Chapter IX: Third Sub-Division of Logic (3)

199.] The immediacy of existence, which the objects have in Absolute Mechanism, is implicitly negatived by the fact that their independence is derived from, and due to, their connexions with each other, and therefore to their own want of stability. Thus the object must be explicitly stated as in its existence having an Affinity (or a bias) towards its other,--as not-indifferent.

(b) _Chemism_.

200.] The not-indifferent (biassed) object has an immanent mode which constitutes its nature, and in which it has existence. But as it is invested with the character of total notion, it is the contradiction between this totality and the special mode of its existence. Consequently it is the constant endeavour to cancel this contradiction and to make its definite being equal to the notion.

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Chemism is a category of objectivity which, as a rule, is not particularly emphasised, and is generally put under the head of mechanism. The common name of mechanical relationship is applied to both, in contra-distinction to the teleological. There is a reason for this in the common feature which belongs to mechanism and chemism. In them the notion exists, but only implicit and latent, and they are thus both marked off from teleology where the notion has real independent existence. This is true: and yet chemism and mechanism are very decidedly distinct. The object, in the form of mechanism, is primarily only an indifferent reference to self, while the chemical object is seen to be completely in reference to something else. No doubt even in mechanism, as it develops itself, there spring up references to something else: but the nexus of mechanical objects with one another is at first only an external nexus, so that the objects in connexion with one another still retain the semblance of independence. In nature, for example; the several celestial bodies, which form our solar system, compose a kinetic system, and thereby show that they are related to one another. Motion, however, as the unity of time and space, is a connexion which is purely abstract and external. And it seems therefore as if these celestial bodies, which are thus externally connected with each other, would continue to be what they are, even apart from this reciprocal relation. The case is quite different with chemism. Objects chemically biassed are what they are expressly by that bias alone. Hence they are the absolute impulse towards integration by and in one another.

201.] The product of the chemical process consequently is the Neutral object, latent in the two extremes, each on the alert. The notion or concrete universal, by means of the bias of the objects (the particularity), coalesces with the individuality (in the shape of the product), and in that only with itself. In this process too the other syllogisms are equally involved. The place of mean is taken both by individuality as activity, and by the concrete universal, the essence of the strained extremes; which essence reaches definite being in the product.

202.] Chemism, as it is a reflectional nexus of objectivity, has pre-supposed, not merely the bias or non-indifferent nature of the objects, but also their immediate independence. The process of chemism consists in passing to and fro from one form to another; which forms continue to be as external as before.--In the neutral product the specific properties, which the extremes bore towards each other, are merged. But although the product is conformable to the notion, the inspiring principle of active differentiation does not exist in it; for it has sunk back to immediacy. The neutral body is therefore capable of disintegration. But the discerning principle, which breaks up the neutral body into biassed and strained extremes, and which gives to the indifferent object in general its affinity and animation towards another;--that principle, and the process as a separation with tension, falls outside of that first process.

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The chemical process does not rise above a conditioned and finite process. The notion as notion is only the heart and core of the process, and does not in this stage come to an existence of its own. In the neutral product the process is extinct, and the existing cause falls outside it.

203.] Each of these two processes, the reduction of the biassed (not-indifferent) to the neutral, and the differentiation of the indifferent or neutral, goes its own way without hindrance from the other. But that want of inner connexion shows that they are finite, by their passage into products in which they are merged and lost. Conversely the process exhibits the nonentity of the pre-supposed immediacy of the not-indifferent objects.--By this negation of immediacy and of externalism in which the notion as object was sunk, it is liberated and invested with independent being in face of that externalism and immediacy. In these circumstances it is the End (Final Cause).

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The passage from chemism to the teleological relation is implied in the mutual cancelling of both of the forms of the chemical process. The result thus attained is the liberation of the notion, which in chemism and mechanism was present only in the germ, and not yet evolved. The notion in the shape of the aim or end thus comes into independent existence.

(c) _Teleology._

204.] In the End the notion has entered on free existence and has a being of its own, by means of the negation of immediate objectivity. It is characterised as subjective, seeing that this negation is, in the first place, abstract, and hence at first the relation between it and objectivity still one of contrast. This character of subjectivity, however, compared with the totality of the notion, is one-sided, and that, be it added, for the End itself, in which all specific characters have been put as subordinated and merged. For it therefore even the object, which it pre-supposes, has only hypothetical (ideal) reality,--essentially no-reality. The End in short is a contradiction of its self-identity against the negation stated in it, _i.e._ its antithesis to objectivity, and being so, contains the eliminative or destructive activity which negates the antithesis and renders it identical with itself. This is the realisation of the End: in which, while it turns itself into the other of its subjectivity and objectifies itself, thus cancelling the distinction between the two, it has only closed with itself, and retained itself.

