In § 95, the terminal remark in reference to the true relation of Finite and Infinite is a perfectly successful Hegelian statement, and a full compensation for the confusing tediousness and length which we have already animadverted on as the fault of the similar discussion in the detailed Logic. Our explanations in that reference, however, shall be allowed to dispense us from translating this remark, however admirable, here.

If in § 86 we found that the Absolute is Being, we see from § 87 that it is equally true that the Absolute is the Nothing. This not only because the Absolute is Difference as well as Identity, but because, all Difference being reflected into the one of this Identity, that one is as good as Nothing. This is illustrated by the nature of the Thing-in-itself, which is to be all substance, all being, but just emerges as an absolute void-Nothing. Both considerations, in fact, are the same.

It is curious, I may remark by way of conclusion here, that the ultimate generalisation of all generalisation should be Being, and quite as much Nothing. Of that there can be no doubt. This Nothing, too, is the only Nothing possible-in effect it is the Nothing, just what we mean by Nothing. Thrown back from these generalisations as quite abstract, as quite untrue, as nothing, one looks once more at the concrete; but what is it, again, in ultimate abstraction but a Becoming?-it never is. These are really the initial generalised abstractions: if we want to think purely of what is of the laws, forms, or principles of all things in general, apart from each thing in particular-it is so we must begin. But, in spite of the Becoming, there is a Become, a Distinguishable, a Here-being, a There-being, what we call mortal state. This has

Reality; this has also Negation; it is so Something. As its Reality against its Negation, it is Something in itself; and, vice versa, it is Something for other. Its Something-for-other identified with what it is in itself, is its Qualification. But its Qualification is its Talification, and both coalesce in Limit. In its Limit, Something is not only ended, but endable; that is, it is Finite. But its end, the finis of the Finite, is the Infinite; and that is the One into which all variety is reflected. But this reflexion of variety into the One is the negative reflexion of this one into its own self; and, again, this negativeness of the Reflexion implies other than the One-more ones-(or, it is allowable by anticipation to say more I's, more Egos).-But thus we are fully in the field of Fürsichseyn, or of

C. BEING-FOR-SELF.

(a) Being-for-Self, as Reference to itself, is Immediacy; and, as Reference of the Negative to itself, it is Being-for-self-ity, One, the One,-what is within itself distinction-less, and so excludent of the Other out of

itself.

(B) The Reference of the Negative to itself is negative reference, so distinguish-ment of the One from itself, the Repulsion of the One,-i.e., the setting of many or simply more Ones. By reason of the Immediacy of the Being-for-self-ity, these Many or More are Beënt, and the Repulsion of the Beënt Ones becomes so far their Repulsion the one of the other as of entities already to the fore, or Mutual Exclusion.

(7) The Many, however, are, the one what the other is; each is one, or one of the Many; they are, therefore, one and the same. Or the Repulsion regarded in

it itself is, even as negative comportment of the Many

Ones mutually, equally essentially their Reference mutually; and as those to which in its repulsion the One refers itself are One, it refers itself in them to itself. The Repulsion is thus quite as essentially Attraction; and the excludent One or the Being-for-Self sublates itself. Qualitative Determinateness, which in the One has reached its absolute determinedness (ihr An-undfürsich-Bestimmtseyn), is with this gone over into Determinateness that is as sublated Determinateness,―i.e., into Being as Quantity.'

These are translations of §§ 96, 97, 98 in the third edition of the Encyclopaedia, (for the future we shall chiefly follow this edition,) and they constitute the entire Encyclopaedic summary of the whole subject of Being-for-Self. This alone, even independently of the similar summaries of Being and There-being, would suffice to demonstrate as well the inadequacy of the Encyclopaedia to convey the System, as the fact that it is nothing but a handy leading-string, or useful synopsis to the student who has already penetrated, or is engaged penetrating, into the business itself-the complete Logic. Further comment, after what has been so fully extended already, will be here unnecessary: 'the Reference of the Negative to itself,' the 'Excludent of the Other out of itself,' already to the fore,' 'in it itself,' 'comportment' italicised for the equally-italicised Verhalten,' &c., may now be trusted to the intelligence of the reader.

Perhaps it may be worth remarking that Hegel displays in what we have just read certain Gnostic analogies. Of the systems so named, we learn that it was a leading idea that God, the sum of all veritable Being, reveals himself in this way, that he hypostasises his Qualities, or allows them to pass out of

himself into existence as Substances; but still directly from God there issues only one substance, the vous, Reason; and it is from this latter that the rest follow, but always so that the one is successively out of the other, the divine substance being extenuated in proportion to the remotion from the centre.' Speculative Philosophy is not unrepresented in the definition of Gnosis as 'Higher Wisdom, a Religious Wisdom, that by aid of foreign Philosophemes would lay deeper the foundations of the Positive and Traditional.' We know, too, that in Alexandria, the seat of Gnosticism, there was a desire and an effort to reconcile and unite 'opposing Philosophemes;' there, when the fair blossom of Greece, which the bland heaven had evoked, was faded and withered up, Art sought to replace what Nature no longer spontaneously offered.' These are certainly Anklänge, assonances; but it is not to be supposed that they were suggestive to Hegel; rather they ought to be suggestive to us only-suggestive of the analogy of the Historical Occasions: and, for the rest, we have to be thankful that Hegel has probably effected, by tenacious dogging of the pure Notion, what the Gnostics, soaring into the figurate Conception, were only able to convert into the monstrosities of dream.

We pass now from What sort to How much; nor is it difficult to see that How much is indifferent to What sort, or that it is just the indifferent limit,

V.

A SUMMARY OR TRANSLATION, COMMENTED AND INTERPRETED, OF THE SECOND SECTION OF THE COMPLETE LOGIC, QUANTITY.

WE have seen the collapse of the entire round of the constituents of Quality into a simple identity from the qualitative indifference of which, its own opposite, a wholly new sphere, Quantity, emerges. This emergence, what Hegel names the Unterschied, the se-cernment, the se-cession, the dif-ference, we have now more closely to consider.

This section opens in a strain of singularly rich and beautiful reflexion, which is also always somehow of a double aspect. On one aspect, it is still Qualitative Being-for-Self which we have before us the Voice,— thoroughly identified with, and indifferent to, its own Determinateness-the Notes; and on the other aspect we suddenly find that this is Quantity. The life of the Voice is now just indifferent continuity of one or ones; and what is that but Quantity? This reference being kept steady, the expressions of Hegel, however coy and clusive, will become intelligible. Quality-a Notewill be readily granted to be the first, the immediate, or the direct Determinateness;' whereas Quantity is a Determinateness which is indifferent, so to speak, to what it is indifferent to the Being it conveys: it is a Limit which is none; it is Being-for-Self directly

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