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This is the shape, the specific kind of inward coherence of matter and its external border in space;

— the individuality of the mechanism.

The specification of matter as an element is at this point shapeless, because it is still only a

singularity. Regarding the form of the shape, and individuality in general, it is preferable to avoid

the image of an external, mechanical style and composition. It may help in this case to distinguish

between the externality of style and the inwardness of the shape's coherence, but the essential

point is to remember the peculiar differentiation which arises from this distinction, which at the

same time constitutes a determinate, self-identical unity in the relation.

§ 236.

The abstract specification is the specific gravity or density of matter, the relation of the weight of its

mass to the volume. In this relation the material selfhood tears itself away from the abstract,

general relations to the central body, ceases to be the uniform filling of space, and opposes a

specific being in itself to an abstract being apart from itself

The varying density of matter is often explained by the assumption of pores; - though "to explain"

means in general to refer a phenomenon back to the accepted, familiar determinations of the

understanding, and no conceptions are more familiar than those of "composition," "pieces and their

details," and "emptiness." Therefore nothing is clearer than to use the imaginative invention of pores

to comprehend the densification of matter. These would be empty interstices, though physics does

not demonstrate them, despite its attempt to speak of them as at hand and its claim to be based on

experience and observation. What is beyond these and is merely assumed is the matter of thought.

It does not occur to physics, however, that it has thoughts, which is true in at least two senses and

here in a third sense: the pores are only imaginative inventions.

An immediate example of the peculiar specification of gravity offered by physics is furnished by the

phenomenon that, when a bar of iron, evenly balanced on its fulcrum, is magnetised, it loses its

equilibrium and shows itself to be heavier at one pole than at the other.-The axioms presupposed

by physics in its mode of representing density are: (1) that equal amounts of equally large material

parts weigh the same;-in this way the formal identity of gravity remains consistent-(2) the measure

of the number of parts is the amount of weight, but (3) also of space, so that bodies of equal

weight occupy equal amounts of space; (4) consequently, when equal weights are found in

different volumes, the equality of the spaces is preserved by the assumption of pores which fill the

space.

Kant has already contrasted intensity to the quantitative determination of the amount, and, instead

of positing that the heavier body contains more particles in a certain space, he has assumed that in

the heavier body the same number of particles fill space to a greater degree. In this way he created

"dynamic physics." At least the determination of the intensive quantum would be just as correct as

that of an extensive quantum; but this distinction (cf § 56) is empty and in itself nothing. Here the

intensive determination of size, however, has this advantage: that it points to the category of

measure and indicates initially a being in itself which as a conceptual determination is an immanent

determinacy of form, and only existent as quantum. But to distinguish between extensive or

intensive quantum differences, - and dynamic physics goes no further than this-does not express

any reality.

§ 237.

Density is at first only a simple determinacy. The simple determinacy is, however, essentially a

determination of form as a unity split apart from itself. Thus it constitutes the principle of

brittleness, the shaping relation of its consistently maintained points.

The previously mentioned particles, molecules of matter, are an external determination of

reflection. The real significance of the determination of the unit is that it is the immanent form of

shaping.

§ 238.

The brittle is the subjective entity existing for itself but it must deploy the difference of the concept.

The point becomes the line and posits itself as an opposed extreme to the line; the two are held by

their middle term and point of indifference in their antithesis. This syllogism constitutes the principle

of shaping in its developed determinacy, and is, in this abstract rigour, magnetism.

Magnetism is one of the determinations which inevitably became prominent when thought began to

recognise itself in determinate nature and grasped the idea of a philosophy of nature. For the

magnet exhibits in a simple, naive way the nature of the concept. The poles are not particular

things; they do not possess sensory, mechanical reality, but rather an ideal reality; the point of

indifference, in which they have their substance, is the unity in which they exist only as

determinations of the concept, and the polarity is an opposition of only such moments. The

phenomena revealed by magnetism as merely particular are merely and repeatedly the same

determinations, and not diverse features which could add data to a description. That the individual

magnetic needle points to the north, and thus to the south as well, is a manifestation of general

terrestrial magnetism: in two such empirical magnets the poles named similarly repel each other,

whereas the poles named differently attract. And precisely this is magnetism, namely, that the same

or indifferent will split apart and oppose each other in the extreme, and the dissimilar or different

will posit its indifference. The differently named poles have even been called friendly, and the

similarly named poles have been called hostile.

The statement, however, that all bodies are magnetic has an unfortunate double meaning. The

correct meaning is that all real, and not merely brittle, figures contain this concept; but the incorrect

meaning is that all bodies also have this principle implicitly in its rigorous abstraction, as magnetism.

It would be an unphilosophical thought to want to show that a form of the concept is at hand in

nature, and that it exists universally in its determinacy as an abstraction. For nature is rather the

idea in the element of being apart from itself so that, like the understanding, it retains the moments

of the concept as dispersed and depicts them so in reality, but in the higher organic things the

differentiated forms of the concept are unified as the highest concretion.

§ 239.

At the opposite end from magnetism, which as linear spatiality and the ideal contrast of extremes is

the abstract concept of the shape, stands its abstract totality the sphere, the shape of the real

absence of shape, of fluid indeterminacy, and of the indifferent elasticity of the parts.

