Examples of the latter are: 'The mind is no elephant:' 'A lion is no table;' propositions which are correct but absurd, exactly like the identical propositions: 'A lion is a lion;' 'Mind is mind.' Propositions like these are undoubtedly the truth of the immediate, or, as it is called, Qualitative judgment. But they are not judgments at all, and can only occur in a subjective thought where even an untrue abstraction may hold its ground.—In their objective aspect, these latter judgments express the nature of what is, or of sensible things, which, as they declare, suffer disruption into an empty identity on the one hand, and on the other a fully-charged relation—only that this relation is the qualitative antagonism of the things related, their total incongruity.
The negatively-infinite judgment, in which the subject has no relation whatever to the predicate, gets its place in the Formal Logic solely as a nonsensical curiosity. But the infinite judgment is not really a mere casual form adopted by subjective thought. It exhibits the proximate result of the dialectical process in the immediate judgments preceding (the positive and simply-negative), and distinctly displays their finitude and untruth. Crime may be quoted as an objective instance of the negatively-infinite judgment. The person committing a crime, such as a theft, does not, as in a suit about civil rights, merely deny the particular right of another person to some one definite thing. He denies the right of that person in general, and therefore he is not merely forced to restore what he has stolen, but is punished in addition, because he has violated law as law, i.e. law in general. The civil-law suit on the contrary is an instance of the negative judgment pure and simple where merely the particular law is violated, whilst law in general is so far acknowledged. Such a dispute is precisely paralleled by a negative judgment, like, 'This flower is not red:' by which we merely deny the particular colour of the flower, but not its colour in general, which may be blue, yellow, or any other. Similarly death, as a negatively-infinite judgment, is distinguished from disease as simply-negative. In disease, merely this or that function of life is checked or negatived: in death, as we ordinarily say, body and soul part, i.e. subject and predicate utterly diverge.
(ß) Judgment of Reflection.
174.] The individual put as individual (i.e. as reflected-into-self) into the judgment, has a predicate, in comparison with which the subject, as self-relating, continues to be still an other thing.—In existence the subject ceases to be immediately qualitative, it is in correlation, and inter-connexion with an other thing,—with an external world. In this way the universality of the predicate comes to signify this relativity—(e.g.) useful, or dangerous; weight or acidity; or again, instinct; are examples of such relative predicates.
The Judgment of Reflection is distinguished from the Qualitative judgment by the circumstance that its predicate is not an immediate or abstract quality, but of such a kind as to exhibit the subject as in relation to something else. When we say, e.g. 'This rose is red.' we regard the subject in its immediate individuality, and without reference to anything else. If, on the other hand, we frame the judgment, 'This plant is medicinal,' we regard the subject, plant, as standing in connexion with something else (the sickness which it cures), by means of its predicate (its medicinality). The case is the same with judgments like: This body is elastic: This instrument is useful: This punishment has a deterrent influence. In every one of these instances the predicate is some category of reflection. They all exhibit an advance beyond the immediate individuality of the subject, but none of them goes so far as to indicate the adequate notion of it. It is in this mode of judgment that ordinary raisonnement luxuriates. The greater the concreteness of the object in question, the more points of view does it offer to reflection; by which however its proper nature or notion is not exhausted.
175.] (1) Firstly then the subject, the individual as individual (in the Singular judgment), is a universal. But (2) secondly, in this relation it is elevated above its singularity. This enlargement is external, due to subjective reflection, and at first is an indefinite number of particulars. (This is seen in the Particular judgment, which is obviously negative as well as positive: the individual is divided in itself: partly it is self-related, partly related to something else.) (3) Thirdly, Some are the universal: particularity is thus enlarged to universality: or universality is modified through the individuality of the subject, and appears as allness Community, the ordinary universality of reflection.
The subject, receiving, as in the Singular judgment, a universal predicate, is carried out beyond its mere individual self. To say, 'This plant is wholesome,' implies not only that this single plant is wholesome, but that some or several are so. We have thus the particular judgment (some plants are wholesome, some men are inventive, &c.). By means of particularity the immediate individual comes to lose its independence, and enters into an inter-connexion with something else. Man, as this man, is not this single man alone: he stands beside other men and becomes one in the crowd, just by this means however he belongs to his universal, and is consequently raised.—The particular judgment is as much negative as positive. If only some bodies are elastic, it is evident that the rest are not elastic.
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.