us therefore is not Identity, but 
Difference. We do not stop at this point, however, or regard things merely 
as different. We compare them one with another, and then discover the 
features of likeness and unlikeness. The work of the finite sciences lies to a 
great extent in the application of these categorise, and the phrase 'scientific 
treatment' generally means no more than the method which has for its aim 
comparison of the objects under examination. This method has 
undoubtedly led to some important results; we may particularly mention 
the great advance of modern times in the provinces of comparative 
anatomy and comparative linguistics. But it is going too far to suppose that 
the comparative method can be employed with equal success in all 
branches of knowledge. Not - and this must be emphasised - can mere 
comparison ever ultimately satisfy the requirements of science. Its results 
are indeed indispensable, but they are still labours only preliminary to truly 
intelligent cognition.
If it be the office of comparison to reduce existing differences to Identity, 
the science which most perfectly fulfils that end is mathematics. The 
reason of that is that quantitative difference is only the difference which is 
quite external. Thus, in geometry, a triangle and a quadrangle, figures 
qualitatively different, have this qualitative difference discounted by 
abstraction, and are equalised to one another in magnitude. It follows from 
what has been said formerly about mere Identity of understanding that, as 
has also been pointed out (s. 99), neither philosophy nor the empirical 
sciences need envy this superiority of Mathematics.
The story is told that when Leibniz propounded the maxim of Variety, the 
cavaliers and ladies of the court, as they walked round the garden, made 
efforts to discover two leaves indistinguishable from each other, in order to 
confute the law stated by the philosopher. Their device was unquestionably 
a convenient method of dealing with metaphysics - one which has not 
ceased to be fashionable. All the same, as regards the principle of Leibniz, 
difference must be understood to mean not an external and indifferent 
diversity merely, but difference essential. Hence the very nature of things 
implies that they must be different.
Likeness and Unlikeness
§SL118
Likeness is an identity only of those things which are not the same, not 
identical with each other: and Unlikeness is a relation of things alike. The 
two therefore do not fall on different aspects or points of view in the thing, 
without any mutual affinity, but one throws light into the other. Variety 
thus comes to be reflexive difference or difference (distinction) implicit 
and essential, determinate or specific difference. 
Difference and identity in natural science
§SL118n
While things merely various show themselves unaffected by each other, 
likeness and unlikeness on the contrary are a pair of characteristics which 
are in completely reciprocal relation. This advance from simple variety to 
opposition appears in our common acts of thought when we allow that 
comparison has a meaning only upon the hypothesis of an existing 
difference, and that on the other hand we can distinguish only on the 
hypothesis of existing similarity. Hence, if the problem be the discovery of 
a difference, we attribute no great cleverness to the man who only 
distinguishes those objects, of which the difference is palpable, e.g. a pen 
and a camel: and similarly it implies no very advanced faculty of 
comparison when the objects compared, e.g. a beech and an oak, a temple 
and a church, are near akin. In the case of difference, in short, we like to 
see identity, and in the case of identity, we like to see difference. Within 
the range of empirical sciences, however, the one of these two categories is 
often allowed to put the other out of sight and mind.
Thus the scientific problem at one time is to reduce existing differences to 
identity; on another occasion, with equal one-sidedness, to discover new 
differences. We see this especially in physical science. There the problem 
consists, in the first place, in the continual search for new 'elements', new 
forces, new genera and species. Or, in another direction, it seeks to show 
that all bodies hitherto thought to be simple are compound: and modern 
physicists and chemists smile at the ancients, who were satisfied with four 
elements, and these not simple. Secondly, and on the other hand, mere 
identity is made the chief question. Thus electricity and chemical affinity 
are regarded as the same, and even the organic processes of digestion and 
assimilation are looked upon as a mere chemical operation. Modern 
philosophy has often been nicknamed the Philosophy of Identity. But, as 
was already remarked (s. 103, note) it is precisely philosophy, and in 
particular speculative logic, which lays bare the nothingness of the abstract, 
undifferentiated identity, known to understanding: though it also 
undoubtedly urges its disciples not to rest at mere diversity, but to ascertain 
the inner of all existence.
Difference implicit is essential difference, the Positive and the Negative: 
and this is this way. The Positive is the identical self-relation in such a way 
as not to be the Negative, and the Negative is the different by itself so as 
not to be the Positive. Thus either has an existence of its own in proportion 
as it is not the other. The one is made visible in the other, and is only in so 
far as that other is. Essential difference is therefore Opposition; according 
to which the different is not confronted by any other but by its other. That 
is, either of these two (Positive and Negative) is stamped with a 
characteristic of its own only in its relation to the other: the one is only 
reflected into itself as it is reflected into the other. And so with the other. 
Either in this way is the other's own other.
Difference implicit or essential gives the maxim, Everything is essentially 
distinct; or, as it has also been expressed, Of two opposite predicates the 
one only can be assigned to anything, and there is no third possible. This 
maxim of Contrast or Opposition most expressly controverts the maxim of 
identity: the one says a thing should be only self-relation, the other says it 
must be an opposite, a relation to its other. The native unintelligence of 
abstraction betrays itself by setting in juxtaposition two contrary maxims, 
like these, as laws, without even so much as comparing them. The Maxim 
of Excluded Middle is the maxim of the definite understanding, which 
would fain avoid contradiction, but in so doing falls into it. A must be 
either +A or -A, it says. It virtually declares in these words a third A which 
is neither + nor -, and which at the same time is yet invested with + and - 
characters. . . .
. . . Identity and Opposition are themselves opposed, and the maxim of 
Opposition was taken even for that of Identity, in the shape of the principle 
of Contradiction. A notion, which possesses neither or both of two 
mutually contradictory marks, e.g. a quadrangular circle, is held to be 
logically false. Now though a multiangular circle and a rectilinear arc no 
less contradict this maxim, geometers never hesitate to treat the circle as a 
polygon with rectilineal sides. But anything like a circle (that is to say its 
mere character or nominal definition) is still no notion. In the notion of a 
circle, centre and circumference are equally essential; both marks belong to 
it; and yet centre and circumference are opposite and contradictory to each 
other.
The conception of Polarity, which is so dominant in Physics, contains by 
implication the more correct definition of Opposition. But physics for its 
theory of the laws of thought adheres to the ordinary logic; it might 
therefore well be horrified in case it should ever work out the conception of 
Polarity, and get at the thoughts which are implied in it.
(1) With the positive we return to identity, but in its higher truth as 
identical self-relation, and at the same time with the note that it is not the 
negative. The negative per se is the same as difference itself. The identical 
as such is primarily the yet uncharacterised: the positive on the other hand 
is what is self-identical, but with the mark of antithesis to an other. And the 
negative is difference as such, characterised as not identity. This is the 
difference of difference within its own self.
Positive and negative are supposed to express an absolute difference. The 
two however are at bottom the same: the name of either might be 
transferred to the other. Thus, for example, debts and assets are not two 
particular, self-subsisting species of property. What is negative to the 
debtor is positive to the creditor. A way to the east is also a way to the 
west. Positive and negative are therefore intrinsically conditioned by one 
another, and are only in relation to each other. The north pole of the 
magnet cannot be without the south pole, and vice versa. If we cut a 
magnet in two, we have not a north pole in one piece, and a south pole in 
the other. Similar, in electricity, the positive and the negative are not two 
diverse and independent fluids. In opposition, the different is not 
confronted by an other, but by its other.
Usually we regard different things as unaffected by each other. Thus we 
say: I am a human being, and around me are air, water, animals, and all 
sorts of things. Everything is thus put outside of every other. But the aim of 
philosophy is to banish indifference, and to ascertain the necessity of 
things. By that means the other is seen to stand over against its other. Thus, 
for example, inorganic nature is not to be considered merely something else 
than organic nature, but the necessary antithesis of it. Both are in essential 
relation to one another; and the one of the two is, only in so far as it 
excludes the other from it, and thus relates itself thereto. Nature in like 
manner is not without mind, nor mind without nature. An important step 
has been taken, when we cease in thinking to use phrases like: Of course 
something else is also possible. While we speak, we are still tainted with 
contingency: and all true thinking, we have already said, is a thinking of 
necessity.
In modern physical science the opposition, first observed to exist in 
magnetism as polarity, has come to be regarded as a universal law 
pervading the whole of nature. This would be a real scientific advance, if 
care were at the same time taken not to let mere variety revert without 
explanation, as a valid category, side by side with opposition. Thus at one 
time the colours are regarded as in polar opposition to one another, and 
called complementary colours: at another time they are looked at in their 
indifferent and merely quantitative difference of red, yellow, green, etc.
