was to be pointed out, disappears in other Heres, and these disappear similarly. What is pointed out, held fast, and is permanent, is a negative This, which only is so when the Heres are taken as they should be, but therein cancel one another; it is simple complex of many Heres. The Here that is "meant" would be the point. But it is not: rather, when it is pointed out as being, as having existence, that very act of pointing out proves it to be not immediate knowledge, but a process a movement from the Here "meant" through a plurality of Heres to the universal Here, which is a simple plurality of Heres, just as day is a simple plurality of Nows.
It is clear from all this that the dialectic process involved in sense-certainty is nothing else than the mere history of its process—of its experience; and sense-certainty itself is nothing else than simply this history. The naïve consciousness, too, for that reason, is of itself always coming to this result, which is the real truth in this case, and is always having experience of it: but is always forgetting it again and beginning the process all over. It is therefore astonishing when, in defiance of this experience, it is announced as "universal experience"—nay, even as a philosophical doctrine, the outcome, in fact, of scepticism—that the reality or being of external things in the sense of "Thises," particular sense objects, has absolute validity and truth for consciousness. One who makes such an assertion really does not know what he is saying, does not know that he is stating the opposite of what he wants to say. The truth for consciousness of a "This" of sense is said to be universal experience; but the very opposite is universal experience. Every consciousness of itself
