On this fact again depends the advance to the third form of the
Reflective judgment, viz. the judgment of allness (all men are mortal,
all metals conduct electricity). It is as 'all' that the universal
is in the first instance generally encountered by reflection. The
individuals form for reflection the foundation, and it is only our
subjective action which collects and describes them as 'all.' So far
the universal has the aspect of an external fastening, that holds
together a number of independent individuals, which have not the least
affinity towards it. This semblance of indifference is however unreal:
for the universal is the ground and foundation, the root, and substance
of the individual. If _e.g._ we take Caius, Titus, Sempronius, and
the other inhabitants of a town or country, the fact that all of them
are men is not merely something which they have in common, but their
universal or kind, without which these individuals would not be at all.
The case is very different with that superficial generality falsely
so called, which really means only what attaches, or is common, to
all the individuals. It has been remarked, for example, that men,
in contradistinction from the lower animals, possess in common the
appendage of ear-lobes. It is evident, however, that the absence of
these ear-lobes in one man or another would not affect the rest of
his being, character, or capacities: whereas it would be nonsense
to suppose that Caius, without being a man, would still be brave,
learned, &c. The individual man is what he is in particular, only in so
far as he is before all things a man as man and in general. And that
generality is not something external to, or something in addition to
other abstract qualities, or to mere features discovered by reflection.
It is what permeates and includes in it everything particular.
176.] The subject being thus likewise characterised as a universal,
there is an express identification of subject and predicate, by which
at the same time the speciality of the judgment form is deprived of
all importance. This unity of the content (the content being the
universality which is identical with the negative reflection-in-self of
the subject) makes the connexion in judgment a necessary one.
The advance from the reflective judgment of allness to the judgment
of necessity is found in our usual modes of thought, when we say that
whatever appertains to all, appertains to the species, and is therefore
necessary. To say all plants, or all men, is the same thing as to say
_the_ plant, or _the_ man.
(γ) _Judgment of Necessity._
177.] The Judgment of Necessity, _i.e._ of the identity of the content
in its difference (1), contains, in the predicate, partly the substance
or nature of the subject, the concrete universal, the _genus_; partly,
seeing that this universal also contains the specific character as
negative, the predicate represents the exclusive essential character,
the _species._ This is the Categorical judgment.