(2) Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the 
maxim of abstract understanding) we should rather say: Everything is 
opposite. Neither in heaven nor in Earth, neither in the world of mind nor 
of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding 
maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in 
itself. The finitude of things will then lie in the want of correspondence 
between their immediate being, and what they essentially are. Thus, in 
inorganic nature, the acid is implicitly at the same time the base: in other 
words, its only being consists in its relation to its other. Hence also the acid 
is not something that persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort to 
realise what it potentially is. Contradiction is the very moving principle of 
the world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction is unthinkable. The 
only thing correct in that statement is that contradiction is not the end of 
the matter, but cancels itself. But contradiction, when cancelled, does not 
leave abstract identity; for that is itself only one side of the contrariety. The 
proximate result of opposition (when realised as contradiction) is the 
Ground, which contains identity as well as difference superseded and 
deposited to elements in the completer notion.
Contrariety then has two forms. The Positive is the aforesaid various 
(different) which is understood to be independent, and yet at the same time 
not to be unaffected by its relation to its other. The Negative is to be, no 
less independently, negative self-relating, self-subsistent, and yet at the 
same time as Negative must on every point have this its self-relation, i.e. its 
Positive, only in the other. Both Positive and Negative are therefore explicit 
contradiction; both are potentially the same. Both are so actually also; since 
either is the abrogation of the other and of itself. Thus they fall to the 
Ground. Or as is plain, the essential difference, as a difference, is only the 
difference of it from itself, and thus contains the identical: so that to 
essential and actual difference there belongs itself as well as identity. As 
self-relating difference it is likewise virtually enunciated as the self-
identical. And the opposite is in general that which includes the one and its 
other, itself and its opposite. The immanence of essence thus defined is the 
Ground.
(iii) The Ground
§SL121
The Ground is the unity of identity and difference, the truth of what 
difference and identity have turned out to be - the reflection-into-self, 
which is equally a reflection-into-other, and vice-versa. It is essence put 
explicitly as a totality.
The maxim of Ground runs thus: Everything has its Sufficient Ground: that 
is, the true essentiality of any thing is not the predication of it as identical 
with itself, or as different (various), or merely positive, or merely negative, 
but as having its Being in an other, which, being the self-same, is its 
essence. And to this extent the essence is not abstract reflection into self, 
but into an other. The Ground is the essence in its own inwardness; the 
essence is intrinsically a ground; and it is a ground only when it is a ground 
of somewhat, of an other.
...
§SL121n
...
The ground and what is grounded are one and the same content: the 
difference between the two is the mere difference of form which separates 
simple self-relation, one the one hand, from mediation, or derivativeness on 
the other. Inquiry into the grounds of things goes with the point of view 
which, as already noted (s. 112n), is adopted by Reflection. We wish, as it 
were, to see the matter double, first in its immediacy, and secondly in its 
ground, where it is no longer immediate. This is the plain meaning of the 
Law of Sufficient Ground is that things should essentially be viewed as 
mediated. The manner in which Formal Logic establishes this law sets a 
bad example to other sciences. Formal Logic asks these sciences not to 
accept their subject-matter as it is immediately given; and yet herself lays 
down a law of thought without deducing it - in other words, without 
exhibiting its mediation. With the same justice as the logician maintains 
our faculty of thought to be so constituted that we must ask for the ground 
of everything, might the physicist, when asked why a man who falls into 
water is drowned, reply that man happens to be so constituted that he 
cannot live under water; or the jurist, when asked why a criminal is 
punished, reply that civil society happens to be so constituted that crimes 
cannot be left unpunished.
Yet even if logic be excused the duty of giving a ground for the law of 
sufficient ground, it might at least explain what is to be understood by a 
ground. The common explanation, which describes the ground as what has 
a consequence, seems at first glance more lucid and intelligible than the 
preceding definition in logical terms. If you ask however what the 
consequence is, you are told that it is what has a ground; and it becomes 
obvious that the explanation is intelligible only because it assumes what in 
our case has been reached as the termination of an antecedent movement of 
thought. And this is the true business of logic: to show that those thoughts, 
which as usually employed merely float before consciousness neither 
understood nor demonstrated, are really grades in the self-determination of 
thought. It is by no means that they are understood and demonstrated. . . .
EXISTENCE
§SL122
As it first comes, the chief feature of Essence is show in itself and 
intermediation in itself. But when it has completed the circle of 
intermediation, its unity with itself is explicitly put as the self-annulling of 
difference, and therefore of intermediation. Once more then we come back 
to immediacy or Being - but Being in so fas as it is intermediated by 
annulling the intermediation. And that Being is Existence.
The ground is not yet determined by objective principles of its own, nor is 
it an end or final cause: hence it is not active, not productive. An Existence 
only proceeds from the ground. The determinate ground is therefore a 
formal matter: that is to say, any point will do, so long as it is expressly put 
as self-relation, as affirmation, in correlation with the immediate existence 
depending on it. If it be a ground at all, it is a good ground: for the term 
'good' is employed abstractly as equivalent to affirmative; and any point (or 
feature) is good which can in any way be enunciated as confessedly 
affirmative. So it happens that a ground can be found and adduced for 
everything: and a good ground (for example, a good motive for action) may 
effect something or may not, it may have a consequence or it may not. It 
becomes a motive (Strictly so called) and effects something, e.g. through 
its reception into a will; there and there only it becomes active and is made 
a cause.
(b) Existence
§SL123
Existence is the immediate unity of reflection-into-self and reflection-into-
other. It follows from this that existence is the indefinite multitude of 
existents as reflected-into-themselves, which at the same time equally 
throw light upon one another - which, in short, are co-relative, and forma 
world of reciprocal dependence and of infinite interconnection between 
grounds and consequents. The grounds are themselves existences: and the 
existents in like manner are in many directions grounds as well as 
consequents.
§SL123n
The phrase 'Existence' (derived from existere) suggests the fact of having 
proceeded from something. Existence is Being which has proceeded from 
the ground, and has reinstated by annulling its intermediation. The Essence, 
as Being set aside and absorbed, originally came are identity, difference 
and ground. The last is the unity of identity and difference; and because it 
unifies them it has at the same time to distinguish itself from itself. But that 
which is in this way distinguished from the ground is as little mere 
difference as the ground itself is abstract sameness. The ground works its 
own suspension: and when suspended, the result of its negation is 
existence. Having issued from the ground, existence contains the ground in 
it; the ground does not remain, as it were, behind existence, but by its very 
nature supersedes itself and translates itself into existence.
This is exemplified even in our ordinary mode of thinking when we look 
upon the ground of a thing, not as something abstractly inward, but as itself 
also an existent. For example, the lightning-flash which has set a house on 
fire would be considered the ground of the conflagration; or the manners of 
a nation and the conditions of its life would be regarded as the ground of its 
constitution. Such indeed is the ordinary aspect in which the existence 
world originally appears to reflection - ... there is nowhere a firm footing to 
be found: everything bears an aspect of relativity, conditioned by and 
conditioning something else. The reflective understanding makes it its 
business to elicit and trace these connections running out in every direction: 
but the question touching an ultimate design is so far left unanswered, and 
therefore the craving of the reason after knowledge passes with the further 
development of the logical Idea beyond this position of mere relativity.
Thing-in-itself
§SL124
The reflection-on-another of the existent is however inseparable from 
reflection-into-self: the ground is their unity, from which existence has 
issued. The existent therefore includes relativity, and has on its own part its 
multiple interconnections with other existents: it is reflected on itself as its 
ground. The existent is, when so described, a Thing.
The 'thing-in-itself' (or thing in the abstract), so famous in the philosophy of 
Kant, shows itself here in its genesis. It is seen to be the abstract reflection-
on-self, which is so clung to, to the exclusion of reflection-into-other-things 
and of all predication of difference.
The thing-in-itself therefore is the empty substratum for these predicates of 
relation.
§SL124n
If to know means to comprehend an object in its concrete character, then 
the thing-in-itself, which is nothing but the quite abstract and indeterminate 
thing in general, must certainly be as unknowable as it is alleged to be. 
With as much reason however as we speak of the thing-in-itself, we might 
speak of quality-by-itself or quantity-by-itself, and of any other category. 
The expression would then serve to signify that these categories are taken 
in their abstract immediacy, apart from their development and inward 
character. It is no better than a whim of the understanding, therefore, if we 
attach the qualificatory 'in-itself'' to the thing only. But this 'in-itself' is also 
applied to the facts of the mental as well as the natural world: as we speak 
of electricity or of a plant in itself, so we speak of man or the state in-itself.
By this 'in-itself' in these objects, we are meant to understand what they 
strictly and properly are. This usage is liable to the same criticism as the 
phrase 'thing-in-itself'. For if we stick to the mere 'in-itself' of an object, we 
apprehend it not in its truth, but in the inadequate form of mere abstraction. 
Thus the man, in himself, is the child. And what the child has to do is to 
rise out of this abstract and undeveloped 'in-himself' and become 'for 
himself' what he is are first only 'in-himself' - a free and reasonable being. 
