from negation; the voice thus is an absolutely abstract one, and, conceived as Thought or all that is, evidently the One. The voice so placed evidently implies negation in general; then two negations, i.e. the negation of itself by the notification which is the first negation, and the negation of this negation back into itself, which is the second. The two things negated, voice and notification, are, thirdly, the same; fourthly, they are directly opposed; fifthly, there is reference to selfidentity as such in the voice; and sixthly, it refers negatively to its notification, but still to itself. The voice being thrown down into an absolutely abstract One, these its moments seem thrown off from it, to stand around it externally, independently, but still inseparably.

B.

ONE AND MANY.

The One being immediate, its Moments are as Therebeënt. The One still contains the Negative (which was lately the Being-for-One), and so, though One, it has still determination. In its reference to Self the One is still Self-determination, and without end, entirely, infinitely. These differences, the determination and the Self-determination, are now, in the immediacy that has come in, beënt. Ideality is transformed into Reality, the hardest and abstractest,-One. But the determinateness of the Beingness is as opposed to the infinite negation of the Self-determination, or what the One is in itself, that it is now in it. The negative, that is, is distinguished as other. The unity is now a reference, and as Negative unity it is negation of itself as of another.

We are to conceive the Negative as One and identical

with the One. We are to conceive also, nevertheless, that within the One there is a traffic of the One with its own Negative, so that also within the One a certain Diremption takes place a certain rise of an sich into an ihm, of in itself into in it-to the distinction of the One from the One. The One is as One, but it is a negative One this it is in itself; this it is also in it; that is, this it is distinguishably to its own self; but if it is this distinguishably to its own self, it sets itself as another, it is the negation of itself as of another, Exclusion of the One as another out of itself.'

The Determination of an absolute One-the notification of the voice-is evidently its negative. The immediacy introduces the form of Being, and the moments become external to each other. Even shrunk into its abstraction, the One is intensely beent, and its moments are independently There-bëent. Ideality is Reality.

The development here is so abstract and subtle, that there is great difficulty in getting the true Vorstellung for the Begriff, the true Conception for the Notion. A plural outer world is not, however, to be too soon disengaged the One is to be left in simple traffic with the negative as negative. What puzzles the reader, and even an attentive one, is that, the moments being reciprocal, there is a difficulty of perceiving, which Hegel intends the One to be in as excluding, and which as excluded. But the metaphor of the voice is still applicable. Notification and voice are identified in the one unity, the voice-but this is immediacy, Being; notification and voice both are; the determinateness of Being stands opposed to the infinite negation; that is, the Notes are opposed to the infinite negation of them -the one voice which is negative in that it absorbs them, and infinite in that it is entire, totum et rotundum.

What the voice is in itself, it is now in it, or the Notes (the Negative) rise in it and show, and so on. It just comes to this, the moments re-assert anew their dif ference; the determination (the Negative) separates from its recipient negation, and fresh distinctions arise. The poles, real and ideal, or material and formal, which have just collapsed, re-extricate themselves for a further collapse on a higher stage. And this is the case universally with Hegel: detach anywhere the smallest particle of his mass, and it will be found magnetic like the mass itself; it will throw itself in poles, one of reality and one of ideality, but neither of which is less real or more ideal than the other; so that the whole is an absolute ideality that is at the same time an absolute reality. This we see in the very first form, Being, Nothing, and Becoming. At first sight, one thinks of artifice; one says to oneself, Give me what is at once affirmative and negative, identical and nonidentical, and I will make anything you like of it; but one calms oneself when one looks to the actual and sees what is there-above all, when one reflects that these, after all, are but expressions of the one living notion itself which contracts to an atom and expands to a world. The an ihm must be viewed as a certain rise of the an sich into visibility; the abstract barren bottom of the vase becomes the pregnant middle. What has been just said, too, must be seen to be only preliminary to what follows under the minuscules, a, b, c.

a. The One in its own self.

It appears contradictory, after what we have just read, to find the One unalterable; and the whole industry may seem a mere trifling, a mere playing with

words. But what we have just read (immediately under B) is only preliminary, and if we but look close, we shall really find this one sentence that ends in unalterable to be genuine Metaphysic: the Absolute, God, is really so determined when Thought contemplates him as the One in its own self, i.e. in its irrespective Absoluteness. This may be a hint to the reader that it depends on himself all through, whether the words of Hegel shall remain abstract and words only, or shall become concrete and alive-Things. The Notion, followed only in its naked nerve, is thin to invisibility; and the words that cannot seize it, or rather that do not seize it, for the reader, break asunder into an externality, as idle and contemptible, as trodden nutshells: with him it rests, however, to look till these broken nutshells cohere into a transparent, plastic menstruum which, not shows, but is the Notion with him it rests to expand the same into Vorstellungen which are the universe; for all here is sub specie æterni.

:

This section (a) is very important in several respects. In the first place, the development is sufficiently simple, and requires not the assistance of repetition in another form, but only the touch of a word here and there. The conclusion drawn of the unchangeableness of the One, contains yet another lesson for us; it may teach us to remain true to our thoughts, and not to interrupt them by the contradictions of a divided reference, the end of which is but foolish wonder, perplexity, doubt, ignorance.

An ihm selbst ist das Eins überhaupt-there is here in the very position of the words the usual Hegelian occult fulness of thought; to translate it, In its self' means any one' on the whole, will show this. Per

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ception of this must have been in Hegel's head, otherwise it would have been natural to begin, The one in its own self is the one on the whole, &c.

The Seyn, Being, that is referred to as indeterminate, but not in the same way as the One, is, of course, that we began with.

We have here three very instructive specimens of that troublesome word Setzen, which even mutuation does not yet seem to have laid these are gesetztes Insichseyn, set (settled) Being-within-self; diess Nichts ist ein Gesetztes, this Nothing is a set issue; and So diess Nichts gesetzt als in Einem, this Nothing sodetermined and as in a. The French constater would very perfectly render Setzen in all these expressions, and the French constater means to ascertain, to determine, to settle, to establish, to fix, &c. Of these English words, the word determine is the best in the sense of to make out and establish, a sense somewhat different from that contained in it when used to translate bestimmen, in which case it means to specificate, notify, characterise, &c. In the first of the three examples, we have the absolute before us, One, but full; its circle of determination complete within it, absolutes Bestimmtseyn, Absolute Determined-Ness— what is this but consummate Insichseyn, Insichseyn, Being-within-Self, just as such? In this sense it is gesetztes, a certain somewhat just definitely established and determined as that certain somewhat. The Beingwithin-self, here, therefore, is just the Being-within-self, itself-Arthur, 'not Lancelot nor another.' Thus it is gesetztes Insichseyn, set (settled) Being-within-self, Being-within-self in actual position, formally posited, Being-within-self, as such, Being-within-self explicit. In the second instance, it results from the simple