5 10 ANALYSIS

of sense-certainty to grasp surd particulars: it only expresses uni-

versals. The truth of sense-certainty is taking-for-true, i.e. perception.
(The dialectic is much influenced by arguments in Plato~s Theaetetus,
where the impossibility of reconciling knowledge with radical subject-
objectfluxis maintained~ and the unchanging universal ideas are shown
to be necessary. Wittgenstein would regard Hegel's treatment as rest-
ing on a misunderstanding of demonstratives, which are unique lin-
guistic instruments, and neither name nor describe.)

II. PERCEPTION

I I I. Immediate certainty's true object is the universal, but it wants

to deal with the immediate 'This'. Perception acknowledges the uni-
versal, the general pattern, to be its object, but it does not yet see
this to be the essential element in its object: it is we, the phenomeno-
logical observers, who see this to be the essential element and the
necessary outcome of what has gone before. ,For perception itself, the
essen tialelementisagainthe 0 bject, as in thesense-certainty. The object
is the essential, constant, independent element, while perception is
givenas unessential, variable, dependent. Perception does notseethat
subject and object are equally the unessential forms in which a uni-
versal pattern is cast.
112. The object can, however, only be a universal pattern in so.
far as it unites many distinct elements, i.e. properties, in its pattern.'
The perceptual object is really given with the interior richness which
the objectofsense.is only taken to have. (Universality is meaningless
without specificity.)
I 13. The thing of perception is sense..,given, but its sensuousness
is universal, i.e. appears in the form of a property. Sense is aufgehohen
(destroyed yet preserved) in the perceptual thing. But the universality
of perception necessarily dirempts itself into a number of mutually
exclusive properties which at the same time it brings together. Its
structure involves an inherent conflict. From one point of view it is
an absolute unity, that ofaspace-time region, which brings the prop-
erties indifferently together, so that where the one is the other is also,
while from another point of view it breaks up into the many distinct
properties, each oLwhich can be considered in and for itself.
I 14. The more loose 'Also' of a medium points, however, to some
more absolute kind of unity which excludes otherness rigidly from
itself. This absolute unity can be attributed to the several properties,
or it can be attributed to the thing as such. We have the alternatives,
it would seem, ofha ving either a bundle of properties or a metaphysi-
cal peg to hang them on or both. (Very uncertain of interpretation.)