The notion of Design or End, while on one hand called redundant, is on another justly described as the rational notion, and contrasted with the abstract universal of understanding. The latter only _subsumes_ the particular, and so connects it with itself: but has it not in its own nature.--The distinction between the End or _final cause,_ and the mere _efficient cause_ (which is the cause ordinarily so called), is of supreme importance. Causes, properly so called, belong to the sphere of necessity, blind, and not yet laid bare. The cause therefore appears as passing into its correlative, and losing its primordiality there by sinking into dependency. It is only by implication, or for us, that the cause is in the effect made for the first time a cause, and that it there returns into itself. The End, on the other hand, is expressly stated as containing the specific character in its own self,--the effect, namely, which in the purely causal relation is never free from otherness. The End therefore in its efficiency does not pass over, but retains itself, _i.e._ it carries into effect itself only, and is at the end what it was in the beginning or primordial state. Until it thus retains itself, it is not genuinely primordial.--The End then requires to be speculatively apprehended as the notion, which itself in the proper unity and ideality of its characteristics contains the judgment or negation,--the antithesis of subjective and objective,--and which to an equal extent suspends that antithesis.

By End however we must not at once, nor must we ever merely, think of the form which it has in consciousness as a mode of mere mental representation. By means of the notion of Inner Design Kant has resuscitated the Idea in general and particularly the idea of life. Aristotle's definition of life virtually implies inner design, and is thus far in advance of the notion of design in modern Teleology, which had in view finite and outward design only.

Animal wants and appetites are some of the readiest instances of the End. They are the _felt_ contradiction, which exists _within_ the living subject, and pass into the activity of negating this negation which mere subjectivity still is. The satisfaction of the want or appetite restores the peace between subject and object. The objective thing which, so long as the contradiction exists, _i.e._ so long as the want is felt, stands on the other side, loses this quasi-independence, by its union with the subject. Those who talk of the permanence and immutability of the finite, as well subjective as objective, may see the reverse illustrated in the operations of every appetite. Appetite is, so to speak, the conviction that the subjective is only a half-truth, no more adequate than the objective. But appetite in the second place carries out its conviction. It brings about the supersession of these finites: it cancels the antithesis between the objective which would be and stay an objective only, and the subjective which in like manner would be and stay a subjective only.

As regards the action of the End, attention may be called to the fact, that in the syllogism, which represents that action, and shows the end closing with itself by the means of realisation, the radical feature is the negation of the _termini._ That negation is the one just mentioned both of the immediate subjectivity appearing in the End as such, and of the immediate objectivity as seen in the means and the objects pre-supposed. This is the same negation, as is in operation when the mind leaves the contingent things of the world as well as its own subjectivity and rises to God. It is the 'moment' or factor which (as noticed in the Introduction and § 192) was overlooked and neglected in the analytic form of syllogisms, under which the so-called proofs of the Being of a God presented this elevation.

205.] In its primary and immediate aspect the Teleological relation is _external_ design, and the notion confronts a pre-supposed object. The End is consequently finite, and that partly in its content, partly in the circumstance that it has an external condition in the object, which has to be found existing, and which is taken as material for its realisation. Its self-determining is to that extent in form only. The un-mediatedness of the End has the further result that its particularity or content--which as form-characteristic is the subjectivity of the End--is reflected into self, and so different from the totality of the form, subjectivity in general, the notion. This variety constitutes the finitude of Design within its own nature. The content of the End. in this way, is quite as limited, contingent, and given, as the object is particular and found ready to hand.

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Generally speaking, the final cause is taken to mean nothing more than external design. In accordance with this view of it, things are supposed not to carry their vocation in themselves, but merely to be means employed and spent in realising a purpose which lies outside of them. That may be said to be the point of view taken by Utility, which once played a great part even in the sciences, but of late has fallen into merited disrepute, now that people have begun to see that it failed to give a genuine insight into the nature of things. It is true that finite things as finite ought in justice to be viewed as non-ultimate, and as pointing beyond themselves. This negativity of finite things however is their own dialectic, and in order to ascertain it we must pay attention to their positive content.

Teleological observations on things often proceed from a well-meant wish to display the wisdom of God as it is especially revealed in nature. Now in thus trying to discover final causes for which the things serve as means, we must remember that we are stopping short at the finite, and are liable to fall into trifling reflections: as, for instance, if we not merely studied the vine in respect of its well-known use for man, but proceeded to consider the cork-tree in connexion with the corks which are cut from its bark to put into the wine-bottles. Whole books used to be written in this spirit. It is easy to see that they promoted the genuine interest neither of religion nor of science. External design stands immediately in front of the idea: but what thus stands on the threshold often for that reason is least adequate.

206.] The teleological relation is a syllogism in which the subjective end coalesces with the objectivity external to it, through a middle term which is the unity of both. This unity is on one hand the _purposive_ action, on the other the _Means, i.e._ objectivity made directly subservient to purpose.

