The concept of reflection, as the correspondence of mental images with the material world which is the source of those images, is the basis of the materialist approach to cognition. Hegel's analysis of reflection in terms of the correspondence between phenomena and their essence is founded on his critique of formal logic. The ordinary consciousness conceives things as being, and studies them in quality, quantity, and measure. Being comes to us as a series of qualities passing one after another, and quantitative change in qualities. Relative stability emerges in the form of Measure.
Measure is the dialectic of quantity and quality which passes into the recognition of something.
But Being meets not a stranger, but itself, as an Other, which is mediated Being. But that turns out to be a mistake. When we at first recognise something, the semblance of the thing shows itself out of the infinite richness of immediate perception. On the contrary, Being itself is inherently and implicitly contradictory. The unessential is essence's own unessential, and proves to be equally essential as unessential.