The other significance of these organic elements, viz. as outer, is their embodiment in a given shape; here they assume the form of actual but at the same VOL. I.— S 258 Phenomenology of Mind time universal parts, or appear as organic systems. Sensibility is embodied in the form for instance of a nervous system, irritability, of a muscular system, re- production, of an intestinal system for tte preser- vation of the individual and the species.
Laws pecuhar to organic life, accordingly, concern a relation of the organic moments, taking account of their two-fold significance — viz. of being in one respect a part of definite organic formation or embodiment, and ia another respect a continuous universal element of a determinate kind, running through all those systems. Thus in giving expression to a law of that sort, a specific kind of sensibility, e.g., would find, qua moment of the whole organism, its expression in a determinately formed nervous system, or it would also be connected with a determinate reproduction of the organic parts of the individual or with the propagation of the whole, and so on. Both aspects of such a law can be observed. The external is in its very conception being for another; sensibility, e.g., finds its immediately realised form in the sensitive system; and, qua uni- versal property, it is in its outer expressions an objective fact as well. The aspect which is called "inner" has its own ''outer" aspect, which is distinct from what is in general called the outer.
Both the aspects of an organic law would thus certainly be open to observation, but not the laws of their relation. And observation does not manage to do that, not because, qua observation, it would be too short-sighted, and should not proceed empirically but should start from the "Idea" — for such laws, if they were something real, must, as a matter of fact, be actual, and must thus be observable: it is rather because Observation of Organic Nature 259 the thought of laws of this sort proves to have no truth at all.
It was put forward as a law, that the universal organic property had formed itself in an organic system into a thing and there found its own embodied image and copy, so that both were the same reahty, present, in the one case, as universal moment, in the other, as thing. But besides, the inner aspect is also for itself a relation of several aspects; and hence, to begin with, the idea of a law is presented as the thought of a relation of universal organic activities or properties to one another. Whether such a law is possible has to be decided from the nature of the property in question. Such a property, however, being universal and of a fluid nature, is, on the one hand, not something restricted like a thing, keeping itself within the distinction of a definite mode of existence, which is to constitute its shape and form: sensibihty goes beyond the nervous system and pervades all the other systems of the organism. On the other hand, such a property is a universal moment, which is essentially undivided, and inseparable from reaction, or irritabihty, and reproduc- tion. For, being reflection into self, it eo ipso already implies reaction. Merely to be reflected into itself is to be a passive, or hfeless being, and not sensibility; just as action — which is the same as reaction — when not reflected into self, is not irritability. Reflexion in action or reaction, and action or reaction in reflexion, is just that whose unity constitutes the organic being, a unity which is synonymous with organic reproduction. It follows from this that in every form of reahty there must be present the same quantity of sensibihty —since we are considering, in the first instance, the 260 Phenmnenology of Mind relation of sensibility and irritability to one another — as of irritability, and that an organic phenomenon can be apprehended and determined or, if we like, explained, just as much in terms of the one as of the other. What one man takes for high sensibiHty, another may just as rightly consider high irritability, and an irritabihty of the same degree. If they are called factors, and this is not to be a meaningless phrase, it is there- by 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 qualita- tive 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 tauto- logical 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 small- ness 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 consi- dered 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 every- thing 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 differ- ences 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 observa- tion 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 appre- hended as it is found in actual existence, then sensibihty, irritability, reproduction sink to the level of common properties, which are imiversals just as indifferent to- wards 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 them- selves.
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 indi- vidual 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 ex- pressed 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 some- thing different from the muscular system, the reproduc- tive 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 ana- tomical 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 in- herently 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 dis- solved, 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, essen- tial and external; on the contrary, it is itself the actual transition, the relational process, and to itself this transi- tion 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 exist- ence, and because the nature of the moments is essen- tially 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 determinate- ness 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 deter- minations when gathered into the simphcity of an organic determination, — expresses at the same time the fact that the content does not have that deter- minate 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 re- flected 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 irrita- bihty "; 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 "pos- sesses 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 inde- terminate, 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 deter- mination 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 expres- sions, "force," "strength," "weakness," would indeed be got rid of, there now arises the equally futile and inde- terminate 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-con- ceptual 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 de- termined; 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 self- existence. 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 in- herently 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 sub- sistence 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 nega- tivity, or pure individual existence, the organism finds its absolute freedom, whereby it is made quite se- cure and indifferent towards the fact of its being rela- tive 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;