Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind), vol. I incl. Preface

* The term " unglijckliches Bewusstsein '' is designi;.'d as a summary expression for the following movement, there being no j'ecognised general term for this purpose, as in the case of "Stoicism." The term hardly seems fortunate : with the following analysis should be read Heo-el's Philosophy of History, part 4, sec. 2, c. 1 and 2. (F.ng. tr. pp. 380-415 and History of Philosophy, part 2., Introduction. The UnTiappy Consciousness' 201 essence ; but objectively and consciously it is not yet this essence itself — is not yet the unity of both. Since, in the fixst instance, it is the immediate, the imphcit unity of both, while for it they are not one and the same, but opposed, it takes one, namely, the simple unalterable, as essential, the other, the manifold and changeable, as the rmessential. For it, both are reahties foreign to each other. Itself, because consciousness of this contradiction, assumes the aspect of changeable consciousness and is to itself the imessential ; but as consciousness of unchangeableness, of the ultimate essence, it must, at the same time, proceed to free itself from the imessential, i.e. to liberate itself from itself. For though in its own view it is indeed only the changeable, and the unchangeable is foreign and extraneous to it, yet itself is simple, and therefore unchangeable consciousness, of which consequently it is conscious as its essence, but still in such wise that itself is again in its own regard not this essence. The position, which it assigns to both, cannot, therefore, be an indifference of one to the other, i.e. cannot be an indifference of itself towards the unchangeable. Rather it is immediately both itself ; and the relation of both assumes for it the form of a relation of essence to the non-essential, so that this latter has to be cancelled ; but since both are to it equally essential and are contradictory, it is only the conflicting contradictory process in which opposite does not come to rest in its own opposite, but produc? itself therein afresh merely as an opposite.

Here, then, there is a struggle against an enemy, victory over whom really means being worsted, where to have attained one result is really to lose it in the opposite. Consciousness of life, of its existence and 202 Phenomenology of Mind action, is merely pain and sorrow over this existence and activity ; for therein consciousness finds only consciousness of its opposite as its essence — and of its own nothingness. Elevating itself beyond this, it passes to the unchangeable. But this elevation is itself this same consciousness. It is, therefore, immediately consciousness of the opposite, viz. of itself as single, individual, particular. The unchangeable, which comes to consciousness, is in that very fact at the same time affected by particularity, and is only present with this latter. Instead of particularity having been abohshed in the consciousness of immutabihty, it only continues to appear there still. In this process, however, consciousness experiences just this appearance of particularity in the unchangeable, and of the unchangeable in particularity. Consciousness becomes aware of particularity in general in the immutable essence, and at the same time it there finds its own particularity. For the truth of this process is precisely that the double consciousness is one and single. This unity becomes a fact to it, but in the first instance the miity is one in which the diversity of both factors is still the dominant feature. Owing to this, consciousness has before it the threefold way in which particularity is connected with unchangeableness. In one form it comes before itself as opposed to the imchangeable essence, and is thrown back to the beginning of that struggle, which is, from first to last, the principle constituting the entire situation. At another time it finds the unchangeable appearing in the form of particularity; so that the latter is an embodiment of unchangeableness, into which, in consequence, the entire form of existence

The Unhappy Consciousness 203 passes. In the third case, it discovers itself to be this particular fact in the unchangeable. The first unchangeable is taken to be merely the ahen, external Being,* which passes sentence on particular existence ; since the second unchangeable is a form or mode of particularity like itself, f the unchangeable becomes in the third place spirit {Geist), has the joy of finding itself therein, and becomes aware within itself that its particularity has been reconciled with the universal. J What is set forth here as a mode and relation of the unchangeable, came to light as the experience through which self-consciousness passes in its unhappy state of diremption. This experience is now doubtless not its own onesided process ; for it is itself unchangeable consciousness ; and this latter, consequently, is a particular consciousness as well ; and the process is as much a process of that unchangeable consciousness, which makes its appearance there as certainly as the other. For that movement is carried on in these moments : an unchangeable now opposed to the particular in general, then, being itself particular, opposed to the other particular, and finally at one with it. But this consideration, so far as it is our affair, § is here out of place, for thus far we have only had to do with imchangeableness as unchangeableness of consciousness, which, for that reason, is not true immutabihty, but is still affected with an opposite ; we have not had before us the unchangeable per se and by itself ; we do not, therefore, know how this latter will conduct itself. What has here so far come to hght is merely this,

* God as Judge. J The religious communion. § .e. the philosophical observer 204 Phenomenology of Mind that to consciousness, whicli is our object here, the determinations above indicated appear in the unchangeable. For this reason, then, the unchangeable consciousness also preserves, in its very form and bearing, the character and fundamental features of diremption and separate self-existence, as against the particular consciousness. For the latter it is thus altogether a contingency, a mere chance event, that the unchangeable receives the form of particularity ; just as the particular consciousness merely happens to find itself opposed to the unchangeable, and therefore has this relation fer naturam. Finally that it finds itself in the unchangeable appears to the particular consciousness to be brought about partly, no doubt, by itself, or to take place for the reason that itsel is particular ; but this union, both as regards its origin as well as in its being, appears partly also due to the unchangeable ; and the opposition remains within this unity itself. In point of fact, through the unchangeable assuming a definite form, the ' beyond,' as a moment, has not only remained, but really is more securely estabhshed. For if the remote ' beyond ' seems indeed brought closer to the individual by this particular form of realisation, on the other hand, it is henceforward fixedly opposed to the individual, a sensuous, impervious unit, with all the hard resistance of what is actual. The hope of becoming one therewith must remain a hope, i.e. without fulfilment, without present fruition ; for between the hope and fulfilment there stands precisely the absolute contingency, or immovable indifference, which is involved in the very assumption of determinate shape and form, the basis and foundation of the hope. By

The Unhappy Consciousness 205 the nature of this existent unit, through, the particular reahty it has assumed and adopted, it comes about of necessity that in course of time it becomes a thing of the past, something that has been somewhere far away, and absolutely remote it remains. If, at the beginning, the bare notion of the sundered consciousness involved the characteristic of seeking to cancel it, qua particular consciousness, and become the unchangeable consciousness, the direction its effort henceforth takes is rather that of cancelHng its relation to the pure unchangeable, without shape or embodied form, and of adopting only the relation to the unchangeable which has form and shape.* For the oneness of the partictdar consciousness with the unchangeable is henceforth its object and the essential reahty for it, just as in the mere notion of it the es ;ntial object was merely the formless abstract unchangeable : and the relation found in this absolute disruption, characteristic of its notion, is now what it has to turn away from. The external relation, however, primarily adopted to the formed and embodied imchangeable, as being an ahen extraneous reahty, must be transmuted and raised to that of complete and thoroughgoing fusion and identification.

The process through which the unessential consciousness strives to attain this oneness, is itself a triple process, in accordance with the threefold character of the relation which this consciousness takes up to its transcendent and remote reahty embodied in specific form. In one it is a pure consciousness; at another time a particular individual who takes up towards actuahty the attitude characteristic of desire and * The historic Christ as worshipped, e.g. in the mediaev-l church. 206 Phenomenology of Mind labour ; and in the third place it is a consciousness of its self-existence, its existence for itself. We have now to see how these three modes of its being are found and are constituted in that general relation. In the first place, then, regarded as pure consciousness, the unchangeable embodied in definite historical form, seems, since it is an object for pure consciousness, to be established as it is in its self-subsistent reality But this, its reahty in and for itself, has not yet come to light, as we already remarked. Were it to be in consciousness as it is in itself and for itself, this would certainly have to come about not from the side of consciousness, but from the unchangeable. But, this being so, its presence here is brought about through consciousness only in a onesided way to begin with, and just for that reason is not found in a perfect and genuine form, but constantly weighted and encumbered with imperfection, with an opposite.

But although the " unhappy consciousness " does not possess this actual presence, it has, at the same time, transcended pure thought, so far as this is the abstract thought of Stoicism, Avhich turns away from particulars altogether, and again the merely restless thought of Scepticism — so far, in fact, as this is merely particularity in the sense of aimless contradiction and the restless process of contradictory thought. It has gone beyond both of these ; it brings and keeps together pure thought and particular existence, but has not yet risen to that level of thinking where the particularity of consciousness is harmoniously reconciled with pure thought itself. It rather stands midway, at the point where abstract thought comes in contact with the particularity of consciousness qua The Unhappy Consciousness 207 particularity. Itself is this act of contact ; it is the union of pure thought and particularity. Moreover, this thinking individuahty, or pure thought, exists for it, and for it too the unchangeable is essentially a particular existence. But that this its object, the unchangeable, which assumes essentially the form of particularity, is its own self, the self which is particularity of consciousness — this is not established for it.

In this first condition, consequently, in which we treat it as piue consciousness, it takes up towards its object an attitude which is not that of thought ; but rather (since it is indeed in itself pure thinking particularity and its object is just this pure thought, but pure thought is not their relation to one another as such), it, so to say, merely gives itself up to thought, devotes itself to thinking {geht an das Denken hin), and is the state of Devotion (Andacht). Its thinking as such is no more than the passing clang of ringing bells, or a cloud of warm incense, a kind of thinking in terms of music, that does not get the length of notions, which would be the sole, immanent objective mode of thought. This boundless pure inward feeling comes to have indeed its object ; but this object does not make its appearance in conceptual form, and therefore comes on the scene as something external and foreign. Hence we have here the inward movement of pure emotion {Gemuth) which feels itself, but feels itself in the bitterness of soul-diremption. It is the movement of an infinite Yearning, which is assured that its nature is a pure emotion of this kind, a pure thought which thinks itself as particularity — a yearning that is certain of being known and recognised by this object, for the very reason that this object thinks

208 Phenomenology of Mind itself as particularity. At the same time, however, this nature is the miattainable ' beyond ' which, in being seized, escapes or rather has already escaped. The ' beyond ' has aheady escaped, for it is in part the unchangeable, thinking itself as particularity, and consciousness, therefore, attains itself therein immediately, — attains itself, but as something opposed to the unchangeable ; instead of grasping the real nature, consciousness merely feels, and has fallen back upon itself. Since, in thus attaining itself, consciousness cannot prevent itself from being this opposite, it has merely laid hold of what is unessential instead of having seized true reahty. Thus, just as, on one side, when striving to find itself in the essentially real, it only lays hold of its own divided state of existence, so, too, on the other side, it cannot grasp that other [the essence] as particular or as concrete. That " other " cannot be foimd where it is sought ; for it is meant to be just a " beyond," that which can not be found. When looked for as particular it is not a universal, a thought-constituted particularity, not notion, but particular in the sense of an object, or a concrete actual, an object of immediate sense-consciousness, of sense certainty ; and for that reason it is one which has disappeared^ Consciousness, therefore, can only come upon the grave of its own hfe. But since this is itself an actuahty, and since it is contrary to the nature of actuahty to afford a lasting possession, the presence even of that tomb is merely the source of trouble, toil, and struggle, a fight which must be lost.* But since consciousness has found out by experience that the grave of its actual imchangeable Being has no concrete

* Cp. The Crusades. The Unhappy Consciousness 209 actuality, that the vanished particularity qua vanished is not true particularity, it will give up looking for the unchangeable particular existence as something actual, or will cease trying to hold on to what has thus vanished. Only so is it capable of finding particularity in a true form, a form that is imiversal. In the first instance, however, the withdrawal of the emotional hfe into itself is to be taken in such a way that this hfe of feehng, in its own regard, has actuahty qua particular existence. It is pure emotion which, for us or per se has found itself and satiated itself, for although it is, no doubt, aware in feehng that the ultimate reahty is cut off from it, yet in itself this feehng is self -feeling ; it has felt the object of its own pure feehng, and this object is its own self. It thus com.es forward here as self-feehng, or as something actual on its own account. In this return into self, we find appearing its second attitude, the condition of desire and labour, which ensures for consciousness the inner certainty of its own self (which, as we saw, it has obtained,) by the process of cancelhng and enjoying the ahen external reahty, — existence in the form of independent things. The unhappy consciousness, however, finds itself merely desiring and toiling ; it is not consciously and directly aware that so to find itself rests upon the inner certainty of its self, and that its feehng of real being is this self-feehng. Since it does not in its own view have that certainty, its inner hfe really remains still a shattered certainty of itself ; that confirmation of its own existence which it would receive through work and enjoyment, is, therefore, just as tottering and insecure ; in other words, it must consciously nulhfy this certification of its own being, so as

210 Phenomenology of Mind to find therein confiimation indeed, but confirmation only of what it is for itself, viz. of its disunion. The actual reahty, on which desire and work are directed, is, from the point of view of this consciousness, no longer something in itself null and void, something merely to be destroyed and consumed ; but rather something hke that consciousness itself, a reahty broken in sunder, which is only in one respect essentially null, but in another sense also a consecrated world. This reahty is a form and embodiment of the unchangeable, for the latter has conserved in itself particularity ; and because, qua unchangeable, it is a imiversal, its particularity as a whole has the significance of all actuahty. If consciousness were, for itself, an independent consciousness, and reahty were taken to be in and for itself of no account, then consciousness would attain, in work and enjoyment, the feehng of its own independence, by the fact that its consciousness would be that which cancels reahty. But since this reahty is taken to be the form and shape of the unchangeable, consciousness is unable of itself to cancel that reahty. On the contrary, seeing that consciousness manages to nulhfy reahty and to obtain enjoyment, this must come about through the unchangeable itseK when it disposes of its own form and shape and dehvers this up for consciousness to enjoy.