Similarly, the state-in-itself is the yet immature and patriarchal state, where 
the various political functions, latent in the notion of the state, have not 
received the full logical constitution which the logic of political principles 
demands.
In the same sense, the germ may be called the plant-in-itself. These 
examples may show the mistake of supposing that the 'thing-in-itself' of 
things is something inaccessible to our cognition. All things are originally 
in-themselves, but that is not the end of the matter. As the germ, being the 
plant-in-itself, means self-development, so the thing in general passes 
beyond its in-itself (the abstract reflection on self) to manifest itself further 
as a reflection on other things. It is this sense that it has properties.
Properties - omitted [Properties of the thing: and their relation to the thing 
is expressed by the word 'have'].
(c) The Thing
§SL125n
In the Thing all the characteristics of reflection recur as existent. Thus the 
thing, in its initial aspect, as the thing-in-itself, is the self-same or identical. 
But identity, it was proved, is not found without difference: so the 
properties, which the thing has, are the existent difference in the form of 
diversity. In the case of diversity of variety each diverse member exhibited 
an indifference to every other, and they had no other relation to each other, 
save what was given by a comparison external to them. But now in the 
thing we have a bond which keeps the various properties in union/ 
Property, besides, should not be confused with quality. No doubt, we also 
say, a thing has qualities. But the phraseology is a misplaced one: 'having' 
hints at an independence, foreign to the 'somewhat', which is still directly 
identical with its quality. Somewhat is what it is only by its quality: 
whereas, though the thing indeed exists only as it has its properties, it is not 
confined to this or that definite property, and can therefore lose it, without 
ceasing to be what it is.

§126 - 127 omitted (Matter and Form)
Matter
Matter, being the immediate unity of existence with itself, is also 
indifferent towards specific character. Hence the numerous diverse matters 
coalesce into the one Matter, or into existence under the reflective 
characteristic of identity. In contrast to this one Matter these distinct 
properties and their external relation which they have to one another in the 
thing, constitute the Form - the reflective category of difference, but a 
difference which exists and is a totality.
This one featureless Matter is also the same as the Thing-in-itself was: only 
the latter is intrinsically quite abstract, while the former essentially implies 
relation to something else, and in the first place to the Form.
§128n omitted.
The Theory of "Matters"
The Thing, being this totality, is a contradiction. On the side of its negative 
unity it is Form in which Matter is determined and deposed to the rank of 
properties (s. 125). At the same time it consists of Matters, which in the 
reflection-of-the-thing-into-itself are as much independent as they are at the 
same time negatived. Thus the thing is the essential existence, in such a 
way as to be an existence that suspends or absorbs itself in itself. In other 
words the thing is an Appearance or Phenomenon.
The negation of the several matters, which is insisted on in the thing no less 
than their independent existent, occurs in Physics as porosity. Each of the 
several matters (coloured matter, odorific matter, and if we believe some 
people, even sound-matter - not excluding caloric, electric matter, etc.) is 
also negated: and in this negation of theirs, or as interpenetrating their 
pores, we find the numerous other independent matters, which, being 
similarly porous, make room in turn for the existence of the rest. Pores are 
not empirical facts; they are figments of the understanding, which uses 
them to represent the element of negation in independent matters. The 
further working-out of the contradictions is concealed by the nebulous 
imbroglio in which all matters are independent and all no less negated in 
each other. If the faculties or activities are similarly hypostatised in the 
mind, their living unity similarly turns to the imbroglio of an action of the 
one on the others.
These pores (meaning thereby not the pores in an organic body, such as the 
pores of wood or of the skin, but those in the so-called 'matters', such as 
colouring matter, caloric, or metals, crystals, etc.) cannot be verified by 
observation. In the same way matter itself - furthermore form which is 
separated from matter - whether that be the thing as consisting of matters, 
or the view that the thing itself subsists and only has proper ties, is all a 
product of the reflective understanding which, while it observes and 
professes to record only what it observes, is rather creating a metaphysic, 
bristling with contradictions of which it is unconscious.
B. APPEARANCE
§131
The Essence must appear or shine forth. Its shining or reflection in it is the 
suspension and translation of it to immediacy, which, while as reflection-
into-self it is matter or subsistence, is also form, reflection-on-something-
else, a subsistence which sets itself aside. To show or shine is the 
characteristic by which essence is distinguished from Being - by which it is 
essence; and it is this show which, when it is developed, shows itself, and is 
Appearance. Essence accordingly is not something beyond or behind 
appearance, but - just because it is the essence which exists - the existence 
is Appearance (Forth-shining).
§ 131n
Existence stated explicitly in its contradiction is Appearance. But 
appearance (forth-showing) is not to be confused with a mere show 
(shining). Show is the proximate truth of Being or immediacy. The 
immediate, instead of being, as we suppose, something independent, 
resting on its own self, is a mere show, and as such it is packed or summed 
up under the simplicity of the immanent essence. The essence is, in the first 
place, the sum total of the showing itself, shining in itself (inwardly); but, 
far from abiding in this inwardness, it comes as a ground forward into 
existence; and this existence being grounded not in itself, but on something 
else, is just appearance. In our imagination we ordinarily combine with the 
term appearance or phenomenon the conception of an indefinite congeries 
of things existing, the being of which is purely relative, and which 
consequently do not rest on a foundation of their own, but are esteemed 
only as passing stages. But in this conception it is no less implied that 
essence dose not linger behind or beyond appearance. Rather it is, we may 
say, the infinite kindness which lets its own show freely issue into 
immediacy, and graciously allows it the joy of existence. The appearance 
which is thus created does not stand on its own feet, and has its being not in 
itself but in something else. ...
...
Appearance is in every way a very important grade of the logical idea. It 
may be said to be the distinction of philosophy from ordinary 
consciousness that it sees the merely phenomenal character of what the 
latter supposes to have a self-subsistent being. The significance of 
appearance however must be properly grasped, or mistakes will arise. To 
say that anything is mere appearance may be misinterpreted to mean that, 
as compared to what is merely phenomenal, there is greater truth in the 
immediate, in that which is. Now, in strict fact, the case is precisely the 
reverse.
Appearance is higher than mere Being - a richer category because it holds 
in combination the two elements of reflection-into-self and reflection-into-
other: whereas Being (or immediacy) is still mere relationlessness, and 
apparently rests upon itself alone. Still, to say that anything is only an 
appearance suggests a real flaw, which consists in this, that Appearance is 
still divided against itself and without intrinsic stability. Beyond and above 
mere appearance comes in the first place Actuality, the third grade of 
Essence, of which we shall afterwards speak. 
In the history of Modern Philosophy, Kant has the merit of first 
rehabilitating this distinction between the common and the philosophic 
modes of thought. He stopped half-way, however, when he attached to 
Appearance a subjective meaning only, and put the abstract essence 
immovable outside it as the thing-in-itself beyond the reach of our 
cognition. 
For it is the very nature of the world of immediate objects to be appearance 
only. Knowing it to be so, we know at the same time, the essence, which, 
far from staying behind or beyond the appearance, rather manifests its own 
essentiality by deposing the world to a mere appearance. One can hardly 
quarrel with the plain man who, in his desire for totality, cannot acquiesce 
in the doctrine of subjective idealism, that we are solely concerned with 
phenomena. The plain man, however, in his desire to save the objectivity of 
knowledge, may very naturally return to abstract immediacy and maintain 
that immediacy to be true and actual. In a little work published under the 
title A Report, Clear as Day, to the Larger Public touching the Proper 
Nature of the Latest Philosophy: an Attempt to force the Reader to 
understand, Fichte examined the opposition between subjective idealism 
and immediate consciousness in a popular form, under the shape of a 
dialogue between the author and the reader, and tried hard to prove that the 
subjective idealist's view was right. In this dialogue the reader complains to 
the author that he has completely failed to place himself in the idealist's 
position, and is inconsolable in the thought that things around him are no 
real things but mere appearances. The affliction of the reader can scarcely 
be blamed when he is expected to consider himself hemmed in by an 
impervious circle of purely subjective conceptions. Apart from this 
subjective view of Appearance, however, we have all reason to rejoice that 
the things which environ us are appearances and not steadfast and 
independent existences; since in that case we should soon perish of hunger, 
both bodily and mental.
(a) The World of Appearances
§132
The Apparent or Phenomenal exists in such a way that its subsistence is 
ipso facto thrown into abeyance or suspended and is only one stage in the 
form itself. The form embraces in it the matter or subsistence as one of its 
characteristics. In this way the phenomenal has its ground in this (form) as 
its essence, its reflection-into-self in contrast with its immediacy, but, in so 
doing, has it only in another aspect of the form. This ground of its is no less 
phenomenal than itself, and the phenomenon accordingly goes on to an 
endless mediation of subsistence by means of form, and thus equally by 
non-subsistence. This endless intermediation is at the same time a unity of 
self-relation; and existence is developed into a totality, into a world of 
phenomena - of reflected finitude. 