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The development from End to Idea ensues by three stages, first, Subjective End; second, End in process of accomplishment; and third, End accomplished. First of all we have the Subjective End; and that, as the notion in independent being, is itself the totality of the elementary functions of the notion. The first of these functions is that of self-identical universality, as it were the neutral first water, in which everything is involved, but nothing as yet discriminated. The second of these elements is the particularising of this universal, by which it acquires a specific content. As this specific content again is realised by the agency of the universal, the latter returns by its means back to itself, and coalesces with itself. Hence too when we set some end before us, we say that we 'conclude' to do something: a phrase which implies that we were, so to speak, open and accessible to this or that determination. Similarly we also at a further step speak of a man 'resolving' to do something, meaning that the agent steps forward out of his self-regarding inwardness and enters into dealings with the environing objectivity. This supplies the step from the merely Subjective End to the purposive action which tends outwards.

207.] (1) The first syllogism of the final cause represents the Subjective End. The universal notion is brought to unite with individuality by means of particularity, so that the individual as self-determination acts as judge. That is to say, it not only particularises or makes into a determinate content the still indeterminate universal, but also explicitly puts an antithesis of subjectivity and objectivity, and at the same time is in its own self a return to itself; for it stamps the subjectivity of the notion, pre-supposed as against objectivity, with the mark of defect, in comparison with the complete and rounded totality, and thereby at the same time turns outwards.

208.] (2) This action which is directed outwards is the individuality, which in the Subjective End is identical with the particularity under which, along with the content, is also comprised the external objectivity. It throws itself in the first place immediately upon the object, which it appropriates to itself as a Means. The notion is this immediate power; for the notion is the self-identical negativity, in which the being of the object is characterised as wholly and merely ideal.--The whole Means then is this inward power of the notion, in the shape of an agency, with which the object as Means is 'immediately' united and in obedience to which it stands.

In finite teleology the Means is thus broken up into two elements external to each other, (a) the action and (b) the object which serves as Means. The relation of the final cause as power to this object, and the subjugation of the object to it, is immediate (it forms the first premiss in the syllogism) to this extent, that in the teleological notion as the self-existent ideality the object is put as potentially null. This relation, as represented in the first premiss, itself becomes the Means, which at the same time involves the syllogism, that through this relation--in which the action of the End is contained and dominant--the End is coupled with objectivity.

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The execution of the End is the mediated mode of realising the End; but the immediate realisation is not less needful. The End lays hold of the object immediately, because it is the power over the object, because in the End particularity, and in particularity objectivity also, is involved.--A living being has a body; the soul takes possession of it and without intermediary has objectified itself in it. The human soul has much to do, before it makes its corporeal nature into a means. Man must, as it were, take possession of his body, so that it may be the instrument of his soul.

209.] (3) Purposive action, with its Means, is still directed outwards, because the End is also _not_ identical with the object, and must consequently first be mediated with it. The Means in its capacity of object stands, in this second premiss, in direct relation to the other extreme of the syllogism, namely, the material or objectivity which is pre-supposed. This relation is the sphere of chemism and mechanism, which have now become the servants of the Final Cause, where lies their truth and free notion. Thus the Subjective End, which is the power ruling these processes, in which the objective things wear themselves out on one another, contrives to keep itself free from them, and to preserve itself in them. Doing so, it appears as the Cunning of reason.

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Reason is as cunning as it is powerful. Cunning may be said to lie in the inter-mediative action which, while it permits the objects to follow their own bent and act upon one another till they waste away, and does not itself directly interfere in the process, is nevertheless only working out its own aims. With this explanation, Divine Providence may be said to stand to the world and its process in the capacity of absolute cunning. God lets men do as they please with their particular passions and interests; but the result is the accomplishment of--not their plans, but His, and these differ decidedly from the ends primarily sought by those whom He employs.

210.] The realised End is thus the overt unity of subjective and objective. It is however essentially characteristic of this unity, that the subjective and objective are neutralised and cancelled only in the point of their one-sidedness, while the objective is subdued and made conformable to the End, as the free notion, and thereby to the power above it. The End maintains itself against and in the objective for it is no mere one-sided subjective or particular, it is also the concrete universal, the implicit identity of both. This universal, as simply reflected in itself, is the content which remains unchanged through all the three _termini_ of the syllogism and their movement.

211.] In finite design, however, even the executed End has the same radical rift or flaw as had the Means and the initial End. We have got therefore only a form extraneously impressed on a pre-existing material: and this form, by reason of the limited content of the End, is also a contingent characteristic. The End achieved consequently is only an object, which again becomes a Means or material for other Ends, and so on for ever.