Consciousness, on its part, appears here hkewise as actual, though, at the same time, as internally shattered; and this diremption shows itself in the course of toil and enjoyment, to break up into a relation to reahty, or existence for itself, and into an existence in itself. That relation to actuahty is the process of alteration, or acting, the existence for itself, which belongs The Unhappy Consciousness 211 to tlie particular consciousness as such. But therein it is also in itself ; this aspect belongs to the unchangeable ' beyond/ This aspect consists in faculties and powers : an external gift, which the unchangeable here hands over for consciousness to make use of. In its action, accordingly, consciousness, in the first instance, has its being in the relation of two extremes. On one side it takes its stand as the active present (Diesseits), and opposed to it stands passive reahty : both in relation to each other, but also both withdrawn into the unchangeable, and firmly estabhshed in themselves. From both sides, therefore, there is detached merely a superficial element to constitute their opposition ; they are only opposed at the surface, and the play of opposition, the one to the other, takes place there.

The extreme of passive reahty is sublated by the active extreme. Actuality can, however, on its own side, be sublated only because its own changeless essence sublates it, repels itself from itself, and hands over to the mercy of the active extreme what is thus repelled. Active force appears as the power wherein actual reahty is dissolved. For that reason, however, this consciousness, to which the inherent reahty, or ultimate essence, is an " other," regards this power (which is the way it appears when active), as " the beyond," that which hes remote from its self. Instead, therefore, of returning out of its activity into itself, and instead of having confirmed itself as a fact for its self, consciousness reflects back this process of action into the other extreme, which is thereby represented as purely universal, as absolute might, from which the movement in every direction started, and which is the essential hfe 212 Phenomenology of Mind of the self-disintegrating extremes, as they at first appeared, and of the process of change as well. In that the unchangeable consciousness contemns its specific shape and form, and abandons it entirely, while, on the other hand, the individual consciousness " gives thanks," i.e. denies itself the satisfaction of being conscious of its independence, and refers the essential substance of its action to the " beyond " and not to itself : by these two moments, in which both parts give themselves up the one to the other, there certainly arises in consciousness a sense of its own unity with the unchangeable. But, at the same time, this unity is affected with division, is again broken within itself, and out of this unity there once more comes the opposition of universal and particular. For consciousness, no doubt, in appearance renounces the satisfaction of its self-feehng, but it gets the actual satisfaction of that feeling ; for it has been desire, work, and enjoyment ; qua consciousness it has willed, has acted, has enjoyed. Its thanks similarly, in which it recognises the other extreme as its true reahty, and cancels itself, is its own very act, which counterbalances the action of the other extreme, and meets with a hke act the benefit handed over. If the former yields to consciousness merely its superficial content, consciousness expresses thanks all the same, and when it gives up its own action, i.e. its very essence, it, properly speaking, does more thereby than the other, which only renounces an outer surface. The entire process, therefore, is reflected into the extreme of particularity, not merely in actual desire, labour, and enjoyment, but even in the expression of thanks, where the reverse seems to take place. Consciousness feels itself therein as this

The Unhappy Consciousness 213 particular individual, and does not let itself be deceived by the semblance of its renunciation ; for the real truth of that procedure is that it has not given itself up. "What has come about is merely the double reflection into both extremes ; and the result is to repeat the cleavage into the opposed consciousness of the unchangeable and the consciousness of a contrasted opposite in the shape of willing, performing, enjoying, and of seK-renunciation itself, or, in general, of seLfexistent particularity. With this has come to light the third attitude in the movement of this consciousness, an attitude which follows from the second and is such as in truth has proved itself independent by its wilHng and by its performance. In the first situation we had only a " notion " of actual consciousness, the inward emotion, which is not yet real in action and enjoyment. The second is this actuahsation, as an external express action and enjoyment. With the return out of this stage, however, it is that which has got to know itself as a real and efiective consciousness, or that whose truth consists in being in or for itself. But herein the enemy is discovered in its special and most pecuhar form. In the battle of emotion this individual consciousness has the sense of being merely a tune, an abstract moment. In work and enjoyment, which are the reaUsation of this unsubstantial existence, it can readily forget itself, and the consciousness of its own proper hfe found in this reahsation is overborne by grateful recognition. But this overthrow of its proper distinctiveness is in truth a return of consciousness into itself, and moreover into itself as the genuine reahty.

This third attitude, wherein this genuine reahty is 214 Phenomenology of Mind one term, consists in so relating this reality to absolute universal Being, as to show it to be mere nothingness.* The course of this relation we have still to consider. To begin with, as regards the contrasted relation of consciousness, in which its reahty is taken to be immediately naught, its actual performance thus becomes a doing of nothing at all ; its enjoyment becomes a feehng of its own unhappiness. In consequence, activity and enjoyment lose aU universal content and significance; for in that case they would have a substantiahty of their own : and both withdraw into the state of particularity, to which consciousness is directed in order to cancel them. Consciousness discovers itself as this concrete particular in the functions of animal hfe. These latter, instead of being performed unconsciously and naturally as something which, fer se, is of no significance, and can acquire no importance and essential value for spirit, — these latter, since it is in them that the enemy is seen in his proper and pecuUar shape, are rather an object of strenuous concern and serious occupation, and become precisely the most important consideration, t Since, however, this enemy creates itself in its very defeat, consciousness, by giving the enemy a fixedness of being and of meaning, instead of getting rid of him really never gets away from him, and finds itself constantly defiled. And since, at the same time, this object of its exertions, instead of being something essential, is the very meanest, instead of being a universal, is the merest particular — we have here

* The conception of the nothingness of the individual in the sight of God. The UnJmfpy Consciousness 21 5 before us merely a personality confined witliin its narrow self and its petty activity, a personality brooding over itself, as -unfortunate as it is pitiably destitute. But all tbe same both of these, both the feeling of its misfortune and the poverty of its own action, are points of connection to wbicb to attach the consciousness of its unity with the unchangeable. For the attempted immediate destruction of its actual existence is effected through the thought of the unchangeable and takes place in this relation to the unchangeable. The mediate relation constitutes the essence of the negative process, in which this consciousness directs itself against its particularity of being, which, however, qyui relation, is at the same time in itself positive, and wiU bring this its unity to hght as an objective fact for this consciousness itself. This mediate relation is consequently a connected inferential process {Schluss), in which particularity, esua^blifihing itself at first in opposition to the inherent esseAce, is bound together and united with this other term , only through a third term. Through this middle!^ term the one extreme, unchangeable consciousnt^ssl has a being for the unessential consciousness, in which, !at the same time, is also involved that the latter hke-^nse has a being for the former, solely through that middle term ; and this naiddle term is thus one which presents both extremes to one another, and acts as the minister of each in turn in deahng with the other. This medium is itself a conscious being, for it is an action mediating consciousness as such ; the content 01 this action is the destruction and annihilation, which consciousness has in view in deahng with its particularity.

216 Phenomenology of Mind In the middle term, then, this consciousness gets freed from action and enjoyment, in the sense of its own action and enjoyment. It puts away from itself, qua self-existent extreme, the substance of its will, and throws on to the mediating term, or the ministering agency,* its own proper freedom of decision, and herewith the guilt of its own act. This mediator, being in direct communication with the unchangeable Being, renders service by advising what is just and right. The act, since this foUows upon obedience to a dehverance enunciated by another, ceases, as regards the performance or the wilhng of the act, to be the agent's own proper deed. There is still left, however, to the subordinate consciousness, its objective aspect, namely, the fruit of its labour, and enjoyment. These, therefore, it casts away as well, and just as it disclaimed its own will, so it contemns such reahty as it received in work and in enjoyment. It renounces these, partly as being the accomplished truth of its self-coiiseious independence, since it seeks to do something «quite foreign to itself, thinking and speaking what, for ^id, has no sense or meaning ; f partly, too, as being e:f ternal property — siace it demits somewhat of the pojssession acquired through its toil. It also gives up the enjoyment it had — since with its fastings and its mortifications it once more absolutely denies itself that enjoyment.

Through these moments— the negative abandonment first of its own right and power of decision., then of its property and enjoyment, and finally the positive mo- * The Priesthood. f t Cp. the use in the Church services of Latin instead oi the vernacular : religious processions, etc. The Unhappy Consciousness 217 ment of carrying on what it does not understand — it obtains, completely and in truth, the consciousness of inner and outer freedom, or reahty in the sense of its own existence for itself. It has the certainty of having in truth stripped itself of its Ego, and of having turned its immediate self-consciousness into a " thing," into an objective external existence. It could ensure its self-renunciation and self-abandonment solely by this real and vital sacrifice [of its self]. For only thereby is the deception got rid of, which Ues in inner acknowledgment of gratitude through heart, sentiment, and tongue — an acknowledgment which indeed disclaims all power of independent self-existence, and ascribes this power to a gift from above, but in this very disclaimer retains for itself its own proper and pecuhar hfe, outwardly in the possession it does not resign, inwardly in the consciousness of the decision which itself has resolved upon and in the consciousness of its own self-constituted content, which it has not exchanged for a content coming from without and filhng it with meaningless ideas and phrases.

But in the sacrifice actually accomplished, while consciousness has cancelled the action as its own act, it has also imphcitly demitted and put ofi its unhappy condition. Yet that this demission * has imphcitly taken place, is effected by the other term of the logical process (Schluss) here involved, the term which is the inherent and ultimate reahty. That sacrifice of the subordinate term, however, was at the same time not a onesided action ; it involves the action of the other. For giving up one's own will is only in one aspect negative ; in principle, or in itself, it is at 218 Phenomenology of Mind the same time positive, positing and affirming the will as an other, and, specifically, affirming the will as not a particular, but universal. This consciousness takes the positive significance of the negatively affirmed particular will to be the will of the other extreme, the will, which, because it is simply an " other " for consciousness, assumes the form of advice or counsel, not through itself, but through the third term, the mediator. Hence its will certainly becomes, for consciousness, universal will, inherent and essential will, but is not itself in its own view this inherent reality. The giving up of its own will as particular is not taken by it to be in principle the positive element of universal will. Similarly its surrender of possession and enjoyment has merely the same negative significance, and the universal which it thereby comes to find is, in its view, not its own doing proper. This unity of objectivity and independent self-existence which hes in the notion of action, and which therefore comes for consciousness to be the essential reahty and object — as this is not taken by consciousness to be the principle of its action, neither does it become an object for consciousness directly and through itself. Rather, it makes the mediating minister express this still halting certainty, that its unhappy state is only imflicitly the reverse, i.e. is only implicitly action bringing self-satisfaction in its act, or blessed enjoyment ; that its pitiable action too is only imflicitly the reverse, namely, absolute action; that in principle action is only really action when it is the action of some particular individual. But for its self, action and its own concrete action remain something miserable and insignificant, its enjoyment pain, and the sublation of

The Unhappy Consciousness 219 these, positively considered, remains a mere 'beyond.' But in this object, where it finds its own action and existence, qua this particular consciousness, to be inherently existence and action as such, there has arisen the idea of Reason, of the certainty that consciousness is, in its particularity, inherently and essentially absolute, or is all reality. [Reason is the first stage in the analysis of concrete mind — of universal self conscious of itself in its object and conscious of the object as universal. Keason is not a mere 'function' of mind, but a stage of mind. It therefore possesses its own peculiar content and operates in a process peculiar to itself. Its aim is to become completely conscious of its own nature ; and to acquire this it must develop itself through its various phases. The process of development is from immediate to mediate, from what it is implicitly to what it is explicitly. The first step therefore is reason as immediate — where universal self is simply and directly aware of itself in a universal object. The operation of concrete mind at this stage is found where reason " observes." The analysis of observation as this operates in the various domains covered by the empirical sciences is thus the subject-matter of the following section. The processes of these various sciences are assumed in Hegel's analysis. Observation must change in character with the objects observed ; hence the difference between observation of inorganic and organic nature, observation of mind, and of the relation of mind and nature. The difficulties reason has to face in this operation, and the contradictions into which it falls in seeking to find laws, etc., to satisfy its aim, form the substance of the following analysis.