(b) Content and Form
§133
Outside one another as the phenomena in this phenomenal world are, they 
form a totality, and are wholly contained in their self-relatedness. In this 
way the self-relation of the phenomenon is completely specified, it has the 
Form in itself: and because it is in this identity, has it as essential 
subsistence. So it comes about that the form is Content: and in its phase is 
the Law of the Phenomenon. When the form, on the contrary, is not 
reflected into self, it is equivalent to the negative of the phenomenon, to the 
non-independent and changeable: and that sort of form is the indifferent or 
External Form. 
The essential point to keep in mind about the opposition of Form and 
Content is that the content is not formless, but has the form in its own self, 
quite as much as the form is external to it. There is thus a doubling of form. 
At one time it is reflected into itself; and then is identical with the content. 
At another time it is not reflected into itself, and then it is external 
existence, which does not at all affect the content. We are here in presence, 
implicitly, of the absolute correlation of content and form: viz., their 
reciprocal revulsion, so that content is nothing but the revulsion of form 
into content, and form nothing but the revulsion of content into form. This 
mutual revulsion is one of the most important laws of thought. But it is not 
explicitly brought out before the Relations of Substance and Causality.
§133n
Form and content are a pair of terms frequently employed by the reflective 
understanding, especially with a habit of looking on the content as the 
essential and independent, the form on the contrary as the unessential and 
dependent. Against this it is to be noted that both are in fact equally 
essential; and that, while a formless content can be as little found as a 
formless matter, the two (content and matter) are distinguished by this 
circumstance, that matter, though implicitly not without form, still in its 
existence manifests a disregard of form, whereas the content, as such, is 
what it is only because the matured form is included in it. Still the form 
still suffers from externality. In a book, for instance, it certainly has no 
bearing upon the content, whether it be written or printed, bound in paper 
or in leather. That however does not in the least imply that apart from such 
an indifferent and external form, the content of the book is itself formless. . 
. .
§134
But immediate existence is a character of the subsistence itself as well as of 
the form: it is consequently external to the character of the content; but in 
an equal degree this externality, which the content has through the factor of 
its subsistence, is essential to it. When thus explicitly stated, the 
phenomenon is relativity or correlation, ...
(c) Relation or Correlation
§135
The immediate relation is that of the Whole and the Parts. The content is 
the whole, and consists of the parts (the form), its counterpart. The parts 
are diverse from one another. It is they that possess independent being. But 
they are parts, only when they are identified by being related to one 
another; or, in so far as they make up the whole, when taken together. But 
this 'together' is the counterpart and negation of the part
. . . The notion of the whole is to contain parts: but if the whole is taken and 
made what its notion implies, i.e. if it is divided, it at once ceases to be a 
whole. Things there are no doubt, which correspond to this relation: but for 
that very reason they are low and untrue existences. We must remember, 
however, what 'untrue' signifies. When it occurs in a philosophical 
discussion, the term 'untrue' does not signify that the thing to which it is 
applied is non-existent. A bad state or a sickly body may exist all the same; 
but these things are untrue, because their notion and their reality are out of 
harmony.
The relation of whole and parts, being the immediate relation, comes easy 
to reflective understanding: and for that reason it often satisfies when the 
question really turns on profounder ties. The limbs and organs for instance, 
of an organic body are not merely parts of it: it is only in their unity that 
they are what they are, and they are unquestionably affected by that unity, 
as they also in turn affect it. These limbs and organs become mere parts, 
only when they pass under the hands of an anatomist, whose occupation be 
it remembered, is not with the living body but with the corpse. . . .
§136
Force and the expression of force.
. . . the explanation of a phenomenon by a Force is a mere tautology. What 
is supposed to remain unknown, therefore, is really nothing but the empty 
form of reflection-into-self, by which alone the Force is distinguished from 
the Exertion - and that form too is something familiar. It is a form that does 
not make the slightest addition to the content and to the law, which have to 
be discovered from the phenomenon alone. Another assurance always 
given is that to speak of forces implies no theory as to their nature: and that 
being so, it is impossible to see why the form of Force has been introduced 
into the sciences at all. In the second place the nature of Force is 
undoubtedly unknown: e are still without any necessity binding and 
connecting its content together in itself, as we are without necessity in the 
content, in so far as it is expressly limited and hence has its character by 
means of another thing outside it.
. . . we speak of the forces of gravity, magnetism, electricity, etc., and in 
psychology of the forces of memory, imagination, will, and all the other 
faculties. All this multiplicity again excites a craving to know these 
different forces as a single whole, nor would this craving be appeased even 
if the several forces were traced back to one common primary force. Such a 
primary force would be really no more than an empty abstraction, with as 
little content as the abstract thing-in-itself. And besides this, the correlation 
of force and manifestation is essentially a mediated correlation (of 
reciprocal dependence), and it must therefore contradict the notion of force 
to view it as primary or resting on itself. . . .
§137
§138
Inward and Outward
§139

§140

§141
The empty abstractions, by means of which the one identical content 
perforce continues in the two correlatives, suspend themselves in the 
immediate transition, the one into the other. The content is itself nothing 
but their identity (§138): and these abstractions are the seeming of essence, 
put as seeming. By the manifestation of force the inward is put into 
existence: but this putting is the mediation by empty abstractions. In its 
own self the intermediating process vanishes to the immediacy, in which 
the inward and the outward are absolutely identical and their difference is 
distinctly no more than assumed and imposed. This identity is Actuality.
C. ACTUALITY
§ 142
Actuality is the unity, become immediate, of essence with existence, or of 
inward with outward. The utterance of the actual is the actual itself: so that 
in this utterance it remains just as essential, and only is essential, in so far 
as it is immediate external existence.
We have ere this met Being and Existence as forms of the immediate. 
Being is, in general, unreflected immediacy and transition into another. 
Existence is immediate unity of being and reflection: hence appearance: it 
comes from the ground, and falls to the ground. In actuality this unity is 
explicitly put, and the two sides of the relation identified. Hence the actual 
is exempted from transition, and its externality is its energising. In that 
energising it is reflected into itself: its existence is only the manifestation of 
itself, not of another.
§ 142n
Exists but not Real
Actuality and thought (or Idea) are often absurdly opposed. How commonly 
we hear people saying that, though no objection can be urged against the 
truth and correctness of a certain thought, there is nothing of the kind to be 
seen in reality, or it cannot be actually carried out! People who use such 
language only prove that they have not properly apprehended the nature 
either of thought or of actuality. Thought in such a case is, one the one 
hand, the synonym for a subjective conception, plan, intention, or the like, 
just as actuality, on the other, is made synonymous with external and 
sensible existence. This is all very well in common life, where great laxity 
is allowed in the categories and the names given to them; and it may of 
course happen that, e.g., the plan, or so-called idea, say, of a certain method 
of taxation , is good and advisable in the abstract, but that nothing of the 
sort is found in so-called actuality, or could possibly be carried out under 
the given conditions. But when the abstract understanding gets hold of 
these categories and exaggerates the distinction they imply into a hard and 
fast line of contrast, when it tells us that in this actual world we must knock 
ideas out of our heads, it is necessary energetically to protest against these 
doctrines, alike in the name of science and of sound reason. For on the one 
hand Ideas are not confined to our heads merely, not is the Idea, on the 
whole, so feeble as to leave the question of its actualisation or non-
actualisation dependent on our will. The Idea is rather the absolutely active 
as well as actual.
The Actual is Real
And on the other hand actuality is not so bad and irrational, as purblind or 
wrong-headed and muddle-brained would-be reformers imagine. So far is 
actuality, as distinguished from mere appearance, and primarily presenting 
a unity of inward and outward, from being in contrariety with reason, that it 
is rather thoroughly reasonable, and everything which is not reasonable 
must on that very ground cease to be held actual. The same view may be 
traced in the usages of educated speech, which declines to give the name of 
real poet or real statesman to a poet or a statesman who can do nothing 
really meritorious or reasonable.
In that vulgar conception of actuality which mistakes for what is palpable 
and directly obvious to the senses, we must seek the ground of a 
widespread prejudice about the relation of the philosophy of Aristotle to 
that of Plato. Popular opinion makes the difference to be as follows. While 
Plato recognises the idea and only the idea as the truth, Aristotle, rejecting 
the idea, keeps to what is actual, and is on that account to be considered the 
founder and chief of empiricism. On this it may be remarked: that it is not 
the vulgar actuality of what is immediately at hand, but the idea as 
actuality. Where then lies the controversy of Aristotle against Plato? It lies 
in this: Aristotle calls the Platonic idea a mere dynamis, and establishes in 
opposition to Plato that the idea, which both equally recognise to be the 
only truth, is essentially to be viewed as an energeia, in other words, as the 
inward which is quite to the fore, or as unity of inner and outer, or as 
actuality, in the emphatic sense here given to the word.
