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; 282 Phenomenology of Mind this falls outside the living organic whole. This universal individual, however, in the way it is immediately the individual of the natural embodiments of organic hfe, is not consciousness itself; its existence qua single organic living individual cannot fall outside that universal if it is to be consciousness.
We have, then, here a connected system, where one extreme is the universal hfe qua universal or genus, the other being that same Hfe qua a single whole, or universal individual: the mediating term, however, is a combination of both, the first seeming to fit itself into it as determinate universality or as species, the other as single whole proper or individual singleness. And since this connected system belongs altogether to the aspect of the organic embodiment, it comprehends within it too what is distinguished as inorganic nature.
Since, now, the universal Hfe qua the simple essence of the genus develops from its side the distinctions of the notion, and has to exhibit them in the form of a series of simple determining characteristics, this series is a system of distinctions set up indifferently, or is a numerical series. Whereas formerly the organic in the form of something individual and single was placed in opposition to this non-essential distinction [of quantity], a distinction which neither expresses nor contains its living nature; and while precisely the same has to be stated as regards the inorganic, taking into account its entire existence developed in the pluraHty of its properties, — it is now the universal individual which is not merely to be looked on as free from every articulation of the genus, but also as the power and might inherent in the genus. The genus disperses into species after the manner of the uni- Observation of Organic Nature 283 versality characteristic of number, or again it may adopt as its principle of division particular characteristics of its existence like figure, colour, etc. While prosecuting this aim, the genus meets with violence at the hands of the universal individual, the earth,* which in the role of universal negativity establishes the distinctions as they exist within itself, — the nature of which, owing to the substance they belong to, is different from the nature of that genus, — and makes good these distinctions as against the process of generic systematisation. This action on the part of the genus comes to be quite a restricted business, which it can only carry on inside those mighty elements, and which is left with gaps and arrested and interrupted at all points through their unbridled violence.
It follows from all this that in the embodied organic existence observation can only meet with reason in the sense of hf e in general, which, however, in its differentiating process involves really no rational sequence and articulation, and is not a thoroughly grounded system of shapes and forms. If in the process of connecting the moments which organic embodiment involves, the mediating term, which contains the species and its reahsation in the form of a single individuality, had within it the two extremes of inner universahty and universal individuahty, then this middle term would have, in the movement of its reahty, the expression and the nature of universality, and would be seK-systematising development. It is thus that consciousness takes as the middle term between universal spirit and its in- * Cp. Logik, WAV., V. p. 153: "The earth as a concrete whole is at once a universal nature or genus as well as an individual. Cp. also Naturphilosophie, §§ 337, 338.
284 Phenomenology of Mind dividuation or sense-consciousness, the system of shapes assumed by consciousness, as an orderly self-constituted whole of the life of spirit,— the system of forms of conscious hfe which is dealt with in this treatise, and which finds its objective existential expression as the history of the world. But organic nature has no history; it drops from its universal life immediately into the indi^dduation of existence; and the moments of simple determinateness and individual Hving activity which are united in this reahsation bring about the process of change merely as a contingent movement wherein each plays its own part, and the whole is preserved. But the energy thus exerted is restricted, so far as itself is concerned, merely to its own focus, because the whole is not present in it; and the whole is not there because the whole is not as such here for itself.
Besides the fact, then, that reason in observing organic nature only comes to see itself as universal life in general, it comes to see the development and reahsation of this life merely by way of systems distinguished quite generally, in the determination of which the essential reahty hes not in the organic fact as such, but in the universal individual [the earthj; and among these distinctions of earth [it comes to see that development and reahsation] in the form of sequences which the genus attempts to estabhsh.
Since, then, in its reahsation, the universahty found in organic hfe lets itself drop directly into the extreme of individuation, without any true self-referring process of mediation, the thing before the observing mind is merely a would-be " meaning "; and if reason can be at the trouble to observe what is thus ' meant ' here, it is confined to describing and recording nature's Observation of Organic Nature 285 '' meanings " and incidental suggestions. This irrational freedom of ''fancying" and ''thinking" doubtless will produce on all sides beginnings of laws, traces of necessity, hints and allusions to order and sequence, ingenious and specious relations of all kinds. But in relating the organic to the different facts of the inorganic, elements, zones, climates, so far as regards law and necessary connection, observation never gets further than the idea of a ''great influence." So too on the other side, where individuahty has not the significance of the earth, but of the oneness immanent in organic hfe, this, in immediate unity with the universal, no doubt constitutes the genus, but its simple unity is just for that reason determined merely as a number, and hence lets go the quahtative appearance; here observation cannot get further than making clever remarks, bringing out interesting points of connection, making friendly advances to the notion. But clever remarks do not amount to a knowledge of necessity; interesting points of connection stop short at being simply of interest, while the interest is still nothing but arbitrary " opinion " about the rational; and the friendliness of the individual in making allusion to a notion is a childlike friendliness which is childish if as it stands it is to be or wants to be worth anything.
h Observation of Selp-Consciousness in its pure FORM AND IN ITS RELATION TO EXTERNAL EeALITY — Logical and Psychological Laws [Observation can be directed upon the self-conscious process ot mind in two waj'S: it may consider tbe mind's thinking relation to reality, and it may consider the mind's active or biotic relation to reality. The result of observation here, as in the foregoing cases, finds expression in a number of laws, which it " frames." The " laws " in the first case are " laws of thought" or connected logical laws: in the latter case we have laws of psychic events, " psychological " laws.