The nature of reason as here conceived is the source and origin of philosophical Idealism, whether the idealism be one-sided or absolute. Idealism is in fact the philosophical expression of the principle of reason, just as the various empirical sciences may be said to be the development, in the several ways which experience dictates, of the operation of rational observation. Hence the introductory pages of the following analysis are devoted to a statement of the character of true and false idealism. The historical material behind the abstract argument elaborated here is provided by the awakened scientific spirit that appeared after the * Cp. Hegel's Hist, of Philos., pt. 2, § 3^ Introd. and C : pt. 3, Introd. Philos. of Hist., pt. 4, § 3j c. 3 arf fin. t Cp. Naturphilos., AV.W., vii. 1, § 246 ; Logik, W.W., v. Reformation, and the methods and results of the empirical sciences at the time Hegel wrote. In particular the physiological conceptions of " irritability," " sensibility " and " reproduction," discussed on p. 256 ff. were first formulated by Haller, Elementa Physiologiae (1757-66). For a list of the chief scientific works which appeared shortly before or about the time the following analysis was written, and which doubtless provided part of the material for the analysis, see Merz, History of European Thought, Vol. I, pp. 82-83.

The polemical criticism which runs through this as through almost every section of the work is directed against the one-sided idealism of Hegel's predecessors and the imperfect conception of scientific method displayed by the current science of nature.] WITH the thought which consciousness has laid hold of, that the individual consciousness is taherently absolute reaHty, consciousness turns back into itself. In the case of the unhappy consciousness, the inherent and essential reality is a "beyond" remote from itself. But the process of its own activity has in its case brought out the truth that individuality, when completely developed, individuality which is a concrete actual mode- of consciousness, is made the negative of itself, i.e. the objective extreme; — in other words, has forced it to make explicit its self-existence, and turned this into an objective fact. In this process it has itself become aware, too, of its xmity with the imiversal, a unity which, seeing that the individual when sublated is the miiversal, is no longer looked on hy us as falling outside it, and which, since consciousness maintains itself in this its negative condition, is inherently in it as such its very essence. Its truth is what appears in the process of synthesis — where the extremes were seen to be absolutely held apart — as the middle term, proclaiming to the unchangeable consciousness that the isolated individual has renounced itself, and to the individual consciousness that the unchangeable consciousness is no longer for it an extreme, but is one with it and reconciled to it. This mediating

Reasons Certainty and Reason's Truth 223 term is the unity directly aware of both, and relating them to one another; and the consciousness of their unity, which it proclaims to consciousness and thereby to itself, is the certainty and assurance of being all truth. From the fact that self-consciousness is Reason, its hitherto negative attitude towards otherness turns round into a positive attitude. So far it has been concerned merely with its independence and freedom ; it has sought to save and keep itself for itself at the expense of the world or its own actuahty, both of which appeared to it to involve the denial of its own essential nature. But qua reason, assured of itself, it is at peace so far as they are concerned, and is able to endure them ; for it is certain its self is reahty, certain that all concrete actuahty is nothing else but it. Its thought is itself eo ipso concrete reahty; its attitude towards the latter is thus that of Idealism. To_it, looking at itself ia this way, it- seems as if how, for the.. first time, the world had come into being. Formerly, it did not imderstand the world, it desired the world and worked upon it ; then withdrew itself from it and retired into itself, abohshed the world s6~"faf 'as itself was concerned, and abohshed itself qua consciousness — both the consciousness of that world as essentially real, as well as the consciousness of its nothingness and,, unreahty. Here, for the first time, after the grave of its truth is lost, after the annihilation of its concrete actuahty is itself done away with, and the individuahty 3f consciousness is seen to be in itself absolute reahty, .t discovers the world as its own new and real world, svhich in its permanence possesses an interest for it, just is previously the interest lay only in its transitoriness,,.

224 Phenomenology of Mind The subsistence of the world is taken to mean the actual presence of its own truth ; it is certain of finding only itself there.... Reason is the conscious certamty of being all reaUty. This is how Ideahsm announces its principle.* Just as consciousness assuming the form of reason immediately and inherently contains that certainty within it, in the same way ideahsm also directly proclaims and expresses that certainty. I am I in the sense that the I which is object for me is sole and only object, is all reahty and all that is present. The I which is object to me here is not what we have in self-consciousness in general, nor again what we have in free independent self-consciousness ; in the former it is merely empty object in general, in the latter, it is merely an object that withdraws itself from other objects that still hold their own alongside it. In the present instance, the object-ego is object which is consciously known to exclude the existence of any other whatsoever. Self-consciousness, however, is not merely from its own point of view {fiir sich) but also in its very self [an sich) all reahty, primarily by the fact that it becomes this reahty, or rather demonstrates itself to be such. It demonstrates itself to be this by the way in which otherness as inherently real {an sich) first disappears in the course of the dialectic movement of " meaning " {Meinen),-\ perceiving, and understanding, and afterwards in the movement through the independence of consciousness in Lordship and Servitude, through the idea of freedom, sceptical detachment, and the struggle for absolute hberation on the part of the self-divided consciousness, where otherness, so far as being stUl for consciousness, vanishes for the latter

* Cp. Ficlite, Grundlage d. Gesam, W. L. t v. sup. p. 95 ff, Reason's Certainty and Reason's Truth 225 itself. There appeared two aspects, one after the other ; the one where the essential reahty or the truly real present to consciousness had the characteristic of existence, the other where it had the character of only being an object for consciousness. But both lead back to one single truth, that what is or the real per se only is so far as it is an object for consciousness, and that what is for consciousness is also inherently real. The mode of consciousness which this truth constitutes has forgotten the process by which this result has been reached ; the pathway to it lies away behind. This consciousness comes on the scene directly in the form of reason ; in other words, this reason, appearing thus immediately, comes before us merely as the certainty of that truth. It is merely assured of being all reality ; it does not, however, itself comprehend this fact ; for that forgotten pathway by which it arrives at this position, is the process of comprehending what is involved in this mere assertion which it makes. And just on that account any one who has not taken this route finds the assertion uninteUigible, when he hears it expressed in this abstract form — although as a matter of concrete experience he makes the same assertion himself.

The kind of Ideahsm which does not trace the path to that result, but starts off with the bare assertion of this truth, is consequently a mere assurance, which does not understand its own nature, and cannot make itself intelHgible to any one else. It announces an intuitive certainty, to which there stand in contrast other equally intuitive certainties that have been lost along that very pathway. Hence the claims and assurances made by these other certainties are equally 226 Phenomenology of Mind entitled to a place alongside the assurance of that certainty. Reason takes its stand on the self-consciousness of each individual consciousness : I am I, my object and my essential reahty is ego ; and no one will deny reason this truth. But since it rests on this appeal, it sanctions the truth of the other certainty, viz. there is for me an other ; an other qua ego is to me object and true reality : or since I am object and reality to myself, I am only so by my withdrawing myself from the other altogether and appearing alongside it as an actuality. Only when reason comes forward as a reflexion from this opposite certainty, does its assertion regarding itself appear in the form not merely of a certainty and an assurance, but of a truth — and a truth not alongside others, but the only truth. Its appearing directly and immediately is the abstract form of its actual presence, the essential nature and inherent reality of which is an absolute notion, i.e. the process of its own development.

Consciousness will determine its relation to otherness or its object in various ways, according as it is at one or other stage in the development of the worldspirit into self-consciousness. How the world-spirit immediately finds and determines itself and its object at any given time, or how it appears to itself, depends on what it has come to be, on what it has come from, or on what it already imphcitly and inherently is. Reason is the certainty of being all reahty. This its inherent nature, this reality, is still, however, through and through a imiversal, the pure abstraction of reahty. It is the first positive character which selfconsciousness fer se is aware of being, and ego is, therefore, merely the pure, inner essence of existence, in other Rca.son's Ccriaiufi/ and Reason's Truth 227 words, is the. Category bare and simple. The category, which usually had the significance of being the inmost essence of existence — leaving existence quite undetermined, or without determination by contrast to consciousness— is here the essential natm'e or simple imity of existence merely in the sense of a reaUty that thinks. To put it otherwise, the category means this, that existence and self-consciousness are the same being, the same not as a matter of comparison, but really and truly in and for themselves. It is onlj'' a onesided, unsound ideahsm which lets this imity again appear on one side as consciousness, with a reahty fcr se over against it on the other.

But now this category'-, or simple imity of self-consciousness and being, has difference within it ; for its verv natiu'e consists just in this — in being immediately one and identical with itself in otherness or in absolute ditTerence. Difference therefore is, but completely transparent, a difference that is at the same time none. It appears in the form of a plurality of categories. Since ideahsm declares the miity of self-consciousness to be all reahty, and at once takes it for the essentially real without fii'st having comprehended its absolutely negative natiu:e, — only an absolutely negative reahty contains within its very being negation, determinateness, or difference, — still more incomprehensible than the former is this. auz. that in the category there are differences, kinds or species of categories. This assurance in general, as also the assurance as to any determinate nimiber of kinds of categories, is a new form of assiu-ance, which, however, itself implies that we are no longer to accept it as an assurance. For since difference starts in the pure ego, in pure understanding itself. 228 Phenomenology of Mind it is thereby affirmed that here immediacy, making assurances, finding something given, must be abandoned, and reflective comprehension begin. But to pick up the various categories again in any sort of way as a kind of happy find, hit upon, e.g. in the difierent judgments, and then to be content so to accept them, must really be regarded as an outrage on scientific thinking.* Where is understanding to be able to demonstrate necessity, if it is incapable of doing so in its own case, itself being pure necessity ?

Now because, in this way, the pure essential being of things as well as their aspect of difference, belongs to reason, we can, strictly speaking, no longer talk of things at all, i.e. of something which would only be present to consciousness by negatively opposing it. For the many categories are species of the pure category, which means that the pure category is still their genus or essential nature, and not opposed to them. But they contain and imply the ambiguity which otherness too, in its aspect of plurality, involves as against the pure category. They, in point of fact, contradict the pure category by this plurality, and the pure category must sublate them in itself, a process by which it constitutes itself the negative unity of the different elements. Qua negative unity, however, it puts away from itself and excludes both the diverse elements as such, and that previous immediate imity as such ; it is then individual singleness — a new category, which is an exclusive form of consciousness, i.e. stands in relation to something else, an other. This individuality is its transition from its notion to an external reality, the pure "schema," which is at once a consciousness, and

* This refers to Kant's discovery of his "table of categories." Reason's Certainty and Reason's Truth 229 in consequence of its being a single individual and an excluding unit, points to the presence of an external other. But the " other " of this category is merely the "other" categories iirst mentioned, viz. pure essential reahty and pure difference ; and in this category, i.e. just in affirming the other, or in this other itseK, consciousness is hkewise the other too. Each of these various moments points and refers to an other ; at the same time, however, they do not involve any absolute otherness. The pure category refers to the species, which pass over into the negative category, the category of excluision, individuahty ; this latter, however, points back to them, it is itself pure consciousness, which is aware in each of them of being always this clear unity with itself — a unity, however, that in the same way is referred to an other, which in being disappears, and in disappearing is once again brought into being. We see pure consciousness here affirmed in a twofold form. In one case it is the restless activity which passes hither and thither through all its moments, seeing in them that otherness which is sublated in the process of grasping it ; in the other case it is the imperturbable miity certain of its own truth. That restless activity constitutes the " other" for this unity, while this unity is the "other" for that activity; and within these reciprocally determining opposites consciousness and object alternate. Consciousness thus at one time finds itself seeking about hither and thither, and its object is what absolutely exists per se, and is the essentially real; at another time, consciousness is aware of being the category bare and simple, and the object is the movement of the different elements. Con-

230 Phenomenology of Mind sciousness, however, qua essential reality is the whole of this process of passing out of itself qua simple category into individuahty and the object, and of viewing this process in the object, cancelling it as distinct, appropriating it as its own, and declaring itself as this certainty of being all reality, of being both itself and its object. Its first declaration is merely this abstract, empty phrase that everything is its own. For the certainty of being all reahty is to begin with the pure category. Reason knowing itself in this sense in its object is what finds expression in abstract empty ideahsm ] * it merely takes reason as reason appears at first, and by its pointing out that in all being there is this bare consciousness of a " mine," and by expressing things as sensations or ideas, it fancies it has shown that abstract " mine " of consciousness to be complete reality. It is bound, therefore, to be at the same time absolute Empiricism, because, for the filling of this empty " mine," i.e. for the element of distinction and all the further development and embodiment of it, its reason needs an impact {Anstoss) operating from without, in which lies the fons ei origo of the multiplicity of sensations or ideas. This kind of idealism is thus jiist such a selfcontradictory equivocation as scepticism ; only, while the latter expresses itself negatively, the former does so in a positive way. But it fails just as completely as scepticism to hnk up its contradictory statements about pure consciousness being all reality, while all the time the ahen impact, or sense-impressions and ideas, are equally reality. It oscillates hither and thither from one to the other and tumbles into the false, or the

Reason s Certainty and Reason's Truth 231 sensuous, infinite.* Since reason is all reality in the sense of the abstract "mine," and the "other" is an externahty indifferent to it, there is here affirmed just that sort of knowledge of an " other " on the part of reason, which we met with before in the form of " intending " or " meaning " {Meinen),-\ " perceiving," and " understanding," which grasps what is " meant " and what is " perceived." Such a kind of knowledge is at the same time asserted by the very principle of this ideahsm itself not to be true knowledge ; for only the unity of apperception is the real truth of knowledge. Pure reason as conceived by this ideahsm, if it is to get at this " other " which is essential to it, i.e. really is per se, but which it does not possess in itself — is thus thrown back on that knowledge which is not a knowledge of the real truth. It thus condemns itself knowingly and voluntarily to being an rmtrue kind of knowledge, and cannot get away from " meaning " and " perceiving," which for it have no truth at all. It falls into a direct contradiction ; it asserts that the real has a twofold nature, consists of elements in sheer opposition, is the unity of apperception and a " thing " as well ; whether a thing is called an ahen impact, or an empirical entity, or sensibihty, or the " thing in itself," it remains in principle precisely the same, viz. something external and foreign to that imity.