§ 143
Actuality is concrete
Such a concrete category as Actuality includes the characteristics aforesaid 
and their difference, and is therefore also the development of them, in such 
a way that, as it has them, they are at the same time plainly understood to 
be a show, to be assumed or imposed.
Possibility 
[a] Viewed as an identity in general, Actuality is first of all Possibility -the 
reflection-into-self which, as in contrast with the concrete unity of the 
actual, is taken and made an abstract and unessential essentiality. 
Possibility is what is essential to reality, but in such a way that it is at the 
same time only a possibility.
It was probably the import of Possibility which induced Kant to regard it 
along with necessity and actuality as Modalities, 'since these categories do 
not in the least increase the notion as object, but only express its relation to 
the faculty of knowledge'. For Possibility is really the bare abstraction of 
reflection-into-self - what was formerly called the Inward, only that it is 
now taken to mean the external inward, lifted out of reality and with the 
being of a mere supposition, and is thus, sure enough, supposed only as a 
bare modality, an abstraction which comes short, and, in more concrete 
terms, belongs only to subjective thought. It is otherwise with Actuality and 
Necessity. They are anything but a mere sort and mode for something else: 
in fact the very reverse of that. If they are supposed, it is as the concrete, 
but not merely suppositions, but intrinsically complete.
As Possibility is, in the first instance, the mere form of identity-with-self 
(as compared with the concrete which is actual), the rule for it merely is 
that a thing must not be self-contradictory. Thus everything is possible; for 
an act of abstraction can give any content this form of identity. Everything 
however is as impossible as it is possible. In every content - which is and 
must be concrete - the speciality of its nature may be viewed as a 
specialised contrariety and in that way as a contradiction. Nothing therefore 
can be more meaningless than to speak of such possibility and 
impossibility.
In philosophy in particular, there should never be a word said of showing 
that "It is possible", or "There is still another possibility", or, to adopt 
another phraseology, "It is conceivable". The same consideration should 
warn the writer of history against employing a category which has now 
been explained to be on its own merits, untrue: but the subtlety of the 
empty understanding finds its chief pleasure in the fantastic ingenuity of 
suggesting possibilities and lots of possibilities.
§ 143n
Possible and Actual
Our picture-thought is at first disposed to see in possibility the richer and 
more comprehensive, in actuality the poorer and narrower category. 
Everything, it is said, is possible, but everything which is possible is not on 
that account actual. In real truth, however, if we deal with them as 
thoughts, actuality is the more comprehensive, because it is the concrete 
thought which includes possibility as an abstract element. And that 
superiority is to some extent expressed in our ordinary mode of thought 
when we speak of the possible, in distinction from the actual, as only 
possible. Possibility is often said to consist in a thing's being thinkable.
'Think' however, in this use of the word, only means to conceive any 
content under the form of an abstract identity. Now, every content can be 
brought under this form, since nothing is required except to separate it from 
the relation in which it stands. Hence, any content, however absurd and 
nonsensical, can be viewed as possible. It is possible that the moon may fall 
upon the Earth tonight; for the moon is a body separate from the Earth and 
may as well fall down upon it as a stone thrown into the air does. . . . In 
language like this about possibilities, it is chiefly the law of sufficient 
ground or reason which is manipulated in the style already explained. 
Everything, it is said, is possible, for which you can state some ground. The 
less education a man has, or in other words, the less he knows of the 
specific connection of the objects to which he directs his observations, the 
grater is his tendency to launch out into all sorts of empty possibilities. An 
instance of this habit in the political sphere is seen in the pot-house 
politician. In practical life too it is no uncommon thing to see ill will and 
indolence slink behind the category of possibility, in order to escape 
definite obligations. To such conduct the same remarks apply as were made 
in connection with the law of sufficient ground. Reasonable and practical 
men refused to be imposed upon by the possible, for the simple ground that 
it is possible only. They stick to the actual (not meaning by that word 
merely whatever immediately is now and here). Many of the proverbs of 
common life express the same contempt for what is abstractly possible. 'A 
bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'.
§ 143n
Everything is Possible ?
After all, there is as good reason for taking everything to be impossible as 
to be possible: for every content (a content is always concrete) includes not 
only diverse but even opposite characteristics. Nothing is so impossible for 
instance, as this, that I am: for 'I' is at the same time simple self-relation 
and, as undoubtedly, relation to something else. The same may be seen in 
every other fact in the natural or spiritual world. Matter, it may be said, is 
impossible: for it is the unity of attraction and repulsion. The same is true 
of life, law, freedom . . . Generally speaking, it is the empty understanding 
which haunts these empty forms: and the business of philosophy in the 
matter is to show how null and meaningless they. Whether a thing is 
possible or impossible, depends altogether on the subject-matter: that is, on 
the sum total of the elements in actuality, which, as it opens itself out, 
discloses itself to be necessity.
§ 144
[b] Contingency (accidents)
But the Actual in its distinction from possibility (which is reflection-into-
self) is only the outward concrete, the unessential immediate. In other 
words, to such extent as the actual is primarily the simple merely 
immediate unity of Inward and Outward, it is obviously made an 
unessential outward, and thus at the same time it is merely inward, the 
abstraction of reflection-into-self. Hence it is itself characterised as a 
merely possible. When thus valued at the rate of a mere possibility, the 
actual is a Contingent or Accidental, and, conversely, possibility is mere 
Accident itself or Chance.
§ 145
Possibility and Contingency
Possibility and Contingency are the two factors of Actuality - Inward and 
Outward, put as mere forms which constitute the externality of the actual. 
They have their reflection-into-self on the body of actual fact, or content, 
with its intrinsic definitiveness which gives essential ground of their 
characterisation. The finitude of the contingent and the possible lies, 
therefore, as we now see, in the distinction of the form-determination from 
the content: and, therefore, it depends on the content alone whether 
anything is contingent and possible.
§ 145n
Free Will 
As possibility is the mere inside of actuality, it is for that reason a mere 
outside actuality, in other words, Contingency. The contingent, roughly 
speaking, is what has the ground of its being not in itself but in somewhat 
else. Such is the aspect under which actuality first comes before 
consciousness, and which is often mistaken for actuality itself. But the 
contingent is only one side of the actual - the side namely, of reflection on 
somewhat else. It is the actual, in the signification of something merely 
possible. Accordingly we consider the contingent so b what may or may not 
be, what may be in one way or another, whose being or not-being, and 
whose being in this way or otherwise, depends not upon itself but on 
something else. To overcome this contingency is, roughly speaking, the 
problem of science on the one hand; as in the range of practice, on the 
other, the end of action is to rise above the contingency of the will, or 
above caprice. It has however often happened, most of all in modern times, 
that contingency has been unwarrantably elevated, and has a value attached 
to it, both in nature and in the world of the mind, to which it has no just 
claim. Frequently, Nature, to take it first, has been chiefly admired for the 
richness and variety of its structures. Apart however from what disclosure it 
contains of the Idea, this richness gratifies none of the higher interests of 
Reason, and its vast variety of structures, organic and inorganic, affords us 
only the spectacle of a contingency losing itself in vagueness. At any rate, 
the chequered scene presented by the several varieties of animals and 
plants, conditioned as it is by outward circumstances - the complex changes 
in configuration and grouping of clouds, and the like - ought not to be 
ranked higher than the equally causal fancies of the mind which surrenders 
itself to its own caprices. The wonderment with which such phenomena are 
welcomed is a most abstract frame of mind, from which one should 
advance to a closer insight into the inner harmony and uniformity of nature.
Of contingency in respect of the Will it is especially important to form a 
proper estimate. The Freedom of the Will is an expression that often means 
mere free choice, or the will in the form of contingency. Freedom of 
choice, or the capacity for determining ourselves towards one thing or 
another, or is undoubtedly a vital element in the will (which is in its very 
notion free); but instead of being freedom itself, it is it is only in the first 
instance a freedom in form. The genuinely free will, which includes free 
choice as suspended, is conscious to itself that its content is intrinsically 
firm and fast, and knows it at the same time to be thoroughly its own. A 
will, on the contrary, which remains standing on the grade of option, even 
supposing it does decide in favour of what is in import right and true, is 
always haunted by the conceit that it might, if it had so pleased, have 
decided in favour of the reverse course. When more narrowly examined, 
free choice is seen to be a contradiction, to this extent, that its form and 
content stand in antithesis. The matter of choice is given, and known as a 
content dependent not on the will itself, but on outward circumstances. In 
reference to such a given content, freedom lies only in the form of 
choosing, which, as it is only a freedom in form, may consequently be 
regarded as freedom only in supposition. On an ultimate analysis it will be 
seen that the same outwardness of circumstances, on which is founded the 
content that the will finds to its hand, can alone account for the will giving 
its decision for the one and not the other of the two alternatives.
