[p. 292]
|292| as such, and the object worked upon, are themselves means is a formal middleness, since that for which they are lies outside them, and so the relating of the subjective to the objective is a completely separated one, remaining merely inside, within the subjective, in the thought of intelligence. In the tool the subject separates its becoming dulled, and objectivity, from itself; it gives up another thing to annihilation, and shifts onto it the subjective part of that annihilation; at the same time its labour ceases to be something singular; the subjectivity of labour is raised in the tool to something universal; anyone can imitate it and labour in the same way; it is to that extent the constant rule of labour.
On account of this rationality of the tool, it stands, as the middle, higher both than labouring and than the object worked upon (for enjoyment, of which we are speaking here), and than enjoyment, or the purpose; and for this reason, too, all peoples standing in the natural potency have so honoured the tool, and in Homer we find respect for it, and the consciousness of it, most beautifully expressed.
γ. The tool stands under the dominion of the concept, and therefore belongs to different or mechanical labour; the child is the middle as absolutely pure, simple intuition. But the totality of both must have precisely this simplicity, yet at the same time the ideality of the concept; or, in the child, the ideality of the extremes of the tool must enter into its substantial essence; in the tool, precisely thereby, an ideality must enter [into] the dead inner, and the reality of the extremes disappear; it must be a middle which is perfectly ideal; as absolute ideality there is only the absolute concept, or intelligence; the middle must be intelligent; but not individual, nor subjective; of the former only an infinitely vanishing and self-presenting appearance; a light ethereal body, which passes away as it is formed; not a subjective intelligence, nor an accident of it, but rationality itself, as real, but in such a way that this reality is itself ideal and infinite, and in its being is immediately also its opposite, namely not to be; thus an ethereal body which presents the extremes, and so is real according to the concept, but also has its ideality, in that the essence of this body is to pass away immediately, and its appearance is this immediate
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