This ideahsm falls into such a contradiction because it asserts the abstract notion of reason to be the truth. Consequently reahty comes directly before it just as much in a form which is not strictly the reality of reason at all, whereas reason aU the while is intended to be all reahty. Reason remains, in this case, a restless * Cp. 'Wiss. d. Loijik, Pt. I, p. 253 S. t v. sup. p. 95 ff. 232 Phenomenology of Mind search, which in its very process of seeking declares that it is utterly impossible to have the satisfaction of finding. But actual concrete reason is not so inconsequent as this. Being at first merely the certainty that it is all reahty, it is in this notion well aware that qua certainty, qua ego, it is not yet in truth all reality ; and thus reason is driven on to raise its formal certainty into actual truth, and give concrete filling to the empty ' mine.' This consciousness, whicti takes being to mean what is its own, now seems, indeed, to adopt once again the attitude of " meaning " * and " perceiving,"; but not in the sense that it is certain of what is a mere " other," but in the sense that it is certain of this "other" being itself. Formerly, consciousness merely happened to perceive various elements in the " thing," and had a certain experience in so doing. But here it settles itself the observations to be made and the experience to be had. " Meaning " and " perceiving," which formerly were superseded so far as we were concerned {fiir tins), are now superseded by consciousness in its own behalf {fiir es). Eeason sets out to know the truth, to find in the form of a notion what, for " meaning " and " perceiving," is a "thing"; i.e. it seeks in thinghood to have merely the consciousness of its own self. Reason has, therefore, here a universal interest in the world, because it is the certainty of having the present within it, or is certain that the actual present is rational. It seeks its " other," while knowing that it there possesses nothing else but itself : it seeks merely its own infinitude.

While, at first, merely surmising that it is in the world of reahty, or knowing this only in a general way to be its own domain, it goes forward on this understanding * V, p. 95 ff. 233 234 Phenomenology of Mind and appropriates everywhere and at all points its own assured possession. It plants the symbol of its sovereignty on the heights and in the depths of reahty. But this superficial " mine " is not its final and supreme interest. The joy of universal appropriation finds still in its property an otherness and externality which does not involve abstract reason. Eeason has the presentiment of being a deeper reahty than pure ego is, and must demand that difference, the manifold diversity of being, should itself become its very own, that the ego should look at and see itself as concrete reahty, and find itself present in objectively embodied form and in the shape of a " thing." But if reason probes and gropes through the inmost recesses of the hfe of things, and opens their every vein so that even reason itself may gush out of them, then it will not achieve this desired result ; it must, for its purpose, have first brought about in itself its own completion in order to be able after that to experience what its completion means.

Consciousness " observes," i.e. reason wants to find and to have itself in the form of existent object, to he in concrete sensuously-present form. The consciousness thus observing fancies {meint), and, indeed, says that it wants to discover not itself, but, on the contrary, the inner being of things qua things. That this consciousness " means " this and says so, lies in the fact that it is reason, but reason as such is for it not as yet object. If it were to know reason to be equally and at once the essence of things and of itself, and knew that reason can only be actually present in consciousness in the shape and embodiment pecuharly appropriate to reason, then it would descend into the depths of its own being, and seek reason there rather than in things. Observation by Reason 235 If it had found reason there, it would again turn from that and be directed upon concrete reahty, in order to see therein its own sensuous expression, but would, at the same time, take that sensuous form to be essentially a notion.* Reason, as it immediately appears in the form of conscious certainty of being all reality, takes its reality in the sense of immediacy of being, and also takes the imity of ego with this objective existence in the sense of an immediate unity, a unity in which it (reason) has not yet separated and then again united the moments of being and ego, or, in other words, a unity which reason has not yet come to understand. It, therefore, when appearing as conscious observation, turns to things with the idea that it is really taking them as sensuous things opposed to the ego. But its actual procedure contradicts this idea, for it knows things, it transforms their sensuous character into conceptions, i.e. just into a kind of being which at the same time is ego ; it transforms thought into an existent thought, or being into a thought-constituted being, and, in fact, asserts that things have truth merely as conceptions. In this process, it is only what the things are that consciousness in observation takes account of ; we, however, [who are tracing the nature of this experience] are interested in what conscious observation itself is. The outcome of its process, however, will be that this consciousness becomes aware of being for itself what it is in itself [i.e. becomes aware of being to itself what, in the meantime, it is to us].

We have to consider the operation of this observa- * This paragraph is a passing remark and refers to the method of the Logic. 236 Phenomenology" of Mind tional phase of reason in all the various moments of its activity. It takes up this attitude towards Nature, Mind, and finally towards the relation of both in the form of sense-existence ; and in all these it seeks to find itself as a definitely existing concrete actuality. a(l) Observation op Nature When the unreflective consciousness speaks of observation and experience as being the fountain of truth, the phrase may possibly sound as if the whole business were a matter of tasting, smelhng, feeling, hearing, and seeing. It forgets, in its zeal for tasting, smelling, etc., to say that, in point of fact, it has really and rationally determined for itself already the object thus sensuously apprehended, and this determination of the object is, at least, as important for it as that apprehension. It will also as readily admit that its whole concern is not simply a matter of perceiving, and will not allow, e.g. the perception that this penknife lies beside this snuff-box to pass for an " observation." What is perceived should, at least, have the significance of a universal, and not of a sensuous particular " this."

The universal, here regarded, is, in the first instance, merely self-sameness ; its movement is merely the uniform recurrence of the same operation. The consciousness, which thus far finds in the object merely universality or the abstract " mine," must take upon itself the movement peculiar to the object ; and, since it is not yet at the stage of understanding that object, it must, at least, be the recollection of it, a recollection Observation of Nature 237 which expresses in a universal way what, in actual fact, is merely given in the form of a particular. This superficial method of gettuag out of particularity, and this equally superficial type of universahty, into which the sense element is merely taken up, without the sense element havmg in itself become a universal, this description of things — is not as yet a process effected in the object itself. The process really takes place solely in the function of describing. The object, as it is described, has consequently lost interest— while the one object is being described another must be kept in view and continually sought, so as not to put a stop to the process of description. If it is no longer easy to find new and whole things, then there is nothing for it but to turn back upon those already found, in order to divide them still further, break them up into component parts and look out for any new aspects of thinghood that still remain in them. There can be no stopping this restlessly active instinct in dealing with its material. To find a new genus of distinctive significance, or even to discover a new planet, which although an individual entity, yet possesses the nature of a universal, can only fall to the lot of those who are lucky enough to do so. But the boundary hne of what, like elephant, oak, gold, is markedly distinctive, the Ime of demarcation of what is genus and species, passes through many stages into the endless particularisation of the chaos of plants and animals, kinds of rocks, or metals, forms of earth, etc., etc., that only art and craft can bring to light. In this reahn where universality means indeterminateness, where particularity now approximates to singleness, and again at this point and that even descends to it entirely, there is offered an

238 Phenomenology of Mind inexhaustible supply of material for observation and description to deal with. Here, where a boundless field is opened up, it can have found at the boundary line of the universal, not an immeasurable wealth, but instead, merely the limitations of nature and of its own operation. It can no longer know whether what seems to have being per se is not a chance accident. What bears the impress of a confused or unformed feeble image, that has barely got out of elementary indeterminateness, cannot claim even to be described. While this seeking and describing seem to be concerned merely with things, we see that in point of fact it is not carried on at the level of sense-perception. Rather, what enables things to be known is more important for that process than the range of sense properties still left over, qualities which, of course, the thing itself cannot do without, but which consciousness dispenses with. Through this distinction into what is essential and what is unessential, the notion rises out of the dispersion of sensibility, and knowledge thereby makes it clear that it has to do with its own self at least quite as essentially as with things. This duaUty in the observed object produces a certain hesitation as to whether what is essential and necessary for knowledge is also so in the case of things. On the one hand, the qualifying " marks " have merely to serve the purpose of knowledge in distinguishing things mter se ; on the other hand, however, it is not the unessential quality of things that has to be known, but that feature in virtue of which they themselves break away from the general continuity of being as a whole, get cut off from others and stand by themselves. The distinguishing "marks" must not only have an essential relation to

Observation of Nature 239 knowledge but also be the essential characteristics of things, and the system of marks devised must conform to the system of nature itself, and merely express this system. This follows necessarily from the very principle and meaning of reason ; and the instinct of reason — for it operates in observation merely as an instinct — has also in its systems attained this unity, a unity where its objects are so constituted that they carry their own essential reality with them, involve an existence on their own account, and are not simply an incident of a given particular time, or a particular place. The distinguishing marks of animals, for example, are taken from their claws and teeth ; for, in point of fact, not only does knowledge distinguish thus one animal from another ; but each animal itself separates itself off thereby, it preserves itself for its own sake by means of these weapons, and keeps itself detached from the universal nature. A plant, on the other hand, never gets the length of existing for its own sake ; it touches merely the boundary line of individuality. This line is where plants show the semblance of diremption and separation by the possession of different sex-characters ; this furnishes, therefore, the principle for distinguishing plants inter se. What, however, stands on a still lower level cannot of itself any longer distinguish itself from another; it gets lost when the contrast comes into play. Being per se and being in a relation come into conflict; a "thing" in the latter case is something different from a " thing " in the former state ; whereas the " individuum " is what it is by preserving itself in relation to another. What, however, is incapable of this and becomes in chemical fashion something other than it is empirically, confuses knowledge and gives rise to the

240 Phenomenology of Mind same doubt as to whether knowledge is to hold to the one side or the other, since the thing has itself no self-consistency, and these two sides fall apart within it. In those systems where the elements involve general self-sameness, this character connotes at once what is self- same for knowledge and for things themselves as well. But the .expansion of these self-identical characteristics, each of which describes undisturbed the entire circuit of its course, and gets full scope to do as it likes, necessarily leads as readily to its very opposite, leads to the confusion of these characteristics. For the qualifying mark, the general characteristic, is the unity of opposite factors, viz. of what is determinate, and of what is 'per se universal. It must, therefore, break asunder into this opposition. If, now, on one side, the characteristic overmasters the universahty in which its essence lies, on the other side, again, this universality equally keeps that characteristic under control, forces the latter on to its boundary Une, and there mingles together its distinctions and its essential constituents. Observation which kept them apart in orderly fashion, and thought it had hold there of something stable and fixed, finds the principles overlapping and dominating one another, sees confusions formed and transitions made from one to another; here it finds united what it took at first to be absolutely separated, and there separated what it considered connected. Hence, when observation thus holds by the unbroken selfsameness of being, it has here, just in the most general determinations given — e.g. in the case of the essential marks of an animal or a plant — to see itself tormented with instances, which rob it of every determination,

Observation of Nature 241 silence the universality it reached, and reduce it again to unreflective observation and description. Observation, which confines itself in this way to what is simple, or restricts the sensuously dispersed elements by the imiversal, thus finds its principle confused by its object, because what is determined must by its very nature get lost in its opposite. Reason, therefore, must pass from that inert characteristic which had the semblance of stability, and go on to observe it as it really is in truth, viz. as relating itself to its opposite. What are called essential marks, are passive characteristics, which, when expressed and apprehended as simple, do not bring out what constitutes their real nature — which is to be vanishing moments of its process of withdrawing and betaking itself into itself. Since the instinct of reason now arrives at the point of looking for the characteristic in the hght of its true nature — that of essentially passing over into its opposite and not existing apart by itself and for its own sake — it seeks after the Law and the notion of law. It seeks for them, moreover, as existing reality; but this feature of concrete reahty will in point of fact disappear before reason, and the aspects of the law will become for it mere moments or abstractions, so that the law comes to fight in the nature of the notion, which has destroyed within itself the iadifferent subsistence of sensuous reafity.