212.] But what virtually happens in the realising of the End is that the one-sided subjectivity and the show of objective independence confronting it are both cancelled. In laying hold of the means, the notion constitutes itself the very implicit essence of the object. In the mechanical and chemical processes the independence of the object has been already dissipated implicitly, and in the course of their movement under the dominion of the End, the show of that independence, the negative which confronts the notion, is got rid of. But in the fact that the End achieved is characterised only as a Means and a material, this object, viz. the teleological, is there and then put as implicitly null, and only 'ideal.' This being so, the antithesis between form and content has also vanished. While the End by the removal and absorption of all form-characteristics coalesces with itself, the form as self-identical is thereby put as the content, so that the notion, which is the action of form, has only itself for content. Through this process, therefore, there is made explicitly manifest what was the notion of design: viz. the implicit unity of subjective and objective is now realised. And this is the Idea.

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This finitude of the End consists in the circumstance, that, in the process of realising it, the material, which is employed as a means, is only externally subsumed under it and made conformable to it. But, as a matter of fact, the object is the notion implicitly: and thus when the notion, in the shape of End, is realised in the object, we have but the manifestation of the inner nature of the object itself. Objectivity is thus, as it were, only a covering under which the notion lies concealed. Within the range of the finite we can never see or experience that the End has been really secured. The consummation of the infinite End, therefore, consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. The Good, the absolutely Good, is eternally accomplishing itself in the world: and the result is that it needs not wait upon us, but is already by implication, as well as in full actuality, accomplished. This is the illusion under which we live. It alone supplies at the same time the actualising force on which the interest in the world reposes. In the course of its process the Idea creates that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it; and its action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created. Only out of this error does the truth arise. In this fact lies the reconciliation with error and with finitude. Error or other-being, when superseded, is still a necessary dynamic element of truth: for truth can only be where it makes itself its own result.

C.--THE IDEA.

213.] The Idea is truth in itself and for itself,--the absolute unity of the notion and objectivity. Its 'ideal' content is nothing but the notion in its detailed terms: its 'real' content is only the exhibition which the notion gives itself in the form of external existence, whilst yet, by enclosing this shape in its ideality, it keeps it in its power, and so keeps itself in it.

The definition, which declares the Absolute to be the Idea, is itself absolute. All former definitions come back to this. The Idea is the Truth: for Truth is the correspondence of objectivity with the notion:--not of course the correspondence of external things with my conceptions,--for these are only _correct_ conceptions held by _me,_ the individual person. In the idea we have nothing to do with the individual, nor with figurate conceptions, nor with external things. And yet, again, everything actual, in so far as it is true, is the Idea, and has its truth by and in virtue of the Idea alone. Every individual being is some one aspect of the Idea: for which, therefore, yet other actualities are needed, which in their turn appear to have a self-subsistence of their own. It is only in them altogether and in their relation that the notion is realised. The individual by itself does not correspond to its notion. It is this limitation of its existence which constitutes the finitude and the ruin of the individual.

The Idea itself is not to be taken as an idea of something or other, any more than the notion is to be taken as merely a specific notion. The Absolute is the universal and one idea, which, by an act of 'judgment,' particularises itself to the system of specific ideas; which after all are constrained by their nature to come back to the one idea where their truth lies. As issued out of this 'judgment' the Idea is _in the first place_ only the one universal _substance:_ but its developed and genuine actuality is to be as a _subject_ and in that way as mind.

Because it has no _existence_ for starting-point and _point d'appui,_ the Idea is frequently treated as a mere logical form. Such a view must be abandoned to those theories, which ascribe so-called reality and genuine actuality to the existent thing and all the other categories which have not yet penetrated as far as the Idea. It is no less false to imagine the Idea to be mere abstraction. It is abstract certainly, in so far as everything untrue is consumed in it: but in its own self it is essentially concrete, because it is the free notion giving character to itself, and that character, reality. It would be an abstract form, only if the notion, which is its principle, were taken as an abstract unity, and not as the negative return of it into self and as the subjectivity which it really is.

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Truth is at first taken to mean that I _know_ how something _is._ This is truth, however, only in reference to consciousness; it is formal truth, bare correctness. Truth in the deeper sense consists in the identity between objectivity and the notion. It is in this deeper sense of truth that we speak of a true state, or of a true work of art. These objects are true, if they are as they ought to be, _i.e._ if their reality corresponds to their notion. When thus viewed, to be untrue means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an untrue man, a man who does not behave as his notion or his vocation requires. Nothing however can subsist, if it be _wholly_ devoid of identity between the notion and reality. Even bad and untrue things have being, in so far as their reality still, somehow, conforms to their notion. Whatever is thoroughly bad or contrary to the notion, is for that very reason on the way to ruin. It is by the notion alone that the things in the world have their subsistence; or, as it is expressed in the language of religious conception, things are what they are, only in virtue of the divine and thereby creative thought which dwells within them.

