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 _quâ_ 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.
134.] But immediate existence is a character of the subsistence itself
as well as of the form: it is consequently external to the character of
the content; but in an equal degree this externality, which the content
has through the factor of its subsistence, is essential to it. When
thus explicitly stated, the phenomenon is relativity or correlation:
where one and the same thing, viz. the content or the developed
form, is seen as the externality and antithesis of independent
existences, and as their reduction to a relation of identity, in which
identification alone the two things distinguished are what they are.
(c) _Relation or Correlation._
135.] (α) The immediate relation is that of the Whole and the
Parts. The content is the whole, and consists of the parts (the
form), its counterpart. The parts are diverse one from another. It is
they that possess independent being. But they are parts, only when they
are identified by being related to one another; or, in so far as they
make up the whole, when taken together. But this 'Together' is the
counterpart and negation of the part.
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