s it possible
to become another, and yet to remain the same? The universal feeling that
the concept needs correction betrays itself in the fact that everyone
involuntarily adds a cause to the change in thought, and seeks a cause for
it, and thus of himself undertakes a transformation of the concept, though,
it is true, an inadequate one. If we think this concept through we come
upon a trilemma, a threefold impossibility. Whether we endeavor to deduce
the change from external or from internal causes, or (with Hegel) to think
it as causeless, in each case we involve ourselves in inconceivabilities.
All three ideas--change as mechanism, as self-determination or freedom,
as absolute becoming--are alike absurd. We can escape these contradictions
only by the bold decision to conceive the quality of the existent as
unchangeable. For the truly existent there is no change whatever. It
remains, however, to explain the appearance of change, in which the wand of
decomposition and the "together" again proves its magic power. Supported by
the motley manifoldness of phenomena, we posit real beings as qualitatively
different, and view this diversity as partial contraposition; we resolve,
_e.g._, the simple quality _a_ into the elements _x_ + _z_, and a second
quality _b_ into _y - z_. So long as the individual things remain by
themselves, the opposition of the qualities will not make itself evident.
But as soon as they come together, something takes place--now the opposites
(+_z_ and -_z_) seek to destroy or at least to disturb each other. The
reals defend themselves against the disturbance which would follow if the
opposites could destroy each other, by each conserving its simple,
unchangeable quality, _i.e._, by simply remaining self-identical.
_Self-conservation against_ threatened _disturbances_ from without (it may
be compared to resistance against pressure) is the only real change, and
apparent change, the empirical changes of things, to be explained from
this. That which changes is only the relations between the beings, as a
thing maintains itself now against this and now against that other thing;
the relations, however, and their change are something entirely contingent
and indifferent to the existent. In itself the self-conservation of a real
is as uniform as the quality which is conserved, but in virtue of the
changing relations (the variety of the disturbing things) it can express
itself for the observer in manifold ways as for