The analysis in this section shows the inadequacy of observation as such to deal with its material in both cases. It fails in the first case because (1) "laws of thought" have no meaning apart from the reality with which thought is necessarily concerned; laws of thought are laws of " thinking," and thinking is both form and content: (2) observation gives each law an absolute being of its own, as if it were detached from the unity of self-consciousness, whereas this unity is the fundamental principle of each and all the laws, which only exist in and by the single process of that unity. Hence a type of logic confined to "observing" laws of thought is necessarily untrue. Observation again fails in the second case because it is impossible to separate mind from its total environment. Observational or empirical psychology therefore is incapable of giving an adequate account of mind: the constitution of the environment enters into and in part determines the constitution of the psychic events, and the latter cannot be explained even as events without interpreting the former at the same time.]
Observation op Self-Consciousness in its pure form and in its relation to external reality — Logical and Psychological Laws Observation of nature finds the notion realised in inorganic nature; laws whose moments are things, which at the same time are in the position of abstractions. But this notion is not a unity reflected into self. The hfe of organic nature, on the other hand, is just this condition of self -reflected simpHcity. The opposition within itself, in the sense of the opposition of universal and individual, does not make its appearance in the essential nature of hfe itself with one factor apart from the other; the essential reahty is not the genus, self-sundered and self-moved in its undifierentiated element, and remaining at the same time for itself undifierentiated in its opposition. Observation finds this free notion, whose universahty has just as absolutely within it developed individuahty, only in the notion which itself exists as notion, i.e. in self-consciousness.
Since observation now turns in upon itself and directs itself on the concrete notion as a free notion, it finds, to begin with, the Laws of Thought. This kind of individuahty, which thought is in itself, is the abstract movement of the negative, a movement returned entirely to the* condition of abstract simpHcity; and the laws are outside reahty.
To say "they have no reality" means ordinarily nothing else than that they are without any truth, 288 Phenomenology of Mind They are intended to be, too, not indeed entire truth, but still formal truth. But what is purely formal without reahty is an ens intellectus, or empty abstraction without the internal distinction which would be nothing else but the content.
On the other hand, however, since they are laws of pure thought, while the latter is the inherently universal, and thus a kind of knowledge, which immediately contains being and therein all reahty, these laws are absolute notions and are in one and the same sense the essential principles of form as well as of things. Since self-directing, self-moving universahty is the simple notion in a state of diremption, this notion has in this manner a content in itself, and one which is all content, though not sensuous, not a being of sense. It is a content, which is neither in contradiction with the form nor altogether separated from it; rather it is essentially the form itself; for the latter is nothing but the universal dividing itself into its pure moments.
In the way in which this form or content, however, comes before observation qua observation, it gets the character of a content that is found, given, i.e. one which merely is. It becomes a passively existing centre of relations, a multitude of detached necessities, which as a definitely fixed content are to have truth just as they stand with their specific characteristic, and thus, ia point of fact, are withdrawn from the form.
This absolute truth of fixed characteristics, or of a plurahty of different laws, contradicts, however, the unity of self-consciousness, contradicts the unity of thought and form in general. What is declared to be a fixed and inherently constant law can be merely a Observation of Self-cmisciousness 289 moment of the self-referring, self-reflecting unity, can come on the scene merely as a vanishing element. When rescued, however, by the process of considering them, from the movement imposing this continuous connection, and when reinstated individually and separately, it is not the content that they lack, for they have a specific content; they lack rather the form, which is their essential nature. In point of fact it is not for the reason that they have to be merely formal and are not to have any content, that these laws are not the truth of thought; it is rather for the opposite reason. It is because in their specific condition, simply as a content with the form removed, they want to pass for something absolute. In their true nature, as vanishing moments in the unity of thought, they would have to be taken as knowledge or as thinking process, but not as laws of knowledge. Observing, however, neither is nor knows that knowledge itself; observation transforms its nature into the shape of an objective being, i.e. apprehends its negative character merely as laws of knowledge.
It is sufficient for our purpose here to have demonstrated the invahdity of the so-called laws of thought from the general nature of the case. It falls to speculative philosophy to go more intimately and fully into the matter, and there they show themselves to be what in truth they are, single vanishing moments, whose truth is simply the whole oiE the thinking process, the process of knowledge itself.
This negative unity of thought exists for its own sake, or rather it is just that condition of being for itself and on its own account, the principle of individuahty, and in its reality it is an acting function of consciousness.
