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intelligi".]]
Immediate certainty does not make the truth its own, for its truth is something universal, whereas certainty
wants to deal with the This. Perception, on the other hand, takes what exists for it to be a universal.
Universality being its principle in general, its moments immediately distinguished within it are also universal;
I is a universal, and the object is a universal. That principle has arisen and come into being for us who are
tracing the course of experience; and our process of apprehending what perception is, therefore, is no longer a
contingent series of acts of apprehension, as is the case with the apprehension of sense-certainty; it is a
logically necessitated process. With the origination of the principle, both the moments, which as they appear
merely fall apart as happenings, have at once together come into being: the one, the process of pointing out
and indicating, the other the same process, but as a simple fact-the former the process of perceiving, the
latter the object perceived. The object is in its essential nature the same as the process; the latter is the
unfolding and distinguishing of the elements involved; the object is these same elements taken and held
together as a single totality. For us (tracing the process) or in itself,(2) the universal, qua principle, is the
essence of perception; and as against this abstraction, both the moments distinguished-that which perceives
and that which is perceived-are what is non-essential. But in point of fact, because both are themselves the
universal, or the essence, they are both essential: but since they are related as opposites, only one can in the
relation (constituting perception) be the essential moment; and the distinction of essential and non-essential
has to be shared between them. The one characterized as the simple fact, the object, is the essence, quite
indifferent as to whether it is perceived or not: perceiving, on the other hand, being the process, is the
insubstantial, the inconstant factor, which can be as well as not be, is the non-essential moment.
This object we have now to determine more precisely, and to develop this determinate character from the
result arrived at: the more detailed development does not fall in place here. Since its principle, the universal,
is in its simplicity a mediated principle, the object must express this explicitly as its own inherent nature. The
object shows itself by so doing to be the thing with many properties. The wealth of sense-knowledge belongs
to perception, not to immediate certainty, where all that wealth was merely something alongside and by the
way; for it is only perception that has negation, distinction, multiplicity in its very nature.
The This, then, is established as not This, or as superseded, and yet not nothing (simpliciter), but a
determinate nothing, a nothing with a certain content, viz. the This. The sense-element is in this way itself
still present, but not in the form of some particular that is "meant"-as had to be the case in immediate
certainty-but as a universal, as that which will have the character of the property. Cancelling, superseding,
brings out and lays bare its true twofold meaning which we found contained in the negative: to supersede
II. PERCEPTION: OR THINGS AND THEIR DECEPTIVENESS(1) 39
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
(aufheben) is at once to negate and to preserve. The nothing being a negation of the This, preserves
immediacy and is itself sensuous, but a universal immediacy. Being, however, is a universal by its having in
it mediation or negation. When it brings this explicitly out as a factor in its immediacy, it is a specifically
distinct determinate property. As a result, there are many such properties set up at once, one the negation of
the other. Since they are expressed in the simple form of the universal, these determinate characters-which,
strictly speaking, become properties only by a further additional characteristic-are self-related, are
indifferent to each other, each is by itself, free from the rest. The simple self-identical universality, however,
is itself again distinct and detached from these determinate characteristics it has. It is pure self-relation, the
"medium" wherein all these characteristics exist: in it, as in a bare, simple unity, they interpenetrate without
affecting one another; for just by participating in this universality they are indifferent to each other, each by
itself.
This abstract universal medium, which we can call "Thinghood" in general or pure essential reality, is
nothing else than the Here and Now as this on analysis turned out to be, viz. a simple togetherness of many
Heres and Nows. But the many (in the present case) are in their determinateness themselves simply
universals. This salt is a simple Here and at the same time manifold: it is white, and also pungent, also
cubical in shape, also of a specific weight, and so on. All these many properties exist in a simple Here, where
they interpenetrate each other. None of these has a different Here from the others; each is everywhere in the
same Here where the others are. And at the same time, without being divided by different Heres, they do not
affect each other in their interpenetration; its being white does not affect or alter the cubical shape it has, and
neither affects its tart taste, and so on: on the contrary, since each is simple relation to self, it leaves the others
alone and is related to these merely by being also along with them, a relation of mere indifference. This
"Also" is thus the pure universal itself, the "medium", the "Thinghood" keeping them together.
In this relation, which has emerged, it is merely the character of positive universality that is first noticed and
developed. But there is still a side presented to view which must also be taken into account. It is this. If the
many determinate properties were utterly indifferent to each other, and were entirely related to themselves
alone, they would not be determinate; for they are so, merely in so far as they are distinguished and related to
others as their opposites. In view of this opposition, however, they cannot exist together in the bare and
simple unity of their "medium", which unity is just as essential to them as negation. The process of
distinguishing them, so far as it does not leave them indifferent, but effectually excludes, negates one from
another, thus falls outside this simple "medium". And this, consequently, is not merely an "also", an unity
indifferent to what is in it, but a "one" as well, an excluding repelling unity.
The "One" is the moment of negation, as, in a direct and simple manner, relating itself to itself, and excluding
an other: and is that by which "Thinghood" is determined qua Thing. In the property of a thing the negation
takes the form of a specific determinateness, which is directly one with the immediacy of its being, an
immediacy which, by this unity with negation, is universality. Qua "one", however, negation, the specific
quality, takes a form in which it is freed from this unity with the object, and exists per se on its own account.
These moments taken together exhaust the nature of the Thing, the truth of perception, so far as it is
necessary to develop it here. It is (1) a universality, passive and indifferent, the "also" which forms the sole
bond of connection between the qualities, or rather constituent elements, "matters", existing together; (2)
negation, likewise in a simple form, or the "one", which consists in excluding properties of an opposite
character; and (3) the many properties themselves, the relation of the two first moments-the negation, as it is
related to that indifferent element, and in being so expands into a manifold of differences, the focal point of
particularity radiating forth into plurality within the "medium" of subsistence. Taking the aspect that these
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