When we hear the Idea spoken of, we need not imagine something far away beyond this mortal sphere. The idea is rather what is completely present: and it is found, however confused and degenerated, in every consciousness. We conceive the world to ourselves as a great totality which is created by God, and so created that in it God has manifested Himself to us. We regard the world also as ruled by Divine Providence: implying that the scattered and divided parts of the world are continually brought back, and made conformable, to the unity from which they have issued. The purpose of philosophy has always been the intellectual ascertainment of the Idea; and everything deserving the name of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness of an absolute unity where the understanding sees and accepts only separation.--It is too late now to ask for proof that the Idea is the truth. The proof of that is contained in the whole deduction and development of thought up to this point. The idea is the result of this course of dialectic. Not that it is to be supposed that the idea is mediate only, _i.e._ mediated through something else than itself. It is rather its own result, and being so, is no less immediate than mediate. The stages hitherto considered, viz. those of Being and Essence, as well as those of Notion and of Objectivity, are not, when so distinguished, something permanent, resting upon themselves. They have proved to be dialectical; and their only truth is that they are dynamic elements of the idea.

214.] The Idea may be described in many ways. It may be called reason (and this is the proper philosophical signification of reason); subject-object; the unity of the ideal and the real, of the finite and the infinite, of soul and body; the possibility which has its actuality in its own self; that of which the nature can be thought only as existent, &c. All these descriptions apply, because the Idea contains all the relations of understanding, but contains them in their infinite self-return and self-identity.

It is easy work for the understanding to show that everything said of the Idea is self-contradictory. But that can quite as well be retaliated, or rather in the Idea the retaliation is actually made. And this work, which is the work of reason, is certainly not so easy as that of the understanding. Understanding may demonstrate that the Idea is self-contradictory: because the subjective is subjective only and is always confronted by the objective,--because being is different from notion and therefore cannot be picked out of it,--because the finite is finite only, the exact antithesis of the infinite, and therefore not identical with it; and so on with every term of the description. The reverse of all this however is the doctrine of Logic. Logic shows that the subjective which is to be subjective only, the finite which would be finite only, the infinite which would be infinite only, and so on, have no truth, but contradict themselves, and pass over into their opposites. Hence this transition, and the unity in which the extremes are merged and become factors, each with a merely reflected existence, reveals itself as their truth.

The understanding, which addresses itself to deal with the Idea, commits a double misunderstanding. It takes _first_ the extremes of the Idea (be they expressed as they will, so long as they are in their unity), not as they are understood when stamped with this concrete unity, but as if they remained abstractions outside of it. It no less mistakes the relation between them, ever when it has been expressly stated. Thus, for example it overlooks even the nature of the copula in the judgment, which affirms that the individual, or subject, is after all not individual, but universal. But, in the _second_ place, the understanding believes _its_ 'reflection,'--that the self-identical Idea contains its own negative, or contains contradiction,--to be an external reflection which does not lie within the Idea itself. But the reflection is really no peculiar cleverness of the understanding. The Idea itself is the dialectic which for ever divides and distinguishes the self-identical from the differentiated, the subjective from the objective, the finite from the infinite, soul from body. Only on these terms is it an eternal creation, eternal vitality, and eternal spirit. But while it thus passes or rather translates itself into the abstract understanding, it for ever remains reason. The Idea is the dialectic which again makes this mass of understanding and diversity understand its finite nature and the pseudo-independence in its productions, and which brings the diversity back to unity. Since this double movement is not separate or distinct in time, nor indeed in any other way--otherwise it would be only a repetition of the abstract understanding--the Idea is the eternal vision of itself in the other, --notion which in its objectivity _has_ carried out _itself,_--object which is inward design, essential subjectivity.

The different modes of apprehending the Idea as unity of ideal and real, of finite and infinite, of identity and difference, &c. are more or less formal. They designate some one stage of the _specific_ notion. Only the notion itself, however, is free and the genuine universal: in the Idea, therefore, the specific character of the notion is only the notion itself,--an objectivity, viz. into which it, being the universal, continues itself, and in which it has only its own character, the total character. The Idea is the infinite judgment, of which the terms are severally the independent totality; and in which, as each grows to the fulness of its own nature, it has thereby at the same time passed into the other. None of the other specific notions exhibits this totality complete on both its sides as the notion itself and objectivity.

215.] The Idea is essentially a process, because its identity is the absolute and free identity of the notion, only in so far as it is absolute negativity and for that reason dialectical. It is the round of movement, in which the notion, in the capacity of universality which is individuality, gives itself the character of objectivity and of the antithesis thereto; and this externality which has the notion for its substance, finds its way back to subjectivity through its immanent dialectic.