VOL. I.— U 290 Phenomenology of Mind Consequently the mental attitude of observation will by the nature of the case be led on towards this as being the reahty of those laws of thought. Since this connection is not a fact for observation, the latter supposes that thought with its laws remains standing separately on one side, and that, on the other side, it obtains another objective being in what is now the object observed, viz. that acting consciousness, which exists for itself in such a way as to cancel otherness and find its reahty in this direct awareness of itself as the negative.
In the active practical reahty of consciousness, observation thus finds opened up before it a new field. Psychology contams the collection of laws in virtue of which the mind takes up different attitudes towards the different forms of its reality given and presented to it in a condition of otherness. The mind adopts these various attitudes partly with a view to receiving these modes of its reahty into itself, and conforming to the habits, customs, and ways of thinking it thus comes across, as being that wherein mind is reahty and as such object to itself; partly with a view to knowing its own spontaneous activity in opposition to them, to follow the bent of its own inclinations, affections, and emotions, and carry off thence what is merely of particular and special moment for itself, and thus make what is objective conform to itself. In the former it behaves negatively towards itself as single and individual mind, in the latter negatively towards itself as the universal being.
In the former a,spect independence [or self-dependence] gives what is met with merely the form of conscious tadividuahty in general, and as regards Observation of Self-consciousness 291 the content remains within the general reality given; in the second aspect, however, it gives the reahty at least a certain special modification, which does not contradict its essential content, or even a modification by which the individual qua particular reahty and pecuhar content sets itself against the general reahty. This opposition becomes a form of wrongdoing when the individual cancels that reality in a merely particular manner, or when it does so in a manner that is general and thus for all, when it puts another world, another right, law, and custom in place of those aheady there.
Observational psychology, which in the first instance states what observation finds regarding the general forms brought to its notice in the active functioning consciousness, discovers all sorts of faculties, inclinations, and passions; and since, while narrating what this collection contains, the remembrance of the unity of self-consciousness is not to be suppressed, observational psychology is bound to get the length at least of wonderment that such a lot and such a miscellany of things can happen to be somehow alongside one another in the mind as in a kind of bag, more especially when they are seen to be not hfeless inert things, but restless active processes.
In telling over these various faculties observation keeps to the universal aspect: the unity of these multifarious capacities is the opposite aspect to this universahty, is the actual concrete individuahty.
To take up again the different concrete individuahties, and to describe how one man has more inclination for this, the other for that, how one has more intelhgence than the other— all this is, however, something much 292 Phenomenology of Mhid more uninteresting than even to reckon up the species of insects, mosses, and so on. For these latter give observation the right to take them thus individually and disconnectedly (begrifflos), because they belong essentially to the sphere of fortuitous detailed particulars. To take conscious individuahty, on the other hand, as a particular phenomenal entity, and treat it in so wooden a fashion, is self-contradictory, because the essential nature of individuality Ues in the universal element of mind. Since, however, the process of apprehending it causes it at the same time to pass into the form of universahty, to apprehend it is to find its law, and seems in this way to have a rational purpose in view, and a necessary function to fulfil.
The moments constituting the content of the law are on the one hand individuality itself, on the other its universal inorganic nature, viz. the given circumstances, situation, habits, customs, rehgion, and so forth; from these the determinate individuahty is to be understood and comprehended. They contain something specific, determinate, as well as universal, and are at the same time something lying at hand, which furnishes material for observation and on the other side expresses itself in the form of individuahty.
The law of this relation of the two sides has now to contain and express the sort of effect and influence these determinate circumstances exert on individuahty. This individuahty, however, just consists both in being the universal, and hence in passively and directly assimilating and blending with the given universals, the customs, habits, etc., thus becoming conformed to them, as also in taking up an attitude of opposition towards them and thus transforming and transmuting Observation of Self-consciousness 293 them; and again in behaving towards them in its individual character with complete indifference, neither allowing them to exert an influence over it, nor setting itself actively against them. On that account what is to have an influence on individuahty, the sort of influence it is to have — which, properly speaking, means the same thing — depends entirely on individuahty itself. Consequently, to say that this individuahty has become this specifically determinate individuahty means nothing else than saying it has been this all along. Circumstances, situation, customs, and so on, which show themselves on one side as something given, and on the other as within this specific individuahty, reveal merely their own indeterminate nature, which is not the point under consideration. If these circumstances, style of thought, customs, the whole state of the world, in short, had not been, then assuredly the individual would not be what he is; for all the individuals that find a place in this state of the world go to constitute this universal substance what it is.
The way in which the condition of the world becomes particularised in any given individual, however — and such an individual has to be understood and comprehended— could have been no other than the way in which it particularises itself as a determinate universal, and in this determinate form alone could it have operated on the individual as it does. Only so could it have made the individual the specific particular individual he is. If the external element is so constituted in and for itself as it appears in individuahty, the latter would be comprehended from the nature of the former. We should have a double gallery of pictures, one of which would be the reflection of the other: the one 294 Pfienonienotogy of Mind the gallery of external circumstance completely en' compassing, circumscribing, and determining the individual, the other the same gallery translated into the form in which those circumstances are in the conscious individual: the former the spherical surface, the latter the centre reflectively representing that surface within it.