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resuming moment of Reason. Nor is it an affair of place only; for we know that Fürsichseyn denotes the collapse of all particularity into singularity. Neither is this the only example of a similar usage. Nevertheless, we believe that we are right in the main, and that even the exceptions will give little pause to the student who is anything instruit. The very chapter in Hegel which is specially entitled Fürsichseyn is devoted to the evolution of the One and the Many, with a view to the transition of Quality into Quantity.*-The third step now is readily intelligible as the stage of an and für sich.

3. What can be intended by these seemingly silly and absurd transitions of Being into Nothing, and again of both into Becoming?-Well now, there is, after all, no great difficulty here. Suppose we define Nothing, how otherwise can we define it than as the absence of all distinguishableness, that is, of every discrimen whatever? But the absence of every recognisable discrimen whatever is just the absence of all particularity, and the absence of all particularity is but the abstraction from all particularity-pure Being! Pure Being and pure Nothing, then, are therefore identical. Pure Seyn can be no otherwise defined than pure Nichts: Seyn like Nichts, and Nichts like Seyn-each is the absence of all distinguishableness, or of every recognisable discrimen whatever. Did

Hegel says (Logic, vol. ii. p. 5), 'it is Being-in-and-for-itself, that is to say, it dif-ferences the significates which it contains in itself; because it is Repulsion of itself from itself, or indifference to itself, negative reference to itself, it sets itself opposite itself, and is infinite Being-for-self only so far as it is unity with itself in this its

dif-ference from itself.' This is, beyond mistake, an identification of the Moment of Unterschied with that of Für sich. Hegel in practice is not strict, however: Fürsichseyn, even in this page, is spoken of as Totality, that is, as An-und-Fürsichseyn. However it may be, my proposition is allowable.

you take up anything, and call it pure Seyn, and yet point to a discrimen in it, you would only be deceiving yourself, and speaking erroneously; for in pure Seyn there can be no discrimen. Seyn must be universal, and any discrimen would at once particularise it. Thus, then, Pure Being and Pure Nothing are absolutely identical-they are absolutely indistinguishable. It is useless to say Nothing is Nothing, but Being is Something: Being is not more Something than Nothing is. We admit Nothing to exist; Nothing is an intelligible distinction; we talk of thinking Nothing and of perceiving Nothing: in other words, Nothing is the abstraction from every discrimen or particularity. But an abstraction from every discrimen, does not involve the destruction of every or any discrimen all discrimina still exist; in Nothing we have simply withdrawn into indefiniteness. This Nothing, then, of ours still implies the formed or definite world. Precisely this is the value of Pure Being: when we have realised the notion Pure Being, we have simply retired into the abstraction from all discrimina, but these for all our abstraction and retirement-still are. Pure Being and Pure Nothing, then, point each to the absolutely same abstraction, the absolutely same retirement. In both, in fact, Thought, for the nonce, has turned its back on all its own discrimina; for Thought is all that is, and all discrimina are but its own. In fact, both Being and Nothing are abstractions, void abstractions, and the voidest of all abstractions, for they are just the ultimate abstractions. Neither is a concrete; neither is, if we may say so, a reale. What, then, is-What actu is-in point of fact is-is neither the one nor the other; but everything that is, is a Úvoλov, a composite, of both. This is remarkable—

that the formed world should hang between the hooks of two invisible abstractions, and, at the same time, that every item of the formed world should be but a úvonov of these two invisible abstractions. We cannot handle Being here and Nothing there, as we might this stone or that wood; yet both stone and wood are composites of Being and Nothing: they both are and are not-and this in more senses than one. They are— that is, they participate in Being. They are distinguishable, they involve difference; difference implies negation: that is, they participate in Non-being. The stone is not the wood, the wood is not the stone: each, therefore, if it is, also is not. Again, neither the one nor the other is, any two consecutive moments, the same; each is but a Werden, but a Becoming. A day will come when both the one and the other, both this wood and that stone, will have disappeared: their existence was a process, then-every instant of their existence was a change, and it took the sum of these changes to accomplish their disappearance. All here is mortalnothing is twice the same-no man ever passed twice through the same street. This, then, is the truth of Being and Nothing: neither is; what is, is only their union-and that is Becoming; for Becoming is Nothing passing into Being, or Being passing into Nothing. This will probably suffice to guide the student who can and will think, in the proper direction to gain his own repose as regards these seemingly silly transitions.

One word may still be added advantageously, however, in reference to the difference of Being and Nothing; for, absolutely identical, they are still absolutely different in them, indeed, the two sides which obtain throughout the universe have reached their absolute and direct antithesis. In Being, Thought is,

willingly-in Nothing, Thought is, unwillingly-in abstraction from all particularity. Being is the tub that sees itself just emptied; Nothing is this same tub that would now see itself refilled. Thought is well pleased to find itself in Being; but in indefiniteness (Nothing) it is uneasy; it has a want, it cravescraves, in short, to have definiteness, particularity, difference, craves to know and to see itself-to know and to see its own distinctions, its own discrimina: and this evolution of Thought's own self to Thought's own self, what is it but the universe? Thus is it that Thought is the pure Negativity, and sets its own Negative-which is the Object. Thus is it that Thought does not remain indefinite, but presses forward, according to its own rhythm, to the revelations of History and Existence. This is another curt formula for what Hegel would: it corresponds exactly to his phrase in regard to Reason making itself für sich that which it is an sich. It is well worthy of observation, too, that the second moment of the one throb, the one pulse, that which corresponds to the Ur-theil, is one of pain. The Ur-theil, which is a breaking asunder into the differences, is but as a throe of labour: the evolution of Existence is but the Absolute in travail. Daseyn is but a continual birth-and birth is pain. So it is that he errs mightily who seeks in life as life repose: life as life is monstration and probation— movement-difference; repose is reachable only in elevation over the finite particulars which emergeor rather only in the reference of these to that Affirmation of which they are but the Negative. That there should be pain in Nothing, then, and that this pain should be the fount of movement, we can now understand. The difference between Being and Nothing, in fact, is but that Being is the implication of

all particularity, and Nothing the abstraction from all particularity. It is obvious, then, that though, so to speak, the middle is always the same (and the middle is the matter held, which here is in both cases indefiniteness, and precisely the same indefiniteness, for implication of all particularity is the same Inhalt as abstraction from all particularity), the extremes differ; or, that though Being and Nothing are statements of precisely the same thing, the one is an affirmative statement, while the other is a negative one. In fact, we can conceive both Being and Nothing as possessing two sides. There is a side in Being in which it is Nothing; and again there is a side-definite existence. being always involved where it is Being. So it is with Nothing even as Nothing, definite existence is still involved; and so it has precisely the same two sides as Being. In short, each constitutes the middle and the extremes of which we have just spoken; and their difference lies in this-that in the one, the one extreme is accentuated, and in the other, the other.

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4. What does the whole thing amount to—or what is the value of the whole business?—Under the three previous questions, we have already had to deal with some considerations which tend to throw light on this question also. It represents nevertheless, perhaps, the very greatest difficulty which every one feels on his first introduction to the system of Hegel. What is all this to do for me? what is it intended to explain ?—in what way is the general mystery rendered any less by it? Such questions occur to everyone. All these abstract terms are mere formalities, one feels, and one is tempted to exclaim, What influence can be allowed any such formalities in questions that concern the origin of this so solid, real, and substantial universe? It is to be said at once, that the light of the whole can never

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