[p. 294]
|294| does not infinitely annihilate itself within itself, but is here, in difference, annihilated only externally for it. Thus its being-twofold is likewise an externality; it expresses nothing but the relation to the subject and to the object, whose ideal middle it is; but this connection it receives through something subjective outside it which thinks it; through itself it expresses it negatively, through its being-annihilated as subject, or as having a meaning of its own for itself, through its inner meaninglessness, so that it is the middle insofar as it is a thing, a determinacy for itself, and yet nothing at all for itself, no thing; it is immediately this opposite of itself, to be for itself and absolutely not for itself but another, so that the absolute concept is here really objective. Corporeal sign; it is the ideality of the tool, as the mien is the ideality of the child, and as it is more rational to make a tool than a child, so a corporeal sign is more rational than gesture. The sign, since it corresponds to the absolute concept, expresses no shape, as which the absolute concept taken up into indifference is; but since it expresses only the concept, it is bound to the formally universal; as mien and gesture are a subjective language, so the corporeal sign is an objective one; as the former does not tear itself loose from the subject nor become free, so the latter remains something objective, and does not carry its subjective element, cognition, immediately in itself; it is therefore also attached to the object, and expresses, on it but free of it, so that it is not a determinacy of the object but has merely been added to it and remains contingent to it, precisely through the contingency of the connection, a relation to something subjective, which, however, is presented wholly indeterminately and must first be added in thought; it therefore also expresses the relation of the possession of an object to the subject.
ג. sounding speech unites the objectivity of the corporeal sign and the subjectivity of gesture; the articulation of the latter with the being-for-itself of the former; it is the middle of intelligences, Logos, their rational bond. The abstract objectivity, which is a mute recognising, gains in it a body of its own, independent, being for itself, but after the manner of the concept, namely one that immediately annihilates itself; with sounding speech
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