thing, an external object, this only makes it the most universal of all possible things, and thereby we express its likeness, its identity, with everything, rather than its difference from everything else. When I say "an individual thing," I at once state it to be really quite a universal, for everything is an individual thing: and in the same way "this thing" is everything and anything we like. More precisely, as this bit of paper, each and every paper is a "this bit of paper," and I have thus said all the while what is universal. If I want, however, to help out speech—which has the divine nature of directly turning the mere "meaning" right round about, making it into something else, and so not letting it ever come the length of words at all—by pointing out this bit of paper, then I get the experience of what is, in point of fact, the real truth of sense—certainty. I point it out as a Here, which is a Here amongst other Heres, or is in itself simply many Heres together, i.e. is a universal. I take it up then, as in truth it is; and instead of knowing something immediate, I "take" something "truly," I per-ceive (wahrnehme, per-cipio).