Although contingency, as it has thus been shown, is only one aspect in the 
whole of actuality, and therefore not to be mistaken for the whole of 
actuality, and therefore not to be mistaken for actuality itself, it has no less 
than the rest of the forms of the idea its due office in the world of objects. 
This is, in the first place, seen in Nature. On the surface of Nature, so to 
speak, Chance ranges unchecked, and the contingency must simply be 
recognised, without the pretension sometimes erroneously ascribed to 
philosophy, in seeking to find it in a could-only-be-so-and-not-otherwise. 
Nor is contingency less visible in the world of Mind. The Will, as we have 
already remarked, includes contingency under the shape of option or free 
choice, but only as a vanishing and abrogated element. In respect of Mind 
and its works, just as in the case of Nature, we must guard against being so 
far misled by a well-meant endeavour after rational knowledge, as to try to 
exhibit the necessity of phenomena which are marked by a decided 
contingency, or, as the phrase is, to construe them a priori. Thus in 
language (although it be, as it were, the body of thought) Chance still 
unquestionably plays a decided part; and the same is true of the creations of 
law, of art, etc. The problem of science, and especially of philosophy, 
undoubtedly consists in eliciting the necessity concealed under the 
semblance of contingency. That, however, is far from meaning that the 
contingent belongs to our subjective conception alone, and must therefore 
be simply set aside, if we wish to get at the truth. All scientific researches 
which pursue this tendency exclusively lay themselves open to the charge 
of mere jugglery and an over-strained precisionism.
§ 146
Condition
When more closely examined, what the aforesaid outward side of actuality 
implies is this. Contingency, which is actuality in its immediacy, is the self-
identical, essentially only as a supposition which is no sooner made than it 
is revoked and leaves an existent externality. In this way, the external 
contingency is something pre-supposed, the immediate existence of which 
is at the same time a possibility, and has the vocation to be suspended, to 
be the possibility of something else. Now this possibility is the Condition.
§ 146n
The Contingent, as the immediate actuality, is at the same time, the 
possibility of somewhat else - no longer however, the abstract possibility 
which we had at first, but the possibility which is. And a possibility existent 
is a Condition. By the Condition of a thing we mean first, an existence, in 
short an immediate, and secondly the vocation of this immediate to be 
suspended and subserve the actualising of something else. Immediate 
actuality is in general as such never what it ought to be; it is a finite 
actuality with an inherent flaw, and its vocation is to be consumed. But the 
other aspect of actuality is its essentiality. This is primarily the inside 
which as a mere possibility is no less destined to be suspended. Possibility 
thus suspended is the issuing of a new actuality, of which the first 
immediate actuality was the pre-supposition. Here we see the alternation 
which is involved in the notion of a Condition. The Conditions of a thing 
seem at first sight to involve no bias any way. Really however, an 
immediate actuality of this kind includes in it the germ of something else 
altogether. At first, this something else is only a possibility: but the form of 
possibility is soon suspended and translated into actuality. This new 
actuality thus issuing is the very inside of the immediate actuality which 
uses it up. Thus, there comes into being quite another shape of things, and 
yet it is not an other: for the first actuality is only put as what it in essence 
was. The conditions which are sacrificed, which feel to the ground and are 
spent, only unite with themselves in the other actuality. Such in general is 
the nature of the process of actuality. The actual is no mere case of 
immediate Being, but, as essential Being, a suspension of its own 
immediacy, and thereby mediating itself with itself.
§ 147
[c] Real Possibility 
When this externality (of actuality) is thus developed into a circle of the 
two categories of possibility and immediate actuality, showing the 
intermediation of the one by the other, it is what is called Real Possibility. 
Being such a circle, further, it is the totality, and thus the content, the actual 
fact or affair in its all-round definiteness. While in like manner, if we look 
at the distinction between the two characteristics in this unity, it realises the 
concrete totality of the form, the immediate self-translation of inner into 
outer, and of outer into inner. This self-movement of the form is Activity, 
carrying into effect the fact or affair as a real ground which is self-
suspended to actuality, and carrying into effect the contingent actuality, the 
conditions, i.e. it is their reflection-into-self, and their self-suspension to 
another actuality of the actual fact. If all the conditions are at hand, the fact 
(event) must be actual; and the fact itself is one of the conditions: for being 
in the first place only inner, it is in fact itself only pre-supposed. Developed 
actuality, as the coincident alternation of inner and outer, the alternation of 
their opposite motions combined into a single motion, is Necessity.
Necessity 
Necessity has been defined, and rightly so, as the union of possibility and 
actuality. This mode of expression, however, gives a superficial and 
therefore unintelligible description of the very difficult notion of necessity. 
It is difficult because it is the notion itself, only that its stages or factors are 
still as actualities, which are yet at the same time to be viewed as forms 
only, collapsing and transient. In the two following paragraphs, therefore, 
an exposition of the factors which constitute necessity must be given at 
greater length.
§ 147n
Blind Necessity
When anything is said to be necessary, the first question we ask is: Why? 
Anything necessary accordingly comes before us as something due to a 
supposition, the result of certain antecedents. If we go no further than mere 
derivation from antecedents, however, we have not gained a complete 
notion of what necessity means. What is merely derivative, is what it is, not 
through itself, but through something else: and in this way, it too is merely 
contingent. What is necessary on the other hand, we would have to be what 
it is through itself: and thus, although derivative, it must still contain the 
antecedent whence it is derived as a vanishing element in itself. Hence we 
say of what is necessary, 'It is'. We thus hold it to be simple, self-relation, in 
which all dependence on something else is removed.
Necessity is often said to be blind. If that means that in the process of 
necessity the End or final cause is not explicitly and overtly present, the 
statement is correct. The process of necessity begins with the existence of 
scattered circumstances which appear to have no interconnection and no 
concern with one another. These circumstances are an immediate actuality 
which collapses, and out of this negation, a new actuality proceeds. Here 
we have a content which in point of form, is doubled, once as content of 
the final realised fact, and once as content of the scattered circumstances 
which appear as if they were positive, and make themselves at first felt in 
that character. The latter content is in itself nought and is accordingly 
inverted into its negative, thus becoming content of the realised fact. The 
immediate circumstances fall to the ground as conditions, but are at the 
same time retained as content of the ultimate reality. From such 
circumstances and conditions there has, as we say, proceeded quite another 
thing, and it is for that reason that we call this process of necessity blind. If 
on the contrary we consider teleological action, we have in the end of 
action a content which is already foreknown. This activity therefore is not 
blind but seeing. To say that the world is ruled by Providence implies that 
design, as what has been absolutely predetermined, is the active principle, 
so that the issue corresponds to what has been foreknown and forewilled.
. . .
The Process of Necessity
Among the three elements in the process of necessity, the Condition, the 
Fact, and the Activity:
[a] The Condition is (a) what is presupposed or ante-stated, i.e. it is not 
only supposed or stated, and so only a correlative to the fact, but also prior, 
and so independent, a contingent and external circumstance which exists 
without respect to the fact. While thus contingent, however, this 
presupposed or ante-stated term, in respect withal of the fact, which is the 
totality, is a complete circle of conditions. (b) The conditions are passive, 
and used as materials for the fact, into the content of which they thus enter. 
They are likewise intrinsically conformable to this content, and already 
contain its whole characteristic.
[b] The Fact is also (a) something presupposed or ante-stated, i.e. is it at 
first, and as supposed, only inner and possible, and also, being prior, as 
independent content by itself. (b) By using up the conditions, it receives its 
external existence, the realisation of the articles of its content, which 
reciprocally correspond to the conditions, so that while it presents itself out 
of these as the facts, it also proceeds from them.
[c] The Activity similarly has (a) an independent existence of its own (as 
man, a character), and at the same time it is possible only where the 
conditions are and the fact. (B) It is the movement which translates the 
conditions into fact, and the latter into the former as the side of existence, 
or rather the movement which educes the fact from the conditions in which 
it is potentially present, and which gives existence to the fact by abolishing 
the existence possessed by the conditions.
In so far as these three elements stand to each other in the shape of 
independent existences, this process has the aspect of an outward necessity. 
Outward necessity has a limited content for its fact. For the fact is this 
whole, in phase of singleness. But since in its form this whole is external to 
itself, it is self-externalised even in its own self and in its content, and this 
externality, attaching to the fact, is a limit of its content.
