[p. 189]
|189| according to its content; its content no longer has any free value of its own; its being is the I itself – idealism, which becomes object to itself; the thing is not what it is; that being is self; – my being-for-me is object as the essence of the thing, in recollection only synthetically, externally attached. The I is here object as the interior of the thing itself, this inwardness of the thing is still separated from its being, it is not yet universality, or the thing posited as thing. This,11) that I intuit the thing only as sign, but its essence as I, as meaning, as reflection into itself, is likewise itself object; it is thus only at first immediate inwardness, it must also enter into existence, become object, conversely this inwardness be external; return to being. This is language, as the name-giving power,12) – imagination only the empty-form-giving, designating [power], which posits the form as inward, but language [posits the inward] as something that is. This then is the true being of spirit as spirit in general – it is there as the unity of two free selves; and an existence which is in accordance with its concept, – it likewise immediately sublates itself – dies away, but is apprehended. At first language speaks only with this self, the meaning of the thing, gives it a name, and expresses this as the being of the object; what is this? we answer, it is a lion, ass etc. it is, i.e. it is not at all something yellow, having feet and so forth, something of its own, self-standing, but a name, a sound of my voice; something quite other than it is in intuition, and this its true being. This is only its name, the thing itself is something else; i.e. we then fall back into sensuous representation; – or only a name in a higher sense, for the name is itself only at first the very superficial spiritual being. – Through the name, then, the
11) In the margin: inwardness which itself is there.
12) In the margin: memory, creative power
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