object, the Other, is or exists, and that its existence is linked with my existence. I may also know what it is, either by immediate sense-perception, or as the result of reflection; but when I say “I know it,” I know only its being or bare existence. This existence is not, it is true, empty existence; I have a knowledge also of more definite characteristics, qualities of the object, but of these, too, I know only that they are. Knowing is also used in the sense of having an idea, but it is always implied that the content is or exists. Such knowledge thus implies an abstract attitude and an immediate relation; whereas the expression “Truth” suggests a severance between certainty and objectivity, and the mediation of the two. On the other hand, we speak of “Cognition” or philosophical knowledge, when we have knowledge of a Universal, and at the same time comprehend it in its special definite character, and as a connected whole in itself.
We comprehend or cognise Nature, Spirit, but not a particular house or a particular individual. The former are Universals, the latter are particulars, and we comprehend or cognise the rich content of those Universals in their necessary relation to one another.
Considered more closely, this knowledge is consciousness, but purely abstract consciousness, that is to say, abstract activity of the Ego; while consciousness proper contains fuller determinations of content, and distinguishes these from itself, as object. This knowledge therefore merely means that such and such a content is or exists, and consequently it is the abstract relation of the Ego to the object, whatever the content is; or to put it otherwise, immediate knowledge is nothing but thought taken in a quite abstract sense. Thought, however, too, means the self-identical activity of the Ego, and therefore, taken generally, is immediate knowledge.
To speak more precisely, thought is that in which its object has also the character of something abstract, the