As the idea is (a) a process, it follows that such an expression for the Absolute as _unity_ of thought and being, of finite and infinite, &c. is false; for unity expresses an abstract and merely quiescent identity. As the Idea is (b) subjectivity, it follows that the expression is equally false on another account. That unity of which it speaks expresses a merely virtual or underlying presence of the genuine unity. The infinite would thus seem to be merely _neutralised_ by the finite, the subjective by the objective, thought by being. But in the negative unity of the Idea, the infinite overlaps and includes the finite, thought overlaps being, subjectivity overlaps objectivity. The unity of the Idea is thought, infinity, and subjectivity, and is in consequence to be essentially distinguished from the Idea as _substance,_ just as this overlapping subjectivity, thought, or infinity is to be distinguished from the one-sided subjectivity, one-sided thought, one-sided infinity to which it descends in judging and defining.

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The idea as a process runs through three stages in its development. The first form of the idea is Life: that is, the idea in the form of immediacy. The second form is that of mediation or differentiation; and this is the idea in the form of Knowledge, which appears under the double aspect of the Theoretical and Practical idea. The process of knowledge eventuates in the restoration of the unity enriched by difference. This gives the third form of the idea, the Absolute Idea: which last stage of the logical idea evinces itself to be at the same time the true first, and to have a being due to itself alone.

(a) _Life._

216.] The _immediate_ idea is Life. As _soul,_ the notion is realised in a body of whose externality the soul is the immediate self-relating universality. But the soul is also its particularisation, so that the body expresses no other distinctions than follow from the characterisations of its notion. And finally it is the Individuality of the body as infinite negativity,--the dialectic of that bodily objectivity, with its parts lying out of one another, conveying them away from the semblance of independent subsistence back into subjectivity, so that all the members are reciprocally momentary means as well as momentary ends. Thus as life is the initial particularisation, so it results in the negative self-asserting unity: in the dialectic of its corporeity it only coalesces with itself. In this way life is essentially something alive, and in point of its immediacy this individual living thing. It is characteristic of finitude in this sphere that, by reason of the immediacy of the idea, body and soul are separable. This constitutes the mortality of the living being. It is only, however, when the living being is dead, that these two sides of the idea are different _ingredients._

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The single members of the body are what they are only by and in relation to their unity. A hand _e.g._ when hewn off from the body is, as Aristotle has observed, a hand in name only, not in fact. From the point of view of understanding, life is usually spoken of as a mystery, and in general as incomprehensible. By giving it such a name, however, the Understanding only confesses its own finitude and nullity. So far is life from being incomprehensible, that in it the very notion is presented to us, or rather the immediate idea existing as a notion. And having said this, we have indicated the defect of life. Its notion and reality do not thoroughly correspond to each other. The notion of life is the soul, and this notion has the body for its reality. The soul is, as it were, infused into its corporeity; and in that way it is at first sentient only, and not yet freely self-conscious. The process of life consists in getting the better of the immediacy with which it is still beset: and this process, which is itself threefold, results in the idea under the form of judgment, _i.e._ the idea as Cognition.

217.] A living being is a syllogism, of which the very elements are in themselves systems and syllogisms (§§ 198, 201, 207). They are however active syllogisms or processes; and in the subjective unity of the vital agent make only one process. Thus the living being is the process of its coalescence with itself, which runs on through three processes.

218.] (1) The first is the process of the living being inside itself. In that process it makes a split on its own self, and reduces its corporeity to its object or its inorganic nature. This corporeity, as an aggregate of correlations, enters in its very nature into difference and opposition of its elements, which mutually become each other's prey, and assimilate one another, and are retained by producing themselves. Yet this action of the several members (organs), is only the living subject's one act to which their productions revert; so that in these productions nothing is produced except the subject: in other words, the subject only reproduces itself.

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The process of the vital subject within its own limits has in Nature the threefold form of Sensibility, Irritability, and Reproduction. As Sensibility, the living being is immediately simple self-relation--it is the soul omnipresent in its body, the outsideness of each member of which to others has for it no truth. As Irritability, the living being appears split up in itself; and as Reproduction, it is perpetually restoring itself from the inner distinction of its members and organs. A vital agent only exists as this continually self-renewing process within its own limits.

219.] (2) But the judgment of the notion proceeds, as free, to discharge the objective or bodily nature as an independent totality from itself; and the negative relation of the living thing to itself makes, as immediate individuality, the pre-supposition of an inorganic nature confronting it. As this negative of the animate is no less a function in the notion of the animate itself, it exists consequently in the latter (which is at the same time a concrete universal) in the shape of a defect or want. The dialectic by which the object, being implicitly null, is merged, is the action of the self-assured living thing, which in this process against an inorganic nature thus retains, develops, and objectifies itself.

