Chapter 2 - Real Measure

Summary

Measure is now determined as a connection of measures that make up the quality of distinct self-subsisting somethings, or, in more common language, things. The relations of measures just considered belong to abstract qualities like space and time; further examples of these nowto be considered are specific gravity and then chemical properties, that is, determinations of concrete material existence. Space and time are also moments of these measures, but are now subordinated to other determinations and no longer behave relative to one another only according to their own conceptual determination. In the case of sound, for instance, the time within which a certain number of vibrations occur, the spatial width and thickness of the sounding body, are moments of its determination. But the magnitudes of such idealized moments are externally determined; they no longer assume the form of a ratio of powers but relate in the usual direct way, and harmony is reduced to the strictly external simplicity of numbers in relations which are most easy to grasp; they therefore afford a satisfaction which is the exclusive reserve of the senses, for there is nothing there of representation, imagery, thought, or the like, that would satisfy spirit. Since the sides which now constitute the relation of measure are themselves measures, but at the same time real somethings, their measures are, in the first instance, immediate measures, and the relations in them direct relations. We now have to examine the further determination of the relation of such relations.

Measure, now real measure, is as follows.

First, it is the independent measure of a type of body, a measure which relates to other measures and, in thus relating to them, specifies them as well as their self-subsistent materiality. This specification, as an external connecting reference to many others in general, produces other relations, and consequently other measures; the specific self-subsistence, for its part, does not remain fixed in one direct relation but passes over into specific determinacies, and this is a series of measures.

Second, the direct relations that thus result are in themselves determinate and exclusive measures (elective affinities).