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 YOL. I.— T 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