The Circle of Circumstances
Necessity, then, is potentially the one essence, self-same, but not full of 
content, in the reflected light of which its distinctions take the form of 
independent realities. This self-sameness is at the same time, as absolute 
form, the activity which reduces into dependency and mediates into 
immediacy. Whatever is necessary is through another, which is broken up 
into mediating ground (the Fact and the Activity) and an immediate 
actuality, or accidental circumstance, which is at the same time a 
Condition. The necessary, being through a other, is not in and for itself: 
hypothetical, it is a mere result of assumption. But this intermediation is 
just as immediate however as the abrogation of itself. The ground and 
contingent condition is translated into immediacy, by which that 
dependency is now lifted up into actuality, and the fact has closed with 
itself. In this return to itself, the necessary simply and positively is, as 
unconditioned actuality. The necessary is so, mediated through a circle of 
circumstances: it is so, because the circumstances are so, and at the same 
time it is so, unmediated: it is so, because it is.
a) The Relationship of Substantiality 
§ 150
The necessary is in itself an absolute correlation of elements, i.e. the 
process developed in the preceding paragraphs), in which the correlation 
also suspends itself to absolute identity.
In its immediate form it is the relationship of Substance and Accident. The 
absolute self-identity of this relationship is Substance as such, which as 
necessity gives the negative to this form of inwardness, and thus invests 
itself with actuality, but which also gives the negative to this outward thing. 
In this negativity, the actual, as immediate, is only an accidental which 
through this bare possibility passes over into another actuality. This 
transition is the identity of substance, regarded as form-activity.
§ 151
Substance
Substance is accordingly the totality of the Accidents, revealing itself in 
them as their absolute negativity (that is to say, as absolute power) and at 
the same time as the wealth of all content. This content however is nothing 
but that very revelation, since the character (being reflected in itself to 
make content) is only a passing stage of the form which passes away in the 
power of substance. Substantiality is the absolute form-activity and the 
power of necessity: all content is but a vanishing element which merely 
belongs to this position, where there is an absolute revulsion of form and 
content into one another.
§ 151n
In the history of philosophy we meet with Substance as the principle of 
Spinoza's system. On the import and value of this much-praised and no-less 
decried philosophy there has been great misunderstanding and a deal of 
talking since the days of Spinoza. The atheism, and as a further charge, the 
pantheism of the system has formed the commonest ground of accusation. 
These cries arise because of Spinoza's conception of God as substance, and 
substance only. What we are to think of this charge follows, in the first 
instance, from the place which substance takes in the system of the logical 
idea. Though an essential stage in the evolution of the idea, substance is not 
the same with absolute idea, but the idea under the still limited form of 
necessity. . . .
Spinoza puts substance at the head of his system, and defines it to be the 
unity of thought and extension, without demonstrating how he gets to this 
distinction, or how he traces it back to the unity of substance. The further 
treatment of the subject proceeds in what is called the mathematical 
method. Definitions and axioms are first laid down: after them comes a 
series of theorems, which are proved by an analytical reduction of them to 
these unproved postulates. Although the system of Spinoza, and that even 
by those who altogether reject its contents and results, is praised for the 
strict sequence of its method, and such unqualified praise for the form is as 
little justified as an unqualified rejection of the content. The defect of the 
content is that the form is not known as immanent in it, and therefore only 
approaches it as an outer and subjective form. As intuitively accepted by 
Spinoza without a previous mediation by dialectic, Substance, as the 
universal negative power, is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs 
all definite content as radically null, and produces from itself nothing that 
has a positive subsistence of its own.
At the stage where substance, as absolute power, is the self-relating power 
(itself a merely inner possibility), which thus determines itself to be 
accidentality - from which power the eternality it thereby creates is 
distinguished - necessity is a correlation strictly so called, just as in the first 
form of necessity it is substance. This is the correlation of Causality.
b) The Relationship of Causality
§ 153
Substance is Cause, in so far as substance reflects into self as against its 
passage into accidentality and so stands as the primary fact, but again no 
less suspends this reflection-into-self (its bare possibility), lays itself down 
as the negative of itself, and thus produces an Effect, an actuality, which, 
though so far only assumed as a sequence, is through the process that 
effectuates it at the same time necessary.
As primary fact, the cause is qualified as having absolute independence, 
and a subsistence maintained in face of the effect: but in the necessity, 
whose identity constitutes that primariness itself, it is wholly passed into 
the effect. So far again as we can speak of a definite content, there is no 
content that is not in the cause. That identity in fact is the absolute content 
itself: but it is no less also the form-characteristic. The primariness of the 
cause is suspended in the effect in which the cause makes itself a 
dependent being. The cause however does not for that reason vanish and 
leave the effect to be alone actual. For this dependency is in like manner 
directly suspended, and is rather the reflection of the cause in itself, its 
primariness: in short, it is in the effect that the cause first becomes actual 
and a cause. The cause consequently is in its full truth causa sui.
. . . .[re Jacobi, omitted]
In the common acceptation of the causal relation the cause is finite, to such 
extent as its content is so (as is the case with finite substance), and so far as 
cause and effect are conceived as two several independent existences: 
which they are, however, only when we leave the causal relation out of 
sight. In the finite sphere we never get over the difference of the form-
characteristics in their relation: and hence we turn the matter around and 
define the cause also as something dependent or as an effect. This again 
has another cause, and thus there grows up a progress from effects to 
causes ad infinitum. There is a descending progress too: the effect, looked 
at in its identity with the cause, is itself defined as a cause, and at the same 
time as another cause, which again has other effects, and so on for ever.

§ 153n
The way understanding bristles up against the idea of substance is equalled 
by its readiness to use the relation of cause and effect. Whenever it is 
proposed to view any sum of facts as necessary, it is especially the relation 
of causality to which the reflective understanding makes a point of tracing 
of it back. Now, although this relation does undoubtedly belong to 
necessity, it forms only one aspect in the process of that category. That 
process equally requires the suspension of the mediation involved in 
causality and the exhibition of it as simple self-relation. If we stick to 
causality as such, we have it not in its truth. Such a causality is merely 
finite, and its finitude lies in retaining the distinction between cause and 
effect unassimilated. But these two terms, if they are distinct, are also 
identical. Even in ordinary consciousness that identity may be found. We 
say that a cause is a cause, only where it has an effect, and vice versa. Both 
cause and effect are thus one and the same content: and the distinction 
between them is primarily only that the one lays down, and the other is laid 
down. This formal difference however again suspends itself, because the 
cause is not only a cause of something else, but also a cause of itself; while 
the effect is not only an effect of something else, but also an effect of itself. 
The finitude of things consists accordingly in this. While cause and effect 
are in their motion identical, the two forms present themselves severed so 
that, though the cause is also an effect, and the effect also a cause, the 
cause is not an effect in the same connection as it is an effect. This again 
gives the infinite progress, in the shape of an endless series of causes, 
which shows itself at the same time as an endless series of effects.

Action and Reaction 
§ 154
The effect is different from the cause. The former as such has a being 
dependent on the latter. But such a dependence is likewise reflection-into-
self and immediacy: and the action of the cause, as it constitutes the effect, 
is at the same time the pre-constitution of the effect, so long as effect is 
kept separate from cause. There is already in existence another substance 
on which the effect takes place. As immediate, this substance is not a self-
related negativity and active, but passive. Yet it is a substance, and it is 
therefore active also: it therefore suspends the immediacy it was originally 
put forward with, and the effect which was put into it: it reacts, i.e. 
suspends the activity of the first substance. But this first substance also in 
the same way sets aside its own immediacy, or the effect which is put into 
it; it thus suspends the activity of the other substance and reacts. In this 
manner causality passes into the relation of Action and Reaction, or 
Reciprocity.
In Reciprocity, although causality is not yet invested with its true 
characteristic, the rectilinear movement out from causes to effects, and 
from effects to causes, is bent round and back into Itself, and thus the 
progress ad infinitum of causes and effects is, as a progress, really and truly 
suspen~This bend, which transforms the infinite progression into a self-
contained relationship, here as always the plain reflection that in the above 
meaningless repetition there is only one and the same thing, viz. one cause 
and another, and their connection with one another. Reciprocity - which is 
the development of this relation - itself however only distinguishes turn and 
turn about-not causes, but factors of causation, in each of which, just 
because they are inseparable (on the principle of the identity that the cause 
is cause in the effect, and vice versa), the other factor is also equally 
supposed.

c) Reciprocity, or Action and Reaction
§ 155
The characteristics which in Reciprocal Action are retained as distinct are 
[a] potentially the same. The one side is a cause, is primary, active, passive, 
etc., just as the other is. Similarly the presupposition of another side and 
the action upon it, the immediate primariness and the dependence produced 
by the alternation, are one and the same on both sides. The cause assumed 
to be first is on account of its immediacy passive, a dependent being, and 
an effect. The distinction of the causes spoken of as two is accordingly 
void: and properly speaking there is only one cause, which, while it 
suspends itself (as substance) in its effect, also rises in this operation only 
to independent existence as a cause.