To the consciousness observing, the truth of the law is given in " experience," in the way that sense existence is object for consciousness ; the truth is not given iu and for itself. If, however, the law does not have its truth in the notion, it is something contingent, not a necessity, in fact, not a law. But its being essentially in the form 242 Phencnnenology of Blind of a notion does not merely not contradict its being present for observation to deal with, but really gives it on that account necessary existence, and makes it an object for observation. The universal in the sense of a rational universaUty, is also universal in the sense imphed in the above notion : — its being is for consciousness, it presents itself there as the real, the objective present ; the notion sets itself forth in the form of thinghood and sensuous existence. But it does not, on that account, lose its nature and fall into the condition of immovable subsisting passivity, or mere adventitious {gleichgiiltig) succession. What is universally normal is also universally valid : what ought to be, as a matter of fact is too ; and what merely should be, and is not, has no real truth. The instinct of reason is entirely within its rights when it stands firm on this point, and refuses to be led astray by entia intellectus which merely ought to be, and would have truth in the sense of this " ought to be," even though they are to be met with nowhere in experience ; and dechnes to be turned aside by the hypothetical suggestions and all the other impalpable unreahties designed in the interest of an everlasting " ought to be " which never is.* For reason is just this certainty of having reality, and what this consciousness is not aware of as an existent entity, i.e. what does not appear, is nothing for consciousness here at all.

The true nature of law, viz. : that it essentially is reality, will, no doubt, again assume for consciousness, if it stops at the level of observation, the form of an opposite over against the notion and the inherently universal ; in other words, this consciousness does not take such an object as its law to be a reality * Directed against Kant and FJchte, Observation of Nature 243 of reason ; it ttinks it has got there something external and foreign. But it contradicts its own idea by actually and in fact not taking its universality to mean that all individual things of sense must have given evidence of the law to enable the truth of the law to be asserted. To assert that stones when raised from the ground and let go, fall, does not at all require us to make the experiment with aU stones. It means most likely that this experiment must have been tried with a good many, and from that we can by analogy draw an inference about the rest with the greatest probabihty, or with perfect right. Yet analogy not only gives no perfect right, but, on account of its very nature, contradicts itself so often that the inference to be drawn from analogy itself rather is that analogy is not at Hberty to draw an inference. Probability, which is what analogy would come to, loses, when face to face with truth, every distinction of less and greater ; be the probability as great as it may it is nothing as against truth. The instinct of reason, however, takes, as a matter of fact, laws of that sort for truth. It is when reason does not find necessity in them, that it resorts to making this distinction, and lowers the truth of the matter to the level of probabihty, in order to bring out the imperfect way in which truth is presented to the consciousness that as yet has no insight into the pure notion ; for universahty is before it there merely iu the form of simple immediate universality. But, at the same time, on accoimt of this universality, the law has truth for consciousness. That a stone falls is true for consciousness, because it is aware of the stone being heavy, i.e. because in weight, taken by itself as such, the stone has that essential relation to the earth expressed in the

244 Phenomenology of Mind fact of falling. Consciousness thus 'finds in experience the objective being of the law, but has it there in the form of a notion as well ; and only because of both factors together is the law true for consciousness. The law, therefore, is accepted as a law because it presents itself in the sphere of appearance and is, at the same time, in its very nature a notion. The instinct of reason in this type of consciousness, because the law is at the same time inherently a notion, proceeds to give the law and its moments a purely conceptual form ; and proceeds to do this of necessity, but without knowing that this is what it seeks to do. It puts the law to the test of experiment. As the law first appears, it is enveloped in particulars of sense, and the notion constituting its nature is involved with empirical elements. The instinct of reason sets to work to find out by experiment what follows in such and such circumstances. By so doing, the law seems only to be plunged still further into sense ; but sense existence really gets lost in the process. The inner purport of this investigation is to find pure conditions of the law ; and this means nothing else (even if the consciousness stating the fact were to think it meant something different) than completely to bring out the law in conceptual shape and detach its moments entirely from determinate specific existence. For example, negative electricity, which is known at first, say, in the form of resin-electricity, while positive electricity comes before us as glass-electricity — these, by means of experiments, lose altogether such a significance, and become purely positive and negative electricity, neither of which is bound up any longer with things of a particular kind ; and^we can no longer say that there are

Observation of Nature 245 bodies whicli are electrical positively, others electrical negatively. In the same way, the relationship of acid and base and their reaction constitute a law in which these opposite factors appear as bodies. Yet these sundered things have no reaUty ; the power which tears them apart cannot prevent them entering at the same time into a process ; for they are merely this relation. They cannot subsist and be indicated by themselves apart, like a tooth or a claw. That it is their very natuje to pass over directly into a neutral product, makes their existence lie in being cancelled and superseded, or makes it into a universal ; and acid and base possess truth merely qua universal. Just then as glass and resin can be equally well positively as negatively electrified, in the same way acid and base are not attached as properties or quaUties to this or that reahty ; each thing is only relatively acidulate and basic ; what seems to be an absolute base or an absolute acid gets in the so-called Synsomates* the opposite significance to another. The result of the experiments is in this way to cancel the moments or inner significations as properties of specific things, and free the predicates from their sub j ects. These predicates are found merely as universal, and in truth that is what they are. Because of this seK-subsistence they therefore get the name of kinds of " matter,"

* A term employed by a chemist, Winterl, at tbe beginning of the nineteenth century to denote combinations intermediate in character between physical mixtures and chemical combinations. In synsomates the bodies undergo in the product, e.g., a change of colour, specific density, and even weight ; these changes do not take place in mere physical mixtures, and yet they do not constitute chemical combination. Examples of synsomates are the blending of water and alcohol, and amalgams of minerals. 246 Phenomenology of Mind which is neither a body nor a property of a body ; certainly no one would call acid, positive and negative electricity, heat,* etc., bodies. Matter, on the contrary, is not a thing that exists, it is being in the sense of universal being, or being in the way the concept is being. Reason, still instinctive, correctly draws this distinction without being conscious that it (reason), by the very fact of its testing the law in every sense-particular, cancels the merely sensuous existence of the law ; and, when it construes the moments of the law as forms of matter, their essential natuje is taken to be something universal, and specifically expressed as a non-sensuous element of sense, an incorporeal and yet objective existence.

We have now to see what turn its result takes, and what new shape this activity of observation will, in consequence, assume. The outcome and truth of this experimentation is found to be fure law, freed from sensuous elements ; we find it as a concept, which, while present in sense, operates there independently and unrestrained, while enveloped in sense, is detached from it, and is a concept bare and simple. This, which is in truth the essential result, now comes before this consciousness itself, but as an object ; moreover, since the object is not a result really for it, and is unrelated to the preceding process — the object is a peculiar kind of object, and its relation to consciousness takes the form of another kind of observation. Such an object, where the simple activity of the notion is the principle of the process within it, is an Organism. * Heat, e.g., is a "mode f motion," a form of "energy." Observation of Organic Nature ■ 247 a (2) Observation of Organic Nature Organic existence is this absolutely fluid condition wherein the determinateness, which alone would make it a definite entity for an other, is dissolved. Inorganic things involve determinateness in their very essence; and on that account a thing reahses the completeness of the moments of the notion only along with another thing, and hence gets lost when it enters the dialectic movement. In the case of an organic being, on the other hand, all determinate characteristics, by means of which it is palpable to another, are held under the control of the simple organising unity ; none of them comes forward as essential and capable of detaching itself from the rest and relating itself to an other organic being. What is organic, therefore, preserves itself ia its very relation.

The aspects of law on which the instinct of reason directs its observation here, are, as we see from the above, in the first instance organic nature and inorganic nature in their relation to one another. The latter means for organic nature just the free play — a freedom opposed to the formal principle of organic nature — of those loosely floating characteristics in which nature, in its individual components, is at once dissolved and out of the continuity of which the individuated elements of nature are at the same time resolved and exist separately. Air, water, earth, zones and climate are universal elements of this sort, which make up the indeterminate simple being of natural individuaUties, and in which these are at the same time reflected into themselves. Neither the individuality nor the natural element 248 Phenomenology of Mind is absolutely self-contained. On the contrary : in tke independent detachment, which observation finds these assuming towards one another, they stand at the same time in essential relation to one another, but in such a way that their independence and mutual indifierence form the predominating feature, and only in part become abstractions. Here, then, law appears as the relation of an element to the formative process of the organic being, which at one moment has the element over against itself, at another exhibits it within its own self-determining organic structure. But laws like these: animals belonging to the air are of the nature of birds, those belonging to water have the constitution of fish, animals in northerly latitudes have thick coats of hair, and so on — such laws indicate a degree of poverty which does not do justice to the manifold variety of organic nature. Besides the fact that the free activity of organic nature can readily divest its forms of determinate characters like these, and everywhere presents of necessity exceptions to such laws or rules, as we might call them ; the characterisation of those very animals to which they do apply is so very superficial, that even the necessity of the " laws " can be nothing else but superficial too, and does not carry us further than what is implied in speaking of the "great influence" of environment on the organism. And this does not tell us what properly falls under that influence and what does not. Such like relations of organic beings to the elements they live in cannot therefore be strictly called laws at all. For, on the one hand, such a relation, when we look at its content, does not exhaust, as we saw, the range of the organic beings considered, and on the other, the terms of the relation itself stand indifferently apart

Observation of Organic Nature 249 from one another and convey no necessity. In the concept of an acid lies the notion of a base, just as the notion of positive electricity implies that of negative ; but even though we do find as a fact a thick coat of hair associated with northerly latitudes, the structure of a fish with water, or that of birds with air, there is nothing in the notion of the north implying the notion of a thick covering of hair, the notion of the structure of fish does not he in the notion of the sea, nor that of birds in that of the air. Because of this free detachment of the two notions from one another, there are as a fact also land animals with the essential characters of a bird, of fish, and so on. The necessity, just because it cannot be conceived to be an inner necessity of the object, ceases also to have a foothold in sense, and can be no longer observed ia actual reahty, but has quitted the sphere of reahty. Finding thus no place in the real object itself, it becomes what is called a " teleological relation," a relation which is external to what is related, and consequently the very reverse of a law of its constitution. It is an idea entirely detached from the necessity of nature, a thought which leaves this necessity of nature behind and floats above it aU by itself.*

If the relation, above alluded to, of organic existence to the elemental conditions of nature does not express its true beiag, the notion of Purpose, on the other hand, does contain it. The observing attitude does not indeed take the reXo? to be the genuine essence of organic existence ; this notion seems to it to fall outside the real nature of the organism, and is then merely that external teleological relation above men- * Cp. with the above, the oscillation between the mechanical and teleolofrical conception of " law " in theoretical biology. 250 Phenomenology of Mind tioned. Yet looking at how the organic being was previously characterised, the organic is in point of fact just realised concrete purpose. For since itself maintains itself in relation to another, it is just that kind of natural existence in which nature reflects itself into the notion, and the moments of necessity separated out [by Understanding] — a cause and an effect, an active and a passive — are here brought together and combined into a single unity. In this way we have here not only something appearing as a result of necessity, but, because it has returned to itself, the last or the result is just as much the first which starts the process, and is to itself the purpose which it realises. What is organic does not produce something, it merely conserves itself, or what is produced is as much there already as produced.

We must elucidate this principle more fully, both as it is in itself and as it is for the instinct of reason, in order to see how reason finds itself there, but does not know itself in what it finds. The concept of purpose then, which rational observation has reached, is, while reason has apprehended it in consciousness, given to reason as something actually real as well ; it is not merely an external relation of the actual, but its inner being. This actual, which is itself a purpose, is related purposively to an other, i.e. its relation is a contingent one with respect to what both are immediately ; prima facie they are both self-subsistent and indifferent to one another. The real nature of their relation, however, is something different from what they thus appear to be, and its effect has another meaning than senseperception directly finds. The necessity inherent in the process is concealed, and comes out at the end, but Observation of Organic Nature 251 in such a way that this very end shows it to have been also the first. The end, however, shows this priority of itself by the fact that nothing comes out of the alteration the act produced, but what was there already. Or, again, if we start from what is first, this, in coming to the end or the result of its act, merely returns to itself, and, just by so doing, it demonstrates itself to be that which has itself as its end, that is to say, qua first it has already returned to itself, or is self-contained, is in and for itself. What, then, it arrives at by the process of its action is itself ; and its arriving merely at itself means feehng itself, is its seH-feehng. Thus we have here, no doubt, the distinction between what it is and what it seeks ; but this is merely the semblance of a distinction, and consequently it is a notion in its very nature.