§ 240.

Between the two actually shapeless extremes contained within magnetism as the abstract concept

of the figure there appears, as an immanent form of juxtaposition distinct from that determined by

gravity, a kind of magnetism transformed into total corporeality, cohesion.

§ 241.

The common understanding of cohesion merely refers to the individual moment of quantitative

strength of the connection between the parts of a body. Concrete cohesion is the immanent form

and determinacy of this connection, and comprehends both external crystallisations and the

fragmentary shapes or central shapes, crystallisation which displays itself inwardly in transparent

movement.

§ 242.

Through external crystallisation the individual body is sealed off as an individual against others, and

capable of a mechanical process with them. As an inwardly formed entity the body specifies this

process in terms of its behaviour as a merely general mass. In terms of its elasticity, hardness,

softness, viscosity, and abilities to extend or to burst, the body retains its individual determinacy in

resistance to external force.

§ 243.

As density, however, is at first only simple determinacy by virtue of the relation of volume to mass,

cohesion is this simplicity as the selfhood of individuality. The self-preservation of the body during

the vibration from a mechanical force is, therefore, also an emergence of its individual, pure

ideality, its characteristic motion in itself through its whole cohesion. It is the specific determination

of its ideal externality in itself through its self-identified time. In this vibration, the product of real

force and external pressure which the body survives in the form of its specified ideality, this simple

form achieves independent existence.

But entities without cohesion — which are inflexible and fluid are without resonance and in their

resistance, which is merely an external vibration, make only a noise.

§ 244.

This individuality, since it is at first here only immediate, can be suspended by mechanical force.

The friction, which brings together that difference of corporeality held apart by cohesion in the

negativity of a temporal moment, causes an initial or concluding selfdestruction of the body to

break forth. And the body exhibits its specific nature, in the relationship between the inner change

and the suspension of its cohesion, through the capacity for heat.

(b) The Particularisation of Differences

§ 245.

Shaping, the individualisation of the mechanism or of weight, turns into elemental particularisation.

The individual body has the totality of the elements within itself; as the subject of the same the

body contains the elements in the first place as attributes or predicates, but in the second place

these are retained only in immediate individuality, and thus they exist also as materials indifferent to

each other. Thirdly, they are the relations to the unbound elements and the processes of the

individual body with those elements.

In connection with the ancient, general idea that each body consists of the four elements, or with

the more recent view of Paracelsus that it consists of mercury or liquid, sulphur or oil, and salt, and

with many other ideas of this kind, it is to be remarked first that it is easy to refute these names if

one understands by them only the particular empirical substances that they primarily denote. It is,

however, not to be overlooked that these names were meant much more essentially to contain and

to express the determinations of the concept. Thus we should rather wonder at the vehemence

with which thought recognised only its own determination in such sensory things and held fast to its

general significance. On the other hand, such a conception and determination, since it has reason

as its source-which neither loses its way in the sensory games of phenomena and their confusion,

nor allows itself to be brought to forget itself-is elevated infinitely far above the thoughtless

investigation and chaotic narrative of the bodies' attributes. Here it is counted as a service and

praiseworthy to have made yet another particular discovery, instead of referring the many

particulars back to generality and the concept, and recognising the latter in them.

§ 246.

The body individualises: (a) the external self of light in its darkness into its specific opacity, colour;

(b) air, as abstract, selfless generality into the simplicity of its specific process, or, as odour, is

rather the specific individuality of the body in its simplicity, itself only as process; (c) water, the

abstract neutrality, is individualised into the determinate neutrality of saltiness, acidity, and,

immediately, into taste.

§ 247.

These particularised bodies are, in their general earthly totality, in the first place only superficially

related to one another and preserve their independence by being isolated from each other. But as

individuals they also stand in relation to each other and, to be sure, outside of the mechanical

relationship as particular individualities.

§ 248.

At first these bodies relate to each other as independent entities, but they then become manifest as

a mechanical relationship in an ideal movement, in the internal reverberation as sound. Now,

however, in real selfhood, they emerge as an electrical relationship to each other.

§ 249.

The being for itself of these bodies, as it is manifested in physical contact, is posited in each by the

difference from the other. Thus this being is not free, but rather an antithetical tension, in which,

however, it is not the nature of the body which emerges: only the reality of its abstract self a light,

is produced and, in fact, as a light set in opposition. The suspension of the diremption, the other

moment of this process, has an undifferentiated light as its product, which disappears immediately

as incorporeal. Apart from this abstract physical manifestation, the process has only the

mechanical effect of shaking as a significant outcome.

It is well-known that the earlier distinction between vitreous and resinous electricity, determined as

a part of sensory existence, was idealised by empirical science into the conceptual distinction

between positive and negative electricity. This is a remarkable instance of the way in which

empiricism, which initially attempts to grasp and retain generality in sensory form, suspends itself.

Although there has been much discussion recently of the polarisation of light, it would have been

more appropriate to reserve this expression for electricity than for the phenomena observed by

Malus, where transparent media, reflecting surfaces, and their various reciprocal inclinations, as

well as a determinate corner of light, are actually so many different kinds of situations, which

produces no difference in light itself but does show itself in light's shining.

The conditions under which positive and negative electricity emerge, in relation to smoother or