§ 156

But this unity of the double cause is also [b] actual. All this alternation is 
properly the cause in act of constituting itself and in such constitution lies 
its being. The nullity of the distinctions is not only potential, or a reflection 
of ours (§ I55). Reciprocal action just means that each characteristic we 
impose is also to be suspended and inverted into its opposite, and that in 
this way the essential nullity of the 'moments' is explicitly stated. An effect 
is introduced into the primariness; in other words, the primariness is 
abolished: the action of a cause becomes reaction and so on.

§ 156n

Reciprocal action realises the causal relation in its complete development. 
It is this relation, therefore, in which reflection usually takes shelter when 
the conviction grows that things can no longer be studied satisfactorily 
from a causal point of view, on account of the infinite progress already 
spoken of. Thus in historical research the question may be raised in a first 
form, whether the character and manners of a nation are the cause of its 
constitution and its laws, or if they are not rather the effect. Then, as the 
second step, the character and manners on one side and the Constitution 
and laws on the other are conceived on the principle of reciprocity: and in 
that case the cause in the same connection as it is a cause will at the same 
time be an effect, and vice versa. The same thing is done in the study of 
Nature, and especially of living organisms. There the sexual organs and 
functions are similarly seen to stand to each other in the relation of 
reciprocity. Reciprocity is undoubtedly the proximate truth of the relation 
of cause and effect, and stands, so to say, on the threshold of the notion; but 
on that very ground, supposing that our aim is a thoroughly comprehensive 
idea, we should not rest content with applying this relation. If we get no 
further than studying a given content under the point of view of reciprocity, 
we are taking up an attitude which leases matters utterly incomprehensible. 
We are left with a mere dry fact; and the call for mediation, which is the 
chief motive in applying the relation of causality, is still unanswered. And 
if we look more narrowly into the dissatisfaction felt in applying the 
relation of reciprocity, we shall see that it consists in the circumstance that 
this relation, instead of being treated as an equivalent for the notion, ought, 
first of all, to be known and understood in its own nature. And to 
understand the relation of action eve must not let the two sides rest in their 
state of mere given facts, but recognise them, as has been shown in the two 
paragraphs preceding, for factors of a third and higher, which is the notion 
and nothing else. To make, for example, the manners of the Spartans the 
cause of their constitution and their constitution conversely the cause of 
their manners, may no doubt be in a way correct. But, as we have 
comprehended neither the manners nor the constitution of the nation, the 
result of such reflections can never be final or satisfactory. The satisfactory 
point will bet reached only when these two, as well as all other, special 
aspects of Spartan life and Spartan history are seen to be founded in this 
notion. Necessity
§ 157
This pure self-reciprocation is therefore Necessity unveiled or realized. The 
link of necessity qua necessity is identity, as still inward and concealed, 
because it is the iGliontity of what are esteemed actual things, although 
their very self-subsistence is bound to be necessity. lvEe circulation of 
substance through causality and reciprocity therefore only expressly makes 
out or states that self-subsistence is the infinite negative self-relation-a 
relation negative in genera], for in it the act of distinguishing and 
intermediating becomes a primariness of actual things independent one 
against the other-and infinite self-relation, because their independence 
only lies in their identity. 
Freedom
§ 158
The truth of necessity is, therefore, Freedom: and the truth of substance is 
the Notion - an independence which, though self-repulsive into distinct 
independent elements, yet in that repulsion is self-identical, and in the 
movement of reciprocity still at home and conversant only with itself. 
§ 158n
Necessity is often called hard, and rightly so, if we keep to necessity as 
such, i.e. to its immediate shape. Here we have, first of all, some state or, 
generally speaking, fact, possessing an independent subsistence: and 
necessity primarily implies that there falls upon such a fact something else 
by which it is brought low. This is what is hard and sad in necessity 
immediate or abstract. The identity of the two things, which necessity 
presents as bound to each other and thus bereft of their independence, is at 
first only inward, and therefore has no existence for those under the yoke of 
necessity. Freedom too from this point of view is only abstract, and is 
preserved only by renouncing all that we immediately are and have. But, as 
we have already seen, the process of necessity is so directed that it 
overcomes the rigid externality which it first had and reveals its inward 
nature. It then appears that the members, linked to one another, are not 
really foreign to each other, but only elements of one whole, each of them, 
in its connection with the other, being, as it were, at home, and combining 
with itself. In this way, necessity is transfigured into freedom - not the 
freedom that consists in abstract negation, but freedom concrete and 
positive. From which we may learn what a mistake it is to regard freedom 
and necessity as mutually exclusive. Necessity indeed, qua necessity, is far 
from being freedom: yet freedom presupposes necessity, and contains it as 
an unsubstantial element in itself. 
 A good man is aware that the tenor of his conduct is essentially obligatory 
and necessary. But this consciousness is so far from making any abatement 
from his freedom, that without it, real and reasonable freedom could not be 
distinguished from arbitrary choice - a freedom which has no reality and is 
merely potential. A criminal, when punished, may look upon his 
punishment as a restriction of his freedom. Really the punishment is not 
foreign constraint to which he is subjected, but the manifestation of his 
own act. In short, man is most independent when he knows himself to be 
determined by the absolute idea throughout. It was this phase of mind and 
conduct which Spinoza called Amor intellectualis Dei. 
§159
Thus the Notion is the truth of Being and Essence, inasmuch as the shining 
or show of self-reflection is itself at the same time independent immediacy, 
and this being of a different actuality is immediately only a shining or show 
on itself. 
 The Notion has exhibited itself as the truth of Being and Essence as the 
ground to which the regress of both leads. Conversely it has been 
developed out of being as its ground. The former aspect of the advance may 
be regarded as a concentration of being into its depth, thereby disclosing its 
inner nature: the latter aspect as an issuing of the more perfect from the less 
perfect. When such development is viewed on the latter side only, it does 
prejudice to the method of philosophy. The special meaning which these 
super- ficial thoughts of more imperfect and more perfect have in this place 
is to indicate the distinction of being, as an immediate unity with itself, 
from the notion, as free mediation with itself. Since being has shown that it 
is an element in the notion, the latter has thus exhibited itself as the truth of 
being. As this its reflection in itself and as an absorption of the mediation, 
the notion is the pre- supposition of the immediate-a presupposition 
which is identical with the return to self; and in this identity lie freedom 
and the notion. If the partial element therefore be called the imperfect, then 
the notion, or the perfect, is certainly a development from the imperfect; 
since its very nature is thus to suspend its pre- supposition. At the same 
time it is the notion alone which, in the act of supposing itself, makes its 
presupposition; as has been made apparent in causality in general and 
especially in reciprocal action. 
 Thus in reference to Being and Essence the Notion is defined as Essence 
reverted to the simple immediacy of Being-the shining or show of 
Essence thereby having actuality, and its actuality being at the same time a 
free shining or show in itself. In this manner the notion has being as its 
simple self-relation, or as the immediacy of its immanent unity. Being is so 
poor a category that It is the least thing which can be shown to be found in 
the notion.  The passage from necessity to freedom, or from actuality into 
the notion, is the very hardest, because it proposes that independent 
actuality shall be thought as having all its substantiality in the passing over 
and identity with the other independent actuality. The notion, too, is 
extremely hard, because it is itself just this very identity. But the actual 
substance as such, the cause, which in its exclusiveness resists all invasion, 
is ipso facto subjected to necessity or the destiny of passing into 
dependency: and it is this subjection rather where the chief hardness lies. 
To think necessity, on the contrary, rather tends to melt that hardness. For 
thinking means that, in the other, one meets with one's self. It means a 
liberation, which is not the flight of abstraction, but consists in that which 
is actual having itself not as something else, but as its own being and 
creation, in the other actuality with which it is bound up by the force of 
necessity. As existing in an individual form, this liberation is called I: as 
developed to its totality, it is free Spirit; as feeling, it is Love; and as 
enjoyment, it is Blessed- ness. The great vision of substance in Spinoza is 
only a potential liberation from finite exclusiveness and egotism: but the 
notion itself realises for its own both the power of necessity and actual 
freedom. 
§ 159n
When, as now, the notion is called the truth of Being and Essence, we must 
expect to be asked, why do we not begin with the notion? The answer is 
that, where knowledge by thought is our aim, we cannot begin with the 
truth, because the truth, when it forms the beginning, must rest on mere 
assertion. The truth when it is thought must as such verify itself to thought. 
If the notion were put at the head of Logic, and defined, quite correctly in 
point of content, as the unity of Being and Essence, the following question 
would come up: What are we to think under the terms 'Being' and 'Essence', 
and how do they come to be embraced in the unity of the Notion? But if we 
answered these questions, then our beginning with the notion would merely 
be nominal. The real start would be made with Being, as we have here 
done: with this difference, that the characteristics of Being as well as those 
of Essence would have to be accepted uncritically from figurate 
conception, whereas we have observed Being and Essence in their own 
dialectical development and learnt how they lose themselves in the unity of 
the notion.