This is exactly, however, the way self-consciousness is constituted. It distinguishes itself in the same manner from itself, without any distinction being thereby estabhshed. Hence it is that it finds in observation of organic nature nothing else than this kind of reahty ; it finds itself in the form of a thing, as a life, and yet, between what it is itself and what it has found, draws a distinction which is, however, no distinction. Just as the instinct of an animal is to seek and consume food, but does not thereby get beyond itself ; similarly the instinct of reason in its seeking merely finds reason itself. An animal ends with self-feehng. The instinct of reason, on the other hand,, is, at the same time, self -consciousness. But because it is merely instinct, it is put on one side as against consciousness, and in the latter finds its opposite. Its satisfaction is, therefore, broken in two by this 252 Phenomenology of Mind opposite ; it finds itself, viz. the purpose, and also finds this purpose in the shape of a thing. But the purpose is seen to he, in the first instance, apart from the thiug presenting itself as a purpose. In the second place, this purpose qua purpose is at the same time objective ; it is taken to fall, therefore, not withm the observing consciousness, but within another intelhgence.

Looked at more closely, there hes in the notion of the thing this character as well : — that of being in itself a purpose. It preserves itself ; this at once means it is its nature to conceal the necessity controlling it, and presents that necessity in the form of a contingent relation. For its freedom, its being on its own account, means just that it behaves towards its necessary condition as something indifferent. It thus sets itself out to be something whose notion falls apart from its existence. In the same way reason is compelled, by letting its own proper notion fall outside it, to look at itself as a thing, as that towards which it is indifferent, and which in consequence is reciprocally indifferent towards it [reason] and towards its own notion. Qua instinct it continues to remain within this state of being, this condition of indifierence ; and the thing expressing the notion remains for it something other than this notion, and the notion other than the thing. Thus for reason the thing organised is only a purpose per se in the sense that the necessity, which lies concealed within the action of the thing — for the active agency there takes up the attitude of being indifferent and isolated — falls outside the organism itself.

Since, however, the organic qua purpose per se cannot behave in any other way than as organic, the Observation of Organic Nature 253 fact of its being per se a purpose is also apparent and sensibly present, and as such it is observed. What is organic shows itself when observed to be something self-preserving, returning and returned into itself. But in this state of being observation does not recognise the concept of purpose, and does not Ltiow that the notion of purpose is not in an intelligence anywhere else, but just exists here and in the form of a thing. Observation makes a distinction between the concept of purpose and self-existence and self-preservation, which is not a distinction at all. That it is no distinction is something of which it is not aware ; what it is aware of is an act which appears contingent and indifferent towards what is brought about by that act, and towards the unity which is all the while the principle connecting both ; that act and this purpose are taken to fall asunder. On this view the special function of the organic is to be the inner operating activity lying in between its first and last purpose, so far as this action imphes the character of singleness. So far, however, as the action has the character of universality, and the active agent is equated with what is the outcome of its operation, this purposive action as such would not seem to belong to the function of organic beings. That individual action, which is merely a means, comes, owing to its individual form, to be determined by an entirely individual or contingent necessity. What an organic being does for the preservation of itself as an individual, or of itself qua genus, is, therefore, quite lawless as regards this immediate content : for notion and universal fall outside it. Its action would accordingly be empty agency without any content in

254 Phenomenology of Mind it ; it would not even be the efficiency of a machine, for this has a purpose and its activity in consequence a definite content. If it were deserted in this way by the universal, it would be an activity of a mere being qua being, i.e. would be an activity not forthwith reflected into itself, like that of an acid or a base — one which could not be cut off from its immediate existence, nor give up this existence that gets lost when related to its opposite, but would be able to preserve itself. The kind of being, whose activity is here under consideration is, however, set down as a thing preserving itself in its relation to its opposite. The activity as such is nothing but the bare insubstantial form of its independent existence on its own account; and the purpose of the activity, its substance — a. substance, which is not simply a determinate being, but the universal — does not fall outside the activity. It is an activity reverting into itself by its own nature, and is not turned back into itself by any ahen, external agency. This union of universality and activity, however, is not a matter for this attitude of observation, because that unity is essentially the inner movement of what is organic, and can only be apprehended conceptually. Observation, however, seeks the moments in the form of existence and diuation ; and because the organic whole consists essentially in not containing the moments in that form, and in not letting them be found within it in that way, this observing consciousness, by its way of looking at the matter, transforms the opposition into one which conforms and is adapted to its own point of view.

An organism comes before the observing consciousness Observation of Organic Nature 255 in this maimer as a way of relating two fixed and existing moments — as a relation of elements in an opposition, wtose two factors seem in one respect really given in observation, while in another respect, as regards their content, they express the opposition of the organic concept of purpose and actual reahty. But because the notion as such is there effaced, this takes place in an obscure and superficial way, where thought sinks to the level of mere ideal presentation. Thus we see the notion taken much in the sense of what is inner, reahty in the sense of what is outer ; and their relation gives rise to the law that " the outer is the expression of the inner." Let us consider more closely this inner with its opposite and their relation to one another. In the fixst place, we find that the two factors of the law no longer have such an import as we found in the case of previous laws, where the elements appeared as independent things, each being a particular body ; nor, again, in the second place, do we find that the universal is to have its existence somewhere else outside what actually is. On the contrary, the organic being is, in undivided oneness and as a whole, the fundamental fact, it is the content of inner and outer, and is the same for both. The opposition is on that account of a purely formal character; its real sides have the same ultimate principle inherently constituting them what they are. At the same time, however, since inner and outer are also opposite realities and each is a distinct being for observation, they each seem to observation to have a peculiar content of their own. This pecuhar content, since it consists of the same substance, or the same organic unity, can, however, in

256 Phenomenology of Mind point of fact, be only a different form of tliat unity, of that substance; and this is indicated by observation when it says that the outer is merely the expression of the inner. We have seen in the case of the concept of purpose the same characteristic features of the relation, viz. the indifferent independence of the diverse factors, and their unity in that independence, a unity in which they disappear. We have now to see what shape and embodiment inner and outer assume in actually existing. The inner as such must have an outer being and an embodiment, just as much as the outer as such ; for the inner is an object, or is affirmed as being, and is there for observation to deal with. The organic substance qua inner is the Soul simply, the pure notion of purpose or the universal which in dividing into its discrete elements remains all the same a universal fluent continuity, and hence in its being appears as action or the movement of vanishing reality ; while, on the other hand, the outer, opposed to that existing inner, subsists in the passive being of the organic. The law, as the relation of that inner to this outer, consequently expresses its content, now by setting forth universal moments, or simple essential elements, and again by setting forth the realised essential nature or the form and shape actually assumed. Those first simple organic properties, to call them so, are Sensibihty, Irritability, and Reproduction. These properties, at least the two first, seem indeed to refer not to the organism in general, but merely to the animal organism. The vegetable level of organic life, too, expresses in point of fact only the bare and simple

Observation of Organic Nature 257 notion of organism, whicli does not develop and evolve its moments. Hence in regard to those moments, so far as observation has to take account of them, we must confine ourselves to the organism which presents them existing in developed form. As to these moments, then, they are directly derived from the notion of self-purpose, of a being whose end is its own self. For Sensibility expresses in general the simple notion of organic reflexion into itself, or the universal continuity of this notion. Irritabihty, again, expresses organic elasticity, the capacity to exercise the function of reacting simultaneously with self-reflexion, and expresses, in contrast to the previous state of being passively and inertly within itself, the condition of being exphcitly actuahsed — a reahsation, where that abstract existence for its own sake comes to be an existence for something else. Reproduction, however, is the operation of this entire self-reflected organism, its activity as having its purpose in itself, its activity qua genus, wherein the individual repels itself from itself, where it repeats by procreation either the organic parts or the whole individual. Reproduction, taken in the sense of self-preservation in general, expresses the formal principle or conception of the organic, or the fact of Sensibihty ; but it is, properly speaking, the reahsed notion of organic existence, or the whole, which either qua individual returns into itself through the process of producing individual parts of itseK, or qua genus does so through the production of distinct individuals.

The other significance of these organic elements, viz. as outer, is their embodiment in a given shape ; here they assume the form of actual but at the same 258 Phenomenology of Mind time universal parts, or appear as organic systems. Sensibility is embodied in the form for instance of a nervous system, irritability, of a muscular system, reproduction, of an intestinal system for tte preservation of the individual and the species. Laws pecuhar to organic life, accordingly, concern a relation of the organic moments, taking account of their two-fold significance — viz. of being in one respect a part of definite organic formation or embodiment, and ia another respect a continuous universal element of a determinate kind, running through all those systems. Thus in giving expression to a law of that sort, a specific kind of sensibility, e.g., would find, qua moment of the whole organism, its expression in a determinately formed nervous system, or it would also be connected with a determinate reproduction of the organic parts of the individual or with the propagation of the whole, and so on. Both aspects of such a law can be observed. The external is in its very conception being for another; sensibility, e.g., finds its immediately realised form in the sensitive system; and, qua universal property, it is in its outer expressions an objective fact as well. The aspect which is called "inner" has its own ''outer" aspect, which is distinct from what is in general called the outer.

Both the aspects of an organic law would thus certainly be open to observation, but not the laws of their relation. And observation does not manage to do that, not because, qua observation, it would be too short-sighted, and should not proceed empirically but should start from the "Idea" — for such laws, if they were something real, must, as a matter of fact, be actual, and must thus be observable : it is rather because Observation of Organic Nature 259 the thought of laws of this sort proves to have no truth at all. It was put forward as a law, that the universal organic property had formed itself in an organic system into a thing and there found its own embodied image and copy, so that both were the same reahty, present, in the one case, as universal moment, in the other, as thing. But besides, the inner aspect is also for itself a relation of several aspects ; and hence, to begin with, the idea of a law is presented as the thought of a relation of universal organic activities or properties to one another. Whether such a law is possible has to be decided from the nature of the property in question. Such a property, however, being universal and of a fluid nature, is, on the one hand, not something restricted like a thing, keeping itself within the distinction of a definite mode of existence, which is to constitute its shape and form : sensibihty goes beyond the nervous system and pervades all the other systems of the organism. On the other hand, such a property is a universal moment, which is essentially undivided, and inseparable from reaction, or irritabihty, and reproduction. For, being reflection into self, it eo ipso already implies reaction. Merely to be reflected into itself is to be a passive, or hfeless being, and not sensibility; just as action — which is the same as reaction — when not reflected into self, is not irritability. Reflexion in action or reaction, and action or reaction in reflexion, is just that whose unity constitutes the organic being, a unity which is synonymous with organic reproduction. It follows from this that in every form of reahty there must be present the same quantity of sensibihty —since we are considering, in the first instance, the

260 Phenmnenology of Mind relation of sensibility and irritability to one another — as of irritability, and that an organic phenomenon can be apprehended and determined or, if we like, explained, just as much in terms of the one as of the other. What one man takes for high sensibiHty, another may just as rightly consider high irritability, and an irritabihty of the same degree. If they are called factors, and this is not to be a meaningless phrase, it is thereby expressly stated that they are moments of the notion ; in other words, the real object, the essential nature of which this notion constitutes, contains them both alike within it, and if the object is in one way characterised as very sensitive, it can be also spoken of in the other way as Ukewise irritable. If they are distinguished, as they must be, they are so in priaciple, and their opposition is qualitative. But when, besides this true distiaction, they are also set down as existent and presented as different, as they would be if made aspects of the law, then they appear quantitatively distinct. Their peculiar qualitative opposition thus passes into quantity ; and hence arise laws of this sort, e.g., that sensibihty and irritabihty stand in inverse quantitative relations, so that when the one increases the other diminishes ; or better, taking directly the quantity itself as the content, that the magnitude of something increases as its smallness diminishes.

Should a more specific content be given to this law, however, by saying, for example, that the size of a hole increases the more we decrease what it is filled with, then this inverse relation might be just as well changed into a direct relation and expressed in the form that the quantity of a hole increases in direct Observation of Organic Nature 261 ratio to the amount of things we take away — a tautological proposition, whether expressed as a direct or an inverse relation; so expressed it comes merely to this that a quantity increases as this quantity increases. The hole and what fills it and is removed from it are qualitatively opposed, but the real content there and its specific quantity are in both one and the same, and similarly the increase of quantity and decrease of smallness are the same, and their meaningless opposition runs into a tautology. In hke manner the organic moments are equally inseparable in their real content, and in their quantity which is the quantity of that reahty. The one decreases only with the other, and only increases with it, for one has hterally a significance only so far as the other is present. Or rather, it is a matter of indifference whether an organic phenomenon is considered as irritabihty or as sensibihty ; this is so in general, and hlvcwise when its quantity is in question : just as it is indifferent whether we speak of the increase of a hole as an increase of the hole qua emptiuess or as an increase of the filling removed from it. Or, again, a number, say three, is equally great, whether I take it positively or negatively ; and if I increase the three to four, the positive as well as the negative becomes four : just as the south pole in the case of a magnet is precisely as strong as its north pole, or a positive electricity or an acid, is exactly as strong as its negative, or the base on which it operates.