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The living being stands face to face with an inorganic nature, to which it comports itself as a master and which it assimilates to itself. The result of the assimilation is not, as in the chemical process, a neutral product in which the independence of the two confronting sides is merged; but the living being shows itself as large enough to embrace its other which cannot withstand its power. The inorganic nature which is subdued by the vital agent suffers this fate, because it is _virtually_ the same as what life is _actually._ Thus in the other the living being only coalesces with itself. But when the soul has fled from the body, the elementary powers of objectivity begin their play. These powers are, as it were, continually on the spring, ready to begin their process in the organic body; and life is the constant battle against them.

220.] (3) The living individual, which in its first process comports itself as intrinsically subject and notion, through its second assimilates its external objectivity and thus puts the character of reality into itself. It is now therefore implicitly a Kind, with essential universality of nature. The particularising of this Kind is the relation of the living subject to another subject of its Kind: and the judgment is the tie of Kind over these individuals thus appointed for each other. This is the Affinity of the Sexes.

221.] The process of Kind brings it to a being of its own. Life being no more than the idea immediate, the product of this process breaks up into two sides. On the one hand, the living individual, which was at first pre-supposed as immediate, is now seen to be mediated and generated. On the other, however, the living individuality, which, on account of its first immediacy, stands in a negative attitude towards universality, sinks in the superior power of the latter.

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The living being dies, because it is a contradiction. Implicitly it is the universal or Kind, and yet immediately it exists as an individual only. Death shows the Kind to be the power that rules the immediate individual. For the animal the process of Kind is the highest point of its vitality. But the animal never gets so far in its Kind as to have a being of its own; it succumbs to the power of Kind. In the process of Kind the immediate living being mediates itself with itself, and thus rises above its immediacy, only however to sink back into it again. Life thus runs away, in the first instance, only into the false infinity of the progress _ad infinitum._ The real result, however, of the process of life, in the point of its notion, is to merge and overcome that immediacy with which the idea, in the shape of life, is still beset.

222.] In this manner however the idea of life has thrown off not some one particular and immediate 'This,' but this first immediacy as a whole. It thus comes to itself, to its truth: it enters upon existence as a free Kind self-subsistent. The death of merely immediate and individual vitality is the 'procession' of spirit.

(b) _Cognition in general._

223.] The idea exists free for itself, in so far as it has universality for the medium of its existence,--as objectivity itself has notional being,--as the idea is its own object. Its subjectivity, thus universalised, is _pure_ self-contained distinguishing of the idea,--intuition which keeps itself in this identical universality. But, as _specific_ distinguishing, it is the further judgment of repelling itself as a totality from itself, and thus, in the first place, pre-supposing itself as an external universe. There are two judgments, which though implicitly identical are not yet explicitly put as identical.

224.] The relation of these two ideas, which implicitly and as life are identical, is thus one of correlation: and it is that correlativity which constitutes the characteristic of finitude in this sphere. It is the relationship of reflection, seeing that the distinguishing of the idea in its own self is only the first judgment--presupposing the other and not yet supposing itself to constitute it. And thus for the subjective idea the objective is the immediate world found ready to hand, or the idea as life is in the phenomenon of individual existence. At the same time, in so far as this judgment is pure distinguishing within its own limits (§ 223), the idea realises in one both itself and its other. Consequently it is the certitude of the virtual identity between itself and the objective world.--Reason comes to the world with an absolute faith in its ability to make the identity actual, and to raise its certitude to truth; and with the instinct of realising explicitly the nullity of that contrast which it sees to be implicitly null.

225.] This process is in general terms Cognition. In Cognition in a single act the contrast is virtually superseded, as regards both the one-sidedness of subjectivity and the one-sidedness of objectivity. At first, however, the supersession of the contrast is but implicit. The process as such is in consequence immediately infected with the finitude of this sphere, and splits into the twofold movement of the instinct of reason, presented as two different movements. On the one hand it supersedes the one-sidedness of the Idea's subjectivity by receiving the existing world into itself, into subjective conception and thought; and with this objectivity, which is thus taken to be real and true, for its content it fills up the abstract certitude of itself. On the other hand, it supersedes the one-sidedness of the objective world, which is now, on the contrary, estimated as only a mere semblance, a collection of contingencies and shapes at bottom visionary. It modifies and informs that world by the inward nature of the subjective, which is here taken to be the genuine objective. The former is the instinct of science after Truth, Cognition properly so called:--the Theoretical action of the idea. The latter is the instinct of the Good to fulfil the same--the Practical activity of the idea or Volition.

(α) _Cognition proper._

226.] The universal finitude of Cognition, which lies in the one judgment, the pre-supposition of the contrast (§ 224),--a pre-supposition in contradiction of which its own act lodges protest, specialises itself more precisely on the face of its own idea. The result of that specialisation is, that its two elements receive the aspect of being diverse from each other, and, as they are at least complete, they take up the relation of 'reflection,' not of 'notion,' to one another. The assimilation of the matter, therefore, as a datum, presents itself in the light of a reception of it into categories which at the same time remain external to it, and which meet each other in the same style of diversity. Reason is active here, but it is reason in the shape of understanding. The truth which such Cognition can reach will therefore be only finite: the infinite truth (of the notion) is isolated and made transcendent, an inaccessible goal in a world of its own. Still in its external action cognition stands under the guidance of the notion, and notional principles form the secret clue to its movement.

