The difference between quantity and quality has been stated. Quality is the first, immediate determinateness, quantity is the determinateness which has become indifferent to being, a limit which is just as much no limit, being-for-self which is absolutely identical with being-for-other — a repulsion of the many ones which is directly the non-repulsion, the continuity of them.
Because that which is for itself is now posited as not excluding its other, but rather as affirmatively continuing itself into it, it is otherness in so far as determinate being again appears in this continuity and its determinateness is at the same time no longer in a simple self-relation, no longer an immediate determinateness of the determinately existent something, but is posited as self-repelling, as in fact having the relation-to-self as a determinateness in another something (which is for itself; and since they are at the same time indifferent, relationless limits reflected into themselves, the determinateness in general is outside itself, an absolutely self-external determinateness and an equally external something; such a limit, the indifference of the limit within itself and of the something to the limit, constitutes the quantitative determinateness of the something.
In the first place, pure quantity is to be distinguished from itself as a determinate quantity, from quantum. As the former, it is in the first place real being-for-self which has returned into itself and which as yet contains no determinateness: a compact, infinite unity which continues itself into itself.
Secondly, this develops a determinateness which is posited in it as one which is at the same time no determinateness, as only an external one. It becomes quantum. Quantum is indifferent determinateness, that is, a self-transcending, self-negating determinateness; as this otherness of otherness it relapses into the infinite progress. But the infinite quantum is the indifferent determinateness sublated, it is the restoration of quality.
Thirdly, quantum in a qualitative form is quantitative ratio. Quantum transcends itself only generally: in ratio, however, its transition into its otherness is such that this otherness in which it has its determination is at the same time posited, is another quantum. Thus quantum has returned into itself and in its otherness is related to itself.
At the base of this ratio there is still the externality of quantum; the quanta which are related to each other are indifferent, that is, they have their self-relation in such self-externality. The ratio is thus only a formal unity of quality and quantity. Its dialectic is its transition into their absolute unity, into Measure.
In something, its limit as quality is essentially its determinateness. If, however, by limit we mean quantitative limit, then when, for example, a field alters its limit it still remains what it was before, a field. If on the other hand its qualitative limit is altered, then since this is the determinateness which makes it a field, it becomes a meadow, wood, and so on. A red, whether brighter or paler, is still red; but if it altered its quality it would cease to be red, would become blue or some other colour. The determination of magnitude as quantum reached above, namely that it has a permanent substratum of being which is indifferent to its determinateness, can be found in any other example.
By magnitude quantum is meant, as in the examples cited, not quantity; and it is chiefly for this reason that this foreign term must be used.
The definition of magnitude given in mathematics likewise concerns quantum. A magnitude is usually defined as that which can be increased or diminished. But to increase means to make the magnitude more, to decrease, to make the magnitude less. In this there lies a difference of magnitude as such from itself and magnitude would thus be that of which the magnitude can be altered. The definition thus proves itself to be inept in so far as the same term is used in it which was to have been defined. Since the same term must not be used in the definition, the more and less can be resolved into an affirmative addition which, in accordance with the nature of quantum, is likewise external, and a subtraction, as an equally external negation. It is this external form both of reality and of negation which in general characterises the nature of alteration in quantum. In that imperfect expression, therefore, one cannot fail to recognise the main point involved, namely the indifference of the alteration, so that the alteration's own more and less, its indifference to itself, lies in its very Notion.