Chemism constitutes in objectivity as a whole, the moment of judgment, of the difference that has become objective, and of the process. Since it already begins with determinateness and positedness and the chemical object is at the same time an objective totality, its immediate course is simple and is completely determined by its presupposition.
The chemical object is distinguished from the mechanical by the fact that the latter is a totality indifferent to determinateness, whereas in the case of the chemical object the determinateness, and consequently the relation to other and the kind and manner of this relation, belong to its nature. This determinateness is at the same time essentially a particularisation, that is, it is taken up into universality; thus it is a principle — universal determinateness, the determinateness not only of the one individual object but also of the other. In the chemical object, therefore, we now have the distinction between its Notion as the inner totality of the two determinatenesses, and the determinateness that constitutes the nature of the individual object in its externality and concrete existence. Since in this way it is in itself or implicitly the whole Notion, it has in its own self the necessity and the urge to sublate its opposed, one sided — existence and to give itself an existence as that real whole that according to its Notion it is.
With regard to the expression chemism for the relation of the difference of objectivity as it has presented itself, it may be further remarked that the expression must not be understood here as though this relation only exhibited itself in that form of elemental nature to which the name chemism so called is strictly applied. Even the meteorological relation must be regarded as a process whose parts have the nature more of physical than chemical elements. In the animate world, the sex relation comes under this schema and it also constitutes the formal basis for the spiritual relations of love, friendship, and the like.
Examined more closely the chemical object, as a self-subsistent totality in general, is in the first instance an object that is reflected into itself and to that extent is distinct from its reflectedness outwards — an indifferent base, the individual not yet specified as different; the person, too, is such a base related at first only to itself. But the immanent determinateness which constitutes its difference, is first reflected into itself in such a manner that this retraction of the relation outwards is only formal abstract universality; thus the relation outwards is the determination of its immediacy and concrete existence. From this aspect, it does not in its own self return into the individual totality; and the negative unity has the two moments of its opposition in two particular objects. Accordingly, a chemical object is not comprehensible from itself alone, and the being of one is the being of the other. But secondly, the determinateness is absolutely reflected into itself and is the concrete moment of the individual Notion of the whole, which Notion is the universal essence, the real genus of the particular object. The chemical object, which is thus the contradiction of its immediate positedness and its immanent individual Notion, is a striving to sublate the determinateness of its existence and to give concrete existence to the objective totality of the Notion. Therefore, though it also lacks self-subsistence, it spontaneously tenses itself against this deficiency and initiates the process by its self-determining.
1. It begins with the presupposition that the objects in tension, tensed as they are against themselves, are in the first instance by that very fact just as much tensed against one another — a relationship that is called their affinity. Since each through its Notion stands in contradiction to the one-sidedness of its own existence and consequently strives to sublate it, there is immediately posited in this fact the striving to sublate the one-sidedness of the other object; and through this reciprocal adjustment and combination to posit a reality conformable to the Notion, which contains both moments.
As each of the objects is posited as self-contradictory and self-sublating in its own self, it is only by an external compulsion [Gewalt] that they are held apart from one another and from their reciprocal integration. Now the middle term whereby these extremes are concluded into a unity is first the implicit nature of both, the whole Notion that holds both within itself. Secondly, however, since in their concrete existence they stand confronting each other, their absolute unity is also a still formal element having an existence distinct from them — the element of communication in which they enter into external community with each other. Since the real difference belongs to the extremes, this middle term is only the abstract neutrality, the real possibility of those extremes; it is, as it were, the theoretical element of the concrete existence of chemical objects, of their process and its result. In the material world water fulfils the function of this medium; in the spiritual world, so far as the analogue of such a relation has a place there, the sign in general, and more precisely language, is to be regarded as fulfilling that function.
The relationship of the objects, as a mere communication in this element, is on the one hand a quiescent coming-together, but on the other hand it is no less a negative bearing of each to the other; for in communication the concrete Notion which is their nature is posited as a reality, with the result that the real differences of the objects are reduced to its unity. Their previous self-subsistent determinateness is thus sublated in the union that conforms to the Notion, which is one and the same in both, and thereby their opposition and tension are weakened, with the result that in this reciprocal integration the striving reaches its quiescent neutrality.
The process is in this way extinguished; the contradiction between the Notion and reality being resolved, the extremes of the syllogism have lost their opposition and have thus ceased to be extremes both against each other and against the middle term. The product is neutral, that is, a product in which the ingredients, which can no longer be called objects, have lost their tension and with it those properties which belonged to them as tensed, while the capability of their former self-subsistence and tension is preserved. For the negative unity of the neutral product proceeds from a presupposed difference; the determinateness of the chemical object is identical with its objectivity, it is original. Through the process just considered this difference is as yet only immediately sublated; the determinateness is, therefore, as yet not absolutely reflected into itself, and consequently the product of the process is only a formal unity.
2. Now in this product, the tension of the opposition and the negative unity, as activity of the process, are indeed extinct. But since this unity is essential to the Notion and has at the same time come into concrete existence, it is still present, though its place is outside the neutral object. The process does not spontaneously re-kindle itself, for it had the difference only for its presupposition and did not itself posit it. This self-subsistent negativity outside the object, the existence of the abstract individuality whose being-for-self has its reality in the indifferent object, is now tensed within itself against its abstraction, and is an inward restless activity that turns outwards to consume. It relates itself immediately to the object whose quiescent neutrality is the real possibility of its opposition; that object is now the middle term of the previously merely formal neutrality, now inwardly concrete and determinate.
