(f) But the chief point in all this is to mark how the mind frees itself from the untruth of abstraction. For it must be allowed that all abstractions are false. The isolation of that which is not sufficient for its own existence, (though as we have seen, a necessary constituent of the process of knowing and of existing,) sets up an untruth as existent. Therefore the mind thinks this isolation only as a moment of a negative unity, (i. e. as an element of a process). This leads us to the consideration of mediation in the more general form, involved by the second question.
IMMEDIATE KNOWING.
(a) Definition.—“Immediate” is a predicate applied to what is directly through itself. The immediateness of anything is the phase that first presents itself. It is the undeveloped—an oak taken immediately is an acorn; man taken immediately is a child at birth.
(b) Definition.—“Mediation” signifies the process of realization. A mediate or mediated somewhat is what it is through another, or through a process.
(c) Principle.—Any concrete somewhat exists through its relations to all else in the universe; hence all concrete somewhats are mediated. “If a grain of sand were destroyed the universe would collapse.”
(d) Principle.—An absolutely immediate somewhat would be a pure nothing, for the reason that no determination could belong to it, (for determination is negative, and hence mediation). Hence all immediateness must be phenomenal, or the result of abstraction from the concrete whole, and this, of course, exhibits the contradiction of an immediate which is mediated (a “result.”)
(e) The solution of this contradiction is found in “self-determination,” (as we have seen in former chapters). The self-determined is a mediated; it is through the process of determination; but is likewise an immediate, for it is its own mediation, and hence it is the beginning and end—it begins with its result, and ends in its beginning, and thus it is a circular process.
This is the great aperçu of all speculative philosophy.
(f) Definition.—Truth is the form of the Total, or that which actually exists.
(g) Hence a knowing of Truth must be a knowing of the self-determined, which is both immediate and mediate. This is a process or system. Therefore the knowing of it cannot be simply immediate, but must be in the form of a system. Thus the so-called “immediate intuition” is not a knowing of truth unless inconsistent with what it professes.