An organic existence is also such a magnitude or quantity, like the number three or a magnet, etc. It is that which is increased or diminished, and if it is increased, then both its factors are increased, as much as both poles of the magnet or both kinds of electricity 262 Phenomenology of Mind increase if the potential of a magnet or of one of the electric currents is raised. That both are just as httle difierent in intension and extension, that the one cannot decrease in extension and increase in intension, while the other conversely has to diminish its intension and increase in extension — this comes from the same notion of an unreal and empty opposition. The real intension is absolutely as great as the extension and vice versa. What really happens in framing a law of this kind is obviously that at the outset irritability and sensibihty are taken to constitute the specifically determinate organic opposition. This content, however, is lost sight of and the opposition goes off into a formal opposition of quantitative increase and diminution, or of different intension and extension — an opposition which has no longer anything to do with the nature of sensibihty and irritability, and no longer expresses it. Hence this mere playing at law-making is not confined to organic moments, but can be carried on everywhere with everything and rests in general on want of acquaintance with the logical nature of these oppositions.

Lastly, if, instead of sensibility and irritabihty, reproduction is brought into relation with one or other of them, then here, too, we fail to find any occasion for framing laws of this kind ; for reproduction does not stand in any opposition to those moments, as they are opposed to one another ; and since the making of such laws assumes this opposition, there is no possibility here of its even appearing to take place. The law-making just considered implies the differences of the organism, taken in the sense of moments of its notion, and, strictly speaking, should be an a priori Observation of Organic Nature 263 process. But it essentially involves this idea, that those differences have the significance of being present as something given, and the attitude of mere observation has properly to confine itself merely to their actual existence. Organic reahty necessarily has within it such an opposition as its notion expresses, and which can be determined as irritabihty and sensibihty, as these again both appear distinct from reproduction. The aspect in which the moments of the notion of organism are here considered, their Externahty, is the proper and pecuhar immediate externahty of the inner ; not the outer which is the outer embodied form of the whole organism ; the inner is to be considered in relation to this later on.

If, however, the opposition of the moments is apprehended as it is found in actual existence, then sensibihty, irritability, reproduction sink to the level of common properties, which are imiversals just as indifferent towards one another as specific weight, colour, hardness, etc. In this sense, it may doubtless be observed that one organic being is more sensitive, or more irritable, or has a greater reproductive capacity than another : just as we may observe that the sensibility, etc. of one is in kind different from that of another, that one responds differently from another to a given stimulus, e.g. a horse behaves differently towards oats from what it does towards hay, and a dog again differently towards both, and so on. These differences can as readily be observed as that one body is harder than another, and so on. But these sense properties, hardness, colour, etc, as also the phenomena of responding to the stimulus of oats, of irritability under a certain kind of load, or of 264 Phenomenology of Mind breeding a number and specific kind of young,— all such, properties and phenomena, when related to one another and compared inter se, essentially defy the attempt to reduce them to law. For the characteristic of their being sensuous facts consists just in their existing in complete indifference to one another, and in manifesting the freedom of nature emancipated from the control of the notion, rather than the unity of a relation — in exhibiting nature's irrational way of availing itself of the accidental element of quantity in order to flit hither and thither between the moments of the notion, rather than in setting forth these moments themselves.

It is the other aspect, in which the simple moments of the notion of organism are compared with the moments of the definite existent embodiment, that would at last furnish the law proper for expressing the true outer as the copy of the inner. Now because those simple moments are properties that permeate and pervade the whole, they do not yet work themselves out of the organic being into such a real separate expression as to form what we call an individual system constituting a definite shape {Gestalt). Or, again, if the abstract idea of organism is truly expressed in those three moments merely because they are nothing stable, but transitory moments of the notion and its process, the organism, on the other hand, qua a definite embodiment, is not exhaustively expressed in those three determinate systems in the way anatomy analyses and describes them. So far as such systems are to be found in their actual reahty and rendered legitimate by being so found, we must also bear in mind that anatomy not only puts before us Observation of Organic Nature 265 three systems of that sort, but a good many others as well. Thus then, apart from this, the sensitive system as a whole must mean something quite different from what is called a nervous system, the irritable system something different from the muscular system, the reproductive from the intestinal mechanism of reproduction. In the systems constituting an embodied form [Gestalt) the organism is apprehended from the abstract side of lifeless physical existence : so taken, its moments are elements of a corpse and fall to be dealt with by anatomy ; they do not appertain to knowledge dealing with the hving organism. Qua parts of that nature they have really ceased to he, for they cease to be processes. Since the being of an organism consists essentially in universahty, or reflexion into self, the being of its totahty, like its moments, cannot consist in an anatomical system. The actual expression of the whole, and the externalisation of its moments are really found only as a process and a movement, running throughout the various parts of the embodied organism ; and in this process what is extracted as an individual system and fixated so, appears essentially as a fleeting moment. So that the reaUty which anatomy finds cannot be taken for its real being, but only that reality as a process, a process in which alone even the anatomical parts have a significance.

We see, then, that the moments of the " inner " being of the organism taken separately by themselves are not capable of furnishing aspects of a law of organic being, since in a law of that sort they refer to an objective existence, are distinguished from one another, and thus each aspect would not be able to be equaUy named in 266 Phenomenology of Mind place of the other. Further, we see that, when placed on one side, they do not find in the other aspect their realisation in a fixed system ; for this fixed system is as little something that could convey truly the general nature of organic existence, as it is the expression of those moments of the inner fife of the organism. The essential nature of what is organic, since this is inherently something universal, lies rather in having its moments universal in concrete reahty as well, i.e. in having them as permeating processes, and not in giving a copy of the universal in an isolated thing. In this manner the idea of a law in the case of organic existence shps altogether from our grasp. The law wants to take and express the opposition in the form of static inactive aspects, and bring out in the case of those aspects the characteristic determining their relation to one another. The inner, to which falls the universahty appearing in the process, and the outer, to which belong the parts of the static form of the organism, were to constitute the corresponding sides of the law, but they lose, in being kept asunder in this way, their organic significance. And at the bottom of the idea of law hes just this, that its two aspects should have a subsistence each on its own account indifferent to the other, and the relation of the two sides should be shared between them, and have a correspondingly twofold determinate nature. But really each aspect of the organism consists inherently in being simple universality, wherein all determinations are dissolved, and in being the process of dissolving them.

If we quite see the difference between this way of framing laws and previous forms, it will clear up its nature completely. Turning back to the process of per- Observation of Organic Nature 267 ceiving and that of understanding (intelligence), which reflects itself into itself, and by so doing determines its object, we see that understanding does not there have before itself in its object the relation of these abstract determinations, universal and individual, essential and external ; on the contrary, it is itself the actual transition, the relational process, and to itself this transition does not become objective. Here, on the other hand, the organic unity, i.e. just the relation of those opposites, is itself the object ; and this relation is a pure process of transition. This process in its simplest form is directly universahty ; and since universahty passes into different factors, whose relation it is the purpose of the law to express, its moments take the form of being universal objects of this mode of consciousness, and the law runs, "the outer is an expression of the inner." Understanding has here grasped the thought of the law itself, whereas formerly it merely looked for laws in a general way, and their moments appeared before it in the shape of a definite and specific content, and not in the form of thoughts of laws.

As regards content, no laws should, then, be admitted in this connection, which merely accept and passively adopt distinctions barely existent, and put them into the form of universahty ; but only such laws as directly maintain in these distinctions the restless activity of the notion as well, and consequently possess at the same time necessity in the relation of the two sides. Yet, because that very object, organic unity, directly combines the function of endlessly superseding, or the absolute negation of, existence with inactive quiescent existence, and because the nature of the moments is essentially a condition of pure transition, — there are thus not 268 Phenomenology of Mind to be found any sucli merely existent aspects as are required for the law.. To get such aspects, intelligence must take its stand on the other moment of the organic relation, viz. on the fact that organic existence is reflected into itself. But this mode of being is so completely reflected into self that it has no specific character, no determinateness of its own as against something else, left over. The immediate sensuous being is directly one with the determinate quahty as such, and hence expresses therein a quahtative distinction, e.g. blue as against red, acid as against alkaloid, etc. But the organic being that has returned into itself is completely indifferent towards an other ; its existence is simple universahty, and refuses to offer observation any permanent sense distinctions, or, what is the same thing, shows its essential characteristic to be merely the changing flux of whatever determinate qualities there are. Hence, the way distinction qua actually existing expresses itseK is just this, that it is an indifferent distinction, i.e. a distinction in the form of quantity. In this, however, the notion is extinguished and necessity disappears. The content, however, the filling of this indifferent existence, the flux and interchange of sense determinations when gathered into the simphcity of an organic determination, — expresses at the same time the fact that the content does not have that determinate character (of the immediate property) and the quahtative feature falls solely within the aspect of quantity, as we saw above.

Although the objective element, apprehended in the form of a determinate character of organic existence, has thus the notion inherent in it, and thereby is distin- Observation of Organic Nature 269 guished from the object offered to understanding, which in apprehending the content of its laws proceeds in a purely perceptive manner, yet apprehension in the former case falls back entirely into the principle and manner of mere percipient understanding, for the reason that the object apprehended is used to constitute moments of a law. For by this means what is apprehended receives and keeps the character of a fixed determinate quahty, the form of an immediate property or a passive phenomenon ; it is, further, subsumed under the aspect of quantity, and the nature of the notion is suppressed. The exchange of a merely perceived object for one reflected into itself, of a mere sense character for an organic, thus loses once more its value, and does so by the fact that understanding has not yet cancelled the process of framing laws. If we compare what we find as regards this exchange in the case of a few examples, we see, it may be, something that perception takes for an animal with strong muscles characterised as an "animal organism of high irritabihty " ; or, what perception takes to be a condition of great weakness, characterised as a " condition of high sensibihty," or, if we prefer it, as an "abnormal affection," and, moreover, a raising of it to a "higher power " — expressions which translate sensuous facts into Teutonised Latin, instead of into terms of the notion. That an animal has strong muscles may also be expressed by understanding in the form that the animal "possesses a great muscular force " — great weakness meaning similarly "a shght force." Characterisation ui terms of irritabihty has this advantage over determination by reference to " force," that the latter expresses indeterminate, the former determinate reflection into self ;

270 Phenomenology of Mind for the peculiar force characteristic of muscles is just irritabihty ; and irritabihty is also a preferable determination to " strong muscles/' in that, as in the case of force, reflection into self is at once imphed in it. In the same way "weakness," or "slight force," organic passivity, is expressed in a determinate manner by sensibiHty. But when this sensibiUty is so taken by itself and fixed, and the element of quantity is still bound up with it, and qua greater or less sensibility is opposed to a greater or less irritabihty, each is reduced entirely to the level of sense, and put into the ordinary form of a sense property ; their principle of relation is not the notion, but, on the contrary, it is the aspect of quantity into which the opposition is now cast, thus becoming a distinction not constituted by thought. While in this way the indeterminate nature of the expressions, "force," "strength," "weakness," would indeed be got rid of, there now arises the equally futile and indeterminate process of dealing with opposites of a higher and lower degree of sensibility and irritabihty, as they increase and decrease relatively to one another. The greater or less sensibihty or irritability is no less a sensuous phenomenon, grasped and expressed without any reference to thought, than strength and weakness are sense determinations not constituted by thought. The notion has not taken the place of those non-conceptual expressions ; instead, strength and weakness have been given a filling by a characteristic which, taken by itself alone, rests on the notion, and has the notion as its content, but loses entirely this origin and character.

Owing to the form of simplicity and immediacy, then, in which this content is made an element of a law, and Observation of Organic Nature 271 through the element of quantity, which constitutes the principle of distinction for such determinations, the reality, which originally is a notion and is put forward as such, retains the character of sense perception, and remains as far removed from knowledge (Erkennen) as when characterised in terms of strength or weakness of force, or through immediate sense properties. There is still left to consider what the outer side of the organic being is when taken by itself alone, and how in its case the opposition of its inner and outer is determined ; just as at first we considered the inner of the whole in relation to its own proper outer. The outer, looked at by itself, is the embodied form and shape (Gestaltung) in general, the system of Life articulated in the element of existence, and at the same time essentially the existence of the organism as it is for an other — objective reality in its aspect of selfexistence. This other appears in the first instance as its outer inorganic nature. If these two are looked at in relation to a law, the inorganic nature cannot, as we saw before, constitute the aspect of a law beside the organic being, because the latter exists absolutely for itself, and assumes a imiversal and free relation to inorganic nature.

