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 positive character. But again, and in this form, the objection would rest on a mistake.

The bare coincidence of the content, if you take it as merely given within a presentation, and if you consider it entirely without any further reference beyond, is not a co-existence of elements. I do not mean, of course, that a whole of feeling is not positive at all. I mean that, as soon as you have made assertions about what it contains, as soon as you have begun to treat its content as content, you have transcended its felt unity. For consider a “here” or “now,” and observe anything of what is in it, and you have instantly acquired an ideal synthesis (Chapter xv.). You have a relation which, however impure, is at once set free from time. You have gained an universal which, so far as it goes, is true always, and not merely at the present moment; and this universal is forthwith used to qualify reality beyond that moment. And thus the co-existence of a and b, we may say, does not belong to the mere “this,” but it is ideal, and appears there. Within mere feeling it has doubtless a positive character, but, excluding distinctions, it is not, in one sense, coincidence at all. In observing, we are compelled to observe in the form of relations. But these internal relations properly do not belong to the “this” itself. For its character does not admit of separation and distinction. Hence to distinguish elements within this whole, and to predicate a relation of coexistence, is self-contradictory. Our operation, in its result, has destroyed what it acted on; and the product which has come out, was, as such, never there. Thus, in claiming to own a relation of coexistence and a distinction of content, the mere “this” commits suicide.

From another point of view, doubtless, the observed is a mere coincidence, when compared, that is, with a purer way of understanding. The relation is true, subject to the condition of a confused