§ 416. The aim of conscious mind is to make its appearance identical with its essence, to raise its self-certainty to truth. The existence of mind in the stage of consciousness is finite, because it is merely a nominal self-relation, or mere certainty. The object is only abstractly characterised as its; in other words, in the object it is only as an abstract ego that the mind is reflected into itself: hence its existence there has still a content, which is not as its own.
§ 417. The grades of this elevation of certainty to truth are three in number: first (a) consciousness in general, with an object set against it; (b) self-consciousness, for which ego is the object; (c) unity of consciousness and self-consciousness, where the mind sees itself embodied in the object and sees itself as implicitly and explicitly determinate, as Reason, the notion of mind.
(a) Consciousness Proper[127].
(α) Sensuous consciousness.
§ 418. Consciousness is, first, immediate consciousness, and its reference to the object accordingly the simple and underived certainty of it. The object similarly, being immediate, an existent, reflected in itself, is further characterised as immediately singular. This is sense-consciousness.
Consciousness—as a case of correlation—comprises only the categories belonging to the abstract ego or formal thinking; and these it treats as features of the object (§ [415]). Sense-consciousness therefore is aware of the object as an existent, a something, an existing thing, a singular, and so on. It appears as wealthiest in matter, but as poorest in thought. That wealth of matter is made out of sensations: they are the material of consciousness (§ [414]), the substantial and qualitative, what the soul in its anthropological sphere is and finds in itself. This material the ego (the reflection of the soul in itself) separates from itself, and puts it first under the category of being. Spatial and temporal Singularness, here and now (the terms by which in the Phenomenology of the Mind (W. II. p. 73), I described the object of sense-consciousness) strictly belongs to intuition. At present the object is at first to be viewed only in its correlation to consciousness, i.e. a something external to it, and not yet as external on its own part, or as being beside and out of itself.
§ 419. The sensible as somewhat becomes an other: the reflection in itself of this somewhat, the thing, has many properties; and as a single (thing) in its immediacy has several predicates. The muchness of the sense-singular [pg 051] thus becomes a breadth—a variety of relations, reflectional attributes, and universalities. These are logical terms introduced by the thinking principle, i.e. in this case by the Ego, to describe the sensible. But the Ego as itself apparent sees in all this characterisation a change in the object; and self-consciousness, so construing the object, is sense-perception.
(β) Sense-perception[128].
§ 420. Consciousness, having passed beyond the sensibility, wants to take the object in its truth, not as merely immediate, but as mediated, reflected in itself, and universal. Such an object is a combination of sense qualities with attributes of wider range by which thought defines concrete relations and connexions. Hence the identity of consciousness with the object passes from the abstract identity of “I am sure” to the definite identity of “I know, and am aware.”
The particular grade of consciousness on which Kantism conceives the mind is perception: which is also the general point of view taken by ordinary consciousness, and more or less by the sciences. The sensuous certitudes of single apperceptions or observations form the starting-point: these are supposed to be elevated to truth, by being regarded in their bearings, reflected upon, and on the lines of definite categories turned at the same time into something necessary and universal, viz. experiences.