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The finitude of Cognition lies in the pre-supposition of a world already in existence, and in the consequent view of the knowing subject as a _tabula rasa._ The conception is one attributed to Aristotle; but no man is further than Aristotle from such an outside theory of Cognition. Such a style of Cognition does not recognise in itself the activity of the notion--an activity which it is implicitly, but not consciously. In its own estimation its procedure is passive. Really that procedure is active.

227.] Finite Cognition, when it pre-supposes what is distinguished from it to be something already existing and confronting it,--to be the various facts of external nature or of consciousness--has, in the first place, (1) Formal identity or the abstraction of universality for the form of its action. Its activity therefore consists in analysing the given concrete object, isolating its differences, and giving them the form of abstract universality. Or it leaves the concrete thing as a ground, and by setting aside the unessential-looking particulars, brings into relief a concrete universal, the Genus, or Force and Law. This is the Analytical Method.

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People generally speak of the analytical and synthetical methods, as if it depended solely on our choice which we pursued. This is far from the case. It depends on the form of the objects of our investigation, which of the two methods, that are derivable from the notion of finite cognition, ought to be applied. In the first place, cognition is analytical. Analytical cognition deals with an object which is presented in detachment, and the aim of its action is to trace back to a universal the individual object before it. Thought in such circumstances means no more than an act of abstraction or of formal identity. That is the sense in which thought is understood by Locke and all empiricists. Cognition, it is often said, can never do more than separate the given concrete objects into their abstract elements, and then consider these elements in their isolation. It is, however, at once apparent that this turns things upside down, and that cognition, if its purpose be to take things as they are, thereby falls into contradiction with itself. Thus the chemist _e.g._ places a piece of flesh in his retort, tortures it in many ways, and then informs us that it consists of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, &c. True: but these abstract matters have ceased to be flesh. The same defect occurs in the reasoning of an empirical psychologist when he analyses an action into the various aspects which it presents, and then sticks to these aspects in their separation. The object which is subjected to analysis is treated as a sort of onion from which one coat is peeled off after another.

228.] This universality is (2) also a specific universality. In this case the line of activity follows the three 'moments' of the notion, which (as it has not its infinity in finite cognition) is the specific or definite notion of understanding. The reception of the object into the forms of this notion is the Synthetic Method.

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The movement of the Synthetic method is the reverse of the Analytical method. The latter starts from the individual, and proceeds to the universal; in the former the starting-point is given by the universal (as a definition), from which we proceed by particularising (in division) to the individual (the theorem). The Synthetic method thus presents itself as the development of the 'moments' of the notion on the object.

229.] (α) When the object has been in the first instance brought by cognition into the form of the specific notion in general, so that in this way its genus and its universal character or speciality are explicitly stated, we have the Definition. The materials and the proof of Definition are procured by means of the Analytical method (§ 227). The specific character however is expected to be a 'mark' only: that is to say it is to be in behoof only of the purely subjective cognition which is external to the object.

* * * * * Definition involves the three organic elements of the notion: the universal or proximate genus _genus proximum,_ the particular or specific character of the genus (_qualitas specified,_) and the individual, or object defined.--The first question that definition suggests, is where it comes from. The general answer to this question is to say, that definitions originate by way of analysis. This will explain how it happens that people quarrel about the correctness of proposed definitions; for here everything depends on what perceptions we started from, and what points of view we had before our eyes in so doing. The richer the object to be defined is, that is, the more numerous are the aspects which it offers to our notice, the more various are the definitions we may frame of it. Thus there are quite a host of definitions of life, of the state, &c. Geometry, on the contrary, dealing with a theme so abstract as space, has an easy task in giving definitions. Again, in respect of the matter or contents of the objects defined, there is no constraining necessity present. We are expected to admit that space exists, that there are plants, animals, &c, nor is it the business of geometry, botany, &c. to demonstrate that the objects in question necessarily are. This very circumstance makes the synthetical method of cognition as little suitable for philosophy as the analytical: for philosophy has above all things to leave no doubt of the necessity of its objects. And yet several attempts have been made to introduce the synthetical method into philosophy. Thus Spinoza, in particular, begins with definitions. He says, for instance, that substance is the _causa sui._ His definitions are unquestionably a storehouse of the most speculative truth, but it takes the shape of dogmatic assertions. The same thing is also true of Schelling.

230.] (ß) The statement of the second element of the notion, _i.e._ of the specific character of the universal as particularising, is given by Division in accordance with some external consideration.

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