Law as Distinction and Sameness

^'149' The absolute flux of the world of appearance passes into bare and simple difference through its relation to the simplicity of the inner being.

The simplicity is apprehended by understanding.

The inner being is in the first instance merely the implicit universal.

This implicit simple universal, however, is essentially absolute universal difference as well; for it is the outcome of the change itself, or change is its very nature.

But change, when planted in the inner reality as change truly is, forthwith is taken up into that reality as equally absolute universal difference at peace with itself, and remaining at one with itself.

In other words, negation is an essential moment of the universal; and negation or mediation in what is universal is universal difference. This difference is expressed in the law, which is the stable presentment or picture of unstable appearance. The supersensible world is in this way a quiescent “kingdom of laws”, no doubt beyond the world of perception-for this exhibits the law only through incessant change – but likewise present in it, and its direct immovable copy or image.

b. Law as Distinction and Sameness

^'150' This kingdom of laws is the truth for understanding. That truth finds its content in the distinction which lies in the law.

At the same time, however, this kingdom of laws is only the preliminary truth. It does not give all the fullness of the world of appearance.

The law is present therein. But it is not all the appearance present. Under ever-varying circumstances, the law has an ever-varying actual existence.

Thereby appearance continues to keep one aspect which is not in the inner world; i.e. appearance is not yet in very truth established as appearance, as that whose independent being has been done away with.

This defect in the law has to be brought out in the law itself. What seems defective in it is that while it no doubt has difference within it, it contains this in a merely universal indeterminate way.

So far, however, as it is not law in general, but a law, it has determinateness within it. As a result, there are found an indeterminate plurality of laws.

But this plurality is rather itself a defect. It contradicts the principle of understanding, for which, since it is consciousness of the simple inner being, truth is the inherently universal unity.

It must, therefore, let the many laws coalesce into a single law, just as, e.g., the law by which a stone falls, and that by which the heavenly bodies move have been conceived as one law. When the laws thus coincide, however, they lose their specific character.

The law becomes more and more abstract and superficial. Consequently we find not the unity of these various determinate laws, but a law which leaves out their specific character.

This is the same as the one law which combines in itself the laws of falling terrestrial bodies and of the movements of celestial bodies does not express both kinds of laws.

The unification of all laws in universal attraction expresses no further content than just the bare concept of the law itself, a concept which is therein set down as existing.

Universal attraction says merely that everything has a constant distinction for anything else.

Understanding pretends by that to have found a universal law which gives expression to universal reality as such. But it has merely found the conception of law itself, although in such a way that it at the same time declares all reality to be in its very nature conformed to law.

The idea of universal attraction important because it is directed against that unthinking way of representing reality.

That unthinking way sees everything as happening as accident and chance, instead of being determined and specific.