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).
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 not 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.
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.
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.
In reference to the relation of form and content in the field of science, we should recollect the difference between philosophy and the rest of the sciences. The latter are finite , because their mode of thought, as a merely formal act, derives its content from without. Their content therefore is not known as moulded from within through the thoughts which lie at the ground of it, and form and content do not thoroughly interpenetrate each other. This partition disappears in philosophy, and thus justifies its title of infinite knowledge. Yet even philosophic thought is often held to be a merely formal act; and that logic, which confessedly deals only with thoughts qua thoughts, is merely formal, is especially a foregone conclusion. And if content means no more than what is palpable and obvious to the senses, all philosophy and logic in particular must be at once acknowledged to be void of content, that is to say, of content perceptible to the senses. Even ordinary forms of thought, however, and the common usage of language, do not in the least restrict the appellation of content to what is perceived by the senses, or to what has a being in place and time.
A book without content is, as every one knows, not a book with empty leaves, but one of which the content is as good as none. We shall find as the last result on closer analysis, that by what is called content an educated mind means nothing but the presence and power of thought. But this is to admit that thoughts are not empty forms without affinity to their content, and that in other spheres as well as in art the truth and the sterling value of the content essentially depend on the content showing itself identical with the form.
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. Not that such analysis is illegitimate: we only mean that the external and mechanical relation of whole and parts is not sufficient for us, if we want to study organic life in its truth. And if this be so in organic life, it is the case to a much greater extent when we apply this relation to the mind and the formations of the spiritual world. Psychologists may not expressly speak of parts of the soul or mind, but the mode in which this subject is treated by the analytic understanding is largely founded on the analogy of this finite relation. At least that is so, when the different forms of mental activity are enumerated and described merely in their isolation one after another, as so-called special powers and faculties.
[b] The one-and-same of this correlation (the self-relation found in it) is thus immediately a negative self-relation. The correlation is in short the mediating process whereby one and the same is first unaffected towards difference, and secondly is the negative self-relation, which repels itself as reflection-into-self to difference, and invests itself (as reflection-into-something-else) with existence, whilst it conversely leads back this reflection-into-other to self-relation and indifference. This gives the correlation of Force and its Expression.
The relationship of whole and part is the immediate and therefore unintelligent (mechanical) relation—a revulsion of self-identity into mere variety . Thus we pass from the whole to the parts, and from the parts to the whole: in the one we forget its opposition to the other, while each on its own account, at one time the whole, at another the parts, is taken to be an independent existence. In other words, when the parts are declared to subsist in the whole, and the whole to consist of the parts, we have either member of the relation at different times taken to be permanently subsistent, while the other is non-essential. In its superficial form the mechanical nexus consists in the parts being independent of each other and of the whole.
This relation may be adopted for the progression ad infinitum, in the case of the divisibility of matter: and then it becomes an unintelligent alternation with the two sides. A thing at one time is taken as a whole: then we go on to specify the parts: this specifying is forgotten, and what was a part is regarded as a whole: then the specifying of the part comes up again, and so on for ever. But if this infinity be taken as the negative which it is, it is the negative self-relating element in the correlation—Force, the self-identical whole, or immanency—which yet supersedes this immanency and gives itself expression; and conversely the expression which vanishes and returns into Force.
Force, notwithstanding this infinity, is also finite: for the content, or the one and the same of the Force and its out-putting, is this identity at first only for the observer: the two sides of the relation are not yet, each on its own account, the concrete identity of that one and same, not yet the totality. For one another they are therefore different, and the relationship is a finite one. Force consequently requires solicitation from without: it works blindly: and on account of this defectiveness of form, the content is also limited and accidental. It is not yet genuinely identical with the form: not yet is it as a notion and an end; that is to say, it is not intrinsically and actually determinate. This difference is most vital, but not easy to apprehend: it will assume a clearer formulation when we reach Design. If it be overlooked, it leads to the confusion of conceiving God as Force, a confusion from which Herder's God especially suffers.
It is often said that the nature of Force itself is unknown and only its manifestation apprehended. But, in the first place, it may be replied, every article in the import of Force is the same as what is specified in the Exertion: and 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: we 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.