To define more exactly, however, the relation of these two aspects in the case of the organic form, this form, in which the organism is embodied, is in one aspect turned against inorganic nature, while in an other it is for itself and reflected into itself. The real organic being is the mediating agency, which brings together and xmites the self-existence of life [its being for itself], with the outer in general, with what simply and inherently is. 272 Phenomenology of Mind The one extreme, self-existence, is, however, the inner in the sense of an infinite " one ", which takes the moments of the embodied shape itself out of their subsistence and connection with outer nature and withdraws these moments back into itself ; it is that which, having no content, looks to the embodied form of the organism to provide its content, and appears there as the process of that form. In this extreme where it is mere negativity, or pure individual existence, the organism finds its absolute freedom, whereby it is made quite secure and indifferent towards the fact of its being relative to another and towards the specific character belonging to the moments of the form of the organism. This free detachment is at the same time a freedom of the moments themselves ; it is the possibility of their appearing in existence and of being apprehended ; and just as they are detached and indifferent in regard to what is outer, so too are they towards one another, for the simple nature of this freedom consists in mere being or in their bare substance. This notion or pure freedom is one and the same hfe, no matter how varied and diverse the ways in which the shape assumed by the organism, its " being for another," may disport itself ; it is a matter of indifference to this stream of hfe what sort of mills it drives.

In the first place we must now note that this notion is not to be taken here, as it was formerly when,, we were considering the inner proper, in its character as a process or development of the moments ; we must take it in its form as bare and simple "inner," which constitutes the purely universal aspect as against the concrete Uving reality ; it is the element in which the existing members of the organic shape find their sub- Observation of Organic Nature 21 Z sistence. For it is this shape we are considering here, and in it the essential nature of hfe appears as the simple fact of subsistence. That being so, the existence for another, the specific character of the real embodied form, is taken up into this simple universahty, in which its nature lies, a specificity that is likewise of a simple universal non-sensuous kind, and can only be that which finds expression in number. Number is the middle term of the organic form, which hnks indeterminate life with actual concrete life, simple Uke the former, and determinate like the latter. That which in the case of the former, the inner, would have the sense of number, would require to express the outer after its manner as multiform reahty, — kinds of hfe, colour and so on, in general as the whole host of differences which are developed as phenomena of hfe.

If the two aspects of the organic whole the one being the inner, while the other is the outer, in such a way that each again has in it an inner and an outer — are compared with reference to the inner both sides have, we find that the inner of the first is the notion, in the sense of the restless activity of abstraction ; the second has for its inner, however, inactive universahty, which involves also the constant characteristic — number. Hence, if, because the notion develops its moments in the former, this aspect made a delusive promise of laws owing to the semblance of necessity in the relation, the latter directly disclaims doing so, since number shows itself to be the determining feature of one aspect of its laws. For number is just that entirely inactive, inert, and indifferent characteristic in which every movement and relational process is extinguished, and which has broken the bridge leadiag 274 Phenomenology of Mind to the living expression of impulses, manner of life, and whatever other sensuous existence there is. This way of considering the embodied organic shape as such and the inner qua inner merely of that embodied form, is, however, in point of fact, no longer a consideration of organic existence. For both the aspects, which were to be related, are merely taken indifferent to one another, and thereby reflection into self, the essential nature of organism, is done away with. What we have done here is rather to transfer that attempted comparison of inner and outer to the sphere of inorganic nature. The notion with its iniinity is here merely the inner essence, which lies hidden away within or falls outside in self-consciousness, and no longer, as in the case of the organism, possesses its objectivity in the actual present. This relation of inner and outer has thus still to be considered in its own proper sphere.

In the first place, that inner element of the form and shape assumed, being the simple individual existence of an inorganic thing, is the specific gravity. As a simply existing fact, this can be observed just as much as the characteristic of number, which is the only one suited to it ; or properly speaking can be found by comparing observations ; and it seems in this way to furnish one aspect of the law. The embodied form, colour, hardness, toughness, and an innumerable host of other properties, would together constitute the outer aspect, and would have to give expression to the characteristic of the inner, number, so that the one should find its counterpart in the other. Now because negativity is here taken not in the sense of a movement of the process, but as ai; inoperative Observation of Organic Nature 275 unity, or as self-existence pure and simple, it appears really as that by which the thing resists the process, and maintains itseK within itself and in a condition of indifierence towards it. By the fact, however, that this simple self-existence, this bare being-for-itself, is an inactive indifference towards an other, specific gravity appears as one property alongside others ; and therewith all necessary relation on its part to this plurality, or, in other words, all conformity to law, ceases.

The specific gravity in the sense of this simple inner aspect does not contain difference in itself, or the difference it has is merely non-essential ; for its bare simphcity just cancels every distinction of an essential kind. This non-essential difference, quantity, was thus bound to find its other or counterpart in the other aspect, the plurality of properties, since it is only by doing so that it is difference at all. When this plurahty itself is held together within the simple form of opposition, and is determined, say, as cohesion, so that this cohesion is self- existence in otherness, as specific gravity is pure self-existence, then cohesion here is primarily this pure conceptually constituted characteristic as against the previous characteristic. The mode of framing the law would thus be what we discussed above, in dealing with the relation of sensibihty to irritability. Furthermore, cohesion, qua conception of self-existence in otherness, is merely the abstraction of the aspect opposed to specific gravity, and as such has no existential reahty. For self-existence in its other is the process wherein the inorganic would have to express its self-existence as a form of self-conservation, 276 Phenomenology of Mind which again would prevent it emerging from the process as a constituent moment of a product. Yet this goes directly against its nature, which has no purpose or universaHty in it. Rather, its process is simply the specific way of bringing out how its self-existence, in the sense of its specific gravity, cancels itself. This determinate mode of procedure, which in that case would constitute the true principle imphed in its cohesion, is itself however entirely indifferent to the other notion, that of the determinate quantity of ts specific gravity. If the mode of procedure were left entirely out of account, and attention confined to the idea of quantity, we might be able to think of a feature like this : — the greater specific weight, as it is a higher intensiveness of being [Insichseyn), would resist entering into the process more than a less specific weight. But, conversely, freedom of self-existence {Filrsicliseyn) shows itself only in the faciUty to meddle with and enter into everything, and maintain itself throughout this manifold variety. That intensity without extension of relations is an abstraction with no substance in it, for extension constitutes the existence of intensity. The self-conservation of the inorganic element in its relation lies however, as already mentioned, outside its nature, since it does not contain the principle of movement within it, or because its being is not absolute negativity and not a notion.

When this other aspect of the inorganic, on the other hand, is considered not as a process, but as an inoperative being, it is ordinary cohesion. It is a simple sense property standing on the one side over against the liberated moment of otherness, which lies scattered over a plurality of properties indifferent_^to and apart Observation of Organic Nature 277 from one another, and appears amongst these as specific gravity or weight. The multipHcity of properties together then constitutes the other side to the latter [specific gravity]. In its case, however, as in the case of the multipHcity, number is the only characteristic feature, which not merely does not bring out a relation and a transition from one to another of these properties, but consists essentially in having no necessary relation ; its nature is rather to make manifest the absence of all conformity to law, for it expresses the determinate character as one that is non-essential. Thus we see that a series of bodies, whose distinction is expressed as a numerical difference of their specific weights, by no means runs parallel to a series where the difference is constituted by other properties, even if, for purposes of simpHfication, we select merely one or two of them. For, as a matter of fact, it could only be the tout ensemble of the properties which would have to constitute the other parallel aspect here. In order to make this into a connected single compact whole, observation finds before it the quantitative determinations of these various properties, but, on the other hand, their differences come to light as quahtative. In this compound, then, what would have to be characterised as positive or negative, and would be cancelled each by the other — in general, the internal arrangement and exposition of the equation, which would be very composite, — would belong to the notion. The notion however is excluded from operating just by the way in which the properties are found lying ; they are to be picked up as mere existent entities. In this condition of mere being none is negative in its relation to another : the one exists just as much as the other, and in no other fashion does it

278 Phenomenology of Mind indicate its presence in the arrangement of the whole. In the case of a series with concurrent differences — whether the relation is meant to be that of simultaneous increase on both sides or of increase in the one and decrease in the other — interest centres merely in the last simple expression of this combined whole, which would constitute the one aspect of the law with specific gravity for the opposite. But this one aspect, qua resultant fact, is nothing else than what has been already mentioned, viz. an individual property, say, like ordinary cohesion, alongside and indifferent to which the others, specific gravity among them, are found lying, and every other can be selected equally rightly, i.e. equally wrongly, to stand as representative of the entire other aspect ; one as well as the other would merely "represent" or stand for [German vorstellen] the essential reahty (Wesen), but would not actually be the fact (SacJie) itself. Thus it seems that the attempt to find series of bodies which should in their two aspects run continuously and simply parallel, and express the essential nature of the bodies in a law holding of these aspects, must be looked at as an aim that is ignorant ahke of what it is about and of the means for carrying it through.

At a previous stage the relation between the inner and outer phases in the organic form set before observation was forthwith transferred to the sphere of the inorganic. The determinate condition to which this is due can now be stated more precisely, and there arises thence a further form and relation in this connection. What seems to present the possibility of such a comparison of inner and outer in the case of Observation of Organic Nature 270 the inorganic, drops away altogether when we come to the organic. The inorganic inner is an inner bare and simple, which comes before perception as a merely existent property. Its characteristic determination is therefore essentially quantity, and qua existent property it appears indifferent towards the outer, or the plurahty of other sense properties. The selfexistence of the living organism, however, does not stand on one side opposed to its outer, it has the principle of otherness within itself. If we characterise self-existence as a simple self-preserving relation to self, its otherness is negativity bare and simple; and organic unity is the unity of self-identical selfrelation and pure negativity. This unity is qua unity the inner phase of the organic ; the organic is thereby inherently universal, it is a genus. The freedom of the genus with reference to its reaUsation is, however, something different from the freedom of specific gravity with reference to embodied form. That of the latter is freedom in the sphere of existence {seyende Freiheit), in the sense that it takes its stand on one side as a particular property. But because it is an existent freedom, it is also only a determinate character essentially belonging to this one embodied form, or through which this form qua reahty is a determinate entity. The freedom, however, of the genus is a universal freedom, and indifferent to this embodied form, or towards its reahsation. The characteristic feature attaching to the self-existence as such of the inorganic is therefore subordinated in the case of the organic to its self-existence, while in the case of the inorganic it is subordinated to its mere existence. Hence, although in the case of the latter that determinate characteristic

^80 Phenomenology of Mind appears at the same time only as a property, yet it possesses the value of being essential, because qua bare negative it stands over against concrete existence which is being for another ; and this simple negative in its final form as a particular characteristic is a number. The organic, however, is an individual entity, which is itself pure negativity, and hence eradicates within it the fixed determinateness of number, which suits the indifference of mere being. So far as it has in it the moment of indifferent being and thereby of number, this numerical element can therefore only be regarded as a side issue within it, but not as the essential nature of its living activity. But now, though pure negativity, the principle of the process, does not fall outside organic existence, and though the organic does not possess negativity as an adjectival characteristic attached to its inner nature, the singleness of the individual organism being instead inherently universal, yet this pure singleness is not therein developed and reahsed in its various moments as if these were themselves abstract or universal. On the contrary, this developed expression makes its appearance outside that universality, which thus falls back into mere immanence and inwardness ; and between the concrete reahsation, the embodied form, i.e. the self-developing individual singleness of the organism, and the organic universal, the genus, appears the determinate or specific universal, the species. The existential form, to which the negativity of the universal, the negativity of the genus, attains, is merely the explicitly developed movement of a process, carried out among the parts of the given shape assumed by the If the genus had the different parts within

Observation of Organic Nature 28 1 itself as an unbroken simple unity, so that its simple negativity as sucli were at the same time a movement, carried on through parts equally simple and directly universal in themselves, which were here actual as such moments, then the organic genus would be consciousness. But the simple determinate character, qua determinateness of the species, is present in an unconscious manner in the genus; concrete realisation starts from the genus ; what finds express realisation is not the genus as such, i.e. not really thought. This genus qua actual organic fact, is merely represented by a deputy. Number, which is the representative here, seems to designate the transition from the genus into the individual embodiment, and to set before observation the two aspects of conceptual necessity, one in the form of a simple characteristic, the other in the form of an organic shape with all its manifold variety fully developed. This representative, however, really denotes the indifference and freedom of the universal and the individual as regards one another ; the genus puts the individual at the mercy of mere quantitative difference, a non-essential element, but the individual qua Hvitig shows itself equally independent of this difference. True universahty, in the way specified, is here merely inner nature ; qua characteristic determining the species it is formal universahty ; and in opposition to the latter, that true universahty takes its stand on the side of organic individual singleness, which is a Hving individual entity by means of that universahty, and owing to its umer nature is not troubled by its determinate character as a species. But this singleness is not at the same time a imiversal individual, i.e. one in which universality would have external realisation as well ;