being also along with them, a relation of mere indifference. This “also” is thus the pure universal itself, the “medium”, the “thinghood” keeping them together.’[1] But there is more than this to be said about a thing. We have seen that the properties are different from one another, and this involves that they do stand in some relation to one another. If they were utterly and merely indifferent they would not even be distinguished, i.e. they would not be determinate qualities. The attributes of a thing, then, involve in their being a rudimentary opposition to one another. But in holding its properties apart the thing develops a further aspect in itself; it becomes more than a mere togetherness or inter-penetration of the properties. ‘The process of distinguishing them, so far as it does not leave them indifferent, but effectually excludes, negates one from another, thus falls outside the simple “medium”. And this, consequently, is not a mere also, a unity which is indifferent to what is in it, but a “one” as well, an excluding repelling unity.’[2] Thinghood thus implies a certain activity; the thing shuts out other properties and holds its own together. It is more than the sum, or the place, of its properties—it is something behind them, something which has them and which refuses to have others. It is an essence.
In this conception of thinghood we have the factors of more developed thought, at least in germ; but they are confused and not set in their proper relations. A thing is not a perfectly coherent object of thought. This does not mean that ‘things’ do not exist; indeed the analysis of thinghood is almost identical with the statement of the meaning of existence for Hegel. To exist is to present oneself thus in space and time; and if this form of presentation turns out to contain contradiction, the conclusion is not that it does not exist, but that existence itself is an inadequate and abstract mode of thought and reality. We may give definite names, for the sake of convenience, to the aspects of thinghood; the surface show, the attributes which when regarded as belonging to the thing are called properties, these are the immediate aspect, and the thing which has the properties is the mediate aspect. Thinghood is one of the many ways in which thought tries to relate these two