In the first place then, Exterior is the same content as Interior. What is inwardly is also found outwardly, and vice versa. The appearance shows nothing that is not in the essence, and in the essence there is nothing but what is manifested.
In the second place, Inward and Outward, as formal terms, are also reciprocally opposed, and that thoroughlu. The one is the abstraction of identity with self; the other mere multiplicity or reality. But as stages of the one form, they are essentially identical so that whatever is at first explicitly put only in the one abstracton, is also plainly and at one step ni the other. Therefore what is only internal is also only external: and what is only external, is so far only at first internal.
It is the customary mistake of reflection to take essence to be merely the interior. If it be so taken, even this way of looking at it is purely external, and that sort of essence is the empty external abstraction.
Ins Innere der Natur
Dringt kein erschaffner Geist,
Zu glücklich wenn er nur
De äussere Schaale weisst.
It ought rather to have been said that, if the essence of nature is ever described as the inner part, the person who so describes it only knows its outer shell. In Being as a whole, or even in mere sense-perception, the notion is at first only an inward, and for that very reason is something external to Being, a subjective thinking and being, devoid of truth. In Nature as well as in Mind, so long as the notion, design, or law are at first the inner capacity, mere possibilities, they are first only an external, inorganic nature, the knowledge of a third person, alien force, and the like. As a man is outwardly, that is to say in his actions (not of course in his merely bodily outwardness), so he is inwardly: and if his virtue, morality, etc. are only inwardly his - that is if they exist only in his intentions and sentiments, and his outward acts are not identical with them - the one half of him is as hollow and empty as the other.
... Any object indeed is faulty and imperfect when it is only inward, and thus at the same time only outward, or (which is the same thing) when it is only an outward and thus only an inward. For instance, a child, taken in the gross as human being, is no doubt a rational creature; but the reason of the child as child is at first a mere inward, in the shape of his natural ability or vocation, etc. This mere inward, at the same time, has for the child the form of a mere outward, in the shape of the will of his parents, the attainments of his teachers, and the whole world of reason that environs him. The education and instruction of a child aim at making him actually and for himself what he is at forst only potentially and therefore for others, viz., for his grown up friends. The reason, which at first exists in the child only as an inner possibility, is actualised through education: and conversely, the child by these means becomes conscious that the goodness, religion, and science which he had at first looked upon as an outward authority, are his own nature. As with the child so it is in this matter with the adult, when, in opposition to his true destiny, his intellect and will remain in the bondage of the natural man. Thus, the criminal sees the punishment to which he has to submit as an act of violence from without; whereas in fact the penalty is only the manifestation of his own crominal will.
What is called the 'pragmatic writing of history has in modern times frequently sinned in its treatment of great historical characters, and defaced and tarnished the true conception of them by this fallacious separation of the outward and the inward. Not content with telling the unvarnished tale of the great acts which have been wrought by the heroes of the world's history, and wit acknowledging that their inward being corresponds with the import of their acts, the pragmatic historian fancies himself justified and even obliged to trace the supposed secret motives that lie behind the open facts of the record. The historian, in that case, is supposed to write with more depth in proportion as he succeeds in tearing away the aureole from all that has been heretofore held grand and glorious, and in depressing it, so far as its origin and proper significance are concerned, to the level of vulgar mediocrity. To make these pragmatic researchres in history easier, it is susal to recommend the study of psychology, which is supposed to make us acquainted with the real motives of human actions. The psychology in question however, is only that petty knowledge of men, which looks away from the essential and permanent in human nature to fasten its glance on the casual and private features shown in isolated instincts and passions. A pragmatic psychlogy ought at leat to leave the historian, who investigates the motives at the ground of great actions, a choice between the 'substantial' interests of patriotism, justce, religious truth, and the like, on the one hand, and the subjective and 'formal' interests of vanity, ambition, avarice, and the like, on the other. The latter, however, are the motives which must be viewed by the pragmatist as reallt efficient, otherwise the assumption of a contrast between inward (the dispositoin of the agent) and the outward (the import of he action) would fall to the ground. But inward and outward have in truth the same content; and the right doctrine is the vey reverse of this pedantic judiciality. If the heroes of history had been actuated by subjective and formal interests alone, they would never have accomplished what they have. And if we have due regard to the unity between the inner and the outer, we must own that great men willed what they did, and did what they willed.