The more precise immediate relation of the extreme of negative unity to the object is that the latter is determined by it and thereby disrupted. This disruption may in the first instance be regarded as the restoration of that opposition of the objects in tension with which chemism began. But this determination does not constitute the other extreme of the syllogism but belongs to the immediate relation of the differentiating principle to the middle term in which this principle gives itself its immediate reality; it is the determinateness that the middle term in the disjunctive syllogism also possesses besides being the universal nature of the object, and by virtue of which the object is both objective universality and also determinate particularity. The other extreme of the syllogism stands opposed to the external self-subsistent extreme of individuality; it is therefore the equally self-subsistent extreme of universality; hence the disruption suffered by the real neutrality of the middle term in this extreme is that it is split up into moments whose relationship is not that of difference, but of indifference. Accordingly these moments are the abstract indifferent base on the one side, and its energising principle on the other, which latter by its separation from the base attains likewise the form of indifferent objectivity.
This disjunctive syllogism is the totality of chemism in which the same objective whole is exhibited first as self-subsistent negative unity, then in the middle term as real unity, and finally as the chemical reality resolved into its abstract moments. In these latter the determinateness has not reached its reflection-into-self in an other as in the neutral product, but has in itself returned into its abstraction, and is an originally determinate element.
3. These elementary objects are accordingly liberated from chemical tension; in them, the original basis of that presupposition with which chemism began has been posited through the real process. Now further, the inner determinateness as such of these objects is essentially the contradiction of their simple indifferent subsistence and themselves as determinateness, and is the urge outwards that sunders itself and posits tension in its object and in another object in order to have something with which it can enter into a relation of difference and in which it can neutralise itself and give to its simple determinateness an existent reality. Consequently, on the one hand chemism has returned into its beginning in which objects in a state of reciprocal tension seek one another and then by a formal, external middle term, unite to form a neutral product. On the other hand, chemism by this return into its Notion sublates itself and has passed over into a higher sphere.
Even ordinary chemistry shows examples of chemical alterations in which a body, for example, imparts a higher oxidation to one part of its mass and thereby reduces another part to a lower degree of oxidation, in which lower degree alone it can enter into a neutral combination with another [chemically] different body brought into contact with it, a combination for which it would not have been receptive in that first immediate degree. What happens here is that the object does not relate itself to another in accordance with an immediate, one-sided determinateness, but that in accordance with the inner totality of an original relation it posits the presupposition which it requires for a real relation and thereby gives itself a middle term through which it unites its Notion with its reality; it is absolutely determined individuality, the concrete Notion as principle of the disjunction into extremes whose re-union is the activity of the same negative principle, which thereby returns to its first determination, but returns objectified.
Chemism itself is the first negation of indifferent objectivity and of the externality of determinateness; it is therefore still infected with the immediate self-subsistence of the object and with externality. Consequently it is not yet for itself that totality of self-determination that proceeds from it and in which rather it is sublated. The three syllogisms yielded by the foregoing exposition constitute its totality; the first has for middle term formal neutrality and for extremes the objects in tension; the second has for middle term the product of the first, real neutrality, and for extremes the sundering activity and its product, the indifferent element; while the third is the self-realising Notion, which posits for itself the presupposition by which the process of its realisation is conditioned — a syllogism that has the universal for its essence. On account, however, of the immediacy and externality attaching to chemical objectivity, these syllogisms still fall apart. The first process whose product is the neutrality of the objects in tension is extinguished in its product, and it is an externally applied differentiation that re-kindles it; conditioned by an immediate presupposition, it exhausts itself in it. Similarly, the separation of the [chemically] different extremes out of the neutral product, as also their decomposition into their abstract elements, must proceed from conditions and stimulations of activity externally brought into play. Also, although the two essential moments of the process, on the one side neutralisation, on the other separation and reduction, are combined in one and the same process, and the union of the extremes by weakening of the tension between them is also a sundering into such extremes, yet on account of the still underlying externality they constitute two different sides; the extremes that are separated in that same process are different objects or materials from those that unite in it; in so far as the former emerge again from the process as [chemically] different they must turn outwards; their new neutralisation is a different process from the neutralisation that took place in the first process.
But these various processes, which have proved themselves necessary, are so many stages by which externality and conditionedness are sublated and from which the Notion emerges as a totality determined in and for itself and not conditioned by externality. In the first process, the mutual externality of the different extremes that constitute the whole reality, or the distinction between the implicitly determinate Notion and its existent determinateness, is sublated; in the second, the externality of the real unity, the union as merely neutral, is sublated; more precisely, the formal activity in the first instance sublates itself in equally formal bases or indifferent determinatenesses, whose inner Notion is now the indrawn absolute activity as inwardly self-realising, that is, the activity that posits the determinate differences within itself and through this mediation constitutes itself as real unity — a mediation which is thus the Notion's own mediation, its self-determination, and in respect of its reflection thence into itself, an immanent presupposing. The third syllogism, which on the one hand is the restoration of the preceding processes, on the other hand sublates the last remaining moment of indifferent bases the wholly abstract external immediacy, which in this way becomes the Notion's own moment of self-mediation. The Notion which has thus sublated all the moments of its objective existence as external, and posited them within its simple unity, is thereby completely liberated from objective externality, to which it relates itself only as to an unessential reality. This objective free Notion is end.